On 1st March 2002 Command & Conquer: Renegade will finally be available for purchase. Representing Westwood's first foray into the first/third-person shooter genre, the action game will allow players to experience the C&C universe in full-on 3D.
However, the road to 1st March 2002 has not been without its rocks and obstacles. Initially promising to give gamers an experience from both sides of the Command & Conquer fence - GDI and Nod - Renegade now places you solely in the shoes of GDI commando Havoc. Also sadly missing are player-useable flying vehicles, so while you're able to hug the ground in your tank or buggy, there'll be no taking to the skies. Not yet anyway. Yup, flyable vehicles could well be weeding their way into multiplayer.
Managing to grab some time with Westwood co-founder Louis Castle, we quizzed him about these omissions, the reason behind the developer's decision to do a first- and third-person shooter, its plans for supporting the game after release, and other titles it currently has in the pipeline.
Why did you decide to do a first-person shooter/3D action game?
Louis: We wanted to do more missions based on the commando character after the original Command & Conquer RTS. We started out making missions for just the commando character and then we started to expand that idea and that then became Red Alert. About a year after that we went back and said, "Hey, you know what, that idea about doing a whole game based around the commando is still a great idea, but RTS is the wrong perspective for a game about one character, you really need it to be first-person or third-person.". So there was then a big debate, do we do it third-person or do we do it first-person. In the end we decided to do both, so Renegade is playable either way. Three years ago it wasn't certain that the future was first-person or third-person, it could have easily gone either way. But now you can play the game in either.
Renegade went from being a strategy game with one character and other things to becoming an action game with third- and first-person points of view with a world that was very alive. As we developed the game we realised it needed more Command & Conquer stuff in it. We added more vehicles and we changed the way the vehicles are used, and the missions themselves were changed to be more like Command & Conquer missions where you destroy the bases and such. We didn't actually start out to make an action FPS, we started out to make a game about Command & Conquer's most interesting character and it ended up as a 3D action game.
The game's been in development for quite a while... ?
Louis: Four years in development and six years in concept. It's been a long time that we've been working on this thing.
Originally you were going to have flying vehicles in Renegade. Where did they go?
Louis: Actually I'm not ruling flying vehicles out as a future expansion for multiplayer. However, we realised that, from a design point of view for a single-player game, you really need to balance the flying vehicles and design the missions differently. We started out with a couple of missions that did have flying vehicles, and then as we realised that this game is much bigger than we thought, we went back and said, "Those levels with the flying vehicles require a lot of extra code and a lot of extra time, so we're just going to cut those levels because we don't have time to do them.". It's a massive game, even the twelve levels that are in there are huge.
You also originally planned to allow the player to play on both the Nod and GDI sides. What happened to this?
Louis: Well, it took us four years to get one side done - we don't think people are going to wait another four years for the game to come out! If we went to do it again however, I think we would better understand the scope of 3D action games and we would definitely design it around fewer missions and two sides right from the start.
Obviously you're very happy with how the game has turned out...
Louis: I'm thrilled with it. I really do believe it's a really beautiful game and it runs really well on low-end systems. The amount of things that can be going on in this game is just so much more than in other games in this genre. The demand for realism, for heightened realism and super-realistic animations and environments, means that many current games in the FPS category have very few things to interact with at a time. You have maybe four or five guys come out at a time for example, and you kill them and that's about it. In this game it's not uncommon to see 20 or 30 things running around, and that's what adds the kinetic energy to the game and that's where I think it really shines.
Do you think Renegade will appeal to Command & Conquer RTS fans as much as FPS fans?
Louis: It's probably not the most popular thing to say but I will say it: with Renegade we are aiming at our Command & Conquer customers. We built this game for them, we designed it because of input from them, and it's always been about those players. We recognise that a lot of those people like action games, although having said that a lot of them have said that they don't like current first-person action games because they're just too hard - that's why we have difficulty levels and a multiplayer mode that rewards teamplay. What we didn't expect though was a bunch of guys around the office who are Counter-Strike freaks to fire up a Renegade multiplayer server every night instead. Every day there's a Renegade server up and running. We're really happy if FPS fans go nuts about it, but the ultimate goal was to bring Command & Conquer players into the action world.
What plans have you got to support Renegade after release?
Louis: Well, we actually set up a MOD college and we contacted all of the biggest MOD makers in the States and invited them over to Westwood for a week. We had our team members run seminars, talking about the game code, giving them the necessary Renegade development tools and teaching them how work with them. On top of this our own team members are building more and more content and developing code for the release and beyond, so for at least a few months after release we'll have four to five guys still building stuff for the product.
Is the aim for these future updates to be free ,or will you release them to retail?
Louis: All this will be free and will be pushed out to the multiplayer community. At some point, if the concepts become too big, if we were getting to the point where we're releasing 80Mb downloads for example, we'd probably release it to retail. We're sensitive to the fact that, especially around the world, not everyone has broadband connections and we want to be able to get the content to everyone.
Will you also be releasing development tools?
Louis: Yes, on top of all the other stuff, we're also taking the GMax editor and releasing a version that can be run on a normal PC. We're also releasing the scripting tools so that you can script events. You'll able to make your own multiplayer maps and script building interaction so that you can make a multiplayer level that's fully functional. I don't know if we're going to take that all the way to the point where you create your own single-player scenarios, however. If you wanted to do single-player scenarios you'd have to use all the professional tools, which means going to a deep, deep level.
Now you've done Renegade, is 3D going to be the way forward for the Command & Conquer franchise in general?
Louis: Everything that we're doing at Westwood now will be rendered with 3D graphics. However, our games don't have to necessarily be in 3D, in the sense that you're running around a 3D maze. For example, our RTS games will still be very top-down, but they will use a 3D engine. The next Command & Conquer game will absolutely be a 3D product but with a 2D interface.
To what extent does fan input influence your game development and development ideas
Louis: A ton. Hand-written letters, e-mails - all that stuff makes a huge difference. The Renegade multiplayer mode for example doesn't even resemble the multiplayer mode we had back in November. All the fans have been putting in their two-cents worth and we've been changing the game based on their feedback. It's very hard when you're making something to remain objective, so I love having both the fan feedback and press feedback, as with that we can make much better games.
What else are you working on at the moment?
Louis: Well, we're working on Earth & Beyond, the space-based RPG, and we're also working on another Command & Conquer real-time strategy title in addition to the one that's coming out, so we're actually working on two of those right now. And also we're trying to figure out what to do with Renegade. Should we do another product and if so, what should it be like? We're thinking that's what we're doing [another Renegade game] but that depends on the sales of this one. We're anxious to see where people go and what they say about it.
