Command & Conquer: Generals Updated Preview

The Command & Conquer games introduced millions to real-time strategy gaming, and while the RTS genre has exploded in the last decade to include hundreds of titles from major and lesser-known studios, many still feel a particular attachment to Westwood's series. Although the distinctive style and mechanics of the Command & Conquer games have stayed fairly constant over the years, the upcoming Command & Conquer Generals has many elements that are new to the series. Not only does it have an impressive new 3D engine, but its near-future setting obviously takes inspiration from recent international events and there are some subtle changes from the Command & Conquer gameplay formula. Generals could be the next C&C game to break out and carve out a new audience.

The Generals demo at this year's E3 made quite a splash. The in-game cinematic sequences showcased the tremendous detail the 3D engine is capable of, and events like a dam's collapse, the subsequent flooding of a river valley, and a final nuclear strike gave the demo a dramatic punch that's rare in RTS missions. We recently had the chance to spend the day at EA Pacific's studio in Irvine, California to check on the game's progress since E3. Most importantly, there were a few missions from the US campaign that we could play through from start to finish. Generals isn't quite at an alpha stage of development yet, but what we could play showed quite a bit of polish for a game that's about five months from shipping.

The first thing to report is that Generals does indeed have an elaborate story and setting fit to wear the Command & Conquer name. It's modern-day war, Hollywood-style. This is the studio that brought us Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, and there's definitely some of the same kind of irreverent tones that serve as a reminder that the game is meant to be fun--not to make some sort of serious political statement. Much of Generals takes place in central Asia. The Chinese are trying to stamp out GLA terrorists that have been working at the massive nation's borders. To stem the controversy that might arise from too close a parallel with current events, the designers made it clear that the GLA is a global, political terrorist group seeking to overturn the international social order. The name stands for Global Liberation Army, for those taking notes. The US has its part to play as the global policeman, and to keep things interesting, it ends up at odds with China as well.

The days of full-motion video are over, even for C&C games. Generals' story will be told through in-engine cutscenes, and while we didn't see any close-ups on the small infantry units or heroes, the engine is at least capable of putting a lot of detailed objects on the screen at once. The story will follow a series of events through the three campaigns, but that doesn't lock players into playing them through in order. Knowing that some players will prefer one of the three factions, the designers are making it possible to play any of the campaigns from the outset. This means the mission difficulty will be fairly balanced between all three, but it does ramp up quickly over the course of each campaign's eight missions. If a total of 24 missions doesn't seem like much, the game will also have three tutorials that precede the campaigns, which are more like short missions with scripted tips than a dull series of instructions.

Hollywood Goes to War

The designers of C&C Generals have taken to heart the challenge of instilling personality and character into a real-world setting. A wall of concept drawings at EA Pacific's studio reveals many unit designs that were once sci-fi enough to be at home in the Tiberium fields of previous Westwood games. They are no more. Even though Generals is set 15 years in the future, which gives the designers some leeway for super-high-tech US fighter planes like the supersonic Aurora strike fighter, the game will also have low-tech, dusty rocket trucks and the "technicals" (pickups with machine guns strapped on the back) that the Somali militia used in the film Black Hawk Down.

Each of C&C Generals' playable sides has its own personality. The US likes its high-tech air power, but also has strong tanks and efficient ranger infantry. The rangers may not do much against armored units, but can storm a building instantly with their flashbang grenade upgrade. As in Red Alert 2, buildings can be garrisoned and provide good protection for infantry until destroyed. The US base structures also pose a hidden threat to attackers, as 10 rangers will pour out of every building destroyed. The US resource collector is a Chinook helicopter that can quickly and fairly safely move between its base and the junk heaps scattered on the map.

Terror and guerilla warfare is the GLA's game. There are a number of conventional units at the GLA commander's disposal, and even though they are weak, cheapness and speed are certainly virtues. Tunnel networks form the backbone of GLA bases, and allow troops to dig in. Under each base structure is a basement, which lets the GLA rebuild quite quickly. There are naturally a few special weapons options true to the GLA's nature. The toxin tractor paints green goo on the landscape, poisoning units and land for a time. A suicide bomber wears a jacket of dynamite. The bomb truck can disguise itself as any vehicle to get closer to its target. And Generals may be the first game to feature anthrax as a weapon upgrade. Some of the GLA units are quite clever in themselves--such as the angry mob unit, which starts off as 10 unruly infantry but will grow over time--but all require a devious mind to use well.

