Welcome to the first Dev Diary for Panzer Corps 2: Frontlines - Westwall, the newest entry in the Frontlines series.
To get things started we explore the broad idea for this new campaign and share some more general info about it. As this is the second US-themed DLC we’ll also highlight similarities and differences compared to the earlier Frontlines-Bulge campaign.
More Dev Diaries with details about campaign progress, specific battles included, and new additions to the game will follow soon. As with Bulge, the full campaign path, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions are provided later separately
Several details seen in this preview are not final and may still change.
Border Wars
Frontlines - Westwall is played once again from the American side. The DLC depicts the Siegfried Line campaign from ca. mid-September 1944 to early December 1944.
But while the Battle of the Bulge is a quite compact subject – happening in a timeframe of ca. 8 weeks, and in a rather limited area – the Siegfried Line campaign is a somewhat different beast, so let’s get a bit more background first.
Siegfried Line is the term usually used in English for the German border defenses built in the late 1930s. In German these were simply called the Westwall, which made it back into the Anglosphere as the West Wall.
These fortifications were not as extensive as World War I trench lines, nor as impressive as the French Maginot Line with its sophisticated underground installations. Still the Westwall, made of several fortified zones littered with mines, anti-tank obstacles and a myriad of pillboxes, soon posed a serious problem for the Allies.
Outside Germany the existence of those defenses was certainly known, but the Allies had only a vague understanding of the exact locations and depth of the fortifications.
As the Westwall covered nearly the entire German border from the Netherlands down to Switzerland almost everything that happened in fall 1944 on the western front is either part of the Siegfried Line campaign, or at least somehow linked to it.
So in a broad sense this DLC depicts Allied efforts to liberate Western Europe as far as possible – notwithstanding isolated locations still held by the Wehrmacht – with the goal to approach and breach the Siegfried Line to finally enter German core territory.
To the wall...
We will go more into the details of the campaign in the next diary, but for now only this: Frontlines - Westwall offers a larger variety of battles compared to Bulge.
Players get to fight in the Low Countries, France, and in Germany, in vastly different settings and conditions ranging from rather open areas with towns and villages in between to heavy terrain covered by dense forest or larger swamps that restrict movement.
Often maps are a mix of the above, and on top of that several scenarios include larger urban areas protected by extensive fortifications.
Players don’t have to destroy each and every bunker on the map, but may get tasked to clear specific areas or simply need to break through fortified lines to be able to reach the mission objectives.
…and into Germany
But once you are past those fortifications things are not always easier, as German armored reserves may just be waiting there to make their move.
That requires players to balance their cores – of course heavy hitting tanks and tank destroyers rule in the open, but without experienced infantry and artillery support they can quickly get stuck.
However, if you overdo it on the infantry side to get through the fortifications more easily you may suffer once you get into tank terrain again.
Since we start in late summer the USAAF can play a bigger role in this DLC. On the other hand the Luftwaffe might become a more frequent problem soon, even if it does not have the numbers to challenge Allied air superiority.
As the campaign progresses adverse conditions like rain and even the first snow may temporarily hamper air operations, but this never gets as serious as in the early stage of the Battle of the Bulge.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Despite all these differences this is still part of the Frontlines series, so it should be no surprise that there are also similarities to Bulge:
Frontlines - Westwall includes more battles than Bulge. Since players often ask for longer campaigns this DLC offers a linear campaign, and so the longest campaign path is, well, longer.
But map scope and detail are very much similar to Bulge, so you can expect detailed maps, and a consistent or near-consistent scale in many scenarios of the campaign.
Most battles are based on historic developments, so there are no outright ahistorical scenarios. Only the intro is more loosely based on the first US actions at the Westwall, but still has a historic core.
Sometimes details are changed or added purely for gameplay reasons in various battles - that is no different from any other content for Panzer Corps.
As in Frontlines - Bulge the timeframe of this DLC is somewhat challenging with key developments happening simultaneously, especially early in the campaign.
To deal with this we give players the chance to experience many of these developments in consecutive scenarios, where we just jump in at a certain date, and join the next battle a bit later.
This too is very similar to the approach taken in Bulge, so individual scenarios often focus on key aspects or crucial stages of certain battles.
Conclusion
That’s all for the first part of this Dev Diary. Hopefully this appetizer gives you a good impression of the new campaign. The next part with more details about campaign progress and some of the battles is not too far away, so watch this space!