 This article is written from areal world point of view. |
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This article is about the first game in the series. For the 2013 game by BioWare Victory, see Command & Conquer (2013). |
Command & Conquer (often referred to by its working title, Tiberian Dawn, to distinguish it from the series itself) was the first Command and Conquer game,and the starting point of the Tiberium universe. Developed by Westwood Studios in 1995, Tiberian Dawn takes place when a strange crystalline substance called Tiberium starts appearing on Earth. While the Global Defense Initiative attempts to control the situation, a faction called the Brotherhood of Nod rises and attempts to destroy GDI and embrace the "Tiberium Age". The events that follow are known as the First Tiberium War.
An expansion pack, The Covert Operations, was released in 1996, introducing new missions for both sides.
On 14 November 2018, it was announced that Command & Conquer would be remastered by Petroglyph Games and Lemon Sky Studios under supervision of Electronic Arts, along with the Covert Operations expansion pack.[2]
Plot[]
- Main article: First Tiberium War
Tiberian Dawn is set in the late 1990s after a meteorite crashed on the Tiber River, Italy, bringing a mysterious but extremely valuable substance, Tiberium. An ancient secret society, the Brotherhood of Nod, somehow acquired the technology to exploit Tiberium's potential ahead of the mainstream scientific community. Led by a messianic leader known only as Kane (played by Joseph D. Kucan), Nod eventually came to control almost half of the world's Tiberium. Using the immense wealth and power gained from Tiberium, the terrorist organization began to spread its influence around the globe, especially among the disenfranchised people of the Third World. In response to Nod's growing influence and Nod terrorist attacks, the United Nations Security Council tasked a recently-formed global taskforce, the Global Defense Initiative, with destroying the Brotherhood.
Endings[]
The Nod campaign ends with Nod's total conquest of the African continent, marked by the fall of South Africa. To celebrate the victory and to further damage the GDI's international reputation, Kane authorizes the commander to destroy a prominent landmark (Eiffel Tower, the White House, Brandenburg Gate, and Houses of Parliament) with the hacked GDI Ion Cannon.
The GDI campaign ends with the total destruction of the Nod base in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the Temple of Nod in which Kane resides. A special cutscene will be shown if the final blow on the Temple is delivered by the Ion Cannon, and this scenario is canon.
Both the GDI and Nod endings are canon; the GDI campaign starts sequentially after the Nod ending.
Development[]
The original concept of the Command & Conquer fiction was created by Brett Sperry, Eydie Laramore and Joseph Bostic. Unlike its predecessor Dune II, Command & Conquer was originally intended to be a high fantasy game featuring wizards and warriors. However, due to the political climate of the early 1990s, and the events of the Gulf War in particular, the developers felt that a contemporary war environment would be more accessible. According to Westwood co-founder Louis Castle: "War was in the news and the threat of terrorism was on everyone's mind. That definitely had an effect on the fictional world of C&C, though a parallel universe was created to avoid dealing with the sobering issues of a real war. "We wanted to make it a contemporary war for a contemporary world, with contemporary politics. At the time, Brett Sperry had said that it seemed to him that the next wars won't be fought nation-to-nation, but fought between Western society and a kind of anarchistic terror organization that doesn't have a centralized government. It turned out to be very prophetic". In an interview, Kane's actor Joseph D. Kucan mentioned that the Brotherhood of Nod faction was an invention of Eydie Laramore in particular, with the two of them having extensively discussed biblical metaphor and imaged backstory.
The Tiberium substance was introduced to replace the spice from Dune II as the mined resource for building and expanding, with Louis Castle stating: "It solved one of the fundamental problems we had with making an RTS, which was that we wanted to have a central resource that everybody was fighting over. Dune has spice, which made perfect sense - and it was also used when we came to the idea of Tiberium. It became the anchor of the C&C universe because people were arguing over a limited resource that represented wealth and power". The original concept of Tiberium was inspired by the 1957 B-movie "The Monolith Monsters".
Beta screenshots[]
Expansion pack[]
- Main article: Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations
There was a single expansion pack released, the The Covert Operations, released in 1996. It only focused on adding new missions, but other than that, no new content was made. The missions are not campaign-based, but can be selected in a list and played in any order. A New Missions button was added on the game's main menu to access that list.
