Feature interview: Command and Conquer 3

Mike Verdu, executive producer of Command & Conquer 3, spills the beans on the long-awaited title.

While Blizzard’s Starcraft may have made the gaming term ‘zerg’ ubiquitous today, Command & Conquer forged its original incarnation – the ‘tank rush’. Both expressions refer to a real-time strategy tactic whereby the player overwhelms his opponent with sheer numbers, sacrificing versatility for power. Until the introduction of ‘scissors/paper/rock’ gameplay, where each unit has an opposing enemy unit it is strong against while being weak against another, it was one of the most effective tactics a player could employ in the early days of the genre. Eleven years later, gamers worldwide still use the tank rush to defeat newbies, or as a part of a grander strategy.

The tank rush however goes back further than Command & Conquer. Back in 1995 when the first C&C title was released – now referred to as ‘Tiberium Dawn’ to avoid confusion with other games in the series – it was easy to identify its heritage. For one, it was developed by Westwood Studios (now EA Los Angeles), that had previously created the RTS Dune II. And spice, the harvested resource in DII, was strikingly similar in behaviour to that of Tiberium. Although Dune featured three playable sides and C&C just the two, players could quickly see the righteous Atreides in the form of the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the evil Harkonnen represented by the Brotherhood of Nod. C&C was essentially a reskinned Dune, but the setting, characters, units and environments were completely different to those of Frank Herbert’s fictional universe. C&C also did something that Dune did not – introduce the gaming community at large to real-time strategy.

A revisit to Westwood’s world of C&C is long overdue, and EA Los Angeles, with C&C Generals and the Lord of the Rings in its bag of top-notch RTS titles, has set its sights on recreating C&C in a form that will hopefully again pioneer the genre it helped create.

Ion Cannons at the ready - Command & Conquer is back.

Tiberium tactics
‘We’ve always known we’d go back to the Tiberium universe,’ says Mike Verdu, executive producer on C&C 3: Tiberium Wars. ‘Many of us are quite passionate about the original franchise, and we couldn’t wait to work on the next chapter.’

According to Verdu, the decision to develop C&C3 has been long in the making, the game marking the culmination of seven years of ideas brainstormed since the release of C&C 2: Tiberium Sun. Although quite a few of Westwood’s original crew left the company once it was absorbed by EA, there’s still a hearty contingent at the publisher’s Los Angeles branch that includes Westwood’s co-founder Louis Castle, so you can be sure that the feel and spirit of C&C will be present.

The year 2047 serves as the starting point for the new game. Verdu explains that Tiberium continues to destroy the Earth, as it was doing in C&C 2, ‘embodying a terrible dilemma as it is both the ultimate energy resource and the worst ecological catastrophe in history’.

‘Tiberium has polarised the world into two powerful warring factions: GDI, the alliance of advanced nations fighting to stop the spread of Tiberium and maintain order at any cost, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a hybrid religious movement, corporation and terrorist organisation that believes Tiberium is the catalyst for the next stage of human evolution.’

The tables have turned in the 17 or so years since the events in the previous game, with Nod now the popular and more powerful force in the new world. The GDI is nothing compared to its former self, and its battle to protect the planet from both Nod and the Tiberium threat is a losing one. If you’re familiar with the series, then it should come as no surprise that Kane, C&C’s bad guy, is making a comeback as leader of the nefarious Nod.

Looking for a parking spot in the Blue Zone