Command and Conquer
“That was Left-handed, wait... maybe it's Right? Or it's my Left foot? God Dammit! which limb was it!!!”
“Unfortunately, no one can be told what Command & Conquer is. You have to play it for yourself.”
Origin of Command & Conquer[edit]
The Command & Conquer series began in 1995 with the first game Command and Conquer which was originally designed as a training program for the U.S. and A. Military after a series of misprints in an official CIA document. The document detailed an obscure cult who called themselves the Brotherhood of God. This was mistyped as the Brotherhood of Nod. In addition the estimated membership was misprinted as 110,000 when it was in fact 11. (Note, this is higher than the 9 Koreans playing Starcraft). Finally the status of the groups armaments was mistyped from 'none' to 'nuclear'. This understandably resulted in a rather frantic panic within American military leadership who was suddenly convinced that the U.S. and A. was about to come under attack from a cult composed of heavily armed troops with nuclear capability.
Therefore they commissioned an emergency military training program. After bombing a number of peaceful countries, the mistake was revealed and the appropriate people were fired. The CIA was then left with a rather expensive computer program that was of no use. So after some subtle changes the program was sold as the computer game known as "Command & Conquer". Much to the surprise of the CIA who just wanted to recoup their losses, the game was a smash success and Westwood Studios was created. Now established as a proper company, they started to market the game to the public with the intention of creating sequels. Command & Conquer Lives!
Story Arcs[edit]
Tiberian series (1995-2000)[edit]
The origin of the Command & Conquer franchise, the Tiberian series originally was designed for kids below thirteen. Two factions of globalized power and influence existed. The yellow gummy bears and the hateful angry red gummy bears who became locked in a virtual struggle for the future of the gummy bear world.
The original Command and Conquer game was produced by Westwood Studios in 1995. The opening sequence shows animation of the bombing of the fictional Willy Wonka Factory in Vienna, with the act being blamed on the angry red gummy bears terrorists and their mysterious leader. The conflict between the industrialized world's leading sweet factories and the rapidly spreading of the angry red gummy society is centered around control of the fictional resource of Tiberium; an exotic and extraterrestrial substance which extracts all sugars from the land it sits upon and deposits them into toxic, above-ground crystals that can be processed into gummy sweets.
As the target audience matured and grew up as teenagers, Westwood Studios decided on a sequel which was darker, richer, and more gloomy. The gummy bears and sweet factories were replaced for the first time with live human models and military structures. Alas Tiberian Sun was born. Two factions, one of them known as Brotherhood of Nod, similar to organizations such as PETA and environmental agencies, focuses on preaching to the masses not to harm wildlife. This included Visceroids and the dog-like Tiberian Fiends, giant jellyfish-like Tiberium Floaters, not damaging the Tiberium ecosystems, and embracing the changing of Earth's atmosphere and ecosystems. Its self-proclaimed messianic leader, a man known only as Kane, appears to have designs to convert the entire world to a Tiberium-based ecosystem. The other faction, the GDI was created by democrats and republicans alike to counter Kane's crazy plans for a new world order. A remake of the previous game was also made reflecting this change of setting.
Tiberium series (2007 - present)[edit]
While the original Command & Conquer's plot was centered around children oriented gummy bears and sweets, its successor of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun shifted this to a more political and environmental like setting against the apocalyptic background of Tiberium and the unstable wildlife which were beginning to assimilate vast portions of the Earth's ecosystems. Command + Conquer 3: Tiberium Warts returned to rewrite and redesign the ongoing story to a setting akin to Electronic Arts' image, a serious story plot set half a century into the future, and a strong emphasis that "Tiberium is Bad".
With the talented producer Mike Verdu, he took a bold move and recruited two unnecessary MIT scientists to aid in this sequel remake. The sequel was a failure and was quickly covered up by hyping on the next two expansion packs in order to cover for the losses.
After learning that a serious story plot was the result of failure, the first expansion set, titled Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Waffles, was filmed to become a cheesy musical game, heavily inspired from the success of hit "High School Musical". Sales turned out slightly better, with immature young fans at the age of twelve screaming for more cheesy nude shots of Vanessa Hudgens, going up by one position compared to Tiberium Warts, which was last position in 2007 Guinness World Record Game Ranking.
