Destruction in Battlefield Commander WWII (Early Access)

In recent years, the genre where we most commonly have decently responsive experiences destruction wise is strategy. Games like Men of War, Call to Arms, and Regiments are some examples. And so when a new one comes out, where destructible environments are one of the features I'm quite curious to see what it is about.

Unfortunately though, there are some notable issues. But given that the game is in early access and is being actively worked on, the main purpose here is to provide feedback, and showcase some pretty notable things that it does.

Building damage

What you'll see is the building divided into parts that will break off on explosive impacts. Although the variations aren't pretty (fairly crude cutouts, in the vein of what I remember in Syrian Warfare, with no visible damage around the broken part), it works decently well with the small buildings and it will deliver pretty good feedback for an explosive shell.

It does get a bit weird with a large building I tried testing on. Granted, this test was far from perfect - there's no "attack ground" button to try hitting it with a tank, and you can't just shell the area with Katyushas, so what I had to do was place units close to it and hope enemies will hit the building too, and not just my units.

Anyway, what I have seen a few times is several of the cutouts simultaneously get broken in several spots on the building, all happening in the same frame. I've seen that happen several times and it's unlikely that I've had multiple bombs hit at the exact same moment.

You can see that, and as much as I could get the building damaged in the video below.

As you can see in the building destruction short, the debris will disappear and there will be nothing for the aftermath.

Lasting debris is still uncommon, but there are some ways to still give you an aftermath feel even without it. One of them is spawning a decal of debris around the damaged area (we have an example of that in Regiments). And another one is spawning generic debris piles under destroyed sections. You can see it very clearly in the newly released tank spinoff of Call to Arms, but the strategy games in the series (and Men of War) had that too.

Terrain and vegetation

This aspect at the moment leaves a lot to be desired. All you'll have is a decal for the impacts, and as far as I saw - the same one for both a tank shell and a larger artillery round. In the case of the latter, it will look quite underwhelming.

As you can also see in the image above, we have some issues with the vegetation as well. You will see the specific patch of grass disappear where the crater formed, but all other forms of flora, such as bushes or trees are unresponsive at the moment.

I do want to note that there will be a nice burned area around destroyed vehicles. Perhaps something similar could be used to spice up the artillery impacts. Ideally of course there would be terrain deformation, but I'm not sure if that can be added at this stage of the game's development.

Vehicle damage and additional props

Now speaking of the vehicle damage, visually there isn't a whole lot there. I've seen smoke coming from the engine area and a destroyed variation. Factors like penetration and component damage are very much there, but I've only seen the things mentioned above.

There are however several things I highly appreciate here that games tend to miss out:

• The destroyed vehicle will keep burning and not get auto extinguished. I think if you destroy one at the start of a round it will keep burning for the entire time. Almost nobody does that and it matters. Burning vehicles are not easy to put out (have a bit of experience with that myself, volunteering in the fire department for several years).

• The previous point kind of gives it away, but destroyed vehicles will remain on the battlefield as an obstacle, and presumably cover too.

• Not vehicles, but something that I do want to point out - dead soldiers will remain on the field as well. In games that do have lasting vehicle wrecks those still tend to vanish, so I appreciate this here too. Even when there's no gore, it matters.

As you might expect, props like fences, chicken coops and so on will be destructible too, but just as we have with the building variations - the debris for those will vanish pretty fast.

A few minor points of feedback

• While the interface is by no means terribly intrusive, a toggle HUD button would be great.

• At the end of a game you should have the option to take a look at the aftermath. The only button you have there is a back to menu one.

• Once again, an attack ground button, or for the very least shell area feature for artillery would be highly useful. Not just for testing destruction, it made using artillery in the game a bit hard if a unit was spotted but there was no continuous line of sight.

Final thoughts

I imagine the destruction aspect in the game is incomplete, and hopefully it will get more attention over the course of the early access phase. What I think would matter the most is making better craters for artillery impacts, that alone would make a massive difference. And having all forms of vegetation respond when hit by the appropriate amount of force.

As you can see, the game gets quite a lot of it right. Hopefully the missing pieces will be filled in too.

The game is available on Steam.

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