> “we talked about things like having her visibly decapitated, but then we thought that [Heath-Smith] would kill us. And we always had a fondness for Lara, we were just sick of her, really. We were buying houses because of Lara. Because of Toby, in hindsight. I don’t think we actually wanted to do anything brutal to her.”
Which explains the popularity of a lot of YouTube channels.
I watched someone play "The Last of Us" and "Uncharted 4" the whole way through. It was very enjoyable (partially because I found someone who could keep their mouth shut through a lot of the cut scenes), and I knew I was probably never going to play through those games all the way through.
I did the same for "The Last of Us" (and also watched a video where the guy barely spoke; I wonder was it the same one you watched...). I watched it because I heard all the good things about it and thought since it was a PS3 game that I'd never play it. I loved watching it.
Then later it got remade for PS4 and I bought it and played it the whole way through. Despite having watched the entire thing, I really enjoyed playing it just as much as I assume I would have without watching it, and, interestingly enough, I enjoyed the gameplay much more than I was expecting.
I'm pretty terrible at video games, especially tense FPS ones like The Last of Us; I own a copy, but I was hoping my wife would play it so I could watch it that way :P
L.A. Noire in particular, although even the "semi" is generous -- if you fail at any skill test three times, the game just says, "screw it, want to move on anyway? Cool." The only variation in outcome you can get is how many of the clues you discover or how soon you crack the case.
I even tried to get a different result on a case by "missing" the evidence that would have unraveled the scheme, to see if it would end differently, but then the coroner just tells you to "look harder" at one of the scenes.
Its not a "consoles" problem, its a "dumb down for the masses" problem. There are plenty of games out for consoles that aren't "push button to win/not die". Some games are designed to be "mass market" (or not), regardless of what platform(s) they're on. There's tons of shovelware crap on PC too, you just probably ignore it.
For example, the SoulsBorne games. (and at least Demon Souls and Bloodborne are console exclusives)
And that is exactly why I buy them. For me time is scarce and I don't have the patience for games that make me grind through levels. Been there done that. Gaming is more than testing reflexes. I view them as another medium to tell a story.
Most games would just show a cutscene of you sliding down a hill and then give control back to you once you got to the bottom, but TR forces you to use the controller a few times and shows you an awesome death sequence if you don't. I found it really enjoyable.
But yes, for the most part, quick time events are annoying as hell. I feel like they were really bad in the early PS3/360 era, but have felt a little bit less forced in recent years. Or maybe I'm just used to them now.
As someone who remembers the first Tomb Raider, it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first steps into 'a 3D version of {insert game concept here}'.
Laura Croft was a 3D version of James Bond and Indiana Jones' love child. The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic. And also the first 3D game that I saw with realistic translations between animation states.
It's probably a lost cause trying to explain it to people who have grown up with high fidelity graphics, but there's a certain magic to "Wow, that hedge looks like a hedge!"
^For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_in_video_gaming )
It's awesome that you can see through the bottom of the power boat, in that video. I wonder if it's an engine limitation, developers thinking "fsck it, we have other problems", or an oversight (that seems unlikely if I could spot it in ten seconds). I never did play Lara a lot, but am quite nostalgic for the era.
Still waiting for all this VR hype to deliver a Time Crisis to my PS4.
I highly doubt that's intentional. The water surface is a static, solid, flat, textured plane. The water appears in the boat whenever the boat dips below the waterline because the water texture then overlays the bottom of the boat.
I'm not even sure there were any games around that time that wouldn't have behaved this way for dynamic objects.
> it was a weird time in gaming^. I'd sum it up as everything was either 'the epitome of 2D gaming' or the first steps into 'a 3D version
> For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo
That's a really good observation, haven't thought about that.
In retrospect, many of the first 3D games don't look that bad actually, I have to say. Maybe it's because when doing it for the first time, people were more aware of the technical limits of the medium (in the same way as many 80s 2D games are often making clever use of the limitations). That kind of constraint creates a lot of creativity. To me much what happened inbetween those early years and today's photorealistic graphics just didn't age that well, for some reason.
Remember playing that, that was great. Pretty hard to race when you don't know the track, though ;)
Recently discovered this old NES game with similar racing, which looks pretty impressive for the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMWuBV8lUI
I'd probably sum up your observation with one my guitarist friend made about early electronic music. It was better, he said, because the first experimenters in the medium were all experts in analog music -- at that point, they had to be.