The second expansion set titled "Command & Conquer 3: Boyle's Vengeance", was later created to balance the heavy Nod theme in Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Waffles. Centering Billy Dee Williams as the infamous GDI Director Redmond Boyle, this time round, the expansion was designed with heavy GDI theme to please GDI enthusiasts. Sales flopped nevertheless due to massive bugs and unbalanced gameplay throughout the game. Fans even complained that the expansion is nothing but merely some pro-African American theme game that talks about cheap jokes and pro-African American junk.
Afterward, Electronic Arts made another bold approach by making a First Person Shooter (FPS) titled "TIBERIUM", by remaking Star Wars Republic Commando in Command & Conquer theme. Electronic Arts sponsors suddenly withdrew from the project team during production. Unable to fuel enough funds to produce the FPS, production eventually came to a halt and all of the staff members were fired to recoup losses. In the aftermath of the "TIBERIUM" cancellation, some anonymous users posted on a pornography cum gaming site, claiming that they were part of the Electronic Arts insider plot to remove some "useless" manpower in the guise of the C&C FPS project. The project team had been deliberately set up by Electronic Arts Executives for "a clean excuse to get rid of them".
While the future sequels are currently dangerously uncertain, and despite the fact that the "Tiberium-based" genre has been pretty unsuccessful in the gaming market due to some management issues, amazingly enough, the development team managed to pull out Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, set to release in early 2010. It was said that this is the finale to the entire Tiberium series, this time round focusing more on Kane's new approach to life after being bombarded with emotional and romantic elements from mass media.
EA decides to degrade the franchise by squeezing one last ounce of what's left of the screwed up franchise by making a toddler-based cartoonish Free-to-Play game dubbed Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances. EA keeps hyping how awesome this game is the fact that it is "FREE", which gullible fanboys jumped in the bandwagon and started sobbing how terrible it was.
Read Alert series (1996 - 2009)[edit]
What happens when you mix Command & Conquer with Chuck Norris? Command & Conquer: Read Alert. Actually, A little known fact about the "Read Alert" Series is that it was not in fact created by the same people who created the original series. In truth the entire "Read Alert" series was the creation of a team of top scientists headed by Stephen Hawking and Chuck Norris. They had developed a time machine and much like Einstein in the game decided that returning to the past to remove Hitler from history would save a great many lives. After many calculations Chuck Norris was sent back to the trenches of World War I and just as a young Hitler survived the shell blast that destroyed the dugout he was sheltering in he was confronted and roundhouse kicked by Chuck Norris thus removing him from history (such is the power of the Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.) Due to this heroic deed by Chuck Norris, a multi-player map in Read Alert 2 got named after his famous roundhouse kick. Chuck Norris then returned to the present only to discover that by erasing Hitler the balance of power had been irrevocably shifted causing the Cold War to become a full scale Hot War just as it does in the game. The team of scientists were then struck with a problem, in order to return the world to its rightful state, Chuck Norris must be stopped from removing Hitler. However if Chuck Norris himself was sent back to stop it himself it might result in an irresistible force meeting an immovable object which had the danger of causing the implosion of the universe. So Mr T and Vin Diesel had to be swiftly recruited and sent back in time. Between them they managed to delay Chuck Norris long enough to allow Hitler to escape and history to proceed normally. The team of scientists, having learned their lesson about meddling with time, created the Read Alert series to act as a cautionary tale to prevent anyone else trying a similar thing.
Four years later, U S and A became under attack by an unexpected force from Middle East. A secret agent, codenamed Borat, invaded the heart of U S and A and kidnapped Pamela Anderson, followed by a huge wave of armed Arabs that tore U S and A from the inside out. The same team of scientists was summoned by the President to "do something!". As time was running out, the team realized that they have to rewrite time in order to save U S and A. So Mr T and Vin Diesel were recruited again to go back a decade into the past and teleported to Kazakhstan to thwart their evil plans. The duo soon realized that they became entangled into the nuclear arms race between Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, India, Pakistan and Kazakhstan. The duo, after contacting present day Chuck Norris, slipped into various countries to dismantled the nuclear weapons and killed every top leader responsible for the nukes. With the nuclear crisis over, Arabs will be left incapacitated to attack U S and A, hence saving U S and A again.
