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Tiberium Goes Bye-Bye

Written by Alec Meer on September 30, 2008 at 8:55 pm.

DEAD

I was thinking only the other day that we hadn’t heard anything about that somewhat dreary-looking Command & Conquer FPS for a while, and then I spot news over at Blue’s that EA have unexpectedly put it out of its misery.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the end to all work on ‘Tiberium,’ effective immediately”, sez Ea’s Mike Verdu. “The game had fundamental design challenges from the start.”

Given it really wasn’t looking all that stellar (RPS readers at the time of the first footage certainly weren’t terribly taken with it), it’s probably for the best, what with C&C’s populist profile recently being boosted by all that Red Alert 3 boob-mania. The real sad news is that it could affect some folks’ jobs – here’s hoping they’re all moved onto interesting new projects. Below the cut: the trailer and some in-game footage, for old time’s sakes.

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Tags: Command-&-Conquer, EA, tiberium

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« I Want Sam & Max Toys | Left 4 Dead Official Blogginess »

Chris Evans says:

No big loss apart from those who were let go. In fact, you could say this is a good move, less cash-ins and hopefully we will get some more good games.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

Urael says:

And here I thought both those trailers looked rather interesting…oh well.

Was an EA product anyway; no great loss to humankind.

[EDIT] Ach! Damn you , Evans! No, not for the first post, you are welcome to that. But quit taking the thoughts from my head and posting them first! ;)

September 30th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

Rogue says:

The biggest loss will be the finger gun shown in some of the screenies. I was really looking forward to that. :(

September 30th, 2008 at 9:19 pm

CrashT says:

This was starting to look like an updated Republic Commando and that would have been something very special indeed.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Skaal-tel says:

looks like a C&C version of star wars: republic commando. While not exactly revolutionary, was a whole lot of fun to play and provided some half-decent teammates.
Shame this is isn’t going to show up.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Smurfy says:

And I got to put this on the Wikipedia page, albeit shoddily.

Meh. I wasn’t too excited. Renegade was good, but this certainly looked ungood.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

Alec Meer says:

I loved Republic Commando, but this never seemed to promise that kind of character.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

rocketman71 says:

“The game had fundamental design challenges from the start”

Which ones?. DRM with only 2 installations allowed?

September 30th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

Josh says:

I was actually rather interested in the game, it’s a shame it wasn’t up to snuff. I hope EA gets around to releasing another C&C FPS, though. While Renegade had it’s share of problems, the multiplayer aspect was brilliant fun.

Uh, when it worked.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Lorc says:

This didn’t look like it was going to be totally without merit. The worst thing to be said was that the trailers were a little too eager to evoke Halo.

Shame about the lost jobs, lost possibilities and junked efforts. Especially the latter.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

Andrew says:

Republic Commando FTW! This doesn’t look quite the same, if at all similar – it’s more C&C “general leads unknown squads” then any kind of real down in the depths squad combat.

While I dislike the games, Brothers in Arms is another example, and the better Rainbow 6: Las Vegas to some extent. There should be more squad-based games, but they are difficult to get right I guess! :)

I want a Republic Commando sequel. LucasArts does to much Jedi crap. Playing someone who wasn’t invincible force-wielding thingy was fun!

September 30th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

Larington says:

Another Republic Commando would’ve been very nice but I have doubts this would’ve been a Republic Commando, I think to pull something like that off again you’d either need to revisit the original or approach it with a completely fresh setting rather than borrowing from Star Wars or C&C or whatever, so it can be judged on its own merits and not its namesake.

The first part of the intro video was quite clever I thought.

I would definately welcome another Republic Commando, as has been said, LucasArts does too much Jedi/Force user stuff when theres plenty of room to do so much else. Heck, I’d be perfectly fine with it being an expansion pack using the same graphics engine, considering that even now its not (imho) an out of date engine. And small scale military squad co-op is so overlooked in the games industry.

September 30th, 2008 at 9:53 pm

Acosta says:

There must be a curse that doesn’t allow C&C being anything else than a RTS (with terrible yet hilarious acting).

September 30th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

Sp4rkR4t says:

There is a simple equation that EA seriously need to follow too make a fantastic C&C FPS, or Renegade done right as I prefer to call it.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert universe + Battlefield game mechanics = Pure WIN!

September 30th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

Taxman says:

I was rather looking forward to Tiberium (yes I liked Renegade too) shame it got killed. Sounds like from the official memo that they were on a strict budget/time window and didn’t hit their targets.

The previews on the net didnt really do the game justice via some magazine previews it was like a more advanced version of Republic Commando and Renegade combined into two (squads, vehicles, capture buildings etc), that probably contributed to its failure they should have stuck straight to the simple Republic Commando model.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

Corion says:

This game was trying too hard to be every other game out there. Halo, Crysis, GRAW, Republic Commando …

It’s pretty obvious to me that even though I totally freakin’ loved C&C:Renegade I probably wasn’t going to like this. It just wasn’t the appropriate spiritual successor.

