“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature” said Brian Eno in the mid-’90s, somewhere around the time of the first Command & Conquer. He used “the crap sound of 8-bit” as one of his examples of flaws that “will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided”. There is certainly a whole wealth of retro games material from the times since to back up the idea that the limitations of 8-bit and 16-bit games would become deeply embedded in the nostalgia for them.
Command & Conquer 3 is the point at which the Command & Conquer series bought completely into this principle. Its success was a rare hold-over from times when PC gaming was the mainstream in the world of full-price big box physical games. By 2007 those PC games which could top the chart were reduced largely to a few EA-bought series. Command & Conquer 3 is clearly updated from the old games. It has much more detailed graphics, with lots of zooming in at pertinent points to show off the details of the 3D world. It has some gameplay tweaks, with much more of a sense of an existing world that you can interact with, taking command of buildings and garrisoning your troops there.
Those are pretty minor details against the bulk of what it does, though, which is a retrenchment and celebration of everything the series did before. It lacks anything as distinctive as the uniquely weird atmosphere of Tiberian Sun that at least suggested the possibility of different directions. Instead, it returns to lots of old standbys and does them bigger, the compromises of the mid-’90s now the way for things to be done. The dual poles of nostalgia and new technological advance that are used to sell many a game are rarely as visible as here.
Was the story in Command & Conquer told through monologues to screen because that was the cheapest and easiest way to produce video content? Probably! Did that become a signature of the series? Command & Conquer 3 confirms so, and leans heavily into the aesthetic produced by limitations. Even when it has two people talking in an interview, it largely formats it the same way. That also means once again using professional actors to approximate the camp that Westwood’s employees originally produced. Grinning exhortations that the speaker would “give my left nut to see some real action” are the order of the day. The same thing goes for the repetitive in-game vocal samples.
The slick recreation of the un-slick, and the reach for classicism in a series set increasingly far into the future, have some odd results. Especially playing it now in that future. At one point I was completely jarred by a mention of the “mainstream media” being exposed, as much because it felt older still as through my forgetting how long that particular phrasing has been with us. The new idea of its late-game third faction makes things weirder still by being the thing most firmly cementing it as a product of 2007. Yet more invading aliens: even the new doesn’t get to be really new.
Top of the charts for week ending 31 March 2007:
Top of the charts for week ending 7 April 2007:
