Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Encyclopedia
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is a real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

 video game developed by Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...

 and released in . The main storyline follows the second major war between the Global Defense Initiative of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

, and the global terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

 organization known as the Brotherhood of Nod who tactically utilizes the highly dangerous extraterrestrial Tiberium
Tiberium
Tiberium or Ichor is a fictional substance that is central to the plot of much of the Command & Conquer series of real-time strategy video games...

 substance, disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...

 through international mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

, black propaganda
Black propaganda
Black propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass or misrepresent the enemy...

 to influence mutant
Mutant
In biology and especially genetics, a mutant is an individual, organism, or new genetic character, arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not...

 populations of The Forgotten, as well as the application of religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism is fanaticism related to a person's, or a group's, devotion to a religion. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. What constitutes fanaticism in another's behavior or belief is determined by the...

 and an overwhelming share of power and wealth in order to complete the Nod's tireless quest for world domination
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...

. The story takes place in 2030, 30 years after the GDI had won the first major war in Command & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn).

As of February 12, 2010, Electronic Arts (EA) licensed Tiberian Sun and its expansion pack Firestorm as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

, thus making it possible to be distributed free of charge. The game was initially available for download from EA's website in order to promote their latest game in the Command & Conquer series
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...

. This version of the game was extracted from the The First Decade
Command & Conquer: The First Decade
Command & Conquer: The First Decade is a compilation of the Command & Conquer series' games published from 1995 to 2003, all bundled into one DVD and updated to run optimally on Windows XP. It was released on February 7, 2006 and sold for the price of one retail game...

 compilation by Electronic Arts and has been found broken, as it fails to play the Nod introduction movie, among other newly introduced bugs
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...

 with the EA's release of The First Decade (TFD).

Synopsis

Tiberian Sun features three factions, each with its unique strengths and tactics; the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), the Brotherhood of Nod (Nod), and The Forgotten (non-playable, neutral faction of mutated human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

s who have been physically and mentally affected by the Tiberium toxin
Toxin
A toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms; man-made substances created by artificial processes are thus excluded...

s). The storyline follows the continuing struggle between the GDI and Nod, the latter of which is ready to launch a new set of surprise sneak attacks in a desperate attempt to wipe the Global Defense Initiative off the face of the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

.

The plot is a follow up to the original game Command & Conquer, after the end of which the Nod leader Kane
Kane (Command & Conquer)
Kane is a fictional character in the alternate history universe of Westwood Studios' and Electronic Arts' Command & Conquer real-time strategy video games in which he is a seemingly immortal mastermind behind the ancient and secretive Brotherhood of Nod society...

 is presumed dead. In Tiberian Sun, Kane resurfaces from his hideout with improved military forces and new Tiberium-enhanced technologies, determined to rule the world at all cost. The GDI commander Michael McNeil is tasked with objectives to prevent the world from falling into the hands of Nod
Land of Nod
The Land of Nod is a place in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, located "on the east of Eden" , to which Cain chose to flee after murdering his brother Abel...

, this time with the very means of the extraterrestrial Tiberium substance.

Gameplay

Tiberian Sun relies heavily on science fiction technologies, and introduces a new isometric
Isometric projection
Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings...

 game engine featuring varying level terrain to give the impression of a true 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...

 environment. Dynamic lighting allows for day/night cycles and special effects, such as ion storms. Maps feature cityscapes where units could hide or battle in urban combat. Some buildings and armored units are rendered with voxel
Voxel
A voxel is a volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space. This is analogous to a pixel, which represents 2D image data in a bitmap...

s, although infantry is still rendered as sprites.

During the campaign, different routes can be chosen, some of which can lead to optional missions that may affect the difficulty of the main mission, or supply the commander with additional units and technologies. Tiberian Sun is the last game of the series to offer the split-route feature.

Video

Tiberian Sun features full motion video using traditional cinematic shots, featuring well-known Hollywood actors.

