- Joined
- Dec 19, 2019
Generals itself is fine. The debilitating effect it had on the series as a whole isn't, as I described in detail, and neither is the pretense of it being 'C&C', when that isn't reflected in anything but the name and the genre. It's basically been irl retconned as the best game in the series, when it pretty much isn't even one, which tilts me so hard I shit out my hemorrhoids.Oldfag CNC fanboy here. I don't really agree.
Generals was honestly a perfectly fine RTS. It had absolutely jack squat to do with CNC, that was just a title plastered on to move more units. But there was nothing particularly wrong with Generals as a game.
While the aesthetic of CNC did change somewhat with Tiberium Wars, it still felt much, much, MUCH more like a real CNC game than any other since Tiberian Sun. While not AS good as earlier games in the series, I would argue all day erry day that it was a modern, streamlined rendition of the Tiberium series rather than being a clone of Generals. I can't really comment on the multiplayer aspects, as I don't think I've ever played a CNC game online despite hundreds of hours in single player.
RA3 was... RA3. 'nuff said. But that was never really the problem. The wild divergence in tone between the Red Alert and Tiberium series started with 2, not 3. It wasn't exactly unprecedented. And while I thought RA2 was fun, I didn't really care for the shift in tone as far as CNC as a series goes. A lot of people forget that RA1 was an absolutely dead serious game about a fictional world war.
No, I think the traditional diagnosis of CNC4 killing the series is correct. Simply because it was seriously THAT bad.
What do you mean about TW being more CNC than anything? RA2 is a TS reskin with better assets (also, proportionally a lot better sized buildings, lol). Same as RA1 being a C&C reskin, only that one is just the exact same, D2K falls in this camp too. Those games all play the same underneath all their drapes. They couldn't be closer if they tried.
TW on the other hand, with the way the units move and behave, feels exactly like Generals. That's the point. You have 4 games, 6 if you count the 2 Dune games, that are very noticably the same, from design of the UI, to unit behaviour. Then you play Generals, and it's blatantly different, but then you play 3, and it sure as shit doesn't resemble C&C1 through RA2, where the only real difference is going from top down to isometric perspective. If you want a 3D game that plays like C&C, try Emperor, and compare it to TW.
I don't get the streamlined argument. Old C&C, as much as I love them, are not complicated at all, it's the other way around. Generals and games post became more complex, both on a design level and a unit management level, directly because they aimed for the SC esports audience that was used to more complex shit. Multiple build queues, SC/WC style upgrades and multiple unit abilities, heavy counter unit ability micro gameplay. Those all got put into the series starting with Generals, before that, in the old games you had a handful of units that can unpack and have abilites, universal sidebar and that's it. You can diehard anything in MP, but those old games were streamlined so much to begin with a child could play them. It's why it was known as the comfy meme RTS where you build a base, build 30 tanks, left click, steamroll. Same can't be said of the SC injected later entries. (this is a reply @Jaimas too, also they did sth different by aping SC kek)
RA3 was bad in that it tried to be everything and ended up being nothing. It tried to ape RA2, but ended up being a flanderised obnoxious version of it, as seemingly made by people who watched a meme compilation. Simultaneously it's also a coop game, which pigeonholed mission and level design. Also a console game, so map sizes have to be limited. Also double down on fast esports micro gameplay shit by giving every unit hard counter abilities against each other. All while being playing like a RA2 mod for Generals, even the general ability shit returned.
RA1 being serious is overstated and RA2 being wacky is also overstated. The later has scenes like a guy begging for his life in a cupboard before being executed, a person getting blown up in a terrorist attack in front of your eyes, the intro starts with a guy getting brainwashed and murdering his friend. Conversely, RA1 has Stalin in bed cackling with his mistress like a cartoon villain. RA1 was always more camp than Tiberian Dawn, even as people were killing eachother in the cutscenes. It wasn't nearly as serious about its subject matter as it is made out to be.
Now, not saying there isn't an overall increase in camp going from 1 to 2, but outside of isolated comedic beats, it's a moderate increase. Not the drastic insanity that people retroactively attributed to it post 3 being shite. People treat 1's darkest moments and 2's most comedic moments as the baseline tone for the two games, which isn't the case
By C&C4 they've already given up. As described in my original post, the double whammy of TW burning all the nostalgia kindle in one go and failing as an esport, followed by RA3 flopping was the death sentence of the series. RA3 did so fucking bad, they cancelled the console version of the expansion, removed coop, cut it down to mini campaigns and didn't allow new units in MP. Ironically, missions were a lot better because of the larger maps and no forced coop. They didn't even print discs, they sold codes in a box for like 5 bucks.
C&C4 and F2P Generals 2 were just fishing for anything that might work. TW/RA3 style followups were proven to be a failure by then, described why in my original post, which meant a death sentence for the series.
@Jaimas, I wouldn't say Dota coming out of WC3 is a feather in the games' cap, considering people would rather play Dota than WC3 even when it was just a custom game. Dota (and the standalone games that followed it) at its's core is just WC3 without everything but 1 hero unit. People had fun with aspects of WC3, but they were overwhelmed by it, so a game mode that removes 80% of the gameplay loop was preferable to playing normal WC3. Eclipsing it both casually and competitively, which later was even true with SC2 vs moba. It's like an admission that the game was bloated as hell. Insert George Lucas saying he went too far in a few places.
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