THQ has been through some turbulent times this year and they're not out of the woods yet, but fortunately for core-gamers, we're the market that the publisher is now solely focused on to bring them out of that slump. So it's encouraging then, to see another new announcement from one of their more successful franchises in recent times -- Company of Heroes 2 from RTS vets Relic Entertainment.

We don't have any official media from the game yet, however, the long-awaited WWII real-time strategy sequel has reportedly been revealed in the June edition of print-mag PC Gamer, with some scans having found their way on to the tubes.

According to the print feature, CoH 2 takes the story to the Ost-front, the Eastern theater of World War II in locales such as Moscow, Stalingrad, Smolensk, Rostov and Kursk where "13 of the 15 bloodiest battles happened". The article details quite a few technical improvements since the first Company of Heroes, explaining how the game will contain procedurally-spread snow that will affect the movement of units and more ways to traverse and destroy the environment -- including flamethrowers that can set buildings alight.

Also new to CoH 2 is a "True Sight" feature, wherein the fog of war is affected by environmental effects such as smoke grenades, which along with an improved cover system is aimed at building on the already successful CoH formula, rather than trying something completely new and different -- as Lead Designer Quinn Duffy explains:

"We tried a number of things, "Quinn says. "In part, it was 'How far can we push it before we lose the essence of what Company of Heroes was?' And we just had an innate sense that things got out the comfort zone of what the game should be, so we started to narrow in."

Mathew Berger, another designer, explains the philosophy in contrast to Relic's last sequel: Dawn of War 2. "Dawn of war 2 was a very big departure, which was to bring newer players in," he says. "When we started looking at going to Company of Heroes 2, that kind of departure did come up. We were really clear that we wanted to maintain the core game, and that was a decision we made and that was in part because of Dawn of War 2."

Greg quickly counters the obvious though: "Dawn of War 2 is an amazing game, but there were certain things that didn't suit the franchise very well."

Company of Heroes 2 is expected in 2013 on PC.