One of my favorite early-3D games was Interstate 76 (1997), apparently built on the MW2 engine.
Vehicle games were oddly popular in that period (Twisted Metal?). Maybe lower-poly no-animation cars were easier to render?
Right. Interstate was to me a very clear signpost towards what games could become - I used to imagine some sort of huge, open-world descendant of it. I remember very distinctly, probably about 8 years later, being blown away by GTA San Andreas, thinking this is the game I've been waiting all this time for someone to make.
I remember it very well myself, I was in my teens in -96. The animations in Tomb Raider were indeed amazing, even if the textures weren't.
Going on to play Quake (World) extensively, what was the most impressive (at least to me) when it first came out was the lighting and immersive/ambient sound, as well as proper 3D as opposed to Duke3D.
Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious.
Diablo is still my favorite Diablo and Blizzard game. The music, the gameplay, the gothic design to me only got watered down in later iterations.
Thanks for reminding me of the classics. The leaps in technology back then was staggering. I always notice something here and there nowadays too, but I feel I haven't seen a leap since Half-Life 2 back in 2004.
This (1996) was a pivotal time for me as a gamer, even if we had Ataris and a Sinclair at home before that. It makes me very nostalgic.
I loved the original C&C and while I understand the appeal of RA because of Cold War nostalgia it always felt like more of a spin-off going in a completely different direction than a spiritual successor (or predecessor). C&C was at times corny but felt very much inspired by 1980s/1990s action movies in a way, RA was often bordering on satire.
There were some attempts to make RA1 an actual prequel in the C&C timeline but its success resulted in the timelines diverging too much.
I actually also kinda liked C&C Generals despite it having no relation to C&C other than the branding but sadly that series was pretty much doomed from the start.
I think in Germany it was marketed as C&C2:RA when it came out and it felt like a prequel to me. The videos, the units, everything was C&C. Tanja -> Commando Bot, Tesla Towers -> Obelisk of Light, etc.
Yeah, they ran into real problems when later titles came out.
The original C&C was released as "Command & Conquer Teil 1: Der Tiberiumkonflikt" ("tiberium conflict", instead of "tiberian dawn")
The original RA was released as "Command & Conquer Teil 2: Alarmstufe Rot" ("code red", instead of "red alert")
C&C2 was then released as "Command & Conquer Teil 3: Operation Tiberian Sun" (instead of simply "tiberian sun")
By the time C&C2 had been released the Internet was becoming a thing and still predominantly English so the different numbering schemes began causing trouble for English-speaking Germans.
I think they gave up on consistent numbering by the time RA2 came out (it wasn't actually called "Teil 4" IIRC) and if I recall correctly they just stuck to the English numbers with C&C3 onwards (yes, that means technically "C&C3" was ambiguous in Germany at that point).
<spoilers>
In Red Alert there are some clues that the setting is tied to that of the original Command & Conquer however. For example Kane shows up on the Soviet side and it's strongly hinted that he is the same Kane as in Tiberian Dawn. This led to some fan theories that Kane is immortal because he's literally the Biblical character Cain, which was pretty plausible if you consider the other Biblical references ("the land of Nod" is where Cain was exiled and Kane is the leader of the Nod Brotherhood; Seth is Kane's second in command and also the name of Cain's and Abel's brother). I think there were also some conspiracies based on the re-use of German voice actors (I think Einstein's assistant was voiced by the voice actor who also voiced Kane? I don't think this is the case in the English version).
</spoilers>
Ultimately this probably has more to do with budget constraints and that Biblical imagery is a cheap way to introduce some drama and I'm not sure whether this was ever intended as more than a not-so-subtle nod (heh) to Tiberian Dawn.
Fun fact: one major criticism of Tiberian Sun was that the publisher cast a new voice actor for Kane who sounded nothing like the first one fans had grown to love (his voice was also much lighter, leading many to joke that he sounded a bit emasculated). IIRC the official explanation was that the original voice actor had demanded too much money. In addition to the disproportionate hype the game had received prior to release that was also often pointed out as one of the major reasons it wasn't as successful as anticipated.
Yes, Tiberian Sun was a bit like Duke Nukem Forever.
