Command & Conquer: Tiberian series
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The Command & Conquer: Tiberian series is a sub-series of real-time strategy video games which belong to the extensive Command & Conquer franchise. The games of the Tiberian series are the direct chronological successors to the 1996 title of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn by Westwood Studios, and are set in a fictional alternate history in which an anomalous extraterrestrial substance known as Tiberium is brought to earth through a meteoric collision during the early 1990s. The substance's intriguing yet hazardous properties begin to fuel an escalating war between two globalized factions; the United Nations Global Defense Initiative, who wish to prevent the proliferation of Tiberium for safety reasons, and the mysterious and ancient Brotherhood of Nod society, who seek for the substance to saturate the earth's biosphere and generate a new ecology.
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[edit] Series overview
The Tiberian series of the Command & Conquer games include:
- Command & Conquer, aka Tiberian Dawn (1995)
- The Covert Operations (expansion pack) (1996)
- Sole Survivor (1997)
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (1999)
- Firestorm (expansion pack) (2000)
- Renegade (2002)
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (2007)
[edit] Production history
[edit] Command & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn)
The genesis of the Tiberian series as well as the C&C franchise in its entirety, Command & Conquer was one of the earliest real-time strategy video games and its runaway success upon its international release in 1995 has often been credited with having popularized this genre.[1] Originally developed for MS-DOS, a "Gold" version for Windows 95 was released in 1997 along with a similar version for the Mac OS. A minor expansion pack titled The Covert Operations was also released, which added a few new missions to the original game. Command & Conquer is widely known under the title Tiberian Dawn throughout the C&C fan community, and was additionally designated as such by Westwood Studios in one of the earliest helpfile texts included in the MS-DOS release of the game.
Versions of Command & Conquer were released for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 platforms, all of which contained the Covert Operations missions as well as a package of a few additional missions entitled Special Ops. The Nintendo 64 version of Command & Conquer also featured 3D graphics instead of sprites in the series for the first time. The game additionally was one of the first to be released on two CDs, instead of one. This allowed multiplayer games between two computers to be played with a single copy.
[edit] Sole Survivor
Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor was a multiplayer spinoff of the original Command & Conquer game. It featured a deathmatch-style game in which each player controls a unit of the original Command & Conquer game and travels around the game arena collecting crates to increase this unit's firepower, armor, speed, attack range and reloading speed. Sole Survivor was often compared to a first-person shooter, however played with a bird's eye view of the arena. It featured no single-player mode and the multiplayer had no hints of a storyline.
[edit] Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Released in 1998 by Electronic Arts, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was the highly-anticipated sequel to the original Command & Conquer. Tiberian Sun was built on a 3D engine and utilized isometric perspectives with varying terrain height, dynamic lighting which allowed for real-time day/night cycles, as well as several special effects such as ion and meteor storms. Tiberian Sun also featured maps consisting of cityscapes, providing players with the option to conceal their forces and do battle with them in urban environments. Numerous structures and armored units were rendered with voxel technology, although all infantry units were still rendered as sprites. Map terrain in Tiberian Sun was deformable and interactive; bombarding the soil with explosive weapons resulted in the formation of craters of varying depths, bridges in urban areas could be destroyed and re-built, and certain Tiberium fields could intentionally or accidentally be detonated, all of which had strategic impacts on the gameplay.
Tiberian Sun was often speculated to be a BattleMech-type game prior to its release, due to a promotional preview of the game within the ending cutscenes of the original Command & Conquer, which extensively showcased an experimental battle-walker prototype being field tested by the Global Defense Initiative. Upon its release, TS would prove to continue the real-time strategy formula, however futuristic mech walker units were introduced to GDI's side, replacing the more conventional tanks the faction had used within the original Command & Conquer.
The full motion videos were scripted differently from their counterparts in the series. While Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert FMV sequences were filmed from first-person perspective, Tiberian Sun used traditional cinematic shots which featured acclaimed Hollywood actors such as James Earl Jones and Michael Biehn.
