BT: So, why did you decide to focus Kane’s Wrath solely around Kane instead of the GDI or the Scrin? The new story jumps around the C&C narrative an awful lot, but it’s always focused on Kane.
JV: That’s mainly a result of the fans loving Kane so much. Whenever we can we try to get feedback from the fans and it’s always stuff like “We love Kane”, “We really like Joe”, or “We need more Kane!” So, because everyone wanted to see more of the Brotherhood of Nod we felt it was finally time to address those requests and just kind of dive into Kane himself.
So, what we do with Kane’s Wrath is show Kane evolving over this twenty year period. We start at the end of the second Tiberium War where Tiberium Sun left off where Kane was just defeated and is physically weak. Act One is very much that look at Kane’s inner circle and a personal look at him. Then we slowly evolve it from there as Kane slowly regains his power and begins to achieve his goals of ascension and so on.
It’s very much a reaction to the fan response – they loved Kane to death and so we really wanted to deliver more Kane.
BT: Were you worried at all that by catering to the older and more hardcore fans of C&C that you might alienate new fans?
JV: Not necessarily. Although we kind of doubled-down on the historical aspects of Kane, we still have a lot of these new characters, like Natasha and Carl who are both brand new to the fiction, to kind of bring in. So, we’ve got a good balance of these new characters that the new fans can tie themselves to, but we also have Kane that the old fans can really understand and get to know more of. There’s a lot of little tricks and inside information that we deliver there about Kane too.
The new fans are learning a lot about Kane too though. They’re learning about his personality and his charisma and they can pick up all these things. It’s really a mixture of the two – the old fans expect the history to be there, but the new fans want to see it too and learn about the Tiberium universe.
BT: Can you tell us a little bit about the interface for the Xbox 360 version and how it works?
JV: Sure! We have a brand new console interface for Kane’s Wrath compared to Tiberium Wars. It’s called the Command Stick Interface.
How it works is; when you pull down the trigger you’re presented with a twelve slot radial interface in the middle of the screen very much like a clock if you can imagine that. Using the left analogue stick you’re able to highlight any of those different slots and activate them with the A button. Within those slots we have everything – build queues, unit abilities, support, control groups.
It’s just a much more accessible and fast way to go through all the different commands you want to do in an RTS game – especially compared to Tiberium Wars, where everything was tied to the D-pad.
What this means now is that the player can manage unlimited build queues from anywhere on the map – unlimited airfields, barracks and so on – manage all those by just drilling through these radial menus. We’ve found in our tests that it’s just a much faster experience and we’re starting to really be able to unlock the full potential of the strategy game.
BT: Did you get any feedback from the fans on any specific things they wanted to see improved from Command and Conquer 3?
JV: Yeah, absolutely. What we did find immediately was that people didn’t think that the D-Pad was fast or comfortable enough to really utilise in an RTS game. That was kind of the first thing we wanted to do – to try and find a new and natural evolution to the radial interface. And that’s kind of what the new interface does.
Also, just in terms of the gameplay, a lot of people found Tiberium Wars was pretty tough and was very difficult on Xbox 360. With the new interface though and with the game in general we think we’ve made it easier by tuning the campaign a bit more and made it a better balance of difficulty.
Plus, a lot of the new units and the whole idea of just going back in time and looking at Kane and so on – all that was based on player responses.
JV: That’s mainly a result of the fans loving Kane so much. Whenever we can we try to get feedback from the fans and it’s always stuff like “We love Kane”, “We really like Joe”, or “We need more Kane!” So, because everyone wanted to see more of the Brotherhood of Nod we felt it was finally time to address those requests and just kind of dive into Kane himself.
So, what we do with Kane’s Wrath is show Kane evolving over this twenty year period. We start at the end of the second Tiberium War where Tiberium Sun left off where Kane was just defeated and is physically weak. Act One is very much that look at Kane’s inner circle and a personal look at him. Then we slowly evolve it from there as Kane slowly regains his power and begins to achieve his goals of ascension and so on.
It’s very much a reaction to the fan response – they loved Kane to death and so we really wanted to deliver more Kane.
BT: Were you worried at all that by catering to the older and more hardcore fans of C&C that you might alienate new fans?
JV: Not necessarily. Although we kind of doubled-down on the historical aspects of Kane, we still have a lot of these new characters, like Natasha and Carl who are both brand new to the fiction, to kind of bring in. So, we’ve got a good balance of these new characters that the new fans can tie themselves to, but we also have Kane that the old fans can really understand and get to know more of. There’s a lot of little tricks and inside information that we deliver there about Kane too.
The new fans are learning a lot about Kane too though. They’re learning about his personality and his charisma and they can pick up all these things. It’s really a mixture of the two – the old fans expect the history to be there, but the new fans want to see it too and learn about the Tiberium universe.
BT: Can you tell us a little bit about the interface for the Xbox 360 version and how it works?
JV: Sure! We have a brand new console interface for Kane’s Wrath compared to Tiberium Wars. It’s called the Command Stick Interface.
How it works is; when you pull down the trigger you’re presented with a twelve slot radial interface in the middle of the screen very much like a clock if you can imagine that. Using the left analogue stick you’re able to highlight any of those different slots and activate them with the A button. Within those slots we have everything – build queues, unit abilities, support, control groups.
It’s just a much more accessible and fast way to go through all the different commands you want to do in an RTS game – especially compared to Tiberium Wars, where everything was tied to the D-pad.
What this means now is that the player can manage unlimited build queues from anywhere on the map – unlimited airfields, barracks and so on – manage all those by just drilling through these radial menus. We’ve found in our tests that it’s just a much faster experience and we’re starting to really be able to unlock the full potential of the strategy game.
BT: Did you get any feedback from the fans on any specific things they wanted to see improved from Command and Conquer 3?
JV: Yeah, absolutely. What we did find immediately was that people didn’t think that the D-Pad was fast or comfortable enough to really utilise in an RTS game. That was kind of the first thing we wanted to do – to try and find a new and natural evolution to the radial interface. And that’s kind of what the new interface does.
Also, just in terms of the gameplay, a lot of people found Tiberium Wars was pretty tough and was very difficult on Xbox 360. With the new interface though and with the game in general we think we’ve made it easier by tuning the campaign a bit more and made it a better balance of difficulty.
Plus, a lot of the new units and the whole idea of just going back in time and looking at Kane and so on – all that was based on player responses.
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