Took too long and didn't bring much new stuff.
RA came shortly after TD. Not much had happend with strategy games till then and they just used the same engine and took everything for TD to the extreme (story, weapons etc.)
One year befor TS we got Starcraft, which took strategy games to another level, so they HAD to do more, but they didn't.
Anyway, the hype was probably enough to make enough money for the other titles, haha.
IIRC RA didn't actually use exactly the same engine as the original TD. I think the TD "Gold" (or GOTY?) edition ported TD to the engine of RA, which was slightly higher resolution and slightly prettier, so that's what most people think of when they think of TD.
Whether TD and TD Gold were actually different engines I don't know but it must have been at least an improved version of the same engine.
I think you're right that SC doomed TS to fail. SC was lauded for having three factions that are actually fundamentally different to a much greater degree than had been done before (e.g. Dune 2000) and had great storytelling compared to the well-done but low-budget and often cheesy narration in TD and RA.
TS tried to one-up the genre with its cinematic cutscenes but they ended up creating an actual protagonist so the result felt much more like watching a movie than something you're actually involved in (especially when the protagonist does more than reacting and following orders -- which was the sole reason having a protagonist became necessary at all).
Also, the engine was different and they tried to cash in on technological superiority with big talk of "voxels" but the end result just looked fuzzy and often sterile. They also tried to do the "multi-faction" thing by introducing the mutants (though not as a playable race) which confused the setting even more. TD was about futuristic modern warfare, TS was 100% sci-fi. In that sense I guess Generals was a bit of a return to the roots.
I think C&C vs RA is one of those things where you're either one type of person or another. For younger me, the RA intro was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen in a piece of commercial software. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6xCWcf_VU
I was more into C&C, though you're absolutely right, that RA intro was amazing! I liked the first RA game, since it was a little more serious... the second and third were a bit too campy for me given the setting of the first.
I played C&C through 3, but really hated the 4th. They ruined it by trying to make it some half-baked MOBA type thing. I still haven't even finished it.
> But then I imagine Dune 2 players saying the same about C&C!
In Dune 2 you could wall-in your repair center (or build other buildings around it); if you did so transport aircraft would come and get damaged vehicles from the battlefield, bring them to repair center and bring them back.
Too bad I never found anything like that in any other relevant RTS since then.
also, use deviator on enemy unit, select it, order it to attack but don't select the target. When it changes owner back, select the target. Even though it's an enemy unit now, it will obey your order. Turrets won't attack it because it's an ally. When it destroys it's target (e.g. construction yard), it will wake up and try to attack you again.
The same trick works when the AI uses a deviator on your units too. Another funny bug I remember is that the range of the Sonic Tank is tied to the game speed, which is quite a nerf or buff because that is a very strong unit. Remember to set it to "slowest" when fighting the Atreides ;-)
Also, the speed setting seemed to affect the current screen more. At high game speeds, if a unit was being chased, you could keep your unit in the view with the enemy unit out of view, and your unit would get a massive speed advantage.
And you could leave an opening with a unit, placed in that opening, acting as a gate. If you wanted to repair something before it got badly damaged, you pass it through the gate.
I remember not being keen on C&C1 because of the horrible 320x200 resolution, when Warcraft 2 had moved up to SVGA. Red Alert ran in SVGA on Windows and was the game that actually made the C&C engine look how it always should have, and gave enough area to see what was going on the battlefield.
Few months ago I did a quick youtube run to watch all TR games. And, nostalgia aside, there's a weird charm of the first game's emptiness. It's mysterious; ugly but mysterious. Sequels had better everything, including mainstream hardware support for 3D but it lost .. that 'lost' feeling.
Apparently a lot of the game controls changed to become easier and more mainstream, I just watched this video a while ago which (among other games) contrasts game controls and movement in early and more recent TR games:
Is it just me or do the animations of the original TR hold up pretty well? In this video of comparing movement mechanics[1] across the various games, I can't help but feel the modern variants are too exaggerated in the character animations. I don't know, it's hard to put a finger on it. I'm not saying the original animations are better in every way, but there's something there that's missing in the more modern variants.
The video is pretty on point otherwise with regards to how dumbed down controls are these days. It seems to me that games with good movement controls are few and far between. The one game I play these days that has excellent controls is NHL (16 and 17) – you really do feel in control, even if you play with beginner controls where the assist is ramped up.
