Tiberian Sun 15th anniversary

[lazygecko]

One day too late... but so what! Still deserving of a belated birthday celebration.



On August 27th 1999, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun was unleashed on the world. It was the fastest selling game ever published by EA at the time. In fact I recall reading that this was the first ever PC game to have a simultaneous worldwide retail release, though I can't verify that 100%. This was one of the most hyped and anticipated sequels of the 1990's, right from the very first teaser trailer which was actually in the first Command & Conquer. It's a very special game to me for different reasons. It was one of the first titles that really swept me up with the hype train, absorbing any info I could from numerous magazine previews and was the first game I actively started to check up online prior to its release, taking part in C&C fansites at the time.

And thanks to this, it was also one of my first major gaming disappointments. The game had a troubled development and is a classic case of up and coming developers having a runaway success, then becoming overly ambitious and biting off more than they can chew for their next project. Lots and lots of features they enthusiasticly talked about in previews ended up being cut from the game or greatly diminished. Either due to time constraints or the fact that these ideas didn't end up working that great in practice. Stuff like civilian cities and settlements being fully functioning neutral factions in their own right and reacting dynamically to how either GDI or Nod treats them. Or day/night cycles coupled with a light/visibility system where the range and accuracy of units would depend on how well lit an area is. There was also a unit rank/leveling systems like you'd see in future C&C titles, however in Tiberian Sun it takes an absurd amount of time to level up your fragile units, the stat bonuses were negligible, and you could exploit it by ordering your unit to kill friendly ones since it made no distinction between factions.
The game was hurt further by the fact that Starcraft had already been released over a year earlier, making a big splash and becoming the new king of the genre. By the time Tiberian Sun was out, Westwood were yesterday's news and many viewed it as too archaic compared to Starcraft.

For all its shortcomings and broken promises though, it was still a very enjoyable game and it grew a lot on me. The FMVs and the game's setting had changed radically in tone from the first game's quasi-modern, 20 minutes into the future story. Now it was pretty much full on sci fi in a bleak, almost post apocalyptic world ravaged by the series' trademark flora. GDI suddenly had huge ass mechs and railguns, while Nod had lasers and cyborg infantry.
Instead of the FMVs being depicted from a first person perspective like in the other C&Cs, this time around we had fleshed out lead actors acting as avatars for the players. Long before Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Michael Biehn was commander MacNiel and his boss issuing the orders was James Earl Jones. Nod had B action actor Frank Zagarino as Anton Slavik in league with the jolly Joe Kucan as Kane (complete with a so-90's-it-hurts cyborg face mask). In retrospect I didn't quite agree with such a departure from the more grounded original, but those FMV cutscenes have a special place in my heart just like the best, trashiest sci fi cheese.

Tiberian Sun is also significant for being one of the most highly modded C&C games out there and the modding community remains quite active to this day with no signs of stopping. One of the first really major mods was Tiberian Sun Retro. This was to TS, what OOO was to Oblivion or SkyRe to Skyrim. The mod did a lot to try and re-enable lost features and overall just try to make the experience more like how we imagined the game would be in all those previews.

TSR has since been superseded by much more ambitious projects though, to the point where they are basically total conversions/reimaginings of the whole game. As the bar was raised for modding standards over the years the game has been taken beyond what was possible using only conventional modding methods, making things like new mechanics and entire new game modes possible. One of the most popular right now is Twisted Insurrection.
The general place to go for TS mods is Project Perfect Mod. You'll find plenty of mods, map packs, tools, etc and of course the community itself.

If you don't have Tiberian Sun, or just lost the discs ages ago and would like to get into it again, then fret not since the game has been deemed completely free by EA for several years now (along with every other pre-RA2 C&C). You can download the full game here:
http://www.cncnz.com/downloads/command-conquer-tiberian-sun/freeware-releases/#303

If you have your own memories and observations on TS, I encourage you to share them in this here celebratory thread.

[CorSair]

One of my pals depicted this as "flop", due to the reasons mentioned in OP. Personally, I think it wasn't excellent, but it was pretty okay, and fun to play.

Well, depending on how you receive your fun. To hell with those chemical missiles, since they don't obey firestorm wall much. :P

Didn't really thought there was good amount of modding. Looking through hosted mods, it seems there's fair amount of stuff to test and play...

[dew]

System Shock 2 was 15yo on Sep 11th.

[Kirby]

dew said:

System Shock 2 was 15yo on August 11th.

FTFY :P

I've never played Tiberian Sun but I vaguely remember some of the hype surrounding it. Of course I got swept up in the StarCraft frenzy and that became my mainstay for a couple of years and I never really was interested in other RTSs durin that time.

[Chopkinsca]

Tiberian sun was one of my favourite games growing up. I once rented it on the way to my friends house, as I had no computer of my own. His dad saw the game and must have liked it too. The next day his dad drives us to the store and buys the game.

[SuperflyJohnson]

It was pretty rough trying to find games to play on an eMachine in the 90's (or in any era, really). Blizzard of course had a lock on the low-end market in those days, and Starcraft had whet my appetite for RTS when some friends exposed me to it.

TS was exciting for being a new and cool-looking game that would run without issue on my 'never obsolete' shitputer. I was enamored enough with it to acquire the classic games in a boxset. I'm surprised they didn't need a bigger box with all the cheesy FMV content in those games.

RIP Westwood, you were one of the greats.

[FireFish]

The Command & Conquer games are a strange beast to me, I played red alert in older days, i have Tiberian sun, and i wanted and still want to play
them because they are somehow fun but at the same time they just feel empty... There is something about the C&C games which make me feel as
if they are kind of odd rts. The design of the sprites is beuftifull, the atmosphere is there, but the gameplay feels lightweight and off.

But i do admit that the franchise its name always atracts attention because it feeds upon a reputation it gained in the 90's.

[lazygecko]

SuperflyJohnson said:

It was pretty rough trying to find games to play on an eMachine in the 90's (or in any era, really). Blizzard of course had a lock on the low-end market in those days, and Starcraft had whet my appetite for RTS when some friends exposed me to it.

TS was exciting for being a new and cool-looking game that would run without issue on my 'never obsolete' shitputer. I was enamored enough with it to acquire the classic games in a boxset. I'm surprised they didn't need a bigger box with all the cheesy FMV content in those games.

RIP Westwood, you were one of the greats.

One of my friends managed to run it on a 90mhz computer at the time because they had stuffed it with an absurd amount of memory. A whoppin 128mb!

[Belial]

Tiberian Sun is meh.

RA2, Generals and Zero Hour for me.

[Orchid87]

Greetings, fellow Sega-16'er :)

[Technician]

Tiberian Sun sounds like a news paper.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I remember the first time I saw this running on a friend's PC, was completely blown away by the visuals coming from the original C&C and Red Alert on the PSX. By sheer coincidence I got it as a birthday present from my brother later that year or the next year? Used to play a lot of multiplayer with that same friend, go in with some randoms, ally with each other, wipe them out then turn on each other haha!

I still think the original C&C is the best in the series but this is definitely a close second. The post apocalyptic setting works, I still love the voxel units and animation way more than the ones in RA2, and there are a bunch of fun units. I eventually moved onto Starcraft because that's what the majority of my friends played, but I still feel the C&C series was way more fun, even if they weren't nearly as balanced.