It’s always a bit weird hearing people from other nations trying to define the WARTIME SPIRIT of Britain, because national characters are, by their all-encompassing nature, pretty reductive and sweeping.
Relic’s Quinn Duffy mostly plays it pretty safe in this Company of Heroes 2 dev diary for the British Forces, sticking to Winston Churchill (a politician so beloved that we kicked him out almost immediately after WWII ended,) D-Day landings, Battle of Britain, all that stuff. But he also makes some incredibly baffling comments, like opting for a Northern Irish commando character because they have a “blood-thirsty twang” to their accent. Err … okay then?
He also seems to lump Northern Ireland in with ‘Britain’ which … I guess is semantically correct if you’re meaning Britain as a shorthand for ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,’ but the term for that is usually just United Kingdom.
But look, I get that when you’re designing national characters for an RTS expansion there’s going to be a tendency to tack towards broad archetypes. So the Welsh guy is an engineer and coal miner, the Scottish chap honed his sniping skills hunting Highland game, and the English … actually they don’t mention a specific English character.
I’m going to assume he’ll have a cut-glass Queen’s English accent, a stiff upper lip and say “By jove!” a lot. Unless he’s working class in which case they’ll probably go for Cockney. Surprise me, Relic. Go for a West Country accent or East Anglia or something.
Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces is due in September. It’s a stand-alone multiplayer expansion (meaning you can buy it and just play as the British in multiplayer,) which will add 15 units and six commanders, plus eight new multiplayer maps.
Published: Jul 20, 2015 05:16 pm