Hearts of Iron 4's Upcoming DLC to Add Bizarre WW2 Experiments Sooner Than Expected

The new Hearts of Iron 4 DLC with Prototype Vehicles will launch earlier than expected bringing experimental content to the WW2 strategy game.

Hearts of Iron 4 is still a leading game in the grand strategy genre. Even after nearly nine years. it continues to attract tens of thousands of players daily and stays among Steam's top games due to its deep recreation of World War 2. With its next DLC the game is trying something new by exploring prototype creations that were never used. Paradox has announced that Prototype Vehicles will be released sooner than expected as part of the first expansion pass.

The Hearts of Iron 4 Expansion Pass 1 has been a mix of good and bad. The first part Götterdämmerung added a lot of great content focusing on key countries and alternate-history paths for Germany. However the Graveyard of Empires country pack received poor reviews with many players disappointed by its focus on Iran India, Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The Prototype Vehicles unit pack is a smaller part of the pass but it's one of the most experimental. It adds vehicles from a time when the arms race was intense and any way to get an edge on the enemy was a fight on its own. These designs were made to solve problems improve current models or out of desperation. Most never saw battle, but a few were used in limited action.

The team at Paradox says we may never know what the final designs looked like. They studied original blueprints to create illustrations of what these designs might have been if fully produced. One design is the Grasshopper a tank with twin helicopter rotors that could jump over obstacles. Another is the Modra Revolving Tank which has a rotating hull to deflect incoming projectiles.

The pack lets you use these models in-game but they are just visual changes not full mechanical updates. That’s probably why most of them did not make it to real life. The good news is the pack is almost ready and will be released earlier than planned now in the second quarter of 2025. So we can expect it in May or June.

The Hearts of Iron 4 Prototype Vehicles unit pack will launch in the second quarter of 2025. You can check out the full developer diary for details on other models like the Perrinelle-Dumay Amphibious Heavy Tank and the huge cannon of the 2B1 Oka heavy mortar which had issues due to its impractical design and strong recoil.