Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (February 2007)

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Developer(s)	Westwood Studios
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Version	2.03, May 31, 2000
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	August 27, 1999
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen) ELSPA: 15+
Media	2 CD-ROMs, DVD-ROM (C&C The First Decade compilation only)
System requirements	Pentium 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP, 2 MB PCI direct draw compliant graphics card, DirectX 6 compatible sound card, 150 MB hard disk space, 4x CD-ROM drive
Input methods	Keyboard, Mouse

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is a real-time strategy game by Westwood Studios, which was released for Microsoft Windows in 1999. A sequel to Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Renegade, and predecessor to Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, the main storyline follows the second war between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod taking place In 2030, roughly 30 years after the end of Command & Conquer (the plot goes assuming that GDI won in the first game).

Compared to its predecessor, Tiberian Sun relies heavily on science fiction technologies, and introduces a new isometric game engine featuring varying level terrain to give the impression of a true 3D environment.

Electronic Arts, which had acquired Westwood Studios in 1998, was the publisher of Tiberian Sun but otherwise had no direct part in its development. Subsequent games in the franchise saw increased control by Electronic Arts, as well as departure of Westwood personnel, eventually resulting in Westwood being closed down and absorbed.

Features

As a highly-anticipated sequel to Command & Conquer, Tiberian Sun follows the continuing struggle for world domination between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod, and the struggle between humanity and the alien Tiberium substance. The game story is a follow up to the original, in which the Nod leader Kane resurfaces from death with renewed vigor, funds, and manpower. The game's theme revolves around the matter of the origin of Tiberium and its terraforming properties.

The game uses an isometric perspective with varying terrain height. Dynamic lighting allows for day/night cycles and special effects, such as ion storms. Maps feature cityscapes where units could hide or battle in urban combat. Some buildings and armored units are rendered with voxels, although infantry is still rendered as sprites.

The full motion video is also scripted differently; while the cutscenes of Command & Conquer and Red Alert were filmed from a first-person perspective, Tiberian Sun used traditional cinematic shots for its FMVs featuring well known Hollywood actors such as James Earl Jones of the original Star Wars trilogy and Michael Biehn of Terminator and Aliens.

Tiberian Sun was speculated to be a BattleMech-type game, as shown in a teaser video in Command & Conquer, but later proved to follow the real-time strategy formula. However, three mech units (the Wolverine, Titan, and Mammoth Mark II) were featured in the game, replacing some of the more conventional jeeps and tanks that were featured in Command & Conquer.

The expansion pack, Command & Conquer: Firestorm, took the storyline to new heights of complexity and introduces new missions and new gameplay features. Instead of featuring GDI against Nod as in earlier Command & Conquer games, GDI and Nod were shown as being compelled to join forces in order to overcome Nod's renegade artificial intelligence, CABAL (Computer Assisted Biologically Augmented Lifeform).

Story

Tiberian Sun departs from the original Command & Conquer real-time strategy games by portraying each army's commander as a character in itself, rather than by referring to the player, who always remained unseen throughout the storylines. Michael Biehn portrayed the GDI Commander Michael McNeil, who takes his orders from James Earl Jones' character General James Solomon. On the side of the Brotherhood of Nod, Frank Zagarino portrayed the infamous character of Anton Slavik, who began the Nod campaign by attempting to, and swiftly succeeding in, reuniting the Brotherhood of Nod after its division into many small and harmless splinter groups after the death of Kane (played by the franchise's cut-scene director Joseph D. Kucan) at the end of the original Command & Conquer.

The plot starts off assuming that GDI won in the first Command and Conquer. In 2030 the world has continued to suffer greatly ever since the arrival of Tiberium. The world's former individual nations have effectively ceased to exist due to the spread of the dangerous extraterrestrial substance, and now only pockets of areas remain which are monitored by the Global Defense Initiative, and are the hiding grounds of the regrouping Brotherhood of Nod. Plants and animals in these vast and worldwide wastelands are either dying or mutating into hideous monstrosities, displacing human civilization mostly toward the polar regions where Tiberium grows slowly, or to the ever scarcer growing areas of the world where Tiberium infestation has yet to begin to truly manifest itself. Throughout the course of the GDI campaign, Commander McNeil is tasked with numerous objectives such as the securing and defending of a mysterious alien spacecraft, the Scrin Starship, defending his own ship from Nod forces when it was grounded during an Ion Storm, and finally preventing Nod from destroying the orbital GDI command station Philadelphia in order to make them capable of launching a world-altering Tiberium missile unhindered. However, Vega and his cohorts were able to steal much of the Scrin Starship and apparently the Tacitus, a relic which was delivered to Kane.

