First it was just a bunch of hush hush rumors but now EA has made, what I personally feel is rather surprising news, that a new studio called Victory Games is making a new C&C game–not only that but VG is going to be the main designer of EA strategy titles. I thought the franchise had sailed off into the RTS sunset but apparently EA thinks the girl has some fight left in her — or that Victory Games can bring it back to life.
Check out the new C&C website for some additional, albeit sparse, details including an EA to EA Q&A (I always hate these) on why this was a great idea.
Says Jon Van Caneghem of Victory Games: Victory Games was created to be the focal point for the creation of strategy games for the Games Label at EA. Our current focus is making a AAA Command & Conquer game, which I am very excited to be working on. I’ve always been a big Command & Conquer fan. We’ve put together a team made up of some of the best talent from previous Command & Conquer games along with a great mix of quality industry veterans. Everyone that we’ve brought on board is very passionate about making strategy games.
… and Felicia Day as Tanya?
I want something more like Generals. I’m not looking for Generals 2 here, cause a lot of people want the mythos. I was never big on the tiberium wars end of things, and Red Alert 3, both in gameplay and FMV quality, was tripe compared to Red Alert 2.
Where were the commicaly massive missiles on the dreadnaught? It’s what the Russian side was all about, commical weaponry.
And before anyone says it, the bear cannons weren’t comical. They were one of the worst weapons in the whole of RA3. When a weapon is as usefull as a spoon in a tank war, it looses its comedy value damn fast.
It seemed like more time was spent on the FMV’s than that other thingy called gameplay that a lot of developers are glancing over these days.
I feel that Generals had the right balance of strategy and cool storytelling with insane weapons like the toxin tractor, emperor overlord tank and the space laser super weapon America had. Hell, even the angry mobs mixed strategy with craziness.
Also, if this comes to consoles, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don’t try and design a complete abomination of a control scheme for a pad. My console has USB slots, and my laptop doesn’t have a graphics card. Give me some goddamn keyboard and mouse support. Closest anone ever got was R.U.S.E with its Move support, and thats still not the same.
Perhaps a new developer can breathe new life into the franchise, which has become somewhat stagnant. It may have taken Blizzard a decade to release a new Starcraft and they managed to make one nearly identical to the first one. A new developer is a great opportunity to take things in a new direction. I for one would love a more Company of Heroes/Dawn of War version of Command and Conquer.
Here’s hoping that by “new” they mean shitcanning the FMV and creating an original branch on the RTS evolutionary tree substantially different from the one they’ve clung to since 1995.
Dude, don’t knock the FMV. After what, 10, 15 years that’s what defines the series. I LOVED the all the actors with nerd-cred doing the cut-scenes in C&C3. Between (forgive me for not knowing their real names) The House chick, Asian Cylon/Not-Cylon girl from BSG, Captain No-Hand from Starship Troopers, Sawyer from Lost and Billy Dee Williams that was a nerdpocalypse! Why would you want to do away with the influence that this series apparently has to get genre-specific actors?
If you want to revamp the tech tree, that I get, we’re a little overdue for one, but when it comes to the FMV, now that we have good enough tech to actually make it look like TV, I would say getting legitimate actors to show up for a game is a good thing.
If you want gameplay changes, I’m totally on board, but please don’t scare off actors from our scene. We are THIS close to having Wil Wheaton be a Kane operative, and I don’t want to miss that.