Command & Conquer: war never changes, unless you download more content for it

George Orwell’s 1984 contained within it the disturbing spectre of three nation states locked in perpetual, pointless conflict. This bleak state of affairs wasn’t motivated by political conviction or desperate need, but a desire to keep the masses’ passions directed and engaged. There was no end to hostilities in sight, nor the political desire to achieve it. And, in the nicest possible of ways, this rather reminds us of Command & Conquer.This is EA’s forever war, an all-out repurposing of the game that would have become Command & Conquer: Generals 2, but has now been transformed into the foundation for a new free-to-play incarnation of the series. Don’t let the absence of far-future technology or weaponised dolphins in the surrounding screenshots fool you: while at launch Command & Conquer will effectively be Generals 2, this is a flexible base for expansion. The spurs of the Red Alert series and the sci-fi chain that followed 1999’s Tiberian Sun are all but guaranteed to follow some way down the line as expansions. Still, there are aspects to Generals that make it uniquely suited to relaunching the series.“Generals 2 was one of the most popular requests from the community,” explains senior development director Tim Morten, “and it’s been a long time since Command & Conquer went back to that universe.”For the uninitiated, Generals was 2003’s near-future C&C, which seemed designed to offset the increasingly far-future tech of the Tiberium series and the camp tomfoolery of Red Alert. As well as a distinct approach to resource scavenging, Generals offered General Abilities. These limited-use skills, such as carpet bombing runs, could be activated to the turn the tide of battle at crucial points, much like realtime versions of Advance Wars’ CO Powers. They return in Command & Conquer as part of a focus on the individual general you’re playing as. Victory Games’ reboot has three main factions, but your choice of general will effectively allow you to play a sub-faction within the three.http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...r2-610x343.jpgPlayable generals represent one way in which Victory has solved the problem of making a free-to-play RTS game. Letting players purchase units or resources mid-battle would be a disaster, turning tightly fought skirmishes into little more than Top Trumps played with participants’ bank balances. But having a new general doesn’t in itself represent an advantage.Generals unlock through play, but if you’re tired of grinding then you can pay to skip the wait. There’s still potential here for backlash, especially if Victory lets an overpowered general slip out of the academy, but such an error would be catastrophic for the game’s balance even if no payment was attached. Furthermore, use of DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine has given Victory access to some sophisticated networking technology that’s perfectly capable of ensuring players with a great deal of content unlocked are matched against one another rather than rookies.Generals won’t be the only paid-for content, we’re sure, but they are key part of the strategy. “We feel like the concept of having specific generals is really compelling,” Morten says, “and we’re planning to carry that into other franchises as we start to revisit them.” While this does mean that previously self-enclosed Command & Conquer franchises are starting to cross-pollinate one another with what were once discrete mechanics, a Red Alert General Ability is certainly something we’d like to see.

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