By Jim Rossignol on January 19th, 2008 at 8:42 am.
The cinematic trailer for Tiberium has trundled onto the web, revealing BattleStar Galactica wobble-camera, and a transforming gun and helmet. There’s not a great deal to be said about it as we’re still a long way from any gameplay footage, but it’s interesting that the hype is beginning to gear up in this way. We can expect EA to sell this one pretty heavily in the coming months. The question is whether anyone believes it will be any good…
Thanks, Game Trailers!
Incidentally, while thanking Game Trailers, I should point out that their new project, a cheats Wiki called WikiCheats has hit the web. If you’re walkthrough-authoring, or stuck on Mass Effect, then you might want to take a look.
19/01/2008 at 09:38 Narvi says:
Hmmm, looks good enough. Unless they’re using the Crysis engine, it’s completely CG though.
19/01/2008 at 09:42 Evo says:
I honestly don’t get why people are getting hyped about this, it just doesn’t seem that good of an idea to me. I blogged my thoughts in more detail, but pretty much – not going to be good!
19/01/2008 at 09:49 Kieron Gillen says:
I dunno if they ARE actually using the Crysis engine, as I couldn’t find it confirmed anywhere, but there’s been speculation around it being used as EALA have licenced it for something…
http://www.mediafeet.com/2007/03/03/crysis-goes-in-house-at-eala
What I find strange is that they’ve got some of the more iconic vehicles and characters in any RTS universe, and they’re choosing to use a load of boring ED-209s instead.
KG
19/01/2008 at 10:12 moromete says:
For the first trailer it is pretty much ok. The more havy duty vehicle use shall appear latter…
19/01/2008 at 10:19 WCAYPAHWAT says:
well, at least they’re not basing it off the Generals storyline…
19/01/2008 at 11:14 FaceOmeter says:
I don’t wish to go all “kieron talking about zelda” on everyone here, but could we have a Sci-Fi game which isn’t about some dude in a very expensive armour suit holding a very large gun please?
19/01/2008 at 11:20 Crispy says:
So EA is basically pissing all over CnC? CnC has always been about storytelling through military campaign, RTS and Kane. They’re right not to slap the CnC name tag on the title, but Tiberium says enough that this is merely an FPS cash-in on the CnC brand. This could be a shooter by any other name, it clearly has no invested connection with the CnC universe. It’s just an FPS cash-in on the CnC IP.
Meh, gah and pfft to EA, I say.
19/01/2008 at 11:21 Kieron Gillen says:
I find it fascinating how much all these games are in the shadow of Halo, in terms of character design – that whole faceless thing was actually a really controversial thing at the time, and now it’s just the standard.
KG
19/01/2008 at 11:24 Richard says:
I really, really lost interest in the whole C&C universe when they went post-apocalyptic. Roll up and die, humanity. It’s a bit late to be messing around in the wasteland.
19/01/2008 at 11:30 Dinger says:
The sloppy zoom on the spacecraft (or whatever it is) was a technique originally used in the Firefly series.Dunno why I felt like mentioning that.
19/01/2008 at 11:33 Bobsy says:
I’m with Mr FaceOmeter here. Presumably this whole idea comes from the desire to “expand” on standard C&C, right? So why the hell are we still in the guise of some dickhead supersoldier and his super-cock-gun (with double erecting action!)? Here’s a wackey idea: our hero is a lone black single parent whose entire adventure involves getting away from the nightmarish warzone to get to the refugee camp where he thinks his kids are waiting.
Okay, it’s a little too Tom-Cruise-in-War-of-the-Worlds, but it’d still be a a damn sight more interesting than watching the Master Chief be all robo-manly again. If I want a game where my primary motivation is killing all the aliens my choices are not limited. I really, really don’t need another one
19/01/2008 at 12:17 derFeef says:
This could be nice. The trialer does have a good athmoshere. But i dont like the “Halo” feel of it, sorry to say this.
19/01/2008 at 12:24 Lachlan says:
Ah, but Halo made so very, very much money…
It wouldn’t surprise me if this game was actually pitched as “Halo, in the C&C universe”. With Halo itself now ended, the path is clear for clones. That doesn’t necessarily make Tiberium /bad/, but it does mean we can expect all the trappings of a console shooter.