This heroic story has been immortalized into a sequel and became a smashing hit success game, and rumors have been spreading that Electronic Arts plan to remake the Read Alert experience, featuring a Time Machine, and replacing the Chuck Norris element with boobs and more boobs, titled Command & Conquer: Read Alert 3. Oh, it was directed by Oprah Winfrey and George Bush. Obviously. It became so successful and the developers began to churn out more expansions in the form of a profitable "booster packs" scheme.
GENERALS (2003-2013)[edit]
Unlike its predecessors, the plot line of Command & Conquer: GENERALS is completely unrelated and nothing to do with the Command & Conquer series.
The game uses an ancient engine dubbed "386" and is the first fully one-dimensional Command & Conquer RTS game. This engine was an evolutionary development from the EA1D (Electronic Arts registered 1-Dimensional) engine used in Need For Slow (NFS). Fans of the C&C universe noted that it was the first ever C&C RTS game that did not include full-motion video cut scenes to tell the story, it did not feature Joe Kucan as Kane, and instead, hired an anonymous bald headed designer for "Behind the Scene effect", which again has nothing to do with Command & Conquer. Also, it departed from the unique interface and base-building mechanics that had characterized all of the previous C&C RTS titles, and went on a bold approach by inspiring game interfaces from Blizzard's games, which ultimately have nothing to do with Command & Conquer franchise as a whole.
In GENERALS, there are three different factions, which again has nothing to do with the title of the game. These factions maintain a balance of power: the United States of Atheists (USA) which adopts the only patriotic faction that has the state-of-the-art technologies; the Mighty Dragon-blessed China, which welcome spammers alike with mass spam of units and zerg rushers, and the Global Liberation Army (GLA), uses guerrilla tactics to win the battle, which includes spraying the enemy with a gooey substance (which can be upgraded by mixing it with blue raspberry kool-aid). GLA soldiers have a tendency to pop out of spider holes at the most inconvenient times. They refer to this as the 'NFS GLA Underground'. The Chinese and the USA are targets of the GLA in every mission.
The expansion pack for GENERALS, Command & Conquer: GENERALS: ZERO:RANGERS, extends the game's plot line by introducing fictional generals. This time round the introduction of fictional generals will have some form of relevance to the game title for the first time in history. ZERO:RANGERS makes many additions to the original game while retaining the three basic factions. Each team may choose one of three different generals. Each general has a specialty and equip with elite colorful Rangers (equivalent to commandos), which translates into prioritizing particular units and abilities: for instance, one of the USA generals prefers L.A.S.E.R. weapons, and hence may deploy a highly sophisticated L.A.S.E.R. Super Weapon codenamed Project:"Shoop Da Whoop" (replacing the Particle Cannon), and armed with Red Rangers who are equipped with L.A.S.E.R. ZERO Crystals that allows them to flash red stream of lights to scare enemy on sight. No new factions have been added to the game. ZERO:RANGERS also includes full-motion video cut scenes - in the form of sponsored advertisements before every single-player mission, which again, has nothing to do with the story plot.
In 2011, it was announced that a sequel to Generals has been planned. As usual, things went sideways and after much consideration, EA decides to degrade the franchise by squeezing one last ounce of what's left of the screwed up franchise by making a Free-to-Play game dubbed Command & Conquer. (to confuse people with the true RTS game back in 1995) EA keeps hyping how awesome this game is the fact that it is "FREE", which gullible fanboys jumped in the bandwagon and started sobbing how terrible it was. The reason for this decision to turn a proper RTS game to a Play-For-Free game is the very fact the same guy responsible for fucking Command & Conquer late franchise after EA's acquisition. Ever heard of this self-proclaimed C&C Lore Master British fart, yup, Samuel Bass, the one who wrote the nightmarish terrible conclusion for Command & Conquer Tiberium Universe? It's him alright. He's been in years fantasizing and trying to turn Command & Conquer franchise into a fantasy-based wizard and magic style MMO franchise. It's his goal to oversee minute little things such as real-life soldiers wielding magic potions instead of guns, to bigger plots such as alienating Real-Time Strategy to MMO. As long as he's somewhat involved in the franchise, this franchise is simple doomed. Period.
Command & Conquer TV[edit]
Command & Conquer TV (CCTV), is a costly viral internet propaganda campaign made by Electronic Arts to "connect with the C&C fans". This phenomenon took the community by storm, as every Command & Conquer fans rushed to the nearest hospitals suffering from acute flu. The shows contains features such as showing off replays of the priceless expressions of players on the losing side (oh no I got pwned!), teaching nerds and n00bs alike tips and tricks how to get the games running on the computer CD-roms (...place the disc in the drive by opening the drive...), giving information and hype on C&C games under development (...lookout for the most awesomeness of awesome new hottest C&C title coming soon...), and giving overall how great Electronic Arts is and how much the team listens and love the passionate fans (...we listen to you guys, but we feel you guys are pirates and we are implementing DRM measures...). C&C TV features three shows for three typical types of people (geeks, nerds, and fags respectively): Battlenet Prime Time, Aftermath (which got canned for low viewership), and Complain School.
Development Team History[edit]
The Command & Conquer franchise has been produced by five different studios to date:
Westwood Studios (1992 – 2002)
- 1995 – Command & Conquer: Gummy Dawn
- 1996 – Command & Conquer: The Convent Operations
- 1996 – Command & Conquer: Read Alert
- 1997 – Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor
- 1999 – Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
- 2000 – Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun – Firestorm
- 2000 – Command & Conquer: Read Alert 2
- 2001 – Command & Conquer: Urine's Revenge
- 2002 – Command & Conquer: Renegate
EA Pacific (former Westwood Pacific) (2002 – 2003)
- 2003 – Command & Conquer: GENERALS
EA Los Angeles (2003 – 2010)
- 2003 – Command & Conquer: GENERALS: ZERO:RANGERS
- 2003 – Command & Conquer: The First Decent Package
- 2007 – Command + Conquer 3: Tiberium Warts
- 2007 – Command & Conquer TV (CCTV) (HD)
- 2007 – Command & Conquer SAGA
- 2008 – Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Waffles
- 2008 – Command + Conquer 3: Deluxe Edition
- 2008 – Command & Conquer 3: Boyle's Vengeance
- 2008 – Command & Conquer: Read Alert 3
- 2009 – Command & Conquer: Read Alert 3 Uprising
- 2010 – Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
- 2010 – Stored in cold storage bunker and never be seen or heard, EVER! (Or so you thought, EA just won't let this franchise go, what a bunch of sadistic sickos)
EA Phenomic (2012)
EA BioWare Victory (2010 - ????)
- 2013 – Command & Conquer
Westwood Studios's Command & Conquer Pictures Archives[edit]
In the expansion pack "The Convent Operations", it features the "Nuns with rifles" story arc.
In Read Alert, Nod was actually around years before the first game; here we see Hitler after being hit by their "Nod Missile", while playing the popular theme Hell March.
In the popular Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor Reality Television Game, Afghanistan.map is one of the famous maps players prefer to play.
In the sequel for Command & Conquer, Kane going AYBABTU in Tiberian Sun and its expansion set Firestorm.
Electronic Art's Command & Conquer/Command + Conquer Pictures Archives[edit]
C&C THE FIRST DECENT PACKAGE features recycled past games which seems to have a problem to work properly.
Command + Conquer 3: Tiberium Warts, with Dry Scalp Care protection, so you will not go bald like the messiah.
"Sandra Telfair Edition" was released to quiet the community down after being too whiny and anti-EA.
One of the many erotic wallpapers featured in the "Sandra Telfair Edition" of Tiberium Warts.
Another marketing strategy to make C&C3 sells.
Command & Conquer TV (CCTV) was launched to thank the million supporters of the money milking franchise, as well as having a hidden agenda for spreading some propaganda for a hidden purpose.
C&C Saga Official Box Art released, this time features the same First Decent Package combined with a Tiberium Warts box set. Alas, a new product!
Kane is angry. Kane wants waffles!
Boyle's Vengeance, It Works Every Time!
Leaked Boxart shot of Boyle's Vengeance. This time round, it will feature only GDI's single player and multi-player support.
Read Alert 3!
The Writers Guild of America has gone on strike AGAIN, this time ruining the screening of Read Alert 3 TV series.
Kane becomes the new Edward Cullen in the final series of the Tiberium story arc.
Boxart for Tiberian Twilight.
Kane's next mission: To seek eternal true love.
Nod Avatars now loaded with Crayola Crayons!
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