When Producer Jim Vassella talks about working on Command & Conquer 3, it's apparent that one of the driving forces in developing the game is its fan base. With a series that redefined the real-time strategy genre when it was first introduced in 1995, it'd be hard to ignore the legion of die-hard Command & Conquer fans that have been playing the game for over a decade. So when given the task of reviving such a fan-cherished world -- and given the chance to revive with it the admittedly cheesy full-motion cutscenes Command & Conquer players have grown to love -- Vassella and team had their work cut out for them.

"It was a big risk for Command & Conquer 3. It hadn't been done for a long time," says Vassella when asked about re-integrating full motion video -- one of the past staples and fan favorites of the franchise -- into the Command & Conquer games. "We kind of embrace the cheese. We know we're cheesy, but we have fun with it. We try to find that good balance [between] cheese and [telling] a decent story."

The design team is hoping to maintain the momentum (and cheese) started with Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars with the game's first expansion, Kane's Wrath. Instead of continuing exactly where Tiberium Wars left off, Kane's Wrath is instead centered around the events following the Second Tiberium War fought in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. With a twenty year gap in the storyline existing between the events of the Second Tiberium War and the Third, Kane's Wrath will use the real-time strategy gameplay and the fullscreen live-action cinematics fans have grown to love to fill the holes and elaborate the mythos surrounding Brotherhood of Nod leader Kane's resurrection.

Continue...