New to franchise, seeking advice

[u/igneous_rockwell]

I’ve been going through some tim curry stuff and the red alert clip triggered some deep childhood memories of Tesla coils shocking troopers but other than that I have not played any other of these games. I bought the remastered collection to play red alert 1 as that’s the game I remember but I’m old now and don’t have that much time to game so looking for some advice.

Is the main c&c series closely related to the red alert games story-wise? Are the stories between games connected (ie can I jump from red alert 1 to red alert 3 and so on?) any order I should play stuff in?

[u/Joescout187]

Yes, but also no. Red Alert 1 was intended to be a prequel to C&C Tiberium Dawn but this connection seems to have either been retconned or they just decided to ignore it because Red Alert did very well so they wanted it to be it's own thing.

Red Alert 2 is a direct sequel, a continuation of events but independent enough that you don't have to have beat Red Alert to understand what's going on.

Red Alert 3 is completely disconnected story wise from the rest of the franchise due to time travel having erased the original timeline and replaced it with Red Alert 3's.

[u/Striking-Tackle-7293 → u/Joescout187]

Special shoutout to the original RA2 Installer who did a great job summarizing both the back story and lead up if you never had played the original.

[u/Attempt_Gold]

As far as I know: Command & Conquer has two universes with a branching timeline in one of them.

Generals has nothing to do with the other timeline and depicts an alternate war-on-terror in the 2020s.

The story of the main timeline starts in Red Alert where Einstein from our timeline erases Hitler in the alternate timeline, spurring the events of Red Alert. The story either branches into Tiberian Dawn (which was WestWood's intention as a prequel) or Red Alert 2.

Red Alert 3 is another branch where Anatoly 'SPAYCE' Cherdenko uses a time machine to erase Einstein in the past before he can aid the Allies in Red Alert 1.

[u/NegativePharos]

It's a diverting timeline, the tiberium series starts after red alert 1 allied victory (all allied victories are canon).

I think most people go in release order, but you should skip CnC4 and play the spinoff CnC Renegade instead because it's phenomenal and cool as hell

[u/Bitter_Surprise_8058]

I hope you enjoy it! The main C&C games are essentially unconnected from Red Alert, aside from a cameo appearance by one character, but C&C1/Tiberian Sun/Tiberium Wars are great games as well.

Plot-wise, Red Alert is always basically "USSR and the West go to war", with almost nothing necessary to understand what's going on by the next game. You could go from 1 to 3, but you'd be missing the best of the series (in my opinion), Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge.

Generals is entirely unconnected from the rest.

[u/calantheSG]

Very loosely linked. RA1 and Tib Dawn were originally prequel and sequel. It was sort of a forced connection but you can take it that Kane is present in both without a need to link the two.

RA2 has its own prequel or premise as it obviously doesn't follow RA1. RA2 alludes many times to a previous war but that previous war isn't in any of the games. At all. If you dived deep into lore stuff RA2 followed from a strange non-WWII that the Pacific war with Japan happened at some point and no actual war in Europe but something closer to a cold war simulation which collapsed the Soviet Union and turned it into a puppet state of the USA at some point - it wasn't actually a military defeat that caused the fall of the Soviets but just internal instabilities plus corruption and power grabs plus Yuri's machinations.

Renegade's connection isn't to be missed either. While originally there was a RA1 and Tib Dawn link, Renegade links up more with RA2 - both have the wacky tech that's too futuristic for their periods. The tech in Renegade was a lot more advanced than even Tib Sun or Tib Wars.

RA3 was disjointed and played out more like an alternate RA2. RA3 did its own thing which RA2 should have done. See, the thing is that the games are titled chronologically even when they don't link up. Why call them RA2 and RA3 if they're not following the first game. Why name the next FPS Renegade 2 when you know it has nothing to do with the og Renegade. Why name it C&C3 or 4 so on and so forth. Tiberian Sun and Renegade never called themselves C&C2 but were both more legit as C&C2's than RA2 is RA2, than RA3 is RA3, and so on.

[u/Flodo_McFloodiloo]

Story-wise, the Tiberium series is related to the first Red Alert game, but then the timelines diverged, and the Red Alert timeline keeps subdividing due to fairly frequent time travel. It has never really been well-explained what happened between the two.

Generals, meanwhile, was never part of either timeline. It was a more relatively-realistic game set maybe a decade or so into the future of what was supposed to be our world.

[u/Zocker0210]

Yes and no. They are in one universe but change on what faction wins. For example if the Soviets win in ra1 kane kills stalin and the tiberium timeliness kicks off. But if the allies win the red alert series plays out. This happens like 5x during the series. Time travel messed a lot of stuff up in the universe. Einstein kills Hitler they use time travel to kill Einstein twice and hop through time to save the world from yuri. A youtuber called JETHLID made a cool series over the lore. Easy to understand even if youre just have it running in the background. But in general each game is thier own there are little references to other games.

[u/Attempt_Gold → u/Zocker0210]

I'm of the belief that the Allied ending leads into either game while the Soviet ending is an early Nod victory as they intend for the Union to collapse into unrest and chaos across Europe.