I don’t think fans of other FPS franchises would have liked it so much either. Without any appeal to the Renegade crowd and nothing else to stand on, this was headed for cancellation from the start. (In my opinion)

C&C isn’t the reason this game was cancelled. If the funding, hard work, and creative talent that is poured into other FPS franches (such as Halo, Call of Duty, Far Cry, etc.) was put into a C&C FPS game, there’s great potential for success there. But if the publisher EA just makes an FPS C&C game for the heck of it to milk another franchise cow without taking it seriously, it won’t be taken seriously by the consumers either.

@rocketman71: No, the DRM allows for 0 installations. Ironically if you download a pirated copy you don’t have to worry about that. Wait a minute …

All silliness aside, http://renegade-x.com/ is going to be getting a lot of hits in light of this news.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:16 pm

Jayof9s says:

As an avid C&C fan since the original game, I probably would have bought the game… But as it is, I’m not really sure I should feel disappointed that it got canceled. The videos make it pretty clear to me that this was just another halo/gears of war/etc clone. Maybe Nod was in there some where to take you out of the ‘armored up guy with guns killing aliens’ but meh, I’m probably better off with it not being finished. Saves me $50 that I’d have regretted spending.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

Shadowmancer says:

So if this is canned then what is the future c&c product that the red alert 3 special edition has an exclusive beta key for then?

September 30th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Carra says:

Republic commando was a very good game. And the AI knew how to behave well :) And great locations too, gotta love those treetops.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Cradok says:

Tiberium cancelled, I’m a little sad about. There wasn’t much there yet, but what was looked like it could be good.

Republic Commando, on the other hand, is my favourite Star Wars game not featuring plastic people since, well, Alliance. Reading Order 66 is making me want to play it again. I want a new one.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

Larington says:

Darnit, now I want to go and replay RepCom but the disc is back at the parents house with a bunch of my other games.

September 30th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

Greg Wild says:

Not surprised in the slightest. The media silence alone told volumes as I saw it.

September 30th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

Dr. Quincy says:

Its Lifeforce Tenka 2!

September 30th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

teo says:

how unexpected…

October 1st, 2008 at 12:11 am

dan_ says:

So they never did get to evolve “the tactical shooter experience by taking core gameplay compulsions like commanding, choice and dominating your enemies and delivering them in first-person.”

Colour me disappointed.

October 1st, 2008 at 12:37 am

RichPowers says:

@Sp4rkR4t

I’m genuinely surprised EA hasn’t gone that route yet. The C&C universe is perfect for a RTS/FPS hybrid that’s easy-to-learn, familiar, and FUN. A C&C RTS/FPS hybrid would also offer plenty of support roles (spy, commando, harvester, engineer, medic). I’d love to spend rounds infiltrating silos and stealing credits.

October 1st, 2008 at 3:06 am

SPEEDCORE says:

I won a copy of Renegade back in the day at some LAN.

It was a pretty poor game.

The C&C world could make for a great FPS but give it to ID or Valve or Gearbox.

October 1st, 2008 at 3:20 am

Inglorion says:

Damn! I love boobs.

October 1st, 2008 at 5:24 am

Tei says:

From the video looks like a good game. Maybe Is hard to see the C&C character… where is the tiberium spice on that video? how a game can be called Tiberium, and not show Tiberium?. Seems today a game as die. Sad.

October 1st, 2008 at 8:02 am

kholmark says:

the gamasutra newspost has some interesting details about why the game was canned :P

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20462

October 1st, 2008 at 8:35 am

Optimaximal says:

Good luck getting Republic Commando working properly if you have a DX10 capable Nvidia card – it only works in crap-o-detail mode with the bump-mapping that makes all the little details in the game work turned off.

October 1st, 2008 at 11:14 am

Cian says:

How anyone could remain uninterested in something that even had the chance of being a successor to Battlezone is beyond me. Not something I followed closely, but I’m dissapointed.

October 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm

Dorsch says:

I urge everyone to check out the developers’ rants in the comments of that gamasutra article, very interesting:

“Calling out how teams are organized is totally call for. Managers upon Manager upon Managers fill the cubes at EALA and I’m sure many other EA studios. There would literally be charts printing on the massive plotter printer with a full on flow chart of who was managed by who. I’m not joking. Combine that with putting creative control in the hands of movie directors, business men and ass clowns in general and I don’t see how we ever even shipped a game.”

Said by a guy who worked on 3 MoHs.

October 1st, 2008 at 8:00 pm

Urael says:

@Dorsch. Jesus. That sounds horrible. Isn’t it about time gaming humanity got it’s act together and started kicking these soulless, manager-riddled corporations into touch?

C’mon, who’s with me!?

October 1st, 2008 at 8:43 pm

TheTruthHurts says:

The real problem started with them placing Chris Plummer in charge. The dude had no idea how to make a video game and had mostly marketing experience – no actual game dev experience other then a few nightmare projects at EALA. He didn’t listen to any of the more experienced staff and changed his mind every few months, causing the team to churn and burn things over and over. The project ended up costing as much as a Hollywood movie and wasting years of people’s time. You simply cannot succeed when the guy at the head of the project has no idea what he’s making, and no idea how to really do it. I’m amazed they let him churn and burn for 4 years on it. Sad… there were some great ideas in the game and some great people on the team.

October 5th, 2008 at 3:09 am

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