TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,975
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
"Hopefully people are just [going to say] 'a great game is a great game,' and look at it from that perspective."
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SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Greg Foertsch, creative director on the upcoming Star Wars Zero Company, gave his take on the resurgence of crustier PC gaming genres like RTS and turn-based tactics over the last decade in a recent interview with PCG associate editor Ted Litchfield. He also explained why he thinks there was such a long fallow period for complex, simmy games in the aughts and early 2010s.
If you love grand strategy, 4X, turn-based tactics, RTS, CRPGs, and so on, there were several decades where you needed a PC to get the full lay of the land, and even then it was slim pickings for a while. You could certainly find these genres finding success on consoles here and there with games like Fire Emblem, Halo Wars, and Dragon Age: Origins, but countless classics were gated by InstallShield wizards and newbie-hostile forum lords who refused to explain what "THAC0" was.
That's less true these days—Age of Empires plays great on a controller, Baldur's Gate 3 is a cross-platform mega hit, and in defiance of all common sense, Company of Heroes is on Nintendo Switch.
"Early on in the 2000s, we got enamored with consoles," Foertsch explained. "And I think certain games didn't make the leap right—the technology reasons, whatever it was, they couldn't make that conversion. A lot of tactics games you look at, they had an isometric sprite based thing. And the way they delivered the content, it never embraced the camera as a tool."
"Camera as a tool" is a line that really struck us: You can see what he's talking about with the cinematic kill cams of XCOM, which Foertsch and many of his colleagues worked on, and contrast that with the pre-rendered, 2.5D art of so many '90s tactics and strategy games. It's a classic look, but also a particularly bad fit for lower TV resolutions viewed from further away than a monitor.
Foertsch reckons it took awhile for the UX and camera tech to innovate in the right directions, but as it catches up, it's approaching the level of comfort you can expect from keyboard and mouse. "You're starting to see some of these games and genres that maybe had a difficult transition to the couch, actually being games that are that are great to play on the couch," he said. "A lot of my PC games, I'll play with controller, and some of them feel great....Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
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Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Greg Foertsch, creative director on the upcoming Star Wars Zero Company, gave his take on the resurgence of crustier PC gaming genres like RTS and turn-based tactics over the last decade in a recent interview with PCG associate editor Ted Litchfield. He also explained why he thinks there was such a long fallow period for complex, simmy games in the aughts and early 2010s.
If you love grand strategy, 4X, turn-based tactics, RTS, CRPGs, and so on, there were several decades where you needed a PC to get the full lay of the land, and even then it was slim pickings for a while. You could certainly find these genres finding success on consoles here and there with games like Fire Emblem, Halo Wars, and Dragon Age: Origins, but countless classics were gated by InstallShield wizards and newbie-hostile forum lords who refused to explain what "THAC0" was.
That's less true these days—Age of Empires plays great on a controller, Baldur's Gate 3 is a cross-platform mega hit, and in defiance of all common sense, Company of Heroes is on Nintendo Switch.
"Early on in the 2000s, we got enamored with consoles," Foertsch explained. "And I think certain games didn't make the leap right—the technology reasons, whatever it was, they couldn't make that conversion. A lot of tactics games you look at, they had an isometric sprite based thing. And the way they delivered the content, it never embraced the camera as a tool."
"Camera as a tool" is a line that really struck us: You can see what he's talking about with the cinematic kill cams of XCOM, which Foertsch and many of his colleagues worked on, and contrast that with the pre-rendered, 2.5D art of so many '90s tactics and strategy games. It's a classic look, but also a particularly bad fit for lower TV resolutions viewed from further away than a monitor.
Foertsch reckons it took awhile for the UX and camera tech to innovate in the right directions, but as it catches up, it's approaching the level of comfort you can expect from keyboard and mouse. "You're starting to see some of these games and genres that maybe had a difficult transition to the couch, actually being games that are that are great to play on the couch," he said. "A lot of my PC games, I'll play with controller, and some of them feel great....Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?