By Jim Rossignol on October 18th, 2010 at 2:43 pm.
Dead Space creators Visceral have been having a pleasant chat with Gamasutra, and along the way they confirmed that they’re working on a new Command & Conquer action game. It won’t be the first, of course, and a previous C&C-based action title was canned by EA in 2008, but it will apparently be, in the words of label general manager Nick Earl, “pretty far out.”
Pretty far out in a way that captures the mad energy of the best C&C games, while at the same time not being a laughable action title? Well, here’s hoping.
18/10/2010 at 14:51 AndrewC says:
Is there an in-context quote? Coz couldn’t ‘pretty far out’ just mean ‘Holiday 2012′?
18/10/2010 at 15:18 Jad says:
That’s what I got out of it.
18/10/2010 at 17:43 Nallen says:
There doesn’t seem to be any context for this quote available, in fact it exists almost entirely in the abstract and isn’t even relevant to the article – which is about cross-border development, reducing the costs of development and EA’s desire to become the lead player in the 3rd person action adventure market. By ‘lead player’ I mean increase their average metacritic score, the most noble of goals.
It seems everyone (across the Intertubes) is going with the ‘new C&C game confirmed’ line based on those three words and no one is asking why the article contains bizarre non sequiturs such as quoting EA’s Nick Earl saying “We’re not outsourcing or insourcing — we really look at it as collaborative development, where everyone is on equal playing ground.” And the author going on to make the statement “[Earl] describes a migration from an insourcing model to an outsourcing one, which further brought the company’s studio collective to its new “collaborative” status.” Perhaps if this statement isn’t just completely wrong it would be useful to have the quote in which he contradicts himself.
There is food for thought in the story though. What is to be made of such a definitive corporate statement that metacritic averages are the barometer of quality? What does shooting for that goal mean when EA release derivative 5 hour long games like the 76% averaging MoH?
What of the process they’ve decided upon for international development? Earl concedes there is “an element of challenge” and “[EA] have been trying to perfect the recipe” but if he is genuine in his statement that all parties involved are equal stakeholders I would say the approach is fundamentally flawed, and while it allows more staff-months on a project due to lower staff costs it also demands more staff-months due to the extensive challenges of multi-party software development. I dare say the cost savings (and therefore quality increases) will not be anything like they expect or project.
The real question here is will the EA approach mean more enjoyable, stimulating games in the future or more games in the vein of MoH, because if you can answer that the question about the next C&C title becomes moot.
18/10/2010 at 14:52 Gundrea says:
Renegade was ok. could have benefitted from a Gordon Freeman approach.
18/10/2010 at 15:10 Andy says:
We must have very different definitions of ‘Okay’. I bought Renegade off the back of having fun in the multiplayer beta and found the single player game to be utterly terrible. The engine was completely busted the design was pretty poor (with the whole regenerating enemies until you’ve killed the commander thing really spoiling things for me) and the AI was nowhere to be seen.
I can’t help but feel there should be some potential in a FPS set in this universe but all evidence to the contrary so far.
18/10/2010 at 15:42 Gundrea says:
I suspect we don’t and you merely think the game was bad.
18/10/2010 at 23:00 jeremypeel says:
Renegade multiplayer was fun – I remember playing it after upgrading my pc in 1851 and being amazed at how beautiful it was. One of the first FPS’ i spent any time with. That’s all I’ll say for it, really
18/10/2010 at 14:58 coldwave says:
I hope they don’t make Screen main enemies.
Shooting crystals and not mans? Where is fun in that?
18/10/2010 at 15:07 Whelp says:
In Soviet Russia, screen shoot at you?
Or did you mean Scrin? :D
18/10/2010 at 15:03 0mar says:
massive flop. You heard it here first. The CnC franchise has been run into the ground.
18/10/2010 at 20:22 DrGonzo says:
I actually really enjoyed C+C 4. It’s the only game in the series that had multiplayer I could go online with. It wasn’t perfect, but it was at least different. C+C 3 and Red Alert 3 suffered from just rehashing the same old tired games.
19/10/2010 at 01:28 Thants says:
Generals is the one that really deserves a sequel.
18/10/2010 at 15:10 Rich says:
Now why, when I read Dead Space, did I think Mass Effect? Wishful think I guess.
18/10/2010 at 15:11 Starky says:
I really think they should do a reboot of CNC, the only character they should keep is Kane, but they should shed all the weight of the franchise and start with a clean slate, from the starting point of CNC1 and go in a new direction.
18/10/2010 at 15:13 Heliocentric says:
I never cared about c&c i cared about my mans killing your mans, kane always have a nice insight to the way an extremist cult of personality might work, that was nice.
So whats left when i don’t have lots of mans? Ooh, the mad tank was good… Or was that red alert? To be honest, why don’t they make a red alert action game? Its much more interesting.
18/10/2010 at 15:22 Rosti says:
This makes me happy – presuming that C&C means ‘Tiberium Universe’. Not that I couldn’t enjoy some Red Alert shooty-bangs, just that Kane/Nod always entertain. Peace through power!, etc.
18/10/2010 at 15:31 Heliocentric says:
But really, i think we’d both agree a dead space rts would be better. A handful of engineers to command and hordes of abomnations. A dynamic campaign based on what you fix and when, with plenty of wrong answers, bring the ai on board before you disable the engines and the ship will travel to a populated planet spreading the cataclysm.
18/10/2010 at 20:28 DrGonzo says:
No! We don’t need any more Dead Space. It’s the blandest most generic game I’ve played in years. I really don’t understand why it gets any praise at all. It’s even worse than the Call of Duty games when it comes to using tired ideas and clichés.