As to the ED209 point, I suspect this is the usual desire of a new art team to put their own imprint on an established setting. Their stuff is, after all, so much cooler than any of that mundane boring old design work that…er…sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
It’s the OMG HARDCORE “mankind on the brink of extinction” bit that really made me roll my eyes. Yeah, yeah, here we go /again/…a little hope for the future would be nice, eh scriptwriters?
19/01/2008 at 12:45 Evo says:
I really don’t like the direction EALA have taken with C&C since they took full control. For me Red Alert 2 was the last great C&C game, nothing since has captured the magic of the originals for me :(
19/01/2008 at 13:10 Slappybag says:
Sacrifice anybody?
19/01/2008 at 13:28 The_B says:
Who does the voice at the start belong to? It sounds so familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…
19/01/2008 at 13:53 arqueturus says:
Derivative pish.
19/01/2008 at 14:14 'The' 'Grandma' says:
First Person?
Squad Control?!
EPIC SCI-FI?!?!?!
WOW MAN! Colour me completely not interested.
19/01/2008 at 14:24 AK says:
Oh, look – some futuristic space marines wearing masks and… zzzzzz.
19/01/2008 at 14:25 Kast says:
As pointed out by Dinger, that zoom effect was the most interesting thing in this trailer. The subtle-yet-unmissable inclusion of EA logo at the beginning was good, though.
19/01/2008 at 14:34 Ben Abraham says:
It wasn’t really a *bad* trailer, was it? Isn’t it a little too early to /completely write it off/?
I mean, gosh, If I want super-instant, knee jerk, reactionary comments about something, I’d go to the Internet!
19/01/2008 at 14:34 Flint says:
I’m just happy about the current swarm of “Halo copies” like this. Yeah it might be repetetive and cliché to have lone soldiers in faceless super suits in futuristic environment, but that’s what appeals to me in a FPS game, at least appeals to me more than all the WW2/realistic/present day toss.
This also looks like it might be the first interesting C&C game for me. But I’ll wait until some gameplay footage and actual info before final decisions.
19/01/2008 at 14:44 WCAYPAHWAT says:
what i want to know is, whats the deal with Kanes Wrath? It’s gone all quiet on that front.
19/01/2008 at 15:10 Kieron Gillen says:
Lachlan: To be fair, this is set in a universe that’s been screwed forever. Each C&C game has left the earth in an increasing uninhabitable state.
KG
19/01/2008 at 15:16 Evo says:
Kieron – Don’t you mean it has left the legacy of the series in an increasingly poor state?
:P
19/01/2008 at 15:22 Nick says:
There’s something amusing about the tagline, “To save Mankind, your most important weapons are the forces you lead…”
Just seems kind of fucking obvious, or something. I was expecting something more like, “Your most important weapon is your courage”, or “nobility of your cause”.
But no, your most important weapons are just your forces, who wield a bunch of weapons. Admirably straight talking there.
19/01/2008 at 15:47 Fraser says:
Kieron: I guess they’re trying to teach us all an important lesson about war, hey?
I’m interested, with the usual dose of scepticism. Half-Life 2 sold me on the idea of 1st-P squad command with the section where you lead antlions in the assault on Nova Prospekt. That was fun.
19/01/2008 at 18:51 yxxxx says:
I for one am hoping its going to be good. I like the C&C universe and as long as good games come from it i dont care what they do.
It is a shame thought that it looks like its going to be played form the GDI side of things.
The brotherhood is not amused
19/01/2008 at 21:05 malkav11 says:
I don’t think America would take too well to a game where you play a terrorist at ground level. And that’s always been the Brotherhood’s shtick. High tech, scary cultist terrorists.
19/01/2008 at 21:21 Taxman says:
I seriously doubt that malkav11, NOD are pretty camp in a bad guy sort of way and pretty much everyone has played NOD in all of the prior games.
I would guess NOD allies itself with the GDI (again) against the Scrin at some point in the game and you have NOD units under your control.
