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7 Years of Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

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Seven years ago today one of the most talked about Command & Conquer games was released. But many fans don't talk about Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight in a positive manner. Even some of the developers who worked on this game don't really like talking about it. Visually, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight looked great, it still does seven years later, the music was epic and worked well. But the drastic shift in gameplay mechanics, the horrible storyline make this game probably the worst Command & Conquer game in the history of the franchise. Tiberium crystals randomly dropping from the sky? Yeah, that's in the game. Some terrible unit designs, especially for Nod units. "Pew-Pew" cheap sounding effects for the weapons. And lets not forget the need to be always connected to the Internet to play. The list of negatives rolls on.

Many people don't know the origins of this game. It is still a bit of a mystery. Based on the some other concepts we have seen from other cancelled C&C projects over the years, we haven't nailed down how it all came together. The strongest "story" I've heard is that the basics of Tiberian Twilight began as some sort of mod or addon for Tiberium Wars and possibly Kane's Wrath, complete with the Crawler/mobile base idea. EALA were just experimenting with other ways to play with the Asian market in mind, and once they polished it up a bit, they'd have made it available to anyone for free and say here's something you guys can play with. Another way to play C&C 3 I guess.

That probably would have been cool. If this happened, we would have most likely got a proper Command & Conquer 4 game that truly was the "epic" conclusion we wanted. However this was not meant to be. Apparently the big EA bosses stepped in and said hey wait a minute. Wrap a poorly conceived storyline around that and we can slap a US$60 price tag on the box and sell it. So long story short, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight is just another example of how these companies work today. Quickly produce a product on a moderate budget over a short period of time. In return, they profit because they know it will sell. Who cares if it's bad. Once the game is released, drop all support for it. So here we are, seven later, and Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight still leaves a sour taste in the mouths of all Command & Conquer fans. We like to mark the anniversaries of all the past C&C games, but this one still stings.

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It's not even ten years to mark the 10th anniversary of this "epic fail" C&C game.

 

But one thing wrong, Sonic. The music isn't epic in C&C4. The music used in C&C4 was just right for Generals 2. Right type of music, but most of them are used for the wrong game.

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I can't believe it's been 7 years. I'm still checking CNCNZ everyday, hoping that new life will be breathed into this franchise.

 

My memory of the C&C4 experience is a bit fuzzy, probably because my brain tries its best to block it out. But my impression is that the C&C4 gameplay model was a Chinese skunkworks project that EA corporate forced onto the C&C franchise, and the developers had to just stick with it. I was a part of the alpha tests, and I remember that none of the fellow testers (literally zero) liked the gameplay. I remember writing long detailed lists of suggestions for the developers, and some of those ideas were incorporated, but most of them were totally ignored. By the time the game was in beta, the testing team grew substantially, and the outcry grew even larger. They stuck with it, and it was a massive flop. After Tiberium was cancelled, the developers at EALA knew that they were about to get laid off at some point, and they were looking for jobs at other studios while C&C4 was being made. It was clear to them that they had little job security and no creative authority, and so that probably contributed to C&C4's lack of quality.

 

As for the story, the cringe-worthy wife scenes come to mind, but I vaguely remember serious plot holes, and being saddened by the entire experience. Generals 2 could have been the high-budget reboot that C&C needed - I wasn't a huge fan of Generals, but C&C badly needed a triple-A game that didn't ruin the Tiberian and RA universes. Then, it became a F2P game with no singleplayer, and they lost me. Then, they cancelled the entire game in 2013, and the rest is history.

 

Renegade X had a good relationship with EA, including with Patrick Soderlund, but unfortunately the corporation has a very high turnaround, so we lost most of our contacts. Everyone else bounced us around between different people, but since no one is in charge of the C&C franchise, we got no solid answers on anything, and no one had the full authority to make lasting deals with us. No one wanted to risk their job to give us conclusive answers on anything. So we just gave up with them.

 

A lot of people cite RTS's decline as the reason why we didn't see another C&C game, but Starcraft 2 was immensely popular just after C&C4, and it used a traditional 90s-style RTS formula. Even if EA didn't want to take a risk with building a high budget RTS game, they could have made a C&C-themed shooter, as people still play Renegade and Renegade-themed games till this day, 14 years later. But like other companies, developers at EA don't have much creative control, and the corporation is more interested in short-term profits than building a quality franchise with a loyal following.

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I didn't follow this when it was released so I'm going on what Sonic says here ... It isn't often you hear of a game that has weedy sound effects. The last time I heard someone complain about sound effects in a game, was Brute Force on the first Xbox.

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This game....this game....THIS GAME.....

 

The game that pretty much killed off this franchise as a whole. The stupid story with that horrible bitch commander from GDI and that stupid whiny wife. The stupidity of GDI trusting Kane, KANE of all people and feel OH SO BETRAYED when he did a heel turn!!! And at the end of the day, Kane goes back to his home planet like Poochie the rapping dog from The Simpsons..

 

Also, WHAT THE **** HAPPEN TO THE SCRIN??!!!

 

The graphics are mostly soulless, I mean, SOME of the models look alright but for the most part the environments were just dull. The soundtrack...I just....all the stupid chanting and all that crap and the sounds...was there even sound effects??

 

And the big kicker, the gameplay...horrid I say horrid. Can only build set amount of units and no real base building to speak of. Which in turn creates boring ass stalemates.

 

This game, no joke, gave me a headache. Nothing but hate for this game and no one will ever change my mind on this. You can like or even love (is that even possible?) this game, but I will never understand why.

Edited by Nmenth
removed reference to piracy

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Yes, Sorin Markov, let the hate flow through you. Become a black planeswalker again.

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I was a part of the alpha tests, and I remember that none of the fellow testers (literally zero) liked the gameplay. I remember writing long detailed lists of suggestions for the developers, and some of those ideas were incorporated, but most of them were totally ignored. By the time the game was in beta, the testing team grew substantially, and the outcry grew even larger.

 

I still wonder if anyone has an early alpha/beta version - I would love to see how much unused stuff was in the files that got cut during development. :(

 

 

A lot of people cite RTS's decline as the reason why we didn't see another C&C game, but Starcraft 2 was immensely popular just after C&C4, and it used a traditional 90s-style RTS formula.

 

To be faor, I think SC2 was one of the main reasons RA3 and TT were so rushed - they needed to release their games before SC2 as they couldnt compete with it.

 

 

And yeah, the wife plot was incredible generic. I just knew she was going to die the moment they showed us one of her szenes during CommandCom.

 

And dont forget the weird montion comic tie in..

 

 

But I still wonder how much of the game/story was cut during development...

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