The Command and Conquer(CNC) series is a real time strategy(RTS) series first developed by Westwood studios that spans almost two decades, from 1995 to 2013. In the series the player is tasked with building an army while managing a simple economy to crush his/her enemy. In this post I will attempt to showcase its rise in popularity and subsequent fall from grace.

Humble beginnings

The first game was launched in 1995 and was based on the previous smash hit game by the same developer, Dune II. It's set in a future world (at the time) in which an alien substance known as Tiberium. This substance was very valuable but deadly and also so unknown that a world alliance called Global Defence Initiative(GDI) wanted to take a reserved approach to it. But this sparked basically a terrorist movement, that almost venerated it and wanted to blend with it, called Brotherhood of Nod (NOD) let by a mysterious leader called Kane. Thus, the player has two campaigns to tackle, one from the perspective of GDI and one from NOD. You could also play skirmish battles vs bots or multiplayer vs any combination of players or players and bots. The game received one expansion in 1996 called Covert Operations

1996 also saw the start of another series, that was originally meant to be a prequel to the Tiberium series, with the launch of Red Alert that saw the Allies (NATO countries) pit against The Soviet Union at the end of WWII fighting for world domination. Both CNC and CNC:RA were successes and established the company and both series in the mainstream conscience. CNC:RA recieved three expansions: CNC:RA-Counterstrike in 1997, CNC:RA-The Aftermath also in 1997 and CNC:RA-Retaliation in 1998.
In 1997 a spin-off called of the original CNC called Sole Survivor was released. It was a multiplayer only deathmatch game in which the player controls a single unit and collects crates that grand bonuses to firepower, armor, speed and so on and fights others for, as the name suggests, be the sole survivor. Unlike the two RTS games released before it, it was not a success, although it, along with mods to Starcraft and Warcraft can be considered the predecessors of the MOBA genre.

Westood's rise to glory

In 1999, Westwood released CNC:Tiberian Sun which continued the storyline of the original CNC. It takes place roughly 30 years later and features much improved graphics, based on a new isometric game engine, and gameplay, while providing a more sci-fi take, as opposed to political, on the issue. It also featured a slow ambient soundrack with an apocalyptic vibe, which was fitting, considering the tiberium infested, war torn that the most fighting takes place.
The next year an expansion was released, called CNC:Firestorm which features a conclusion to the GDI perspective of the base game. Here GDI and NOD are forced to join forces against a rogue AI NOD created to aid against GDI, called CABAL

In the year 2000, the game CNC:Red Alert 2 was released. This is probably the most know game of the series. It features the Soviet Union invading the USA. The soviet sheer mechanical prowess and artillery supported by large number of conscripts and psychically controlled units, such as a giant squid are pit against the allied much more specialised units such prism and mirage tanks, fast aircraft and experimental units dabbling in time travel and teleportation. Although CNC:RA hinted at a link with the Tiberium series, Red Alert 2 is considered as a parallel universe as a consequence of time travel experimentation.
The game received a massive expansion in 2001, with CNC:RA2:Yuri's Revenge that introduces a whole new faction in Yuri, previously an ally and advisor to the Soviet Union, based on slave labour and psychically controlled units. They could also capture allied or soviet units to aid them in their goals. In addition to this, the other two factions were more fleshed out with more units and missions.

In the year 2002, the game CNC:Renegade was released. Unlike the other games in this universe, this was a first person shooter (FPS) in which you play as GDI commando Captain Nick "Havok" Parker. The game takes place in the closing weeks of the First Tiberium War covered by the original game. Its campaign was mediocre, but it featured a critically acclaimed multiplayer mode that pitted teams of players against each other. Both teams had a base to protect that had structures the player would`ve constructed in the RTS games, including a tiberium refinery that employed a harvester to generate income with which the players could buy weapons or vehicles such as buggies, tanks or aircraft to aid in the fighting. With enough tiberium the player could also choose to become a hero unit instead of a regular one (soldier, rocketeer, engineer etc) and/or buy a beacon for superweapons to target enemy bases. If that sounds good to you, this game has been revived and is free and open source and is called RenegadeX

The series under EA

In 2003 CNC:Generals was released and it wasn't developed by Westwood like the previous games, but by EA Los Angeles. Even though Westwood was purchased by EA back in 1998, they did not interfere until now. This game was built with a brand new 3d game engine called SAGE(Strategy Action Game Engine) and featured a totally different plotline set in the near future pitting three factions against each other. There were the highly advanced and specialised troops, but also expensive to train and develop, of the US army; the cheaper but less niche troops of China that also focused on numbers, brute force and hacking; and the cheap and stealthy terrorist organisation called the GLA(Global Liberation Army). Every faction had a dedicated campaign and explored every perspective of this global war. Aside, from these campaigns you could also play skirmish battles against the AI or in multiplayer against and in cooperation with any combination of 7 AI bots and human players. The same year, the game saw an expansion in the form of CNC:Generals-(Zero Hour) that expanded the roster of all the factions while also including three derivative, highly specialised factions for every one of the three major armies, such as an air superiority focused US general, or nuclear powered chinese general, or a highly toxic bio-weapons based GLA terrorist leader. It also introduced Challenges which pit the player against every general in the game one after the other while expected to complete certain objectives.

In 2007 saw the launch CNC3:Tiberium Wars. It was a direct continuation of CNC:Tiberian Sun and it took place roughly 17 years after its predecessor's events. It featured pretty similar gameplay to CNC:Generals but with much improved graphics and attention to detail. The much anticipated game also introduced a new faction known as The Scrin. The players encounters them late in the campaign and learns that they are the originators of Tiberium and that this new alien enemy used it to change the Earth so that it would become livable for them. The next year an expansion was released that expanded all factions' rosters, and like CNC:Generals, it introduced 6 new armies that were variations on their respective base allegiances (two for each). It also introduce a whole new strategic mode that had the player plan in a Turn Based manner how to conquer the world. He would attack regions and build defences and fortify positions for more supplies of tiberium and manpower to support other armies nearby. Whenever the player would interact with enemies here, the game would start a new game that played in the usual RTS manner, but the starting armies and bases would depend on decisions made on the strategic map.

The same year CNC3:Red Alert 3 was released. The premise of the game was that at the end of CNC:RA2, when the Soviet Union was losing the war, the Premier decided to steal the allied time-travel technology and use it to go back in time and kill Albert Einstein, who was the mastermind behind all the allied most powerful tech, thus hoping that back in the original time, the Allies would be underequipped and lose the war. Of course, this being a game, things aren't that easy and sees the rise of The Empire of the Rising Sun become a major competitor to world power. Thus, the single player part of the game fields three campaigns, one from the perspective of every faction. This game took a major detour from the formula and focused heavily on multiplayer, so much so that every single mission requires an ally, either a friend or a mostly useless AI partner. Also all factions could build on water and most units had two modes in which it would function and had special abilities. Its graphics were quite cartoony as well. In 2009 a stand-alone expansion was released. It was called CNC:RA3-Uprising so it did not require the base game to be playable. It introduced 30 new maps and four mini campaigns, three for each faction continuing the story in CNC:RA3 (Allied victory) and another one focusing on the origin story of the Empire's commando unit - Yuriko Omega. A part of this expansion was also sold separately, only including the units and maps, but not the campaigns and it was called CNC:RA3-Commander's Challenge. While this game wasn't a disaster, it did signal the beginning of the end for the series.

The fall from grace