Michael Biehn
Michael Biehn
Michael Connell Biehn is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in James Cameron's science fiction action films The Terminator as Kyle Reese, Aliens as Cpl. Dwayne Hicks, and The Abyss as Lt. Coffey. He has also acted in such films as Tombstone, The Rock, and Planet Terror...

 (known from The Terminator
The Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...

 and Aliens
Aliens (film)
Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton...

 movies) is portrayed as the GDI commander Michael McNeil, who is instructed by General James Solomon, played by James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones is an American actor. He is well-known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership...

 (known from the original Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

 trilogy). On the side of Nod, Frank Zagarino
Frank Zagarino
Frank Zagarino is an American actor, star of low budget action movies.One of his early roles was in the movie Barbarian Queen in which he played opposite Lana Clarkson. Like several other American B movie stars he made many of his movies in Europe, especially in Italy...

 portrays the commander Anton Slavik, who only lives to follow and enforce every thought of the sociopath
Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are very disproportionately responsible for violent crime...

 Kane, played by the franchise's cutscene
Cutscene
A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, strengthen the main character's development, introduces enemy characters, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue, and clues...

 director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 Joseph D. Kucan
Joseph D. Kucan
Joseph David Kucan is a Video game developer, director, actor, screenwriter, and casting director for various gaming companies and movies. He is a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada. He is well known for his role as Kane from the Command & Conquer series.-Early life:Kucan was born in Las Vegas, Nevada....

. The Forgotten are represented by Christine Steel
Christine Steel
Christine Steel is an actress who played the role of Jenny Andrews on the TV series Team Knight Rider, as well as the Tiberium Mutant Umagon in Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun.-External links:...

 portraying Umagon who teams up with Michael McNeil throughout their joint fight against Nod, Christopher Winfield portraying Tratos the visionary
Visionary
Defined broadly, a visionary, is one who can envision the future. For some groups this can involve the supernatural or drugs.The visionary state is achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. One example is Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century artist/visionary and Catholic saint...

 Mutant leader, and Nils Allen Stewart (known from The Mask
The Mask (film)
The Mask is a 1994 American superhero comedy film based on a series of comic books published by Dark Horse Comics. This film was directed by Chuck Russell, and produced by Dark Horse Entertainment and New Line Cinema, and originally released to movie theatres on July 29, 1994 through New Line...

) portraying Mutant Commando, who is responsible for sending entire Nod bases to hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

 with a push of a button.

Soundtrack

Tiberian Sun features a futuristic and ambient soundtrack by Jarrid Mendelson and Frank Klepacki
Frank Klepacki
Frank Klepacki is an American musician, video game music composer and sound director best known for his work on the Command & Conquer series. Having learned to play drums as a child, he joined Westwood Studios as a composer when he was only 17 years old...

, who composed the signature themes for the movie sequences, as well as the game's musical score with the intention to differ from the original Command & Conquer in order to capture the mood for each mission.

Development

Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...

, who had acquired Westwood Studios in 1998 and published Tiberian Sun, and had no direct part in its development, pushed for Tiberian Sun's release ahead of schedule, resulting in a number of engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...

 and gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...

 features being omitted from the game, some of which were later included in Firestorm expansion pack.
Subsequent games in the franchise were also heavily subjected to increased control by Electronic Arts, as well as departure of numerous Westwood personnel, eventually resulting in Westwood being closed down and assimilated
EA Los Angeles
EA Los Angeles is a video game developer founded originally in 1995 as DreamWorks Interactive LLC, a subsidiary of DreamWorks SKG....

.

