They thought they were doing the right thing. They figured at least one adult in my household would have a normal-sized head. They thought wrong, and a child suffered.

Well, Archer slept through the whole thing, but one day, years from now, I'll pull up this post and then he'll suffer. Until then he'll remain blissfully ignorant that he was a cog in the relentless wheels of THQ's Company of Heroes 2 PR machine. He'll say "But father, I don't want to join the Red Army!" to which I will reply, "Not a lot of people did, son."

Then we'll laugh and laugh.

Along with the tiny fuzzy hat came a card that read: "операция красный снег готовиться к холодному фронту, товарищ". Fifteen minutes in Google Translate later and I deciphered the message: "Operation Red Snow — Prepare for a cold front, comrade."

Well at least someone in this house is prepared for a cold front.

In a superb autopsy of Kaos Studios, closed three months after it finished Homefront for THQ, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander paints a vivid picture of a studio doomed by meddling, duplicitous executives, and filled with underqualified managers, overworked developers and even an overflowing urinal.

There's a lot of anonymous sourcing, which means there's a lot of mud flung by pissed-off people who lost their jobs. And a huge wad of it lands on the guy whose name helped sell the game's concept to the public from the day it was announced.

That would be John Milius, the screenwriter known for, among other things, 1984's Red Dawn. Milius was invoked the day THQ announced the game in 2009, as Red Dawn's story closely mirrors that of Homefront's.

However, "Although ... Milius is credited with writing the script, multiple staffers tell Gamasutra he ultimately wrote not a word of it, despite the game containing at least 20,000 lines of dialog," Alexander reports. "Most former employees credit Kaos writer C.J. Kershner with Homefront's script."

Kershner, in the game's credits, is credited with "associate designer, writing, QA."

[Update] Back in 2009, THQ clarified to Eurogamer that Milius' role was more as a story consultant than a screenplay writer. Eurogamer quoted a THQ representative as saying he was "definitely involved in the dialogue," however. Still, ""He's not writing the story per se but he's heavily involved in structuring it and increasing the quality of it really," said Kaos' Erin Daly at the time.

The remainder of the original post follows.

Danny Bilson, the THQ's former executive in charge of core games, is portrayed as having more of an influence over Homefront's story—good and bad. Bilson, himself a Hollywood screenwriter who was run out of his THQ job in late May, "came up with much of the high-level story ideas for the game," Alexander reports. However, he also insisted on the scenario involving North Korea as the invading force—a situation some critics laughed at as wildly unrealistic—because original concepts depicting China as the aggressor were seen as harmful to THQ's business ambitions in that country.

That only scratches the surface of this tale of ambitious failure, unreasonable expectations, undue credit and stinging recriminations. My favorite detail was the "Urinal Bucket," which came to symbolize the mordant humor with which Kaos staffers viewed their plight, many convinced their shop would be closed even before Homefront released.

Kaos Descends: How Homefront's Developer Met its End [Gamasutra]

A new teaser trailer for next year's strategy title Company of Heroes 2 has just arrived. And while it doesn't feature any gameplay or show off its fancy features, the trailer does show one thing incredibly effectively:

It gets cold in Russia, y'all.

A narrator rather effectively intones the dire history of World War II, and sets up the conditions of the less-covered Eastern front in which the game takes place. And all the snow and ice and Stalin (especially the Stalin) add up into one chilling effect indeed.

While it's a little cheap, even by live-action video game trailer standards, this clip for the upcoming Darksiders II is saved by one thing: the presence of the ever-wonderful James Cosmo.

One of the manliest men to have ever walked the Earth, Cosmo is perhaps best known these days as Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch in the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones. Though Braveheart fans will also remember him as Campbell.

Company of Heroes is a franchise that prides itself on several things. For one, it's a well-regarded real-time strategy game. For another, historical accuracy is paramount to developers Relic.

