Last Friday, EA invited press to its Redwood Shores headquarters to get a last look at Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath before its debut next month. As its title implies, C&C3's first expansion will focus squarely on the exploits of Kane, the nigh-immortal bald-headed despot who figures prominently into the series' wacky mythology. Through a campaign that spans 20 years, players will get reacquainted with the uber-villain, primarily through the same schmaltzy (albeit high-definition) full-motion videos that have become the series' trademark. Apparently, there's an interloper (played by Carl Lumby of "Alias" fame) who's been sullying the Brotherhood's great legacy in Kane's absence. As Kane's right hand, you simply will not stand for it.
Friday's demo culminated in a couple of skirmish matches between teams of press attendees and members of the game's development team. Our hosts were quite eager to have us check out the expansion's recently-announced epic units, gently goading us toward all the requisite tech-ups that would enable their construction. They're essentially the expansion's answer to RTS hero units, only gargantuan and mechanized instead of charismatic and seasoned. Each side has one, and building it requires a sizable investment of time and resources -- you'll be locking up one of your war factory structures for almost a minute.
Judging from the skirmish matches they were utilized in (not to mention the firm assurances of our hosts), an epic unit isn't simply another component of your army. Rather, they're the focal points around which you'll build them. Quite literally, in certain respects. Each one has "hard points" built into it in which you can garrison infantry units (a bit like the walkers in Universe at War, though with more of an emphasis on unit synergy). Doing so grants the epics different properties depending on the type of unit you plugged in -- a rocket squad in the Nod epic unit, for instance, will grant it the ability to fire missiles.
GDI's epic unit is the Mammoth Armored Reclamation Vehicle (or "MARV"), which has the enviable capability to crush any enemy vehicles caught under it, including some of the largest in the game. As its name implies, it's also good at harvesting Tiberium, able to instantly collect and process any patch it rolls over. Nod's entry into this preposterous arms race is the Redeemer, a four-legged walker with a gnarly laser cannon, while the Scrin will field the Eradicator, which looks a lot like a Covenant Locust from Halo and can generate resources for your army by processing the chassis of defeated units.
Our hosts were pretty clear on one thing: fielding an epic unit could immediately change the course of a match or scenario. The big question, then, is whether or not Command & Conquer 3 is the sort of game that would benefit from that kind of focus. While it's difficult to deny the draw of commanding units this impressive-looking and with such spectacular powers, it's easy to speculate that their introduction into C&C3 could have an adverse affect on its strategic variety. Plainly speaking, it would be too bad if the only viable strategy, post Kane's Wrath, is one in which you're racing to build an epic before your opponent does.
Xbox 360 players, in any event, will be happy to know that the game's designers have been hard at work reconceptualizing the console RTS interface, and the results they demonstrated looked pretty promising. The work-in-progress that was shown is being built around a radial menu that could be summoned anywhere on the map, allowing players, among other things, to queue up build orders to multiple structures without deselecting their current targets.
The devs made a very compelling argument for the merits of the new interface by loading up two versions of the same map, one in Command & Conquer 3, the other in Kane's Wrath. Issuing the same orders in the new interface took considerably less time, mostly because the player wasn't required to scroll through the map and pick out individual buildings in the playfield. Is it enough to justify cross-platform play with PC users? Not a chance. But right now, it looks like an incremental step forward for console RTS usability, at the very least.
EA has set a March 24th release for Kane's Wrath. Look for some more in-depth coverage as we get more playtime with the expansion.
