Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
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| Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun | |
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| Developer(s) | Westwood Studios |
| Publisher(s) | EA Games |
| Latest version | 2.03, 2000-05-31 |
| Release date(s) | August 27, 1999 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T (Teen) ELSPA: 15+ |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Media | 2 CD-ROMs |
| System requirements | Pentium II 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 2 MB PCI graphics card, DirectX compatible sound card, 200 MB hard disk space, 4x CD-ROM drive |
| Input | Keyboard, Mouse |
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is the sequel to Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, to be followed by the upcoming Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars in the Tiberian series. The game takes place about 30 years after the end of Tiberian Dawn. In the 2030's, when the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod are again at war in a battle for the future of the world.
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.
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[edit] Features
As a highly-anticipated sequel to Command & Conquer, Tiberian Sun followed the continuing struggle for world domination between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod, and also the struggle between humanity and the alien Tiberium substance. The game story is a follow up to the original, in which the Nod leader and GDI's public enemy #1, Kane, resurfaces from an apparently faked death with renewed vigor, funds, and manpower. The game's theme revolves around the question of why Tiberium came to earth in the first place, with the discovery of an alien spacecraft.
The 3D engine featured several new features. The game utilized an isometric perspective with varying terrain height. Dynamic lighting allowed for day/night cycles and special effects, such as ion storms. Maps featured cityscapes where units could hide or battle in urban combat. Some Buildings and armoured units were rendered with voxels, although infantry was still rendered as sprites. The terrain was deformable; for instance, bombarding the ground with explosive weapons created craters.
The full motion videos were 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, and Michael Biehn of Terminator and Aliens fame.
Tiberian Sun was at first 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, mech units were featured in the game, replacing the more conventional tanks that were featured in Tiberian Dawn.
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.
[edit] Units
Command and Conquer units used by both sides are: light infantry, engineers, hunter seeker droids, harvesters and limpet drones. Structures are: construction yards, Tiberium refinery, electromagnetic (EMP) pulse cannon, Tiberium silo and pavement.
[edit] GDI
GDI units are: disk throwers, jump jet infantry, medics, ghostalker,Powered Assault Armor, or "wolverine", amphibious APC, Medium Battle Mechanized Walker, or "titan", MLRS, disruptor, Mammoth Mk. II, mobile sensor array (MSA), Orca fighter, Orca bomber, Orca carryall, dropship, Kodiak, Orca transport, Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV), mobile EMP cannon (Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), juggernaut (Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), drop pod control plug(Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), mobile war factory(Command and Conquer: Firestorm only).
[edit] Nod
NOD units are: rocket infantry, cyborg soldiers, cyborg commando, mutant hijacker, attack buggy, subterranean APC, artillery, attack cycle, devil's tongue, stealth tank, mobile sensor array (MSA), mobile repair vehicle, Harpy, Banshee, Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV), cyborg reaper(Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), fist of NOD (Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), mobile stealth generator(Command and Conquer: Firestorm only), mobile war factory(Command and Conquer: Firestorm only).
[edit] 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 director Joseph D. Kucan) at the end of the original Command & 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, preventing the Brotherhood from creating advanced airborne units and chemical missiles based on extractions from Tiberium, 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 lauching a world-altering Tiberium missile unhindered. In these missions, McNeil encounters the mutants Tratos and Umagon of The Forgotten, who eventually agree to cooperate in assisting with the downfall of Nod.
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, and the world is left at the eve of a Second Tiberium War between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod.
[edit] Firestorm
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. 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 from its part is in an on-going attempt of stopping the spread of Tiberium by retrieving the mysterious Tacitus device, however with Tratos assassinated by the Brotherhood of Nod, they were left with no alternative than to turn to CABAL, only to be betrayed by the A.I. as soon as they recuperated 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 Slavik's Nod forces would win the battle against CABAL, but CABAL is apparently not truly destroyed. The final cut-scene 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.".
Whatever events follow Firestorm will be revealed in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.
Unlike other campaigns seen thus far in the Command & Conquer series, the campaigns of the Firestorm expansion are tied together. If one plays but one side, he/she 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 he/she plays the other campaign. What is also different from all former Command & Conquer campaigns is that both the GDI as 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 Nod campaign and the southeastern corner of the GDI 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. Lastly, the endings of the two campaigns in Firestorm co-exist (i.e. both happened at the same time and both are canonical), which was a first in the Command & Conquer series as well.
[edit] 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. The game performance was sluggish on all but the latest computers.
Many of the touted features such as intelligent, adaptive AI, unit veterancy and realtime lighting were either severely scaled back or completely removed. Game strategy was lacking to the point one could complete entire missions with an army of one type of unit (ie infantry/ engineering rushes).
Others disapproved of the soundtrack, which departed from the industrial/hip-hop styles of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn in favour of slow, moody ambient music reflecting the game's apocalyptic background setting of a world ecologically being 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.
[edit] 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: Tiberian Dawn. 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 believed by fans to be a proto-type of GDI's Wolverine, the laser on the other hand sounds like the same laser sound from Nod's Obelisk of Light. This trailer gives the impression that the game looked liked a first-person type of game and the gameplay was similar to the MechWarrior video game series.
[edit] See also
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian series
- Command & Conquer: The First Decade
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
- Command & Conquer: Generals
- Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
[edit] External links
- cncgamer
- Encyclopedia
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun at MobyGames
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm at MobyGames
- www.TiberiumWeb.com - Source for evereything tiberium
- Project Perfect Mod
[edit] Media
| Games: | Red Alert: Command & Conquer: Red Alert | Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Counterstrike | Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The Aftermath | Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Retaliation
Red Alert 2: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 | Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge |
| Factions: | Allies | Soviet Union | Yuri's army |
| Characters: | Red Alert: Allied Characters | Soviet Characters
Red Alert 2: Allied Characters | Soviet Characters |
| Storyline: | Red Alert: Storyline
Red Alert 2: Storyline |
| Technology: | Technology of the Allies | Technology of the Soviets |
| Games: | Command & Conquer: Generals | Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour |
| Factions: | USA | GLA | China |
| Characters: | USA: General Alexis Alexander | General Malcom "Ace" Granger General "Pinpoint" Townes
GLA: "Dr. Thrax" | Prince Kassad | General Rodall "Demo" Juhziz China: General Ta Hun Kwai | General Tsing Shi Tao | General "Anvil" Shin Fai |
| Storyline: | USA | GLA | China |
| Misc: | Controversy |
