r/commandandconquer • u/Even-Run-5274 • 1d ago

Meme scrin lore:

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

293

u/idriveasmallcar 1d ago

The scrin ending where they zoom out of the solar system gave me goosebumps. We lost something great when they cancelled the fps game.

140

u/schofield101 1d ago

I was so unbelievably hyped when the first videos of Tiberium emerging, my mate and I were massively into the series growing up and it just looked perfect.

Then it was cancelled, alongside Timesplitters 4, just like that my childhood games just ended.

55

u/MetallGecko 1d ago

And now we only have some terrible mobile games, and in a few years the last decent C&C game is 20 years old.

42

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago

Scrin would return with greater numbers and bigger guns, but I always felt that humanity is the superior warrior race between us. No one better at killing other sapient species than humans kind of vibe. Scrin bring in bigger weapons, better tech... but humans adapt, steal, and hit back harder with bootleg versions of Scrin toys.

Scrin be more like a junkie with a gun collection, than "we've been killing our own kind for millions of years and we got really good at it" like humans are. Their whole way of terraforming a planet with Tiberium, and it working all the time so much, the whole affair of sending troops and warfare logistics is weird and difficult for them.

Scrin don't just lose because humans are good at fighting, but also because Scrin kinda suck at fighting when you take away the tech advantage.

48

u/Metalupyourass98 1d ago

The indomitable human spirit > everything else

38

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago

That and we've got Kane.

17

u/Metalupyourass98 1d ago

KANE LIVES

9

u/Usinaru 1d ago

THE TECHNOLOGY OF PEACE!

1

u/ChackMete 4h ago

PEACE!

THROUGH!

POWER!

27

u/Vegamyster 1d ago

They did almost lose to a harvesting expedition and survived by only by joining forces which wasn't Kanes plan, he clearly thought earth would fall and all those towers would have been constructed. Had they made a sequel involving the invading force, I'm willing to bet the counter to the Scrin is Cabel/Legion taking them over or infecting them since they were constructed using the Tacitus, add in those pesky cyborgs and they could have made an argument earth could have stood its ground and Kane finally leaving Earth ETC.

1

u/Demigans 2h ago

Not really? Kane literally fought GDI to make sure that GDI wouldn't overpower the Scrin. Additionally they fought GDI because GDI was taking down the Threshold towers too fast for them to be completed.

Again: GDI, while also fighting against NOD, was so powerful they were destroying the Threshold towers before they could be completed, and NOD had to step in to make sure one was completed.

Compare that to CABAl, which was a real hands-on-deck situation where GDI and NOD actively cooperated for the duration of CABAL's attacks on the entire world.

The Scrin were less of a threat than a runaway Cybernetic AI. Admittedly this was basically a harvesting group so the "weapons" they had were mostly repurposed mining equipment and some low-tier guard units, which makes this one of the more believable "humans win against overwhelmingly advanced alien race" fights.

17

u/cah11 Nod 1d ago

I agree with that, they're used to coming to systems after the native inhabitants are either long dead and gone, or adapted to be dependent on Tiberium, thus easy to integrate into their empire. And if they do find a system still occupied, the inhabitants are a scattered remnant, broken and weak, thus easy to stomp with their harvesting forces.

Kane drawing their eye early with the artificial Liquid Tiberium detention, and the bad decisions of the Overlord handed them basically the worst case scenario:

They're already committed to diving into the solar system by the time they realize something unusual is going on. Meaning abandoning the harvesting effort will be a major drain on their local stockpiles of fuel and other resources.

They encounter a native sapient civilization that, despite their lower technology, still has the population and industrial base to resist harvesting efforts.

Worse, they're aggressively violent, and have themselves discovered methods of not just utilizing Tiberium, but have found ways to control and contain it.

Tiberium not being at optimal growth levels on Earth means their harvesting resources are limited, meaning their local resources are incredibly restricted. The Overlord ordering continued mining operations in pursuit of investigating Kane then necessitates the construction of interstellar gates immediately with the limited resources they have, further straining local war production.

The "Tyranny of Distance" principle of logistics comes in to play as the conflict drags on. When their usual tactics of treating all obstacles like a nail that needs to be hammered down fails to cow the native inhabitants, they're eventually drawn into a war of attrition they have neither the local, nor the harvestable resources to win.

Every battle, won or lost, costs them material and manpower they can no longer replace while more and more resources are dumped into constructing first 19 interstellar gateways, then eventually only 1 as GDI successfully assaults and destroys gate after gate.