What comes to mind for me is Assassin's Creed. The character animations in it are so detailed that they completely gave up on realism - every single motion is a flashy, flailing leap that may or may not conform to terrain.
At a certain point, I think TR (and a lot of other old games) benefitted from the requirement that a game get at least one thing right. If your animations are shoddy, you need realistic motion because exaggeration will just look deranged. If your graphics are ugly, you need good storytelling because visuals won't get players invested. And so on. If your textures and context sensitivity are lacking, you need tight controls so characters don't commit suicide.
SO I guess I'm part of the crowd arguing older games were better in those ways. Not because the past was better, but because they had fewer ways to ensure success in at least one aspect of control, or immersion, or realism.
For detail and realism I recommend the Uncharted series. The things they did with character animation are NUTS. Get Drake moving in one direction and then make him turn or reverse sharply in another direction and you will see his momentum and observe him shifting his weight from his former lead foot to his new lead foot. It's like watching a Pixar film: the flashy bits aren't what impress you, it's the subtle, little things.
They pre-baked all these animation states based on the angle Drake was moving to (or the difference in angles between his former and current trajectories; I;m not sure) and used the game engine to look them up and interpolate between them. In Uncharted 4 things get even more nuts: move to the edge of a ledge or crevice and you can use the left analog stick to make Drake's hand reach at any angle; if he finds a handhold there will be a smooth realistic transition as he climbs to the new handhold -- no jump button necessary.
I would say that the series is getting tired but they keep doing new and better things with each game. And they even gave Drake a satisfying ending without killing him off. Quite unlike the rerun city that Eidos made those poor Tomb Raider devs crank out.
When I played one of the Uncharted games, I think it was 2 or 3, I spent like a half hour just watching how Drake moved through crowds and realistically avoided people or put his hand on railings as he walked by. It was just incredible, incredible animation.
Witcher 3 went a similar direction, but some time after release added an "Alternative Animation" option so the controls would be more responsive at the cost of animation accuracy.
Banjo-Kazooie did this also, back on the N64. I'm certain it wasn't nearly as beautifully detailed as Uncharted, but the very slight nods to momentum and movement physics made the game a unique joy to play, even being quite young at the time.
Changing direction in a sprint would leave you sliding as your momentum carried you; Banjo would throw his hands out and wobble on a ledge but pull balance back (certainly a mechanism to ease the difficulty level for players).
Overall no one mechanism was overpowering, but it made switching to other games seem strange and clipped, the artificial instant start-stop now out of place and unreal.
> The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic.
The graphics in general were not ground breaking (for me earlier games like Quake, Magic Carpet, Heretic, Descent, Tie Fighter, etc. were just as good if not better - Duke Nukem 3d was far behind the 8 ball), it was the movement mechanics which really sold it - definitely the first 3d character who moved with a degree of realism. I don't think even today movement is always handled quite so well - too many glitches where you suddenly zip through a movement at lightning speed.
My thinking was that none of the other games I could think of from that time period (including your mentions) were intended to take place in a real-world setting.
There's a certain artistic license you can bank on when you're working in a fantasy setting.
It was really fluid at the time - and, as you point out, even now it's good. Sure, the resolution is junk by today's standards, but that's expected.
I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit.
It was an early preview of a concept that would be pushed further by later game series such as Uncharted and Mass Effect. I think it was the very beginning of the big eventual merger between games and movies that's still a ways ahead in the future.
> "I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit."
Maybe one of the first 3D games in its genre, but not the only game that had such things.
There were other games at the time or before that had similar aspects:
I remember playing through TR2 with my brother as youngsters. I don't think he's forgiven me for 'progressing' in the level by killing a couple of enemies, using all the medkits, and overwriting the only save with low health at this point [1] - just before you have to climb a ladder into a small room with two enemies
Plus, if I remember correctly it was one of the early games that made use of 3D acceleration and it used to be bundled with those 3DFX Voodoo GPU which you used in addition to your weak 2D graphics card. Good times.
Not only that, but it was the beginning of accelerated 3D graphics in consumer PCs. There was never another leap as big as the one provided by getting a 3DFX Voodoo. I remember it fondly.