This means weapons and vehicles are true to history, and the snowy weather has an actual impact on your game. But it's more than just that.

In 1941 Stalin issued Order No. "Not A Step Back" 227, forbidding retreat on penalty of death. Though brutal, it did manage to push Germans off of the Soviet Union's lands.

Keeping in line with the history of Russians versus Germans, then, means that retreating from battle on the Eastern front will get you shot by your own army men.

After showing off a few new features that Stephen saw during his demonstration—like a new line-of-sight feature, and being able to have your men vault over cover—our Russian soldiers were trapped, pinned down by heavy German fire. What could they do?

An order was called for the men to retreat. A second line of Russian defense, witnessing this retreat, shouted at the infantrymen to stand strong and pursue the fight. The scared men kept running, and a cut scene showed them being gunned down.

It was an uncomfortable cut scene to watch. But this is exactly why Relic chose the Eastern front setting in the first place: because it's the bloodiest conflict in history, seeing 20 million Russian deaths.

Developer Vigil Games' next Darksiders title retains the hack and slash formula from its predecessor, but it ventures into a new territory with its storyline. And even after just barely catching a glimpse of it, I already want to know more.

My demo on the E3 showfloor starts at the beginning of the game. Death, the new horseman protagonist players get to ride as, is on a mission to free his brother from unjust accusations of starting the apocalypse. But the first obstacle in Death's course to the Tree of Life has him meet face to face with the keeper of secrets, also known as the Crowfather.

Throughout Death's riding, jumping, and scaling of walls and cliffs, an ominous voice resonates through icy blue canyons and caverns, whispering of troubling secrets. An occasional appearance of a figure in a crowfeathered frock indicates that the panicked whispers are coming from him.

Before Death will face off against the crazed Crowfather, he platforms across the frozen level, using wall runs, mantles, bounces, and climbing to navigate. He'll slash skull-like enemies with his scythe, and hammer down on them with a heavier secondary weapon. Since this was early on in the game, I wasn't able to tinker with some of his more impressive abilities—like transforming into a reaper, though some in-battle cutscenes will tease this ability—but it's exciting to read about what he can eventually level towards. Having a personal horde of exploding zombies and being able to split into two entities are just a few of the interesting abilities.

Since my demonstration only lasted about 20-30 minutes, I didn't get a chance to meet NPCs and explore the world—which is supposed to be over double the size of the first Darksiders—but I didn't need it to get excited about investing more time in the game. My tiny peek at Death's role in this game, as well as his responsibilities that the storyline seems to tell me have probably occasionally gone awry, did that for me.

Before my boss battle with the Crowfather, he pleaded with me to destroy the green-glowing amulet chained around his neck. Even with Death's Cubone-looking mask on, I could see pain in his eyes while he explained that he couldn't alleviate the Crowfather's stress by destroying the amulet. It looks like he wants to, and hates that he knows he can't. There's a deeper plotline here that I want to poke through. What's the amulet exactly? Why does it trouble him? Why does the Crowfather have it, and why is it driving him crazy?

By the boss fight's end, the amulet transferred its powers into Death, embedding it into his chest. It's unclear what exactly this will mean for him, or what the deal bartered between Death and Crowfather was that handed the amulet off to him in the first place, but what we do know is that the amulet contains all the souls of Death's annihilated race: the Nephilim. All of his brothers' souls are captured in there, and now trapped in his own body. It's a harrowing thought, to know that the deaths the four horseman were responsible for—the deaths of his own kind—are now flowing through his brain and undoubtedly his conscious.

You can expect more coverage from us before the game's release in August.

THQ is having a rough go of things right now, but their kill-fest Darksiders II is right on track.

Really, in a way we play Death in a huge number of games, whether or not that's the character's real name. It's almost refreshing to take on the role of the Grim Reaper himself. Darksiders II is due on current consoles this August, and on the Wii U when the console gets here.

