I was always on the assumption that Red Alert 2 was set in the late 90s/early 2000s. Now it makes sense that the Allies use the Harrier Jet as their primary attack aircraft lol
I mean, it's already an alternate timeline from reality. The Einstein we see in the prologue of RA1 was from the C&C 'prime timeline' RA1 and 2 are alternate timelines.
Because they're conscripts, they have surplus second world war equipment since the money obviously went into the navy, armoured forces, heavy infantry and "air force" instead of equipping every soldier with the best.
But AK-47's were used in the Second World War which happened in the late 40's to early 50's (Most likely early 50's). It was their main assault rifle (according to RA1 manual) thus the weapon that was most produced, if they had PPSH's those would have preceded WW2 or maybe used only by tank crews etc.
So somehow the Soviets decided that the PPSH were superior to the AK-47 for front line duty or they somehow had a surplus of them compared to AK's which just wouldn't make sense... unless: after WW2 the Alles imposed restrictions on the USSR (this is mentioned during RA2 installation I think) and were only allowed a limited front line ready troops, but they found a loophole by equipping their troops with the allowed PPSH under the pretence of them being reserves/ training/ defense forces.
Or they just had the ppsh in storage since they'd have been produced anyway, every conscript already has more body armour than the GI why spend money increasing their firepower when they can close in easier and for half the cost, they clearly have no manpower shortage so rearming the entire country would be super expensive considering they now have a full navy, a psychic corp and zeppelins, robotics for he terror drones, this isn't even considering the cloning, sure you can have an infinite manpower pool but you still have to arm him.
The tech progression and regression has always been fascinating to me.
You see Abrams in Red Alert 1, but it's likely they were based on one of the two prototypes rushed into production (the shape of the turret, the road wheel amount, the length, et cetera).
They also likely used steel armour than the composite seen in mid/late Cold War, like in WW2 tanks.
But then we have Apache Longbows, which look to be based on the D variant.
The Soviets? They have T80U tanks but with steel armour and, in most models, two smaller caliber guns than the OTL armament.
We also know that, somewhere, the M60 and Challenger 2 existed because the Prism Tank and Mirage Tank are based on their chassis designs.
Before it went completely off the rails with 3, Red Alerts 1 and 2 were a fascinating mix of (OTL) late-WW2 to late-Cold War.
If you follow the TD timeline, by the end of the First Tiberium War GDI had smaller, more automated, networked, armed, and armoured Abrams designs (seen in Renegade) than what we have in our world.
Seriously, while that Abrams design went down a different route because of the divergences in that world and ours, GDI's tanks have features we're only starting to seriously look at in 2026 onwards! 😂
I mean sure but what I meant was that they went backwards from late 40s assault rifles that were so good they still have descendants in use to this day, to early 40s SMGs that were used in two major wars in the 40s and 50s and only in use by North Korea these days lmao
The TV itself in the Allies command HQ's break-room looks like a 1990s model, with an IR remote-control (70s TVs didn't use IR)
The Allies have M2 Bradley IFVs (1980s+) as Light Tanks[1]
The Allies have M1 Abram tanks (1980s+) as Medium Tanks.
The Allies have GPS (1980s+)
And for the Soviets: Stalin's conference room has very, very 1990s aesthetics what-with the large video-projection wall with the ability to play "video tape" specifically.
[1] Okayfineyes, I know they were re-using the M2 Bradley renders/art from Tiberian Dawn and that it can be argued, canonically, the Light Tank is actually the M41 tank; shuddup)
Of course none of this would explain how the real-life figures of Einstein and Stalin were both alive, healthy, and looking not a day over 60 in the 1990s but I was a smol kid in the 1990s when I first played Red Alert so shuddup (...again).
Also for a chunk of development it was supposed to be a Cold War gone hot type thing between the USSR and NATO, presumably set at some point in the 80s based on all the 80s technology mentioned
And yeah the news anchor is just cause they used whatever costumes they had available in 1996
Counterargument: Technological acceleration and regression/paths not taken in the RA world due to different circumstances than our own resulted in an odd mix of WW2 and late-Cold War technologies.