I use to dump video from a TV Tuner card into the linear frame buffer of the 3DFX Voodoo card. Instead of using the pass through cable I used two monitors. It was my first multi-monitor setup.
The game is just Prince of Persia extruded into a third dimension. All the basic moves are the same - running, stepping, standing jump, running jump, straight up jump, ledge grab, ledge hang, not letting you fall off a ledge if you're walking. Yet it's never given credit as being an inspiration.
One semi-interesting factoid regarding the 3D part is that Tomb Raider (despite being a flagship title of Playstation later) launched first on Sega Saturn, a console with relatively weak 3D capabilities (and was a game that was first designed against those weaknesses).
I remember it being quite frustrating to play, you had to line up the character exactly with a ledge to jump up onto it, etc. It could be very clumsy. But that continues to this day in games like the GTA games; you'll be right next to a ladder but can't climb it because the character is rotated 1º farther than they should be to grab it or whatever.
What's the story behind this blog? It just occurred to me that the domain is for the developers of Firewatch; are the authors of the articles employees of Campo Santo?
I think they used to use it to provide info about the progress of Firewatch. I remember getting thiese quarterly reviews as a newsletter during development.
I remember playing the original Tomb Raider as a teenager, and while Lara did have "sex appeal," it was the action and violence I enjoyed the most. Let's not kid ourselves--violence sells video games. Imagine if Lara Croft never died and never killed anything/anyone. She wouldn't be Lara Croft. Almost every photo in this article shows a woman holding two guns. She is a killer, and I love her for that.
I was more interested in the exploration aspect. Levels in the first Tomb Raider are very good, with puzzles and spooky traps. Violence plays quite a minor role there.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 67.4 ms ] threadThis is funny since there were tons of scenes worse than decapitations in the 2013 reboot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyVHV7ct4gU
I watched someone play "The Last of Us" and "Uncharted 4" the whole way through. It was very enjoyable (partially because I found someone who could keep their mouth shut through a lot of the cut scenes), and I knew I was probably never going to play through those games all the way through.
Then later it got remade for PS4 and I bought it and played it the whole way through. Despite having watched the entire thing, I really enjoyed playing it just as much as I assume I would have without watching it, and, interestingly enough, I enjoyed the gameplay much more than I was expecting.
I even tried to get a different result on a case by "missing" the evidence that would have unraveled the scheme, to see if it would end differently, but then the coroner just tells you to "look harder" at one of the scenes.
For example, the SoulsBorne games. (and at least Demon Souls and Bloodborne are console exclusives)
But yes, for the most part, quick time events are annoying as hell. I feel like they were really bad in the early PS3/360 era, but have felt a little bit less forced in recent years. Or maybe I'm just used to them now.
Laura Croft was a 3D version of James Bond and Indiana Jones' love child. The hook was that it was one of the first 3D games were things looked kind-of, sort-of, maybe-if-you-squinted-at-them realistic. And also the first 3D game that I saw with realistic translations between animation states.
It's probably a lost cause trying to explain it to people who have grown up with high fidelity graphics, but there's a certain magic to "Wow, that hedge looks like a hedge!"
PS: So much hate for TR2's canal level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=8m30s
^For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_in_video_gaming )
Still waiting for all this VR hype to deliver a Time Crisis to my PS4.
I'm not even sure there were any games around that time that wouldn't have behaved this way for dynamic objects.
> For reference, 1996 was Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2, Time Crisis, Super Mario RPG, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, Pokemon, Quake, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS, TES II: Daggerfall, Pilotwings 64, Wipeout 2097/XL, Marathon Infinity, MoO2, C&C:RA, DoA, and Diablo
That's a really good observation, haven't thought about that.
In retrospect, many of the first 3D games don't look that bad actually, I have to say. Maybe it's because when doing it for the first time, people were more aware of the technical limits of the medium (in the same way as many 80s 2D games are often making clever use of the limitations). That kind of constraint creates a lot of creativity. To me much what happened inbetween those early years and today's photorealistic graphics just didn't age that well, for some reason.
https://youtu.be/f2lajsZt4Hg
One of my favorite early-3D games was Interstate 76 (1997), apparently built on the MW2 engine.
Vehicle games were oddly popular in that period (Twisted Metal?). Maybe lower-poly no-animation cars were easier to render?