In these missions, McNeil encounters the mutants Tratos, Umagon and Ghoststalker of The Forgotten who eventually agree to cooperate in assisting with the downfall of Nod. Throughout the campaign, GDI must deal with General Vega, the Brotherhood wrathbringer who attacked Phoenix and executed with Eye Candy, a drug which Vega is both supplier and user of, its base commander Tao. As the Kodiak with McNeil and Chandra tracking down the renegade Nod general, their reconnaissance squadron finds UFO technology that Vega stole and brought before Kane. They encounter Umagon, a shiner, who in exchange for her leader's life will provide support with the GDI. The forces of McNeil track down Vega to his pyramid, but the officer commits suicide (after being abandoned by Nod's dictator Kane). They fail to stop the Nod leader and in Northern Europe, their headquarters are under attack. With ARG vehicles, they manage to reactivate the Hammerfest base defenses, but Jake McNeil, brother to Michael, is executed. The GDI finds out the Brotherhood will launch aggressive strike with their chemical missiles. After a few battles against Nod, the Kodiak is grounded in an Ion Storm and Umagon is caught and prepared by Kane for her "last Tiberium enhancement." While the Commander defends the Kodiak, Kane prepares to unleash the fury of the Tacitus to transform Earth. McNeil is contacted by Ghostalker that Umagon was abducted and against Solomon's prime orders, the commander rushes headlong to fight Kane. The dictator was seemingly slain however and the Nod Temple razed.

In the Nod campaign, Slavik manages to escape the facility where he is about to be executed as a GDI spy under the authority of Nod's current leader, Hassan, who is secretly allied with General Solomon in order to be able to maintain his position of power. With the assistance of his second-in-command and right-hand woman, Oxanna Kristos, Slavik wages a war against Hassan in the name of Kane, his forces surrounding Hassan's pyramid headquarters very quickly. He succeeds, and much to everyone's surprise Kane's face appears on a wall screen to his loyal subjects just as Hassan is about to be publicly executed on-stage. Hassan's throat is slit by Anton Slavik, the Brotherhood reunited in full for the first time since the end of the First Tiberium War. Not long after this, the war is then turned against GDI. It is then a fight which could mean a total devastation of the world or Peace. After a mission in which Jake McNeil (brother of Michael McNeil) is captured, three nuclear missiles are set to destroy the orbiting Philadelphia. The three ICBMs hit the Philadelphia, annihilating it, much to the dismay of the captured McNeil. After this event, Kane broadcasts to the brotherhood that "A new age is upon us," and subsequently fires a missile, with so much Tiberium aboard that the crystal is able to cover the entire surface of the globe from orbit. As the missile is launched, Kane mysteriously teleports away.

Firestorm

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun – Firestorm
Developer(s)	Westwood Studios
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	March 8, 2000
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy, expansion pack
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T Teen), ELSPA: 15+

The Firestorm expansion follows the events as they unfolded in the GDI campaign of Tiberian Sun. With the Brotherhood of Nod seemingly fractured into feuding warlords following Kane's second demise, Anton Slavik is determined to keep the dream alive through the resurrection of CABAL, a highly advanced AI developed by Nod. Unfortunately, CABAL betrays him and suddenly starts to use Nod's Tiberium cyborgs to assassinate most of the Brotherhood's leaders, leaving them in chaos and largely leaderless. CABAL then begins to conquer the world through the systematic assimilation of human populations into its cyborg armies on a massive scale. The Global Defense Initiative, meanwhile, continues its ongoing attempt to stop the spread of Tiberium by retrieving the mysterious Tacitus device; however with the assassination of Tratos by the Brotherhood of Nod, they were left with no alternative than to use CABAL. GDI was later betrayed by the A.I. as soon as they recovered the last component of the Tacitus. The ever-increasing threat of the renegade A.I. eventually forces Slavik to approach the GDI with an alliance against a common foe.