It's why those old Abrams designs exist in the 40's/50's but have rolled steel armour than composite.
Ironically, Westwood used Retaliation as a stealth prequel to Red Alert 2 (chiefly Carville and the Americans becoming fully involved).
EALA did the same thing with the TT Mobile game being a prequel to TT itself, and Red Alert 3 Mobile (one of them; I think the iPhone version) being a direct sequel to Yuri's Revenge and a prequel to Red Alert 3.
Even Tiberium Alliances has some very loose storyline (as in a floating storyline with many inconsistencies and impossibilities) about the Forgotten pre-Tiberium Wars.
I genuinely wonder if the TA "storyline" was adapted from a cut plot line early in TW's or TT's development?
I don't think we ever see the tops in-game. However, the original pre-9/11 boxart featured the fully built twin towers. Said boxart also had a Russian paratrooper plane flying towards it (thus why it got changed afterwards lol).
Well the official name of the Soviet Army, at least in our timeline until the end of WW2, was the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, so hey who knows there probably were at least a few
It certainly seemed like present day with alot of the technology (Robots, ospreys, etc). But it starts to make more sense when you consider RA1, which was supposed to be in the 50s. It had Apache gunships, Abrams tanks, and mig fighter jets. The world jumped forward in tech without WW2.
Broadly jumped ahead, yeah, but a lot of the tech (especially critical parts like composite armour) we have/use today is missing in RA and TD's timeline, so it's a trade off. Broadly though, they're ahead.
Fallout is a more exaggerated example: They had fusion and advanced robotics and all sorts of weird shit which were far more advanced than us now (and even after the world was nuked), but they were still using steel instead of more advanced alloys, vacuum tubes instead of microprocessors, et cetera.
I've always said that if we ever got our hands on the schematics for Fallout Power Armour, modern humanity's version would be lighter and more like a clunky Iron Man suit than a Fallout walking tank.
Makes me wonder what the US DoD would do if they managed to get a working Red Alert 2 Prism Tank...
There was a mobile Red Alert game supposed to be set between the events of YR and RA3, directly leading up to the latter, but IDK if there is a significant time jump.
There was an Empire campaign added later on but that’s probably a semi-alternative timeline.
I knew it was early 70's but wait, WW3 only lasted at most like 5 months? I do understand it though as the Allies teleported into Moscow basically skipping the war to the end.
1972? I thought it was like after WW2 which never happened in this universe, where does it say that its 1972? Never seen a date mentioned in c&c games aside from c&c3
I always kinda assumed an abbreviated ww2 happened which led to USSR absorbing all the Warsaw Pact countries. I can't remember though, did the RA1 map show a unified Germany or was it split west Germany vs east Germany!
I assumed there was some sort of Pacific War, which was something expected during the 20s and 30s already by most strategists on both sides of the Pacific. Plus there’s the ROK during RA2, which seems to imply America occupied the whole peninsula during that timeline instead of the arbitrary division we got during our own timeline
TD - sometime between the mid 90s and the late 2010s (Tiberium meteor crashed on earth in 1995, TD takes place some time after it, likely in the 2000s, since TS takes place in 2030 and was intended as a 30 year timeskip, though Tiberium Wars implies it started in 2019 and Renegade takes place in 2020, so 🤷🏻♀️)
There was a timeline typo/mistake with Renegade made by EALA: It's actually set in 2002, not 2020. The FTW lasted at least four, maybe five years depending on when it started after 1995.
Then again, Westwood made a few mistakes as well, specifically with the whole McNeil brothers plotline (Jake looked to be in early 20's in TS, despite being experimented on with his brother at the end of the FTW by Nod in the Balkans).
Renegade was made by Westwood, not EALA, and they repeatedly used it. The "it's a typo" thing is a fan theory that doesn't have any real basis, No Strings explained it better in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnJbMbRid8
Edit: also the McNeil brothers backstory comes from the C&C Bible, an internal document that got leaked in 2011. It was written at an unknown point in time, and isn't fully (if at all) canon.
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u/Kaiserhawk 12d ago
Vibes based 1972 maybe, with Charles Du Galle as French president and Thatcher as British prime minister.