Tempest Rising (new Command & Conquer and Red Alert like game from 3D Realms)

Blake00

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Anyone who's followed my work in the Civ2 forums on the Red Alert 2 Seige of New York scenario and C&C Tiberian Sun African Campaign Scenario Remaster knows I'm a big retro Command & Conquer fan. Us fans have been waiting a long time for a new game to come from EA, and a lot of us hoped the recent remasters would lead to more remasters of 2nd generation C&C games or new sequels but in the years since we’ve heard nothing from EA still.

However thankfully other smaller studios are stepping up (eg Global Conflagration and Fractured Alliance) and those retro loving guys at 3D Realms have decided to dip their toes into the RTS genre (normally they do FPS games!) and create a new game called Tempest Rising that’s very VERY Command & Conquer and Red Alert looking but with modern graphics and lighting effects and my word does it look good! Alternative war history? Check! Strange alien resource spreading all over the earth? Check! Allied global defense forces trying to keep the peace? Check! Eastern European faction obsessed with obtaining god like powers from the alien resource? Check! Single player campaigns separated by badass cutscenes & face to face mission briefings? Check! Sick Frank Klepacki style synth rock album? Check! This just might the new C&C and RA like game we’ve been waiting for!

Steam:

Trailer:

First Gameplay footage:

Gamescon Gameplay footage:

Screenshots:
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I do now. :yeah:

I'm not too picky about my RTS, but the inevitable question is: "What new dish does it bring to the potluck?" I do like this plan for "Tempest" yielding greater returns if left to mature: the idea that the resource actually takes practical management to avoid overexploiting is weirdly underrealized in these sorts of games. As pointed out in the AoM retrospective, one of the biggest challenges for the post-RA2 gen was solving for turtle tactics, and incentivizing mining further afield is a step in the right direction.

Cor but "GDF" is calling it danger close. :mischief:
 
As pointed out in the AoM retrospective, one of the biggest challenges for the post-RA2 gen was solving for turtle tactics, and incentivizing mining further afield is a step in the right direction.
Heh my mates and I occasionally play AoM at our LAN parties. It's a classic!
And yeah putting incentives around the map to force exploring is definitely a good idea. I remember Warcraft 3 did a good job of that too with various villages and camps you could conquer for artifacts to put on your heroes.
 
The available shots make it look...dark. One reason I keep playing RA2 (and Civ3) is because the landscape and units are attractive and easy to distinguish. Will definitely be watching, though. I'd like something like Generals again...I enjoyed the realism of that more than the attack dolphins and bears (and mechs) of the RA series.
 
Yeah it's funny the RA games usually had better graphics plus balancing and therefore gameplay since they came after each new C&C tiberium game. However for universe, art style and atmosphere I always preferred the more serious tiberium series with C&C2 Tiberian Sun being my favourite. I loved those dark moody night missions where parts of the map glowed in the dark eg glowing green tiberium fields and glowing red Nod bases. I still remember getting goosebumps when I first saw the first GDI mission where you drop in from orbit at night and are surrounded by glowing stuff and moving search lights, that mission is dead simple yet I still replay it occasionally for nostalgia.

I guess these guys are big fans of that moody C&C2 stuff too.. however maybe they'll do bright day time missions too.
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It's funny, I had a hard time getting into Tiberian Sun partly because of that dreariness. :p (C&C3's high contrast gave me mixed feelings.) The lighting's not terrible but infantry legibility seems shaky: one thing Generals seems to have learned from Emperor is that foot units should be easily recognizable at a distance.

I remember arguing with someone here who claimed RA was "always" camp: I'll go to bat that Eugene Dynarski played Stalin better than native actors. RA2 was definitely more playful, but there's a lot of Fridge Horror lurking just around the corner (Chrono Legionnaire, anyone?) that with a little nudge could easily tip the comedy into catastrophe. A friend of mine wrote a fanfic novelization of RA2, and oftentimes it reads much more like World in Conflict.