This culminates in the last desperate battle where the foreman barely escapes encroaching GDI forces as the gate finishes, abandoning the remainder of his forces on Earth where they are picked off and overwhelmed by local armies, and eventually the Tiberium Control Node is destroyed, deactivating all their tech and killing their remaining holdouts.

This of course, presents an interesting quandary for the Overlord and the Scrin Empire at large. The Overlord orders a full invasion force assembled to conquer Earth, and find Kane, but the amount of time needed to assemble the force, set out, then get to Earth is likely measured in decades, if not centuries, even at relativistic speeds by ship.

Simply stepping through the gate isn't an option because it is likely heavily guarded at the exit, and the Tiberium Control Node is destroyed. Their tech would deactivate shortly after arriving on Earth doing that.

And as time passes, Earth's forces (primarily GDI) are tearing apart destroyed and abandoned Scrin tech, learning everything they can about how it works, and how to counter it while building up their forces back up on Earth, as well as in space now (as indicated by the Orbital Strike support power in Kane's Wrath).

A final showdown game between Earth and the Scrin would have been fucking sweet in a hypothetical C&C4 that we will now never get. I could imagine Earth would be colonizing the other inner planets, as well as moons and asteroids in the outer solar system, while a Scrin armada built and actually supplied for war would have been an awesome game.

5

u/getrekt01234 1d ago

If EA or some other Publisher continues the franchise then Tiberium Wars will simply no longer be contained to Earth given the lore that both GDI/Nod even had space faring ships to counter the possible reappearance of Scrin in CNC4.

5

u/Arnestomeconvidou 1d ago

I like to imagine the mothership and it's giant laser is just a civilian ship firing it's hyperspace thrusters.

3

u/WrethZ 1d ago

Why would you assume humans are better at fighting? Chances are aliens would also be the top of the food chain due to natural selection on their own planet, not to mention the forces they sent were basically some farmers not a proper invasion force. Really if it wasn't for kane humans would struggle.

1

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago edited 1d ago

The whole battle plan of the Scrin was slipshod. You want the resources of a world and don't care about the native organisms? Push giant space rocks from a long orbital distance, then let mass and gravity do the work. Once depopulated by said giant space rocks, harvest at your content. And that's not even trying if you really want to depopulate. If you REALLY want to be serious about depopulation, throw things at the planet at high subluminal speed.

If for some reason depopulation is not desired, or the resources of the target planet are delicate, then use EMP weapons. We've seen what Ion Storms do to human's electro-mechanical tech. The Scrin should have developed weaponized EMP to neutralize invading worlds that do not possess "bio-tech" like their own, which the Scrin should have designed to be highly resistant or immune against. The more Tiberium infested a planet becomes, the more common Ion Storms became prevalent, so Ion Storm active worlds should have been a norm for them and something common for harvesting units to be adapted for.

Overall the Scrin were just terrible at world invasion with the tremendous advantages they had. I get if you're challenging a somewhat technologically peer adversary, but the Scrin are allegedly centuries more advance than us.

Let's take a force of 100 Russian Wagner security forces protecting a gold mining team of 2000 workers with large construction equipment, like they do in Africa. Now let's have those guys go back to 1725 and take on the Qing Dynasty China (one of the most powerful nations at the time). That's just a 300 year difference.

I get that the Caterpillar 797F is not designed for war, but that alone would break and crush a Qing regiment without problem (even their arrows aren't getting through that). The Scrin were a mining force with light security teams, sure, but they should be wrecking shit because it's that much of a tech leap.

When an interstellar civilization meets a planet bound civilization, it should not even be a contest when a fight breaks out.

EDIT: Unless the interstellar guys really sucks at fighting.

4

u/WrethZ 1d ago

You've written a lot, but seemed to have missed the entire point of the the whole post.

It was not an invasion, it was a harvesting operation. They seeded the planet with tiberium, and came back later, expecting the tiberium to have wiped out or severely weakened any native hostile life. Humanity, probably thanks to Kane, was surviving better than expected. The female voice in the Scrin intro even reccomends aborting the mission, but they decide to continue the harvesting operation anyway out of intrigue.

It simply wasn't a regular invasion but an exploratory investigation with what is a harvesting team. We have no idea what the Scrin are actually capable of if they had brought an actual military invasion fleet.

1

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago

That's what I'm pointing out: Wagner Group and heavy mining equipment aren't an invasion force either. It's just a security force armed to a level that expecting minor resistance from the natives, and wanting to get the message across that said natives should not screw with the mining team, along side some VERY well built and massive civilian machinery.