China's natural advantage is its population, and in Generals there's nothing like a big group of Chinese infantry or armor. This special advantage has been added to the game as a "horde bonus" that makes groups of similar Chinese troops hardier and fire faster. Playing as China, players will want to keep units to together, while the opposition will try to create diversions around the map to keep the Chinese army too busy to coalesce into an invincible horde. The Chinese are also not afraid to use nuclear missiles. But perhaps their most interesting unit is the overlord tank, a massive double-barreled tank that's actually big enough to fit one of the three Chinese base defense structures on its back. It's a tank that can roll along to support an army with anti-air rockets, machine gunners, or a propaganda tower, which gives units a bonus.

Superweapons and hero units define the furiously fast gameplay of C&C games. To be sure, the other two sides have their own responses to China's nuclear missiles. The GLA's "SCUD Storm" makes up for the inaccuracy of SCUD missiles with numbers. A half-dozen of the missiles are packed with fearsome bio-goo. And the US has its high-tech satellite-based laser. But this isn't any old satellite laser--it has a sustained attack that will paint a path of destruction.

The commando was C&C's most beloved unit, enough to earn his own game: Renegade. Generals introduces a new generation of hero units, which have potent special abilities. The US hero is very much like the commando, armed with a machine gun and explosives. The GLA has a crack sniper to wreak havoc by picking off the pilots inside of vehicles. Special armor-piercing ammo actually lets the sniper get pilots inside tanks too, which makes the units neutral and able to be captured by any side. Pilots are the only unit in the game that gains experience, which is displayed as a series of chevrons above vehicles. The Chinese hacker hero is very unconventional, and while she can't much defend herself in a straight fight, she makes up for it with the ability to steal money from other players, steal buildings, and cut the enemies' lines of communication.

Reportin' For Duty

Generals gets its name from a new gameplay concept: the general. At the start of a mission, the player chooses one of three generals at the command center. Unlike hero units, the general doesn't have a direct effect on the battlefield and doesn't show his face unless the command center is destroyed (and then the general's pistol is hardly much of a defense). The general is essentially a way to focus and customize armies, as each one opens up one extra unit, grants two special abilities, and provides a veteran bonus to a unit type. For example, the US Air Force general has two air-attack abilities that recharge over the course of about 10 minutes--a fire bomb attack and a cluster bomb attack, both of which are launched by low-flying B-52s that can be shot down by anti-air emplacements. The other US generals focus on tanks and on Special Forces. The GLA generals divide their specialties into bioweapons, guerilla fighting, and terror attacks. The Chinese generals also represent that side's strengths: hordes of infantry, hacking, and nuclear weapons.

The several missions we played from the US campaign should be quite representative of how they'll appear in the final game. The US tutorial mission is quite simple. Players start out controlling a small squad of rangers, who overcome some GLA troops and rendezvous with some Humvees before recapturing a fallen US base. There's a group of pilots nearby that can jump in the Humvees to make them somewhat more effective. After that, it's time to clear out a crowded town, capture some oil derricks--one of a number of useful neutral buildings scattered around maps--and proceed to the main objective. The next mission provides a more substantial target: a chemical weapons plant guarded by a GLA base. But before you get there, there's a city to navigate and with a number of the buildings garrisoned by hostiles, it's time to send in the two helicopters full of rangers. The rangers slide down ropes to the rooftops, then quickly silence the opposition. We're not going to reveal too much about the other, later missions we played, but suffice it to say that they were much more challenging and featured more-advanced US weaponry as well as cunning GLA foes. There is an obvious rock-scissors-paper balance to the conventional units, but the game also has plenty of special units that don't quite fit that formula.

At this point, it's safe to say that Generals is a good-looking game. The cityscapes are remarkably detailed for a 3D game intended to run on a wide variety of PCs. The game has lots of special effects for the big weapons and dynamic lighting on everything to provide eye-candy, and the destructible trees, cars, and other objects add a tangible sense to the environments. The engine is capable of day-and-night lighting, and the designers showed off one night map that recreates Hong Kong. The game can put a lot of units on the screen at once, but that does mean there's something of a tradeoff with the infantry graphics. The relatively low-polygon infantry don't look nearly as distinctive as the rest of the game.

When EA first unveiled Generals early this spring, the late 2002 release date seemed incredibly ambitious. But the designers say that since the engine and groundwork was finished and stable quite early in the project, the game has come along quickly compared to some other games. But with the levels of detail involved with the 3D engine, maps aren't as simple to create as in Red Alert 2. As a result, Generals has slipped to a 2003 release date, but not by much. The official date is now January 21, 2003. The game is now nearing alpha, and that's when polishing and multiplayer balancing will happen in full force. We haven't played the multiplayer yet, but were assured that it won't be long before we do. EA Pacific has big plans for top-notch multiplayer support. Stay tuned in the coming months for more on what might just be the best C&C game in years.