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Command and Conquer is a real-time strategy series of computer games released by the game developer Westwood Studios, now a part of Electronic Arts.
Tiberian Series
The original Command and Conquer series features two warring factions called the United Nations Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the quasi-state terrorist group, the Brotherhood of Nod.
Conflict is centered over control of a new resource called Tiberium, an exotic material discovered by Dr. Ignatio Mobius near the Tiber River in Italy in 1995. Tiberium extracts minerals from the land it sits upon and deposits them in above-ground crystals that are simple to process into useful materials.
However, Tiberium has a darker side; it emits harmful radiation and toxic gases, causing mutations in all forms of life. Almost certainly extraterrestrial in origin, it is generally thought of to have come to Earth by a meteor impact, although some speculate that its true nature is as an alien terraforming agent. Tiberium is a disruptive technology and the source of Nod's rise to global power.
While the GDI focuses on research on making Tiberium into useful materials and mitigating the damage to Earth's people and ecosystem, Nod's position is to embrace Tiberium as the herald of a new age. Nod has done heavy research into Tiberium-based weaponry, and its leader, Kane, has designs to convert the entire planet to a Tiberium-based ecosystem. The GDI was created by status quo nations to counter Kane's plans for a new world order. The Brotherhood of Nod excels at manipulating the media to turn world opinion against the GDI.
Unique to the game series is that the player can play as the "bad guys" (Nod) instead of the GDI.
Games in the Tiberian Command and Conquer series are:
- Command and Conquer (also known as Tiberian Dawn)
- Command and Conquer: Sole Survivor (Online only man versus man)
- Command and Conquer: The Covert Operations
- Command and Conquer: Gold (windows 95 version of Tiberian dawn with higher resolution and windows installer)
- Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun
- Command and Conquer: Renegade
Command and Conquer (1995)
The original Command and Conquer (aka Tiberian Dawn), was the first popular realtime strategy game. Its runaway success launched the genre. Originally released for MS-DOS, a "Gold" version for Windows 95 was released in 1997. An expansion pack, The Covert Operations, was also released.
The game portrays the player as a battlefield commander. Through an Electronic Video Agent (EVA), the commander remotely controls base construction, defense, and attacks against the enemy. Set in the 2000s, commanders are given control of modern and near-future military infrastructure
The game's plot is detailed and shown in cutscenes between missions. By the official plotline, Nod's leader, Kane, is assumed dead when the Temple of Nod in Sarajevo was destroyed by GDI's space-based Ion Cannon. The alternate ending shows Nod's hackers hijacking GDI's Ion Cannon to destroy a world wonder of the player's choice.
Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun (1999)
Tiberian Sun took much the same formula as the original, however, the cutscenes included characters representing the commanders themselves. While it made for better storytelling, it also distanced the player from the game by not treating them directly as the commander. The new 3D game engine featured hills,
Set in the 2030s, Tiberian Sun relied much more heavily on Science Fiction than its predecessor. Military technology included pulse rifles, battle mecha, and skirtless hovercraft. In one set of missions the commander must attack or defend a crashed alien spacecraft.
The plot thickened as Kane seemingly came back from the dead, picking up the pieces of the fractured Brotherhood to wage war against GDI again. Prospects for humanity began to look grim, as Tiberium had spread pervasively throughout all temperate areas of the globe, forcing most people to move into GDI refugee camps in the Antarctic.
Firestorm Expansion (2000)
In Tiberian Sun: Firestorm, GDI fights Nod while its computer system CABAL becomes a renegade faction of its own after it turns on its original creators. Without a computer system to help them, Nod falls into disarray and steals GDI's EVA. The two factions must then join forces to stop CABAL from destroying the world.
Command and Conquer: Renegade (2002)
Command and Conquer: Renegade is a first-person shooter game that takes place in the world of the original Command and Conquer. Set between Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun, the player plays the role of a commando and leads an elite squad through enemy territory.
Command and Conquer: Tiberian Twilight (To be released)
Command and Conquer: Tiberian Twilight is expected to be the third RTS in the Tiberian plotline and possibly the final if the games are to be a trilogy. Very little hard information is available on it at this time. Fans expect the game will take on even heavier sci-fi tones than Tiberian Sun, potentially pitting GDI directly against theorized alien invaders.
The development of the game is currently stalled. While it was once promised to be out by the end of 2003, the project was caught in the midst of EA's reorganization, and the C&C development team was assigned to work on The Battle for Middle Earth, an RTS version of the Tolkien novels.
Red Alert Series
The spin-off Red Alert series is set in an alternate timeline, created when Albert Einstein travels back in time and assassinates Adolf Hitler, resulting in unchecked Soviet aggression as they press into Europe.
Early games in the Red Alert series implied that the events of these games were the origins for the conflict in the original Command & Conquer (Kane appears as an advisor to Joseph Stalin), as well implying that the Red Alert series was a ploy by Kane himself. As the Red Alert series became arguably more popular than the original C&C series, this idea was phased out.
The Red Alert series has the following structure:
- Red Alert
- Red Alert: Counterstrike
- Red Alert: The Aftermath
- Red Alert: Retaliation
The Red Alert series has a sequel, Red Alert 2, and an expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge.
Another spin-off was Command And Conquer - Sole survivor. This game featured a deathmatch type of game in which each player controlled one tank, the game was primarily developed for internet and network play but never really became a popular part of the c&c universe.
Westwood also released a music disc with the music from the Red Alert series. This disc was bundled with some later versions of the game.
Command and Conquer: Generals
Command and Conquer: Generals is a new (and completely different) real-time strategy game.
Unlike any other game from this series, this title and the expansion (Zero Hour) were developed by Electronic Arts Pacific (EAP). Despite the sale of Westwood to EA, the same development team that created
Red Alert 2 developed
Generals.
It utilizes Westwood's W3D engine developed for Renegade and is the first fully three-dimensional Command and Conquer game.
In Generals, there are three different factions: the USA, China, and the Global Liberation Army (GLA). The GLA is a terrorist organization that is trying to "free" the world. The Chinese and the USA are the targets of the GLA. This story is followed by the game´s expansion pack: Command and Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour
The music of Generals is of different style for each faction. The opening and ending background music for China's campaign also features China's national anthem, March of the Volunteers.
Command and Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
Carrying on from the USA ending of the original, the expansion pack made huge changes to the game dynamic by introducing three customizations for each of the three side under the guise of a 'General', with different unique properties in its own units and tacrics. There are nine in total, of which they are:
China
USA
GLA
Other info
Other games made by Westwood Studios:
There is also an open source project (not affiliated with Westwood) called FreeCNC that aims to clone the gameplay and allow users to play on non-Win32 operating systems, and that uses the original game graphic files.
External links
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es:Command and Conquer
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