That was a misreading of the dev comment on my part. They were apparently responding to a comment for a timeline for War in Europe (WiE) being 1943-1945, rather than War in the East (WitE). They were saying extending the whole-Europe map back to the start of the war would be a huge project.
Anyway I had an email exchange with Joel Billings today. He is OK with me passing along a few things regarding WitE2. It will definitely start June 22 1941. :) It’s in alpha and unlikely to come out this year. Steel and WitE2 are being developed simultaneously with programmers on both so the releases are not dependent on each other. At this point he isn’t sure which game will release first. Hope that helps.
Virtually all of the known information on WitE2 is found in the 49-page thread titled, surprisingly, “WitE2” in the Matrix Games forum topic for WitE. It’s probably too long now to read it all, but you can start at the end and work backwards as far as you like. It contains a lot of new screenshots and describes most of the new mechanisms being added to the original game, along with discussions surrounding same.
Was just going to post about the Eagle Day update. I wonder what prompted that after all these years.
The Close Combat series going to gog is good, and surprising. They even have the 2 slithering titles. So War in the Pacific the next title to go There? Wonder if the those are the original titles or the matrix updated ones. The names would suggest not the updates, but that could be so that people recognize them.
That’s what I’m guessing, plus their remakes/updates are a bit more expensive. I’ve been playing Cross of Iron, though, and it’s a great update though.
I’ve found the new Strategic Command improves so much over the old one it’s impossible to go back to playing it. There should be a Pacific expansion coming for the new game at some stage.
As someone who’s never played any of the Close Combat games, I’m really tempted to give them a try. I’ve seen A Bridge Too Far described as the best one; is that the consensus here?
I read, what was it, 2666 (?) that was supposed to be great and bounced off it like a brick wall. And I loved Ulysses (to establish my modern big-L Literature creds). Is this one different? I’m really tempted because I like stuff like Umberto Eco and whatnot and the concept is intriguing…
I haven’t read 2666 so I cannot comment, but I read both The Third Reich and The Savage Detectives, and both of these are probably a lot more accessible compared to 2666, at least the first part of The Savage Detectives. Less somewhat pretentious.
It’s probably worth a try as they seem quite different books.
About the Close Combat games, instead, I seem to remember that the problem was that they were very buggy and with AI that was for the most part a placeholder. Matrix rereleased them a while ago trying to fix the worst parts, but they weren’t that much better.
I remember I was seeking on some sites some SUPERLARGE mods that transformed the games into super-mega-huge interlinked campaigns, and supposedly fixed some problems as well and updated the AIs. But in the end here too the difficulty was artificial because the AI was still doing nothing intelligent or tactical. Plus problems with pathing, LOS and everything else.
I have no idea in what state are the games on GOG in respect to all this.