The soundtrack of Tiberian Sun again was composed by Frank Klepacki, but it departed from the industrial/hip-hop styles of its prequel in favor of slow, moody and ambient music, reflecting the game's apocalyptic background setting of a world ecologically being ravaged by Tiberium and a humanity that is facing an increasingly uncertain future. A CD of the game's soundtrack was also released.
Tiberian Sun's storyline followed the continuing struggle for world domination between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod, as well as the human race's struggle with the relentlessly advancing alien Tiberium substance. Nod's leader and GDI's public enemy #1, Kane, resurfaces from an apparently faked death nearly 40 years after the initial conflict, which sets off a second world war between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod. The game's theme also subtly revolves around the question of why Tiberium came to earth in the first place, with the discovery of what appears to be an alien spacecraft and a mysterious object known as the Tacitus.
Despite the anticipation surrounding the title, Tiberian Sun was released to mixed reviews. Delays had caused the game to take a total of four and a half years to develop, and as a result the game suffered from outdated features such as a maximum resolution of 640x480. Many found the game performance to be sluggish on all but the latest computers of the time as well, and numerous of Tiberian Sun's touted innovative features, such as intelligent and adaptive skirmish AI, unit veterancy and real-time lighting were either severely scaled back, or removed entirely as the result of time constraits. Westwood Studios later would eliminate many of the performance and stability problems of Tiberian Sun, and would reuse its 3D engine for the production of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2.
[edit] Firestorm
Firestorm was the expansion pack to Tiberian Sun, introducing several new missions for each faction which followed upon the conclusion of the main game's GDI campaign. Firestorm featured several new units and structures for both factions, and told a story where GDI and Nod were shown as being compelled to reluctantly join forces, in order to overcome Nod's renegade artificial intelligence, CABAL. To date Firestorm's storyline remains unique in the Command & Conquer series, as it featured ending sequences for GDI and Nod which both took place simultaneously, and which both were considered as official canon (in all other Command and Conquer games, the actions and events occurring during the "good" side's campaign only are considered canon, with the other side's actions and events being seen as an alternate reality).
[edit] Renegade
Command & Conquer: Renegade is a first-person shooter, in which the player takes the role of a Nick "Havoc" Parker, a GDI commando in the war against Nod. The game is set in the final few weeks of the storyline portrayed in Command & Conquer.
The game engine, called the "Renegade engine" or "Westwood 3D", was developed in-house by Westwood. It could support real world physics and allow seamless movement from indoor to outdoor environments. The game also took on one of the most unique approaches to the FPS genre. Through the game, Havoc can enter and destroy enemy structures with C4 explosives, drive mammoth tanks, MRLSs and other classic Command & Conquer vehicles. At the time, these were unique FPS concepts.
The multiplayer mode extended these concepts further, giving this FPS many mechanics of the RTS. For instance, a player would be given a budget to individually purchase and drive vehicles. Two players could also man a single vehicle as a driver and gunner team. Massive environments allowed for large armoured battles as well as subterfuge. A player could also target and launch the famous Ion Cannon or Nuclear Warhead superweapons. Destroying specific enemy buildings would, depending on the buildings' purpose, cripple electrical power, Tiberium gathering, or unit production. The ultimate objective was to eradicate the opponent's base.
The game was not without its shortcomings. Critics have pointed out the lackluster graphics and "laggy" online performance for the reason why it failed to achieve popularity. However, such problems with lag have since been fixed and there are on average 50 servers, and up to 900 people still playing online at any one time. The Renegade network is now run by Strike Team and Black-hand Studios, in association with EA.
[edit] Renegade 2 (Cancelled)
Command & Conquer: Renegade 2 was to be another first-person shooter game using an updated version of the "Westwood 3D" engine. Renegade 2 was going to be a link between the Red Alert and Tiberian series. It was presented to Electronic Arts and cancelled due to either or both, less than satisfactory sales of Renegade and the bumpy situation of the studio being consolidated into EA Pacific at the time.
It is hoped that as EA Games initially canceled Command & Conquer 3 and have now revived it under the name of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, that Renegade 2 may be revived and produced in the future.
