Hitting temperatures below -80 degrees Fahrenheit, soldiers on the eastern front of WWII often referred to Russian Winter as “General Winter.” Where the Russian forces seemed hard-pressed to stop the Nazi tide from sweeping over their country, the harsh winter of 1941 took its toll on Hitler’s unprepared army.

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Taking place during the same historical period, Relic Entertainments Company of Heroes 2 our first look at the new gameplay mechanics in Company of Heroes 2, but a recent update shows just how the team plans to make General Winter an oppressive and important force.If you’ve ever visited or lived in a place that gets heavy snowfall, then you know just how much winter conditions impede movement. Soldiers and vehicles both move dramatically slower in Company of Heroes 2 if they move through unpacked snow. Of course you can always force them to cut a more direct path to a target, but you risk leaving tracks, many of which are unique enough that a skilled player will be able to tell exactly what passed through the area. Just imagine a situation with a sniper: In the original game, terrain would never give them away, but now it’s more important than ever to position sharpshooters in an area that provides adequate concealment, lest hunters trace their tracks.Outside the risk of taking additional fire, the bigger issue for your squads is hypothermia. While you and your friends might be able to walk to a car or a cabin to warm up, this wasn’t an option for many soldiers on the battlefields of 1941. Fires could give away your position, and these men couldn’t help but pour sweat as they dealt with the stress and exertion of narrowly avoiding bullets, explosions and armored vehicles that sought to rip them apart. If you’re outside during a blizzard, a new weather event that can occur in Company of Heroes 2, your soldiers risk exposure (though certain troops like the Siberian sniper will be layered against even the harshest conditions). As they move in a blizzard, a temperature gauge appears next to them. If these soldiers don’t find cover or get to a fire made by an engineer before the gauge bottoms out, then they’ll start dying, bodies casually falling into the snow as your men press on. Cover becomes more important than ever in these situations, as denying it to your opponent exposes them, and can force even a much stronger squad to fall back in order to avoid the wrath of General Winter.On top of increasing the importance of cover, hypothermia changes the battle dynamics in a couple more key ways. For starters it makes engineers much, much more important. In the last Company of Heroes,engineers were important, sure, but they never felt crucial to a front line force. Occasional situations calling for a flame-thrower aside, engineers were generally relegated to base-building and point capturing. In Company of Heroes 2 they can make or break your force, as they are the only units that can construct cover or make fires to save your men from the cold. Likewise transports, something I know many of my friends generally avoided because it made whole squads easily targetable by one good shot, become crucial. Not only do they give your men shelter from the temperatures outside, but they also move better through the snow. You may risk a greater number of casualties if the transport goes down, but you won’t lose as many men to the cold and your foe will have a harder time using the tracks to tell what sorts of forces you moved through the area.The cold temperature also means that rivers and lakes freeze over, giving commanders several new strategic options. For starters, tanks and other vehicles slide around on the ice, making complicated maneuvers a much greater ordeal. Then there’s the consequences of explosives –namely, the surface of the water collapses and units turn into ice cubes. While tanks will never collapse the ice on their own, the heavier the vehicle the easier it is to blow the ice out from under them. Setting up explosives on key choke points on a river is now an extremely lethal tactic, while tanks that might otherwise stand no chance could use a well-aimed shot to break the ice out from underneath a vastly superior force. The ice eventually freezes over in a matter of minutes, but this new tactic allows a savvy commander to deny ice-laden choke points and make travelling over ice a high risk option.While the weather mechanics implemented in Company of Heroes 2 only represent a few of the many sweeping gameplay changes coming to the franchise, they’re also some of the most exciting. Longtime Company of Heroes fans have learned how to master gunfire, bombs and situations where we have to send men into battle with one another, but confronting General Winter is something altogether different. You can shoot people and blow up tanks, but winter won't ever bleed or give up the fight.

Anthony loves Company of Heroes. Like really, really loves it and has spent countless hours with it. If you want to read more of his rants and learn more about him you can follow him on IGN.