Westwood, EALA und einige Hintergründe

Hmm... Ok, the reply isn't completely off base, nor is he totally accurate, so I'll elaborate so we can clear this up for good. I've known Cypher for a long time, so he speaks with a good amount of knowledge on these things.

BTW, this is the last post I'm ever going to make in regards this constant flame war at EA about past C&C games. I said it before — you need to listen to them now. Shaking your fists in anger at EA isn't productive. EA, like every game company, has its issues, but they don't want to make bad games. Keep that in mind.

Ren 2 (Battlegrounds):

Renegade 2 was finished with pre-pro, we had created an "X slice" demo and were awaiting the final "go" approval when it was canceled. I was in the meeting with Bing et al. when it was, since I was the one presenting the game to them. There are more factors than just "EA was mean!!" in that decision however — Battlefield was on the horizon (unbeknownst to us @ WW), and DOOM 3 was scheduled to hit that year (didn't hit for 2 more, lol). EA was in the position at the time that they (EA) didn't want anything to be "#3", and let's be honest, Renegade's graphics were never top-notch. The WW execs and EA execs decided to kill going forward with the game because of those two other products coming into the marketplace at around the same time.

IMO, neither would have impacted it, but at the time, that was the decision and the grounds for it. Everyone on the team was crushed. We all loved it dearly. I couldn't say anything about the decision for several days until an official announcement went out, which was hell since everyone was very excited about the game and its potential.

RA2's continuity:

Yes, the solution to RA2's complete break of the RA -> C&C -> TS fiction was something that several of us came up with to "fix" the problem. RA being the prequel was what we (Westwood LV) intended for the series. It was originally called C&C0, FYI. RA2 was a great game, but we had issues with how to fit that into the timeline we wanted to maintain. We found a creative way to fix it. It's in the WWv2 C&C3 GDI campaign. Yuri, an acolyte of Kane's (Nod was experimenting with psionics in the WWv2 C&C3) is sucked into a chrono-vortex that is created by a Chronosphere that GDI inadvertently activates (along with some other RA-era tech) while attempting to retrieve the only other existing suit of powered "screaming eagle" commando armor (the first was melted on re-entry from orbit when the Philadelphia was destroyed) from the sealed tech vaults at Area 51.

Just like Einstein fracturing the timeline from "real" time with his little trip back into the past in RA, so did Yuri's presence throw off the already-altered timeline again, creating the RA2 reality. RA games would have continued in that splintered reality.

That is how it would have been explained. End of story on that.

Continuum:

Yep, stopped to help E&B out. One of the three worst mistakes we ever made at WW.

C&C Bible:

The bible was a marketing idea that none of us had any time to contribute to. The internal version was badly written, had no continuity and ignored by all of us that worked on the C&C story. It was out of date the moment it was first written and was never updated after. There were versions done later, but the internal one... yikes.

Story / versions / etc.

The C&C3 story changed with each new location / producer and time period it went through. There are at least 4 versions of C&C3 (WWv1, WWv2, EAv1, EAv2) that had different factions and story concepts. I worked on the WWv1/2 and EAv1 versions. EAv2 is pretty much TW. The WWv2 story was the one that the EAv1 was going to use as well (or a modified version thereof).

WWv1 started right after Firestorm shipped, and we voluntarily stopped it to work on Continuum. All existing design docs were given to WWP for ideas for RA2 / Yuris. Some of the units in Yuris are modified versions of that first C&C3 design.

WWv2 started towards the end of WWLV's existence, right before the consolidation. It continued on for a bit at EALA before sputtering because all of us working on it were put onto ZH.

EAv1 was the real official restart of C&C3, which we worked on in both EALA locations (BelAir and Playa). EAv1 was stopped to help LotR, Goldeneye and MoH. It was never really picked back up.

After that version, I'm going to assume that the next one was TW, since I was gone at that point.

Staff:

When WW/WWP was consolidated, many people were fired outright and others were offered jobs at EALA or EARS. Some took the jobs, some didn't. Living in a city that has no other game companies (Vegas), your reality of choices was — stay in Vegas and find other work (non-industry), go with EA to LA or SF and maybe continue your project, or go to another company and move anyway.

All of the WWLV design & production staff that did go to EALA eventually left or were fired before TW was started on. There are still some technical and artistic people at EALA that worked on the previous WWLV C&C games.

The WWLV team didn't work on Generals, but almost all of us worked on ZH (while some were on MoH) and many worked on the LotR series after that.

WWLV/WWP:

The decisions of who decided on what project isn't as clear-cut as they were made out in the response. There were some political issues between WWP and WWLV and EA management that I won't get into because way it's too much bad blood, but the picture painted isn't the whole story.

So that's that. Done, spent, fini. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to making U@W a franchise that kicks major ass.

A-

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Ishmael - PG
Creative Director, Petroglyph
www.petroglyphgames.com
www.obscured-view.com (rebooting soon!)