The expansion pack contains a hidden 5-mission mini-campaign of dinosaur missions, accessible by launching the game with command-line argument 'funpark' and then starting a new game. e ROM.
Ports[]
Macintosh edition[]
The System 7.5-native version was released in 1996 for Power Macintosh machines ported by Totally Hip Software. It introduced many of the features that were later implemented into the Windows version, such as SVGA resolution, the black and gray sidebar and 1v1 Internet play over Westwood Online.
Sega Saturn edition[]
In 1996 a Sega Saturn version was released. This version features the complete GDI and Nod campaign. However, changes in both level design and GUI was made to better accommodate controller usage. The graphics were also significantly reduced in quality missing many animations and colour depth of the PC original in order to improve performance. The music was changed from Westwood's proprietary mono format to stereo CD audio improving the quallity of the music and allowing it to be played by a standard CD audio player. Loading and saving from the PC version was replaced by a level password system.
Sony PlayStation edition[]
Following the Saturn version a PlayStation version was released. It features similar changes to the Saturn version such as reduced visual quality, GUI changes and changed level design. The biggest change from the Saturn version was the addition of the fifteen single-player missions from The Covert Operations expansion pack, as well as an extra set of unique new missions, called Special Operations, which have since been ported to the Windows version by the fan base and included in the unofficial 1.06 patch. The music was also changed to use Sony's own format reducing quality, but still an improvement of the mono PC versions.
Windows edition[]
The Windows 95-native version also known as Command & Conquer: Gold, and was released in 1997. It offers SVGA graphics, Internet play support via Westwood Online, and the Command & Conquer themes pack (animated icons, wallpaper, and sound effects) for Windows 9x.
Nintendo 64 edition[]
The Nintendo 64 port was developed by Looking Glass Studios and released in 1999. It featured 3D environments and structures combined with 2D infantry sprites. It also introduced four exclusive missions which have since been ported by fans and are included in the unofficial 1.06 patch for the Windows release. Inside the ROM, most of the other Special Operations and Covert Operations missions can be found as well, but none of them are playable in the game itself without editing the ROM.
Freeware release[]
To mark the 12th anniversary of the Command & Conquer series, EA has released Command & Conquer for Windows as freeware in 2007. While this was not the case for the Covert Operations expansion pack, the fans have distributed it alongside the base game without sanction, so it is de facto considered freeware as well.
The original releases are currently down, but mirrors exist here.
Fan projects[]
Unofficial v1.06 patch[]
- Main article: Command & Conquer Unofficial Patch 1.06
The unofficial 1.06 patch, which started as a collection of crash fixes made by various hackers around the release of Command & Conquer: The First Decade, grew out to a full game enhancement patch. Its features include numerous bug fixes in game logic, missions and graphics, a fully customizable game resolution, all original console-only missions, a language packs system for unofficial translations, and a lot more. With most of the bugs out of the way, the patch project is shifting towards adding new features in mission making, modding and translation. Since its development is closely tied to that of the CnCNet online play system, and none of its features irreversibly change the original feel of the game (any that do can generally be disabled in the game's configuration tool), it has become the de facto standard in the C&C community.
Open source reimplementations[]
OpenRA featuring a Tiberium Wars style tabbed interface and high-resolution graphics
FreeCNC is an open source clone written in C++ and Lua using the SDL libraries that is not developed anymore. There is also a Tiberian Dawn mod for the C# reimplementation OpenRA that uses the original game graphics, but is rebalanced and optimised for multiplayer matches. Similar but in very early stages of development is Red Horizon which tries to create tools and a game engine for legacy 2D Westwood RTS in Java. Command and Conquer - Tiberian Dawn - HTML5 is a recreation of the original game in HTML5 and JavaScript meaning it runs in modern web browsers.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
References[]
- ↑ The tale of a release date. C&C Communications Center (2018-01-29). Retrieved on 2018-01-31.
- ↑ C&C Remastered Announcement from EA. Reddit (14 November 2018). Retrieved on 14 November 2018.
Weblinks[]
- Official website (archived)
- Command & Conquer folder on Westwood FTP mirror
- Command & Conquer Gold folder on Westwood FTP mirror
- Freeware Classic Command & Conquer games at CNCNZ.com
- Nyerguds' 1.06 project site
- Command & Conquer portal on CNCNZ.com
- Command & Conquer portal on the C&C Communications Center
- Command & Conquer Gold on CnCNet
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