The physical feature that most impressed players of the first great Company of Heroes real-time strategy game was the earth. In combat, under the impact of a grenade or tank shell, it cratered.

There were many other things to like in the first CoH, which is one of the best-reviewed video games of all time. It was a smarter, smaller-scale game of real-time World War II battles, one that humanized its few player-controlled units and unfurled a dynamic array of combat opportunities.

The earth in Company of Heroes 2 is impressive. What's more notable now is its fire and snow. Those two features that will decide life and death in the early 2013 PC game's setting, the cold hell of World War II's Eastern Front.

In Santa Monica last week, I played a small portion of Relic's new Company of Heroes during a showcase by game publisher THQ. I played as the Russians, as all players of the game's campaign will. Our mission was near the town of Polunino, my small squad set up, for demo purposes, with infinite troop resupplies—for experimentation, of course. We had to walk a road, clear a house, engage a German tank across an icy lake.

The snow is everywhere in this game. That's expected. We're in Russia, after all. What Relic will do with the snow might impress you. It will accumulate. It will pile onto disabled tanks and it will cover the tracks of your enemies, tracks that may differ across unit types. Heavy snow will slow the infantry who wade through it. The snow will scatter when pounded with an explosion. It will melt away when it is met with flame.

Fire. It's the other stand-out. Russian engineers in your squad bring flamethrowers to the fight against Germans who have occupied so many wooden Russian buildings. The core tactic here is challenging but obvious: approach a house full of Germans; suppress the ones firing from the windows; bring the flamethrower closer; burn it all down. The spread and control of fire will be a key to victory.

The pre-E3 demo of Company of Heroes 2 that I played highlighted a few other features in the sequel: 1) smarter troop intelligence that sends men to the proper side of cover; 2) a vaulting mechanic that lets soldiers hurdle cover (if commanded )instead of only ever running around it; 3) enemy armor, mainly tanks, that can be disabled and then commandeered mid-battle, introducing the new option to try to leave enemy armor intact enough to use; 4) a new line-of-sight system that looks less like the radial clearing of most games' fog of war and more like the spreading of an amoeba of clarity, unfogging only the parts of the map that the troops on the ground can see (In real-time, that amoeba shape changes as smoke drifts past a previously open line of sight, blocking it for the moment; the game screen fully unfogs, briefly, during an aerial strike.

My own experience with Company of Heroes is limited. I know it mostly vicariously from the friends and colleagues who have fallen hard for the game. It was a game that rewarded tactics, not just rapid clicking. I see no changed direction with the new one. This sequel appears to be for the existing fans, a game made to convert those who will come to it. It's not budging, except to head east to the bloodiest side of a brutal war.

You know what? I think that Jesper Kyd is a darned fine composer. He's best known for his work on the Assassin's Creed series, and his work has come to embody that series for me—that piercing, odd solo female voice, driving electronic beats, and wide-open string arrangements. He captures the series' fixation upon flight and momentum with grace and vision. So much video game music simply mimics the musical styles of hollywood, but Kyd has always struck me as a composer willing to experiment and find his own sound.

Kyd has written the music for the upcoming Darksiders II, and has shared some tracks on his YouTube channel. As you'll hear in that top track, "Into Eternity," the music has more than a little bit of Assassin's Creed in it—but it tweaks things with just enough shambly darkness to conjure Death, Darksiders II's protagonist. It's like Assassin's Creed via Danny Elfman.

Which feels appropriate, considering that Death himself looks like a cross between Skeletor and Jack Skellington.

You can check out three more tracks on Kyd's YouTube channel.

Rumors have been hot and heavy that THQ would be announcing a sequel to hit PC strategy title, Company of Heroes and, today, the beleaguered publisher has done exactly that. As hinted by the vintage newspaper page we showed last week, the sequel to the 2006 game will focus on the WWII battles between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, with players commanding the Red Army. Developed by Relic Entertainment, Company of Heroes 2 is scheduled for release in early 2013.