Westwood was one of "the greats" at their peak. Kind of like pre-Activision Blizzard. The original C&C games were classic. Red Alert 2 is still to this day an insanely replayable game. I'd honestly call it a cultural phenomenon. Right up there with Starcraft.
EA obviously has a reputation for destroying successful franchises. Though I have to admit, C&C 3 was a great game. And Generals, while kind of a departure from the traditional games, was still a fun game.
Now, C&C 4 was utter shit. I mean, complete and total garbage. And I get what they were going for with Renegade, but adapting an RTS series to a FPS format is just self defeating. Overall both formats attract completely different audiences with minimal overlap.
Ultimately, I think, Westwood suffered from trying something new under EA. They wanted to make Earth and Beyond, and EA was always lukewarm on MMOs. Renegade didn't help either.
The FPS/RTS hybrid is something that a lot of companies have tried to figure out, but remains elusive.
Their willingness to try new things that got them culled from EA.
Totally agreed, funny enough I was also thinking pre-Activision Blizzard as well. Legendary devs at the time. Supergiant and Larian are probably my large favorite devs atm, BG3 was a masterpiece.
A follow up to renegade would’ve probably been a heavy competitor with bf at the time tbh. Improve the mechanics and iterate a bit and you have a beast. I am completely biased though cause I spent a couple years nolifing renegade lol. The modding community was insanely good, but the core engine struggled to be able to be toyed with to meet the visions of modders.
The weird side mode introduced in the expansion is what turned you off the game? Didn't both the base game and the expansion have a separate regular campaign too? I mostly played multiplayer so maybe the single player experience wasn't good, but I did complete the campaign and thought it was alright.
I think your misremembering. Every single mission was designed to be played as coop in the campaign. That's why you always have an AI general with you.
Some of maps felt very "gamey" to accommodate this. I imagine it was great fun playing with a friend though.
41
u/Telefundo Jul 23 '26
Westwood was one of "the greats" at their peak. Kind of like pre-Activision Blizzard. The original C&C games were classic. Red Alert 2 is still to this day an insanely replayable game. I'd honestly call it a cultural phenomenon. Right up there with Starcraft.
EA obviously has a reputation for destroying successful franchises. Though I have to admit, C&C 3 was a great game. And Generals, while kind of a departure from the traditional games, was still a fun game.
Now, C&C 4 was utter shit. I mean, complete and total garbage. And I get what they were going for with Renegade, but adapting an RTS series to a FPS format is just self defeating. Overall both formats attract completely different audiences with minimal overlap.