18/10/2010 at 23:49 Tetragrammaton says:
Dead space wasn’t perfect, but it was great fun, and did a great job of building and maintaining an atmosphere, one of the most important aspects of a horror game.(It could have done with 99% less peekaboo moments though) That said, I am probably viewing in through the rose tinted spectacles of an avid fan of JCs “The Thing’ and someone who actually thought ‘Event Horizon’ was quality B-movie.
To each his own.
19/10/2010 at 01:30 Thants says:
Dead Space is really underrated.
18/10/2010 at 15:27 westyfield says:
Here’s hoping for a Red Alert game rather than the Tiberium or Generals universe.
I want to play as time-travelling Einstein!
18/10/2010 at 15:37 AndrewC says:
Hey kids! You wanna play a game as Time-Travelling Einstein where you can control nuclear bombs AND psychic dolphins?
YEAH!
It’s the new game from the Command & Con-
oh
18/10/2010 at 18:26 Nick says:
Press LMB to shake hand. Press RMB to say ‘Time will tell, sooner or later, time will tell’.
18/10/2010 at 20:30 DrGonzo says:
That is the best intro to a game I can remember. I installed it and saw it when I was about 12 or possibly even younger and probably haven’t been quite as excited by an intro ever again.
18/10/2010 at 15:31 tomwaitsfornoman says:
If Dead Space is anything to go by, this will be a well-polished, derivative POS, wherein you shoot babies.
18/10/2010 at 15:53 TheApologist says:
Sounds like silly fun. Shooters are generally quite good at being silly fun.
I refute your cynicism grumpy blog comment peoples!
18/10/2010 at 16:35 bleeters says:
More footage of Joseph D Kucan snarling into a camera is fine by me.
18/10/2010 at 16:45 Navagon says:
Dead Space devs = shitty PC port. C&C franchise = dead in the water after Twilight and not so great for action games even before then, as Renegade proved.
Why is it that EA leaves so many of its old classic IPs completely unused, yet manages to still find meat on the corpse of an IP it butchered long ago?
18/10/2010 at 18:28 Unknown says:
Dead Space PC is not a shitty port. Other than the mouse lag issue (which is completely fixed by disabling V-Sync), it is actually one of the better PC counterpart to a console game.
18/10/2010 at 18:41 Urael says:
Well, I’ll agree Dead Space is not a shitty port – it was an average game with some very high production values and some very cool design – but the mouse-lag was still present for me even after disabling v-sync.
18/10/2010 at 18:51 Heliocentric says:
V sync made everything go to hell. But it wasn’t actually the problem.
The game has 2 mouse base problems, a mouse speed dead zone and truely terrible mouse acceleration. Both artifacts of controller based development, indeed playing with a pad the acceleration and dead zone make total sense.
Get that v sync excuse off my lawn.
18/10/2010 at 17:12 Eclipse says:
“It won’t be the first, of course, and a previous C&C-based action title was canned by EA in 2008″
What?
Nobody remembers C&C Renegade D:
18/10/2010 at 18:13 Fwiffo says:
You’re not reading the “and”.
18/10/2010 at 17:16 f4stjack says:
What they need is an action game, be it a TPS or a FPS, where you can select the world countries to attack and do it in a-la dungeon keeper style. Kinda sandboxy, kinda storybased… I would be playing it till forever…
or that’s wot I think anyway.
18/10/2010 at 18:27 Orvidos says:
I may be a crazy person, but I enjoyed Renegade quite a bit. There were some gamey contrivances in the single-player that have already been mentioned, but I got a lot of time out of the multiplayer. And I suspect I still would, could I find my Decades disk and people were still playing it (which they might well be).
18/10/2010 at 20:26 destroy.all.monsters says:
EA has screwed up this IP so bad I can’t imagine they won’t find a way to blow this
Also – third person = terrible and removal of immersion in the vast majority of cases.
18/10/2010 at 21:23 Subject 706 says:
EA are really on a creative roll lately…when it comes to creatively ruining franchises.
18/10/2010 at 23:11 jeremypeel says:
Wonder what Mr Samuel Bass, RPS regular and lead on C+C4, thinks of this.
MR BASS, I SUMMON THEE
19/10/2010 at 04:40 destroy.all.monsters says:
No offense to him but C&C 4 is generally viewed as an abortion. 3 was ok, but not great. EA has never really gotten the Westwood feel down – nor have they chosen to hire Isgreen at any point. despite the fact that guy *is* the keeper of the (old) lore.
Honestly I think they should let Kucan pick a team and executive produce. But enough of my blather.
Tiberium got shelved as did Renegade 2. Apparently doing an action game in the Tiberium universe is more difficult than it seems. Maybe a Red Alert version where you play as Tanya or her Soviet counterpart?
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19/10/2010 at 04:40 TheTingler says:
Just to make it clear: Visceral, the Dead Space and general third-person-action-game developer, is NOT developing this Command & Conquer game, and so consequently this may not be an action game.
The interview somewhat unclearly says that they are bringing other EA developer studios “under the Visceral label”, presumably C&C developer EA LA.
So in the same way 2K Australia became a “sister studio” of 2K Marin and everyone assumed that XCOM was being made by the same guys who did Bioshock 2 – incorrect, that’s just what the publisher wants you to think by confusing you as much as possible.
19/10/2010 at 08:07 D says:
19/10/2010 at 08:08 D says:
Forgot the closing tag, only the top part was the quote
21/10/2010 at 08:18 TheTingler says:
Told you so.