Dev log #2 - The British campaign in the Market Garden DLC

Hello!

It is Oleksandr from Starni Games with the new Dev log entry. This time we will look at the British campaign around which the entire Market Garden DLC is built.

NEW CAMPAIGN

Market Garden features a new British campaign that follows closely after the Normandy events. Here is the operation list:

1. Road to Valkenswaard
2. Liberation of Eindhoven
3. Liberation of Nijmegen
4. The Battle of Son
5. The Waal Crossing
6. The Elst Assault
7. The Battle of Highway 69
8. Operation Berlin (Arhnem)

The campaign follows a British ground troops unit tasked with reaching the Allied paratroopers that landed in the German rear and are holding key bridges for the main forces' advance.

The operation starts well, but the enemy offers increasingly greater resistance. Due to a number of enemy counterattacks - you have to slow down your advance and even move back to prevent the encirclement. These unfortunate delays put the paratroopers in a dire situation, so your new objective is to help evacuate the surviving paratroopers and help them join main forces and retreat to more tenable positions.

The Market Garden campaign has historically controversial results and we wanted to reflect that in our presentation of these events.

When working on the battle maps we were trying to keep maximum authenticity and present the operation Market Garden as best as we can. We also wanted each mission to have interesting primary and secondary objectives that made sense historically.

Another topic of discussion was to make sure our Market Garden maps look visually different from the Normandy maps, so that you could visually tell you are no longer in France. To achieve that we added a lot of new assets - houses, new buildings, and landmarks. You could clearly see that cities differ a lot, while villages are more alike to our Normandy maps, as there are fewer things we could add that would feel distinct.

The landmarks are a big part of making the maps look authentic and real. We added a number of well-known buildings and structures, such as the Nijmegen bridges and the historical buildings surrounding them. Some maps - like Nijmegen - require a lot of unique assets, while others - like a battle on the road in the middle of nowhere - require no unique assets to feel real.

The campaign features new UK, US, and German units, a new British character, 3 new British heroes, and an updated set of British awards. Although, the awards are a sore point for the team - there are not so many historically accurate new awards we could provide to the player that would fit the character’s rank and achievements, so we had to use some of the ones we also awarded in Normandy - there is just not so many other existing real awards that we could add. Still, we tried to add a few new ones that felt right (mostly from other nations, as key British awards were already explored in the Normandy campaign).

To sum up, 8 new challenging battles await you with new units, environment assets, characters, heroes, awards, and unique combat situations. We really hope that you will enjoy your time in the Netherlands no less than you did in Normandy. While we keep working to improve the game and provide new challenges for your tactical skills.

See you next time!