[edit] Command & Conquer: Continuum (Cancelled)
Command & Conquer: Continuum was to be Westwood's second MMORPG, developed on the "Westwood 3D" engine, set in the Tiberian Universe. It was canceled, due to the termination of Westwood Studios in 2003. As said by Adam 'Ishmael' Isgreen and Rade Stojsavljevic, it was supposed to be a non-stand-and-swing MMORPG, featuring:
- Instanced "crisis zones" in it, hubbed flight routes, scripted boss battles, and a lot of other ideas that have shown up in all the MMORPG since.
- GDI, Nod, Mutants and CABAL. Scrin to be added later. Los Angeles half underwater, Area 51, Dino island, Newark airport, a mutant city and lots more.
- Fluid and movement-oriented combat, rather than most MMORPGs. Range was important for weapons use, and there were layers of counters for the weapon types.
- Creatures that had many console-game-boss sensibilities, in that you could expose weaknesses on them and then hit those for extra damage.
- A moving and evolving Tiberian world, where the players could play a great role in the entire story.
[edit] Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars is the title of the third game in the Tiberian storyline. After several years of circulating rumours that Westwood Studios was working on a new Tiberian game - rumors which were fuelled by leaked concept art posted on the internet by artists who once worked at Westwood, interviews with Louis Castle as well as posters of C&C3 concept art in The First Decade game-collection - Electronic Arts finally announced on 18 April 2006 that a third game in the C&C series was in the development stages by them.
Before this announcement, fans referred to the speculated third game in the series as "Tiberian Twilight", as it had been discovered that http://www.tiberiantwilight.com had been registered by Westwood and still leads to EA's webpage for the Command & Conquer series. The official website is: http://www.ea.com/commandandconquer/
The first gameplay footage of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars premiered on the SpikeTV show Game Head on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at Midnight.
[edit] Gameplay
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In Command & Conquer, the player does not take the role of any on-screen individual, but instead takes the role of a commander who oversees military operations on the battlefield remotely through a fictional AI entity known as the "Electronic Video Agent" (EVA), which enables the player to construct a base and deploy and command troops.
The base is built through a futuristic and little-explained mechanism whereby buildings are constructed off-screen and then remotely deployed at the desired location. The one exception is the Construction Yard - the centre of base operations - which is responsible for the construction of other buildings. The Construction Yard cannot be built directly but instead must be deployed from a unit known as the Mobile Construction Vehicle.
The base is responsible for the production of all military units - troops, vehicles and aircraft. These efforts are funded by the alien Tiberium substance which acts as a self-replenishing resource that can be refined into funds for the respective sides to finance their war efforts with. The player must therefore create refineries and use harvesters to collect the resource from Tiberium fields on the gameplay map.
In each game the player can choose between two campaigns, each corresponding to either the Global Defense Initiative or the Brotherhood of Nod factions. The campaign consists of a string of missions, with the objectives for each one detailed in a cutscene immediately before the mission begins. In Command & Conquer, the player is addressed directly by the game characters (including the EVA). Conversely, in Tiberian Sun the player is depicted as an on-screen character and the mission briefings are mostly described passively, though in many cases the EVA addresses the player directly in separate cutscenes. Normally the Campaigns are each in their own timeline and do not co-exist. In Tiberian Sun Fire Storm the two are actually intertwined, a first for the C&C series.
In addition to detailing mission objectives, the cutscenes follow the overall storyline, though in most cases the two are one and the same.
[edit] Storyline
[edit] The First Tiberium War
The series' storyline follows an escalating war between the worldwide Brotherhood of Nod society, lead by a self-appointed and charismatic leader known only as Kane, and the Global Defense Initiative, a United Nations-founded and funded military taskforce. In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, the events of which take place during this so-called First Tiberium War, the two main factions involved in the conflict were described as follows by the EVA:
- Sanctioned by the United Nations, the Global Defense Initiative has one goal: to eliminate multi-national terrorism in an effort to preserve freedom.
- The Brotherhood of Nod, an ancient and secret society, maintains strong ties with most global terrorist organizations. Commanded by this man, known only as Kane, Nod's long-term goals are unknown. However, recent activities include: expansionary behaviour into disenfranchised nations, high-volume investment in global trade markets, and aggressive manipulation of international mass-media.