The combined forces of GDI and Nod eventually won the battle against CABAL, but CABAL was apparently not truly destroyed. The final cutscene of the Nod campaign shows CABAL's face on a display, surrounded by fluid-filled cylinders with dormant humans inside, one of whom is seen to be Kane. Kane's face is superimposed over CABAL's onscreen, and then Kane/CABAL says "Our directives must be reassessed."

Unlike other campaigns seen thus far in the Command & Conquer series, the campaigns of the Firestorm expansion are tied together. Playing only one side, one will barely end up understanding the story (for example, the third GDI mission was to stop the quarreling of civilians and mutants, however within the GDI campaign itself a reason as to why this conflict began is never given - only in the Nod campaign. In the same manner, Tratos was said to have been assassinated in the next mission for what at first glance appeared to be no reason either.), unless one plays the other campaign. What is also different from all former Command & Conquer campaigns is that both the GDI and the Nod campaign in Firestorm will lead to the same battle at the end. If the player examines both the Nod and GDI versions of the final "Core of the Problem" mission closely, it becomes apparent that the southwestern corner of the map in the GDI campaign and the southeastern corner of the Nod campaign are identical. CABAL's core and all surrounding scenery is also identical in both missions. In both of the briefings concerning this final mission, the player will also hear that the other side is attacking CABAL from another direction. Similarly, in the preceding missions, each side refers in the briefings to missions being attempted by their counterparts in the other campaign to weaken CABAL. Lastly, the endings of the two campaigns in Firestorm co-exist (i.e. both happened at the same time and both are canonical). Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is the only other Command & Conquer game to follow the same format.

Reception

Despite the anticipation surrounding Tiberian Sun, the game was released to mixed reviews. Delays had caused the game to take four and a half years to develop, and as a result, the game featured outdated graphics yet the game performance was sluggish on all but the latest computers. The game received a rating of 7.9 from GameSpot.^[1]

Many of the touted features such as intelligent, adaptive AI, unit veterancy and real-time lighting were either severely scaled back or completely removed. Game strategy was lacking to the point where a player could complete entire missions with an army of one type of unit (e.g. infantry/ engineer rushes).

Others disapproved of the soundtrack, which departed from the Industrial music styles of Command & Conquer in favor of slow, moody ambient music reflecting the game's apocalyptic setting in a world being ecologically ravaged by Tiberium. Westwood would later successfully eliminate many of the performance and stability problems, and would reuse Tiberian Sun's isometric graphics engine for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2.

Despite these issues, the interactive environment, new graphics and new array of units were considered important good points to note about Tiberian Sun. GameSpot thought that the new soundtrack was 'catchy' instead of apocalyptic and also said that it was an excellent sequel to the original Command and Conquer, although it didn't necessarily have all the features that made the original Command and Conquer a hit.

Early Development

There is an early Tiberian Sun trailer, which can be found as one of the Sneak Preview movies within the Gold Edition of Command & Conquer [1]. In this trailer it shows a Mech being tested to how well it can deal with damage and doing target practice with a laser. This Mech is similar in design to the GDI's "Wolverine", though it fires a green laser instead of bullets. This trailer gives the impression that the game was to be played from a first-person perspective and the gameplay was similar to the MechWarrior video game series.

Several images and references in the Tiberian Sun "rules" file indicate that more features were planned for release. A former Westwood employee working for Petroglyph Games elaborated upon them in March 2007.^[2] A "loadout" screen was to be implemented allowing commanders to pick units to take into battle before missions. Drop pods which later appeared in Firestorm were intended to debut in Tiberian Sun, and be customizable before deployment. The "loadout" screen was finished in a prototype of Command & Conquer 3, but Westwood was dissolved and Electronic Arts did not revive the concept.^[2] Lighting was intended to play a larger role, as units spotted by lamps or guard towers would be susceptible to enemy fire at greater ranges, and in turn would suffer a reduction in their own range ability. Westwood planned the Hunter / Seeker Droid option to support selection of target types, but ultimately the droid was made to attack at random. Developers eschewed creating differences in terrain types to preserve unit balance.

See also

• Command & Conquer: Tiberium series
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert
• Command & Conquer (video game)
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Command & Conquer: The First Decade

References

External links

• C&C Wiki project
• Storyline Guide at Planet C&C
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun at MobyGames
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm at MobyGames
• Tiberian Sun gameplay & storyline synopsis
• Project Perfect Mod