Going on to play Quake (World) extensively, what was the most impressive (at least to me) when it first came out was the lighting and immersive/ambient sound, as well as proper 3D as opposed to Duke3D.
Red Alert had some of the earliest video cut scenes in a game I remember seeing, even if it was terribly interlaced and the acting was atrocious.
Diablo is still my favorite Diablo and Blizzard game. The music, the gameplay, the gothic design to me only got watered down in later iterations.
Thanks for reminding me of the classics. The leaps in technology back then was staggering. I always notice something here and there nowadays too, but I feel I haven't seen a leap since Half-Life 2 back in 2004.
This (1996) was a pivotal time for me as a gamer, even if we had Ataris and a Sinclair at home before that. It makes me very nostalgic.
"From God, to Kane, to Seth, I am his right hand man" ~ Seth, Brotherhood of Nod, Command & Conquer, 1995
(People always give C&C:RA too much credit IMO, the original C&C was overlooked. But then I imagine Dune 2 players saying the same about C&C!)
There were some attempts to make RA1 an actual prequel in the C&C timeline but its success resulted in the timelines diverging too much.
I actually also kinda liked C&C Generals despite it having no relation to C&C other than the branding but sadly that series was pretty much doomed from the start.
The original C&C was released as "Command & Conquer Teil 1: Der Tiberiumkonflikt" ("tiberium conflict", instead of "tiberian dawn")
The original RA was released as "Command & Conquer Teil 2: Alarmstufe Rot" ("code red", instead of "red alert")
C&C2 was then released as "Command & Conquer Teil 3: Operation Tiberian Sun" (instead of simply "tiberian sun")
By the time C&C2 had been released the Internet was becoming a thing and still predominantly English so the different numbering schemes began causing trouble for English-speaking Germans.
I think they gave up on consistent numbering by the time RA2 came out (it wasn't actually called "Teil 4" IIRC) and if I recall correctly they just stuck to the English numbers with C&C3 onwards (yes, that means technically "C&C3" was ambiguous in Germany at that point).
<spoilers> In Red Alert there are some clues that the setting is tied to that of the original Command & Conquer however. For example Kane shows up on the Soviet side and it's strongly hinted that he is the same Kane as in Tiberian Dawn. This led to some fan theories that Kane is immortal because he's literally the Biblical character Cain, which was pretty plausible if you consider the other Biblical references ("the land of Nod" is where Cain was exiled and Kane is the leader of the Nod Brotherhood; Seth is Kane's second in command and also the name of Cain's and Abel's brother). I think there were also some conspiracies based on the re-use of German voice actors (I think Einstein's assistant was voiced by the voice actor who also voiced Kane? I don't think this is the case in the English version). </spoilers>
Ultimately this probably has more to do with budget constraints and that Biblical imagery is a cheap way to introduce some drama and I'm not sure whether this was ever intended as more than a not-so-subtle nod (heh) to Tiberian Dawn.
Fun fact: one major criticism of Tiberian Sun was that the publisher cast a new voice actor for Kane who sounded nothing like the first one fans had grown to love (his voice was also much lighter, leading many to joke that he sounded a bit emasculated). IIRC the official explanation was that the original voice actor had demanded too much money. In addition to the disproportionate hype the game had received prior to release that was also often pointed out as one of the major reasons it wasn't as successful as anticipated.
Took too long and didn't bring much new stuff.
RA came shortly after TD. Not much had happend with strategy games till then and they just used the same engine and took everything for TD to the extreme (story, weapons etc.)
One year befor TS we got Starcraft, which took strategy games to another level, so they HAD to do more, but they didn't.
Anyway, the hype was probably enough to make enough money for the other titles, haha.
Whether TD and TD Gold were actually different engines I don't know but it must have been at least an improved version of the same engine.
I think you're right that SC doomed TS to fail. SC was lauded for having three factions that are actually fundamentally different to a much greater degree than had been done before (e.g. Dune 2000) and had great storytelling compared to the well-done but low-budget and often cheesy narration in TD and RA.
TS tried to one-up the genre with its cinematic cutscenes but they ended up creating an actual protagonist so the result felt much more like watching a movie than something you're actually involved in (especially when the protagonist does more than reacting and following orders -- which was the sole reason having a protagonist became necessary at all).