The EVA goes on to explain the nature of the Tiberium substance around which much of the game's storyline indirectly revolves:
- These efforts are suspected to be funded by Nod's access to vast Tiberium deposits. Tiberium continues to confound the scientific community, soaking up ground minerals and soil nutrients like a sponge. The end result of this unique leeching process is the creation of the formation of Tiberium crystals, rich in minerals and available for collection at the minimum of mining expense.
In a later briefing, the EVA provides more background information and new discoveries concerning Tiberium:
- Tiberium is named after the river Tiber in Italy where it was first discovered. There are now more than 200 areas of the Earth affected by Tiberium deposits. Tiberium appears to be spreading by means of conveyance unknown. We now know that not only does Tiberium leech elements from the soil, but it appears to also leech vital nutrients from all plantlife. Human contact with Tiberium is extremely toxic and often fatal. Exposure should be avoided.
Additionally, in a televised interview, the eccentric Tiberium expert Doctor Ignatio Mobius explains Tiberium with technobabble:
- Molecularly, Tiberium is a non-carbon based element, that appears to have strong ferrous qualities, with non-resonating reversible energy! Which has a tendency to disrupt carbon-based molecular structures, with inconsequent and unequal positrons orbiting on the first, second and ninth quadrings! The possibilities of Tiberium... are limitless!
And later, after learning of Tiberium's deadly toll on ecology and humanity:
- Tiberium is a new life form. Quite simply put, it seems to be adapting to Earth's terrain, foliage and environment to suit its own alien nature. If this is the case, ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a killer beyond that of our most turbulent nightmares. It is not an exaggeration to state that the future of the entire planet may be in jeopardy.
Tiberium is never fully explained in the series, and is constantly surrounded in a mystery which only deepens as the storyline progresses throughout the successive Command & Conquer games.
In the campaign of the Global Defense Initiative, the First Tiberium War comes to an end when Kane's temple in Sarajevo is destroyed by a final GDI assault. The Nod campaign results in a Nod victory over the GDI, however the series assumes a GDI victory when the storyline is revisited in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun which depicted the Second Tiberium War. The expansion pack Covert Operations has various missions that however show a concurrent campaign occurring. At the end of the conflict, GDI has won the war in Europe by capturing and destroying the Temple of Nod with the aid of the Ion Cannon. To prevent the loss of Nod controlled Africa, the player must take a Nod strike team and destroy an advanced communications centre located somewhere on the continent in order to ensure that GDI does not regain dominance. Other missions like "Infiltration" suggest an ongoing attempt by GDI to deploy back into Nod controlled Africa as the map uses desert terrain colours.
In lieu of the evidence, it appears that the Nod campaign ended prior to GDI success in Europe. As the introduction video introduces a GDI taskforce somewhere in the Mediterranean, it is unlikely that the Nod campaign ended before the GDI player campaign starts.
[edit] The Second Tiberium War
The Second Tiberium War begins in the 2030s when Kane (who was presumed dead after Nod's defeat in 1995) reappears in a live broadcast to General James Solomon onboard the Philadelphia space station.
Meanwhile, tiberium has been ravaging the world for 40 years now and has grown in many varieties, mutating flora and fauna and forcing humans to move to the polar regions where tiberium spread is slowed down by arid conditions. Many regions around the planet have entered desertification process, and natural resources other than tiberium are becoming nonexistent. As a result from tiberium spreading, world's population is decreasing at an alarming rate. Many countries along with the United Nations no longer exist, making of GDI the last powerful military/political organisation on Earth.