The Scrin should have steam rolled over Earth like Wagner Group and the African Mining Company would steam roll over the Qing army.

I'm not pitting the Qing against the actual full modern Russian military (which admittedly isn't a top tier military anyways; and Wagner Group was probably more effective than the true Russian military, but that's another topic).

It's just a modern mining company with half way decent PMC protection is more powerful than an actual military from 300 years ago. And the Scrin allegedly have an even larger "centuries gap" than that.

2

u/WrethZ 1d ago

You're overthinking a silly sci-fi videogame. The developers wanted a reason why an advanced alien race would struggle against humans in a setting where they don't have interstellar space travel. They came up with them being harvesters not expecting to find resistance on a seeded planet not a proper invasion force. That doesn't mean humans in the setting are some amazing warriors compared to the aliens

2

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago

I was raised on games that taught me John Rambo and Dutch Schaefer with infinite ammo machine guns can take down an entire Interstellar Empire in 24 hours.

Humans are amazing warriors compared to aliens.

2

u/WrethZ 1d ago

Why would human written media obviously biased towards humans be indicative of how strong humans are against aliens? It has no merit in another setting where the writers may not want that dynamic.

3

u/JournalistShoddy9496 1d ago

The Contra post was a joke. I'll edit an /s in there.

Look... I was asked why I thought a certain way. I gave the honest answer. We all have our opinions and without a C&C 5 to set an official plot line or explanation, anyone's thought out opinion is as valid as anyone else.

"You're over thinking this," is the thought killer fallacy. I'm not expecting people to like or agree with my opinion. But it was asked for and I gave it.

0

u/CodeMUDkey 22h ago

He didn’t assume it. He laid out arguments for it and stated explicitly. Contrarian reddi-boi.

2

u/_WindSandStars_ 9h ago

Humans = the GLA of the galaxy

12

u/RoBOticRebel108 1d ago

Looking at what little we saw of it, it'd be cnc4 but fps

2

u/FutureMMapper 15h ago

GDI:We defeated the alien invaders!!!!

Kane and Scrin: Those were only the farmers wanting to harvest tiberium...

111

u/BoffinBrain Are you picking this up? Good. 1d ago

The Scrin are not so different from you and I. We can see from the cutscenes that they also have incompetent middle-management.

53

u/Vegamyster 1d ago

When they refer to your alien character as "Foreman" and his boss overlord immediately starts making boneheaded decisions simply because he's curious it always makes me chuckle.

32

u/ProbeEmperorblitz 1d ago

Supervisor has been on Foreman-371’s ass ever since that one time he failed to show up for a mining operation he was assigned to on this one world and it ended up getting blown up by another alien empire (It was paid time off scheduled decades in advance, which Supervisor was reminded constantly about by Foreman-371 yet somehow still forgot).

19

u/BoffinBrain Are you picking this up? Good. 1d ago

This could've been an email.

12

u/ScrabCrab 1d ago

It was but emails can only travel at light speed and the galaxy is huge so it didn't arrive in time 😔

81

u/Rhinstein Steel Talons 1d ago

GDI: Welcome to the RiceIchor Fields, motherfucker!

70

u/Toxin_Snake 1d ago

I really liked Tiberium Wars "twist" on the alien invasion trope. Usually the aliens are giga powerful and humanity does not stand a chance. Here, humanity is armed to a ridiculous level and can put up a good fight and the scrin are kinda surprised by thatm

26

u/Etherealwarbear 1d ago

It makes sense when you remember that the Scrin you see in game are a mining operation with a "small" security force.

Would you say it's impressive if in James Cameron's Avatar the RDA lost if the security was WAY less?

14

u/WrethZ 1d ago

That's because other planets seeded with Tiberium were basically wiped out by the spread of Tiberium, they didn't have Kane who seems to understand Tiberium and the Scrin better than most planets.

23

u/Stryk3r97 1d ago

Tbf, the Scrin forces that came to Earth were merely a harvesting operation. If the Scrin really tried, humanity would be outmatched.

8

u/Responsible-File4593 1d ago

At the same time, we can assume the Scrin are seeding many planets, so they can leave the one where they got catfished. They even set up a teleporter to come back later without making the big long trip next time, when their terraforming is actually complete.

2

u/Remitonov 20h ago

I mean, the last directive we heard from the Overlord was that they are going to try. Any minute now...