The ED209′s people are referring to are called Titans they are a new GDI unit in the C&C3 expansion pack coming out soon.
From what I’ve seen in a magazine preview it reminds we a lot of the Star Wars:Republic Commando game but taken further. Special forces at your command and you can capture various points in a map to manufacture/acquire new units for use. Overall it actually sounded pretty interesting but there were no shots of how the commanding of units is handled.
19/01/2008 at 21:26 DigitalSignalX says:
All I could think of watching that was exactly “Halo, in the C&C universe” … whether they pitch it that way or not. Since I own a PC, and not an Xbox, my Halo excitement is fairly smothered in contempt. I am looking forward to a new FPS C&C title though, since StarCraft’s ghost got indefinitely postponed.
19/01/2008 at 22:16 Okami says:
“Halo, in the C&C universe” …
I guess that was how the project was pitched internally….
19/01/2008 at 23:17 Zaptrack says:
If a shooter is Sci-fi and the main character wears a suit it’s halo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_life_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberium_%28video_game%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marines
E.E smith is such a rip off artist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Control
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TimeSplitters_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TimeSplitters:_Future_Perfect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_%28franchise%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_mario_galaxy\
Gawd, who’s this mariuo guy and why does he rip off halo so much, what with his overalls, which can be construed as a suit, and his being in space.
19/01/2008 at 23:26 Alan Au says:
They should have called it Command & Conquer: Renegade 2k9. Then they could release annual roster updates and completely milk the franchise.
19/01/2008 at 23:57 malkav11 says:
There’s a Nod campaign in all of the C&C games in the Tiberian universe, yeah. There’s never been a game where you exclusively play as them, certainly never at ground level. And I think you underestimate just how knee-jerk the “terrorism” card is. People would kick a fuss. Not sensible, intelligent people, but then these things aren’t about that.
20/01/2008 at 00:05 The_B says:
Are they ever?
20/01/2008 at 01:27 kadayi says:
Nice trailer, but I hope we can move beyond this sort of thing with future FPS’s
20/01/2008 at 01:39 WCAYPAHWAT says:
Those are NOT titans.
20/01/2008 at 01:47 caramelcarrot says:
Wasn’t the first game with “supersoldier in a visor” DOOM? In fact, master chief looks pretty based on Doomguy.
Also, if they can do squad combat as well as Freedom Fighters (which the city bits of half-life 2 reminded me of), then it might actually be decent.
20/01/2008 at 02:29 Kieron Gillen says:
See the face at the bottom?
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/21/29838791_2be4ea5e36.jpg
Doom wasn’t faceless in the way Halo is faceless.
KG
20/01/2008 at 10:25 Taxman says:
WCAYPAHWAT the ED209 look alikes were called Titan’s in the GameInformer preview but maybe that has changed since then because…
I swore I saw a screenshot of those Titan units in C&C Kane’s Wrath but now I cannot find it. However there are Titan units in the game from looking at the latest media but they are different like miniature Battlemechs, they could have changed the design and naming for units.
20/01/2008 at 11:52 WCAYPAHWAT says:
The C&C website released some renders of the Titans and Wolverines from Kanes wrath a month or so back. They were just graphical updates of their Tiberian Sun versions, much like the juggernaut was.
I really hope the Ed’s aren’t meant to be titans, honest to god.
How often are these journo types wrong? lads?
20/01/2008 at 12:08 Taxman says:
Well from what I know Tiberium is set a few years after Kane’s Wrath (again something that might have changed) what could have happened is that the Tiberium Titan is sort of a new generation of Titan which is why it has the same name.
21/01/2008 at 21:13 Alan Au says:
Also, it occurred to me that nobody in their right mind would make an automatically transforming gun, because that’s power that could be used for something else, and energy is at a premium. Plus, just think how much it would suck if you couldn’t arm your weapon because the battery was running low. So yeah, it looks cool, but maybe all weapon designers suddenly contract the stupid-disease in the future.
03/06/2008 at 21:57 big daddy says:
Personaly i think this game is going to be kinda like c&c renigade in a vast tibe playground.
face less?!?
you fricken see his face at the first.
he looks like he could blast sam fisher goggles of with one dirty glance.