Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Interview

March 15th, 2008, 20:18 Posted By: wraggster

For long-suffering fans of the Red Alert series, the revelation last month that work on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is now underway at EALA was welcome news indeed. Red Alert is one of the seminal real-time strategy games, of course, and the original is still one of the most beloved games of all time. Of course, EA didn't reveal much in its press release announcement, so we went straight to executive producer Chris Corry himself to talk about the game, which is due for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 this holiday season.

IGN: Red Alert 3 was recently revealed. It's been a while since the last one, hasn't it?

Chris Corry: There actually hasn't been a Red Alert game for a little while now; it's been seven years. It's kind of interesting reintroducing the world to Red Alert. For those who are already familiar with Red Alert games and their place in the C&C universe, certainly Red Alert 3 is going to be everything that the hardcore fans have been looking for. It's going to have that trademark, light, humorous, fun, Saturday matinee popcorn feel to it, with live-action cinematics and all these great actors chewing up the stage.

IGN: Is that what you consider to be the distinction that makes Red Alert different?

Chris Corry: We think of there being two universes that reside under the Command & Conquer brand. When we think about Command & Conquer, we think about sort of a style of play. So it's fast, fun, fluid RTS gameplay. But then underneath that we have the Tiberium universe, which C&C 3 lived in and that's the dark, gritty, brooding sci-fi world of Kane and Nod and GDI. It touches on some pretty serious themes; environmentalism, religion versus science, and other themes. And it really chronicles the journey of Kane.



Blimps are cool.

And then very distinct and separate from that we have the Red Alert universe. We really think of Red Alert being not so much about World War II or the Cold War, but it really is about time travel and the unintended consequences that can occur from meddling in areas that no man has a right to. The way that manifests itself in the game is this series of alternate histories. In Red Alert 2--and we're carrying it through to Red Alert 3--it's also kind of a fundamental shift in tone where we're trying to not take ourselves nearly as seriously as the Tiberium universe does. There's a little bit of tongue-in-cheek there, and it really is about that humorous, bright saturated experience, as opposed to that dark, gritty, sci-fi experience.

IGN: Tell us about the setting and the story, and is it directly related or connected to the events of the last game, or is it a completely different timeline?

Chris Corry: I touched on that time travel theme. The events that kick off Red Alert 3 really come back to that. Our story opens with the Allies and the Soviets going at it again, but this time the Allies have beaten the Soviets back and have the upper hand. The Soviet leadership is cowering behind the walls of the Kremlin; their defeat is imminent and all but certain. At that point, sort of crazed with desperation, the leadership descends into the bowels of the Kremlin into their secret labs where they have this skunk works project going on. They fire up this prototype of this device which is a time machine that's never been used before. And their intention is to go back in time and erase Albert Einstein from the timeline. Of course, Albert Einstein in the previous games has been instrumental in the technological advances that made the Allies so successful...

IGN: And he shot Hitler!

Chris Corry: And you see that kind of parallel there from Red Alert 1, which has kind of a similar dynamic with Einstein going back to erase Hitler.

So the Soviet leadership goes back [in time] and they do it. They take our good man Albert out. They come back to the present day and it looks like the operation has been a resounding success. Moscow and the Kremlin have been resorted to their former glory. It looks like the operation has gone off magnificently. Of course, that lasts for a healthy two minutes, and then all of a sudden alarms and klaxons start going off, and all the monitors come to life, and the aids come rushing in and they realize that they're under attack. But they're not under attack this time from the Allies. They're under attack from this huge, intimidating superpower that they have inadvertently spawned on the world stage: the technology cult of the Empire of the Rising Sun. And they realize with this sinking feeling in their gut that by meddling with time, they haven't erased the Allies. The Allies are still there; the Allies are still a threat. But they've actually spawned a second mortal enemy, and that kicks off the third Red Alert war, where we now have this triumvirate of the Soviet, the Allies, and the Empire of the Rising Sun.

IGN: You say that and everyone is going to think Japan.

Chris Corry: It is Japan. I really like to call them the Empire of the Rising Sun because it makes them more ominous and it makes them different. And they are different. The great thing about using Japan is that it works for us in a lot of great ways. We wanted to make sure that we were brining something new and fresh and exciting to the Red Alert experience, and Japan was a really great choice for us because it has this really great wealth of historical and cultural touchstones that we can riff on. Everyone knows about ninjas and samurais and anime mecha. At the same time we've got full license to make them a little bit mysterious and maybe confound expectations a bit as well.

IGN: Ninja mecha. Ninja mecha.

Chris Corry: I'm not saying that there are ninjas. I'm not saying there are mecha. But I'm saying that if I were making a game with the Empire of the Rising Sun in it, you'd kind of want to put ninja and mecha in it, wouldn't you?

Land and sea combat.

IGN: That's the new faction. Are all the factions completely rebuilt from scratch?

Chris Corry: They're pretty different. In the previous two Red Alert games, the Allies and the Soviet factions have been pretty different. Certainly, the Empire of the Rising Sun is going to be very different as well. In practical terms, all three factions have a very different build mechanic. For the Empire of the Rising Sun, we're keeping information about that faction a little close to the vest, but there are some themes that you see there. They're certainly the most technologically advanced. They're a dominant naval power. Unit transformation plays a significant role in that faction. There's certainly a lot in that faction that you don't see in the Soviets and Allies.

IGN: It wouldn't be Red Alert without the live-action cutscenes. What do you have in mind?

Chris Corry: We really do think the live-action cinematics are a staple of the Red Alert series. We're going pretty full bore with the cinematics this time. We're going to have more than an hour of cinematics; it's almost a minimovie that we're shooting for this. We're not quite ready to talk about the cast. We've got almost the entire cast locked down, but until we actually do the cinematics shoot, which we're currently scheduled to do in mid April, we won't be talking about that. Until I've got the movie stars in their seats and doing their stuff, it doesn't feel real.

IGN: Where does the filming take place at? Los Angeles? Vancouver?

Chris Corry: It's LA. We do SAG shoots here in LA and it's actually amazing to me. Before C&C 3, I'd never been on a movie set, and that really is what these are. These are full-on movie productions. We use movie production houses, we use a real movie DP [director of photography], and of course we're using real movie talent. We put a great deal of energy and time and attention into building elaborate sets and shooting a lot of green and doing a pretty aggressive post-production schedule where we do a lot of the sort of things that you would see in a Hollywood feature.

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