RA3... There's a YouTube comment hiding somewhere that summed it up best: "RA2 is like watching a parody of an 80s porno. RA3 is the porno."
 
I do now. :yeah:

I'm not too picky about my RTS, but the inevitable question is: "What new dish does it bring to the potluck?" I do like this plan for "Tempest" yielding greater returns if left to mature: the idea that the resource actually takes practical management to avoid overexploiting is weirdly underrealized in these sorts of games. As pointed out in the AoM retrospective, one of the biggest challenges for the post-RA2 gen was solving for turtle tactics, and incentivizing mining further afield is a step in the right direction.
I like turtle tactics though. In particular I really like the turtle up, build giant army and steamroll your enemy style of tactics.

That play style can be really fun. And in addition making it both viable and strong as a late game play style is what best incentivizes aggressive play so as to NOT allow the turtling player to reach the tipping point of no return. So it's win win.

Indeed, my main gripe against the post RA2 RTS games was the incessant and annoying insistence of rapid high micro gameplay. Like, I want my strategy game to be about strategy. As in planning and positioning and stuff. Not a twitch shooter.
 
I mean I'm the guy who can never get into WARNO and its ilk because I was doing No-Death Runs on reflex before I knew they were A Thing™, so I'm more playing Devil's Advocate for the multiplayer crowd. :p
 
lol yeah I'm a total turtle - must build the biggest defenses - must research all techs/buildings/units in RTS kinda guy too lol.. and yeah usually the games where they made static defenses and even top tear units feel like glass were not my favourite!

That's also why I sometimes get annoyed with OpenRA and Dune 2 Legacy as static defenses feel almost useless and you just end up having to try and out build the AI on unit production which not easy as usually the AIs have like 20 harvesters lol. Whereas in the original games static defenses were stronger and the AI harvesters were limited.. however yeah.. multiplayer balancing and pro players getting too good at crushing AIs changed all that in the fan remakes.
 
you just end up having to try and out build the AI on unit production
Au contraire: I've basically perfected the art of surgical force in singleplayer. :cool: 3–5 tanks, 2–4 artillery, a couple of ack-acks and mixed infantry in the back (to catch breakthroughs) are enough to hold a front with proper micro even without turrets: the arty blunts the initial mechanized push, and then the infantry just blunders into the kill zone. Enemy artillery is the main challenge but a fast detachment/air flight can flank 'em before they find range. As the Allies, you have the added bonus of medics and technicians, which basically makes you impregnable.

4/6 Longbows/MiGs are enough to snipe a harvester and the AI usually won't build them back fast enough to keep its budget balanced; after clearing out the mid-field, I go after the power plants to disable base AA (the AI concentrates its turrets on a single vector which usually leaves an exploitable corridor on the edges). Unlike the original game, the AI doesn't sell off structures when it's out of cash, so if it's out of power and out of harvs, it's just a matter of finishing off the straggling units and then capturing the base at leisure.

Thank Christ for the pause key because I could never tune tactics this fine in the original game. :p
 
That's another thing. I newer really got into multiplayer in RTS games. Like, if I wanted to spend time with other people I would go outside and talk to them. Or get counterstrike or something.
What I want from my strategy games is fun singleplayer action. Preferably in the form of a good campaign.

Red Alert 2 did that part the best in my view. Every mission in that is a puzzle that you can solve. And once you figure it out you can easily beat it under par time. But if you can't figure it out the option is always there to just brute force through it anyway.
 
I was largely locked out of multiplayer by poor Internet, and when my friend ran LAN parties they were FPSes through and through—I think we managed the OG StarCraft once. :p

We definitely lost something when the industry pivoted to eSports in the late 2000s: C&C3 played a lot faster than I was used to, and RA3 was very clearly oriented to multiplayer, with virtually every mission optimized for co-op, and special abilities I sometimes feel bordered on complexity for its own sake. Company of Heroes still had a pause key so methodical players weren't overwhelmed, but in most other titles it felt like you were intentionally being shorted for time to quicken the action and/or sharpen the tourney crowd to the bleeding edge, with the more complex logistics dumbed down streamlined in favour of PvP (see: harvester swarms replaced by point-control tactics).