Omitted features

Several images and references in the Tiberian Sun "rules" file indicate that more features were planned for the release. A former Westwood employee working for Petroglyph elaborated upon them in March and May 2007.
A "loadout" screen was to be implemented, allowing commanders to pick units to take into battle before missions. The "loadout" screen was finished in a prototype sequel to Tiberian Sun, codenamed Command & Conquer: Incursion, but Westwood was dissolved and Electronic Arts did not revive the concept. Drop-pods were intended to be customizable for GDI before deployment. Lighting was intended to make a huge difference for day/night play, as units spotted by light posts/towers would be susceptible to enemy fire at greater ranges, and in turn would suffer a reduction in their own range ability. Westwood planned the Hunter/Seeker Droid option to support selection of target types, but ultimately the droid was made to attack at random. Developers also didn't have enough time to finalize balanced differences in terrain types, or to make The Forgotten a full faction for the expansion, as it was initially intended.

Expansion

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun – Firestorm is an expansion pack developed by Westwood and published by Electronic Arts on March 7, 2000, for the award winning apocalyptic science fiction
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...

 real-time strategy video game Tiberian Sun, featuring single player and multiplayer modes. Firestorm takes the storyline to new heights of complexity, introduces new missions and new gameplay features, and adds to the game a fourth (non-playable) faction known as CABAL.

Synopsis

Firestorm follows the events as they unfolded in the GDI campaign of Tiberian Sun. With Nod fractured into feuding warlords following Kane's death, Anton Slavik (known also as The Serbian Wolf) is determined to keep Kane's ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...

 alive through the resurrection of Nod's highly advanced artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, CABAL (Computer Assisted Biologically Augmented Lifeform), while the Global Defense Initiative continues its ongoing campaign to stop the spread of Tiberium and its monstrous mutation
Mutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...

s by retrieving the extraterrestrial Tacitus device.

GDI and Nod must now join forces in order to overcome Nod's previous vital assistant in tactical decisions and their current nemesis, CABAL, who intends to conquer the world through the systematic assimilation of human populations into its cyborg
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...

 armies with the means of Tiberium on a massive scale.

Reception

Tiberian Sun had an outstanding anticipation since the beginning of its development. It was the fastest selling game on the EA
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...

 games label, selling 1.5 million copies within a month. In the German gaming magazine PC Player issue 01/2000, Tiberian Sun received a special award as "Most Hyped Game in 1999" (the year the game was released). Between 1999 and 2000, Tiberian Sun won a single Gold and three Platinum Awards from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more than 100,000 units (Gold) and more than three times 200,000 units (Platinum) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As the Gold Award is not counted into the Platinum Award, all four awards total in between 700,000 and 1,700,000 units sold. Tiberian Sun was voted #29 in PC Gamer Magazine's Readers All-Time Top 50 Games Poll in April 2000 issue.

GameGenie.com rated the game 5/5, and stated:
GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...

 noted that the new soundtrack is "catchy", and stated that the game is an excellent sequel to the original Command & Conquer.

Despite some of the game's technical issues resulting from its rushed release after Westwood Studios was acquired by the Electronic Arts, many reviewers considered the interactive environment, new graphics, new array of units, new concepts, single-player (story wise) and the popular multi-player to be the significant high-points of Tiberian Sun, and credited it with high rankings.

To this day, Tiberian Sun has been highly praised by numerous fans from all over the world.

See also

  • Command & Conquer (video game)
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert
    Command & Conquer: Red Alert
    Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy computer game of the Command & Conquer franchise, produced by Westwood Studios and released by Virgin Interactive in...

  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
    Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
    Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 is a 2.5D real-time strategy computer game by Westwood Studios, which was released for Microsoft Windows on October 23, 2000 as the follow-up to Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Set in the early 1970s, Red Alert 2 supposedly picks up at the conclusion of the Allied...

  • Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge
    Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge
    In Command and Conquer: Yuri's Revenge, the true story starts off assuming the Allies won in Red Alert 2. The plot is based around Yuri, the former head of the Soviet Psychic Corps, coming out of hiding to take over the world by using his Psychic Dominators...

  • Command & Conquer: Renegade
    Command & Conquer: Renegade
    Command & Conquer: Renegade is a first and third person shooter video game developed by Westwood Studios and is part of the Command & Conquer series. It is the only C&C game that uses the first person view...

  • Command & Conquer game series
    Command & Conquer
    Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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