The last Command & Conquer game sucked. It ended the series (for a while) and took away our interest with the franchise. That was until this February when Victory Games confirmed that a new Command & Conquer was coming but they oddly focused on the social aspect of gaming in the announcement. Fast forward to December 2011 and BioWare is teasing the announcement of a new game they're working on, one which seemingly was going to be Command & Conquer: Alliances, but to be confirmed at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards last night.
We weren't too far off as the show premiered the first teaser trailer for Command & Conquer: Generals 2, a game that we now have more details on.
Only moments after the Spike Video Game Awards show ended - check out the complete list of winners here - IGN and AusGamers posted interviews they conducted with BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka and executive producer Jon Van Caneghem about Command & Conquer: Generals 2 which revealed a few tidbits about the direction of the game and their goal with the bringing the game pack. Below are the highlights of the information gleaned:
- Original Command & Conquer: Generals is the best selling game in the series and BioWare Victory wanted to delve in to the near-future time period.
- Jon Van Caneghem: "One of our main goals is to bring C&C back to the roots that have made it one of the most popular and beloved properties in the strategy genre and that revolves around the core gameplay."
- Generals (players) command "huge, massive armies."
- Entire new game elements will be added.
- Game takes place 10 years after the events of the first Generals and begins with a terrorist attack taking out world leaders at a peace treaty signing.
- Three factions: GLA, EU and an unannounced third (the terrorists).
- Victory studio formed beginning of the year, became a part of BioWare in the summer - It's not even the same BioWare who makes Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc. They just attached "BioWare" to this other EA studio.
- Command & Conquer: Generals 2 is PC only and is developed using the Frostbite 2 engine (see: Battlefield 3).
- Battlegrounds will be "fully destructible."
- Cinematics will be in-game thanks to Frostbite 2 with the goal of making them immersive.
- BioWare Victory aims to offer both a strong single-player campaign and strong multiplayer.
- Expect a lot of new features for multiplayer.
- "Accessible" but "challenging to master."
- Generals 2 will be serious compared to the camp factor found in the Tiberium and Red Alert games.
While what we're hearing about Generals 2 returning to the franchise's core values sounds good, this is the typical pre-release talk we'd get for any game, especially one coming off a few weak installments. It's almost important for fans to note that even though the "BioWare" label is attached to EA Victory Games now, this is a separate development house than the BioWare studios who develop the "traditional" BioWare games and I'm looking at that as partially a PR movie to get a positive brand attached to Command & Conquer.
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There are quite a few hints about new multiplayer features and we previous heard about Victory's focus on making this game more "social" and that industry veteran Jon Van Caneghem was brought in to help bring the Command & Conquer franchise online. We'll leave that all up to speculation until we hear more.
What are your thoughts?
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