Smart, aggressive, and downright snarky: Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Electronic Arts Los Angeles (EALA) Lead Designer Jason Bender‘s latest interview, this time with Play.tm, covers a lot of old ground on Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (PC, Xbox 360) we’ve walked through before: enemy AI, Cylon-studded and Splinter Cell-infiltrated full motion videos, and so forth.
So we’ll highlight some of the new (or at least newer) stuff he reveals to Play.tm, a couple of which you might have noticed while playing the demo.
Smart: while Jason’s revealed how bad you can make the enemy AI before, with enough play time on the demo, you may have noticed that unit AI is also improved. Jason mentions that the infantry squads you build are smart enough to jump to nearby cover as they find it. For example, positioning the squad near a building will cause them to take cover in its shadow, granting them an armor bonus.
Aggressive: Jason mentions that the average multiplayer battle lasts closer to 20 minutes now (which actually makes it perfect for the Xbox 360, when you think about it). That is some aggression. The observation was that old Command & Conquers matches would take up to an hour to complete (especially in Generals) if both players were skilled enough.
Resource (Tiberium) distribution in multiplayer maps are more dispersed: “there simply aren’t enough resources in your starting base to win by turtling up.” The drive to acquire resource patches will guarantee a fight for Tiberium fields and positions on the map.
Snarky: you’ve seen the Live Vision camera demo for Tiberium Wars, part of what Bender calls the BattleCast system of Command & Conquer with ESPN commentary and coverage. The skittish among us begged that it be an optional shut-off feature (just because the 15 seconds of fame can easily become 15 seconds of agonizing insults).
Well, it has its uses. Unless the commentary happens to come from (a) a noob, or (b) a complete and total a-hole to begin with, Bender says we can look forward to professional analysis of multiplayer tactics and video walkthroughs. Noobs can learn much from these commentaries, while veterans can use them to know their enemy as well as themselves. Ask the Korean pro gamers – they do that a lot.
Of course, criticism could also get downright snarky. It’s already bad enough we lost – just don’t rub our faces in it.
Via Play.tm
Electronic Arts Los Angeles (EALA) Lead Designer Jason Bender‘s latest interview, this time with Play.tm, covers a lot of old ground on Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (PC, Xbox 360) we’ve walked through before: enemy AI, Cylon-studded and Splinter Cell-infiltrated full motion videos, and so forth.
So we’ll highlight some of the new (or at least newer) stuff he reveals to Play.tm, a couple of which you might have noticed while playing the demo.
Smart: while Jason’s revealed how bad you can make the enemy AI before, with enough play time on the demo, you may have noticed that unit AI is also improved. Jason mentions that the infantry squads you build are smart enough to jump to nearby cover as they find it. For example, positioning the squad near a building will cause them to take cover in its shadow, granting them an armor bonus.
Aggressive: Jason mentions that the average multiplayer battle lasts closer to 20 minutes now (which actually makes it perfect for the Xbox 360, when you think about it). That is some aggression. The observation was that old Command & Conquers matches would take up to an hour to complete (especially in Generals) if both players were skilled enough.
Resource (Tiberium) distribution in multiplayer maps are more dispersed: “there simply aren’t enough resources in your starting base to win by turtling up.” The drive to acquire resource patches will guarantee a fight for Tiberium fields and positions on the map.
Snarky: you’ve seen the Live Vision camera demo for Tiberium Wars, part of what Bender calls the BattleCast system of Command & Conquer with ESPN commentary and coverage. The skittish among us begged that it be an optional shut-off feature (just because the 15 seconds of fame can easily become 15 seconds of agonizing insults).
Well, it has its uses. Unless the commentary happens to come from (a) a noob, or (b) a complete and total a-hole to begin with, Bender says we can look forward to professional analysis of multiplayer tactics and video walkthroughs. Noobs can learn much from these commentaries, while veterans can use them to know their enemy as well as themselves. Ask the Korean pro gamers – they do that a lot.
Of course, criticism could also get downright snarky. It’s already bad enough we lost – just don’t rub our faces in it.
Via Play.tm