Also, the engine was different and they tried to cash in on technological superiority with big talk of "voxels" but the end result just looked fuzzy and often sterile. They also tried to do the "multi-faction" thing by introducing the mutants (though not as a playable race) which confused the setting even more. TD was about futuristic modern warfare, TS was 100% sci-fi. In that sense I guess Generals was a bit of a return to the roots.
I played C&C through 3, but really hated the 4th. They ruined it by trying to make it some half-baked MOBA type thing. I still haven't even finished it.
In Dune 2 you could wall-in your repair center (or build other buildings around it); if you did so transport aircraft would come and get damaged vehicles from the battlefield, bring them to repair center and bring them back. Too bad I never found anything like that in any other relevant RTS since then.
I feel like the acting is so bad it's good. It's become a cult classic.
I think it was from later on (Red Alert 2 or 3?) but Tim Curry's "SPAAACE!" is a classic - even he is struggling to keep a straight face!
Awww, you missed Mark Hamill in Wing Commander 3?
ps: Youtube scanned my HN comments and suggested this to me; felt almost on point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8
Apparently a lot of the game controls changed to become easier and more mainstream, I just watched this video a while ago which (among other games) contrasts game controls and movement in early and more recent TR games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo
The video is pretty on point otherwise with regards to how dumbed down controls are these days. It seems to me that games with good movement controls are few and far between. The one game I play these days that has excellent controls is NHL (16 and 17) – you really do feel in control, even if you play with beginner controls where the assist is ramped up.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQRr3pXxsGo
At a certain point, I think TR (and a lot of other old games) benefitted from the requirement that a game get at least one thing right. If your animations are shoddy, you need realistic motion because exaggeration will just look deranged. If your graphics are ugly, you need good storytelling because visuals won't get players invested. And so on. If your textures and context sensitivity are lacking, you need tight controls so characters don't commit suicide.
SO I guess I'm part of the crowd arguing older games were better in those ways. Not because the past was better, but because they had fewer ways to ensure success in at least one aspect of control, or immersion, or realism.
They pre-baked all these animation states based on the angle Drake was moving to (or the difference in angles between his former and current trajectories; I;m not sure) and used the game engine to look them up and interpolate between them. In Uncharted 4 things get even more nuts: move to the edge of a ledge or crevice and you can use the left analog stick to make Drake's hand reach at any angle; if he finds a handhold there will be a smooth realistic transition as he climbs to the new handhold -- no jump button necessary.
I would say that the series is getting tired but they keep doing new and better things with each game. And they even gave Drake a satisfying ending without killing him off. Quite unlike the rerun city that Eidos made those poor Tomb Raider devs crank out.
Changing direction in a sprint would leave you sliding as your momentum carried you; Banjo would throw his hands out and wobble on a ledge but pull balance back (certainly a mechanism to ease the difficulty level for players).
Overall no one mechanism was overpowering, but it made switching to other games seem strange and clipped, the artificial instant start-stop now out of place and unreal.
The graphics in general were not ground breaking (for me earlier games like Quake, Magic Carpet, Heretic, Descent, Tie Fighter, etc. were just as good if not better - Duke Nukem 3d was far behind the 8 ball), it was the movement mechanics which really sold it - definitely the first 3d character who moved with a degree of realism. I don't think even today movement is always handled quite so well - too many glitches where you suddenly zip through a movement at lightning speed.
There's a certain artistic license you can bank on when you're working in a fantasy setting.
I'd like to also point out that, from an artistic perspective, the game had a coherent atmosphere and story. It was the first game I've seen where you could see the beginnings of games borrowing a little from movies. Visuals, story, and music told the same message and expressed the same spirit.
It was an early preview of a concept that would be pushed further by later game series such as Uncharted and Mass Effect. I think it was the very beginning of the big eventual merger between games and movies that's still a ways ahead in the future.
Maybe one of the first 3D games in its genre, but not the only game that had such things.
There were other games at the time or before that had similar aspects:
- Diablo (1996)
- Resident Evil (1996)
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996)
- Warcraft II (1995)
- Command & Conquer (1995)
- Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995)
- X-COM (1994)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)
To this day, my wife and I still talk about that level, and trying to solve it together so many years ago.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA0r_Wp-EtU&t=9m15s
(although, it might be that it was the first bit of any TR game I ever played)