Back in 2016, I interviewed Johan Andersson, at that time Paradox's executive vice president of game development, about Hearts of Iron 4. He explained how his last job interview with the company back in 1998 ended with a board game - Axis & Allies, now published by Renegade Games.
Of course, when Hearts of Iron 4 emerged just six months later (on June 6, appropriately), it looked and felt almost nothing like Axis & Allies. Andersson and his team at Paradox had taken Larry Harris Jr.'s classic as their inspiration, but the franchise they created and iterated on for the better part of two decades was so much more than Harris' design ever was.
Yes, you could still smash American, British, and German tanks together in clamorous little battles throughout Europe, and set packs of fighter planes spooling around the cardboard Pacific. But where Hearts of Iron 4 excelled was in creating alternate histories, something that the rules of most other war games, including Axis & Allies, simply aren't capable of doing - even to this day.
I see something else - progress, and the potential to reimagine historical grand strategy on the tabletop.
Collection
[
|
...
]