Beyond the problem of simply fighting the spread of tiberium, GDI also has to deal with the reappearance of Kane, who, along with a core group of loyalists, reunites the fractured Brotherhood of Nod, which splintered after the end of the First Tiberium War. The reunification of the Brotherhood precipitates a revolution across the globe, offering a new hope to those worst afflicted by Tiberium, not in the form of a promise to be rid of the substance (which would prove lethal to many mutants among the new generation), but in the form of the prospect of adapting to and assimilating in to the emerging Tiberium ecosystem. A second fight for world domination ensues. This war is an important turn in history for many reasons: the discovery of an alien spacecraft (and later, the discovery that it might have been built by man), the arrival in war of the Forgotten mutants, the creation of more deadly and powerful weapons like Tiberium bio-warheads, and most of all, the discovery of a mysteriously originated object called the "Tacitus". The conflict eventually becomes truly worldwide, and the player is taken to battlefields in various regions of the globe, like Norway, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Mexico, the United States, etc. The Second Tiberium war finally ends with a battle in Cairo wherein Kane attempts to launch a MIRV-ICBM into the upper atmosphere to spread tiberium throughout the atmosphere. Finally, GDI defeats Nod in Cairo and Kane is killed by commander McNeil himself.
[edit] Firestorm
Firestorm begins shortly after the end of the last game when the GDI Kodiak crashes during an ion storm just after leaving Cairo with the Tacitus on board. Kodiak's crew including commander McNeil dies in the crash. The loss of the Kodiak and increase in ion storm activity cut off all contact with Philadelphia space station, the Kodiak being the communication relay between the station and GDI forces. One of the few ground-based GDI generals activates the Firestorm Protocol, taking command of GDI until communication with the Philadelphia is re-established. Following Nod's defeat, GDI fights the remaining Nod forces, who are once again without leader and hopeless. Eventually, Nod's artificially intelligent computer system CABAL, will be reactivated and become a renegade faction of its own and start to build a massive cyborg army and attack civilian populations. GDI and Nod will later conclude a cease-fire and unite their forces in order to destroy CABAL. However, it is unclear if CABAL was really destroyed.(it should also be noted that the Firestorm story is unique to the Command and Conquer universe as both sides co-exist with each other, as opposed to two different endings featured in other games).
[edit] Inconclusiveness
The storyline covered in both games leave many questions unanswered. The survival of Kane, the origin of Tiberium, and the alien spaceship recovered in the GDI campaign all remain unexplained. The fate of the planet concerning Tiberium is also never mentioned.
Additionally, the game contains confusing concepts, such as the unusually strong likeness between Kane and the facial depiction of CABAL. The game hints that Kane and CABAL may in fact be a single entity, or have become a single entity over the course of the story, but fails to conclusively resolve this and many other issues. One of the more concrete pieces of evidence was when, in the briefing for a mission between the second and the sixth, CABAL accidentally said "vital to my... your movement". This suggests that CABAL has an agenda of his own. This could possibly refer to Kane's ideals. Another piece of evidence that Kane is CABAL is his "media" face is drastically different from his "real" face and he dissolved as the missile launched in the Nod ending. Also, it could be possible that Kane survived the first Tiberium War by copying his memories into the Nod Temple's computers and reconstructing his body as a cyborg.
The belief that Kane and CABAL are the same was confirmed at the end of the Final Nod Firestorm mission, in which as Nod celebrates the defeat of CABAL the scene switches to show a secret lab filled with what looks to be Cloning tanks, one tank that seems to contain Kane, at the end of the scene a monitor shows Kane's face superimposed over CABAL's onscreen, seemingly talking among him\itself, just before the game ends Kane\CABAL says "My... our directives must be reassessed"
It is also possible that CABAL's personality was modeled on Kane to better serve Kane's goals. What Nod, perhaps, did not count on was that Kane's ambitious personality traits would surface in CABAL and he would try to evolve the humans in his own way - through technology.
[edit] References
- ^ Paul Mallinson (2002-05-31). Games that changed the world: Command & Conquer. CVG magazine. Retrieved on 22 December 2006.
[edit] See also
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert
- Global Defense Initiative
- Global Defense Initiative storyline
- Brotherhood of Nod
- Brotherhood of Nod storyline
- Kane (Command & Conquer)
- Tiberium
[edit] External links
- PlanetCNC's Command and Conquer Encyclopedia
- Tiberian Twilight and Renegade 2 concept art.
- Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun series at MobyGames
- RTS-World.net - C&C Fan Site
- www.TiberiumWeb.com - Source for everything Tiberium
- The C&C Wiki project
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