The consequence was that campaigns were no longer stories in their own right, but an obligatory tack-on serving as an extended tutorial; gone were "puzzle" missions that mashed up the arsenal in ways you'd never see in online matches, because why waste time on something that'll never go competitive? (Uprising as singleplayer-only struck me as odd, then when I finally played it I realized they probably hadn't optimized balance for MP.) I basically gave up on Tom Clancy's EndWar when every battle progressed essentially the same way and half your progress was being decided by RNG. The apotheosis, of course, was Tiberian Twilight, which was literally a spinoff MOBA repackaged at the last second to milk brand recognition.

I follow Rimmy pretty steadily, and given most of his actual gaming is with friends, when he gets excited about the singleplayer I start taking notes. :cool:

But if you can't figure it out the option is always there to just brute force through it anyway.
> Zhukov moment.
 
Been forgetting to check up on this and see how it's been going...

On their steam news page they've been posting a lot of the soundtrack.. naturally all very C&C and Red Alert inspired.. some are really good!


They've also been posting more cool screenshots and concept art..

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And more gameplay videos and dev diaries..



Also I've updated my original post as I failed to notice the Gamescon 2022 gameplay footage that shows the awesome C&C like briefing intro and outro sequences for missions using very nice graphics that really set the mood.

 
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I like what I'm seeing. Maybe it's just the FMV nostalgia, but it never occurred to me that the tête-à-tête briefing could be done digitally—and that opens up a whole swath of dynamic flavour. They seem to be hinting at a persistent force element between missions: Tiberian Sun originally planned for something similar with the command ships but it was cut for time constraints. The 'loyalty' mini-missions call to mind Emperor and how your support (or lack thereof) in the field affected alignment of the Fremen, Sardaukar, Ix and Tleilaxu. (Design-wise, Emperor's campaign was the most innovative of the Westwood era; it's just a shame the constant push-pull turned the late game into a Groundhog Day slog.) Back when C&C Remastered was first announced and people were speccing wishlists for a future title, Emperor's dynamism was front and centre of my mind... and so, it seems, of this team's. :cool:

Aside: I find it hilarious a comment on the music slags Klepacki as stuck in a rut when my first thought was a lot of these industrial tracks feel like riffs from his studio albums. :lol: (Come to think of it, faction-tailored soundtracks were another Emperor innovation...)
 
Yeah when I saw a few months back that briefings & cutscenes would be in-game/engine instead of FMV the retro nostalgic C&C lover in me was a bit sad, but to now see in that Gamescom footage just how good their engine is and how stunning those briefings and cutscenes look.. I'm aaaaalllllllllll good with it now. And yeah the whole interactive command HQ stuff where you can talk to people and upgrade your troops and hire stuff was an unexpected cool surprise! I LOVED in Sarcraft 2 Wings of Liberty how you could walk around your command ship visiting the bridge, bar and science labs talking to crew members and researching/purchasing things. In fact I think I often spent just as much time in those intermission sequences as I did playing the friggin missions themselves haha! And I remember back then thinking "imagine if the C&C games had this and you could walk around a secret NOD base talking to Kane and other people".. so to see that these guys are doing something like that in Tempest is super cool. Really ups the immersion.

Emperor Battle for Dune is so underrated.. such a shame it wasn't polished and added to for a bit. It's soundtrack was just amazing.. all the Harkonnen songs.. I tribute Dune games on my old website and use a bunch of Emperor songs for the tributes.

Lol yeah I think someone got a little bit too excited over the Tempest music hey haha. It's all sounding super cool but no need to throw shade on Klepacki when the Tempest guys are clearly doing it in his style.

Annoyingly the THQ Nordic folks haven't updated their Tempest OST playlist with all the tracks (I might msg them about it) but this search seems to get all 7 released so far.. good stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/@THQNordicInside/search?query=Tempest Rising OST
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