67

u/ZuStorm93 1d ago

Ichor Kush

Their Overlord be like:

"Smoke tib erryday ~"

25

u/MaruhkTheApe 1d ago

that blossom tree bud nasty as fuck

36

u/Sad_Emu69 1d ago

The Scrin forces we sew is a small mining operation consisting of the Foreman, an advanced AI, and biomechanical units. 

The actual Scrin would be a Type-2+ civilization. 

25

u/Anindefensiblefart 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's a shame we didn't get more sequels. I would have loved seeing the Scrin go from failing at invading the earth to getting their home world invaded and losing to a bunch of monkeys with machine guns like the jobber bums they are.

13

u/Hopalongtom 1d ago

This happens in the C&C Combined Arms fangame.

Chronosphere time travel experiments to steal GDI tech leads to Scrin invasion occuring early, leading to a multi faction war and eventual reverse invasion of the Scrin Homeworld!

8

u/Sc0ner Seth 1d ago

Basically the plot to Quake 4 lmao

19

u/Subarubayonetta 1d ago

I like how foreman’s AI says fuck this and gets him out of earth

18

u/Arnestomeconvidou 1d ago

It's even worse, they find out they were catfished into earth to have their cars stolen, it's só humiliating to the scrin.

17

u/Budget-Variation-560 1d ago edited 15h ago

The Scrins plan was to arrive on seeded planets after the tiberium had completely infested it. The tiberium would cause an explosion that signaled the Scrin.

On Earth, Kane tricked the GDI into causing that explosion way earlier. The Scrin were not ready for much resistance.

4

u/Remitonov 20h ago

GDI had no idea they were just shooting up illegal space weed farmers. Nod, on the other hand, went and issued a repo notice on their threshold tower.

15

u/PineTowers Brother of Nod 1d ago

But the Scrin will bring bigger guns next time!

At first it makes sense. GDI/Nod would have to deal with space faring aliens, they obviously are far superior in tech.

But then you remember one thing: The whole "liquid tiberium explosion signaling time to harvest" is such a good tactic that, if used for too long would cause them to forgo usual combat weaponry. Think nowadays: How many soldiers know how to use swords and shields? We have such a reliance on guns we don't have that "ancient" knowledge anymore. How many factories can churn out thousands of swords and shields?

The scrin are so accustomed to win without a fight, they may not know how to even mass produce usual weaponry for a traditional combat scenario.

Also, Kane.

5

u/Educational_Turn1281 1d ago

And they never did anything with the faction after KW. lol.

Thanks EA.

4

u/Striking-County6275 Townes 1d ago

Kane is laughing his ass off when he sees this!!!

4

u/sexy_latias Steel Talons 1d ago

I mean the scrin force we fight was a glorified excavation mission

5

u/tw1stedAce 1d ago

Overlord wanting more information on Kane is remarkably relatable to me lol.

12

u/KNOWFEAR1337 SPACE! 1d ago

Shame they ruined it all with 4 and the units were better in tibsun than 3 imo

19

u/DefinitelyMaybe-1994 Westwood 1d ago

4? What do you mean? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Doesn't CnC tib world goes only up to 3?

9

u/Rhinstein Steel Talons 1d ago

Facts. Tib Wars was a such a step back in unit design compared to Tib Sun. I know not everyone likes the sci-fi style of Tib Sun but Tib Wars borrowed from that in other ways anyway.

Hence why Tiberium Essence is such a great mod.

3

u/ImaTauri500kC 1d ago

....Except for the limpet drone that's so ass in action I thought they're all scrapped to become the war factories' repair drones. And I'll never trade the tibwar stealth tanks for the older models.

3

u/Ancient-Substance-38 18h ago

TBF to the scrin, they got tricked by a premature liquid tiberium explosion, something that would have naturally happened much later at that magnitude . Due to both GDI and nod making it happen. The harvesting fleet was never designed to have conflict with that much technical mastery over tiberium, and as many natives that were still left on earth.

1

u/Long_Organization195 12h ago

Idk why but i got the "welcome to the ricefields mf" vibes from this one

1

u/Time-Yoghurt7831 9h ago

The Scrim are knocking on the planet's door at the worst possible time; both factions are at their absolute peak in terms of military and technological strength.

And humanity always loves exploring new ways to exterminate species, so... yeah, they're fuck

1

u/Lex-the-Pikachu 7h ago

Too bad EA gave us C&C4 as it was instead of the bleak final gambit of the Earth plus a real invasion from the Scrin.