Command and Conquer Renegade
Luke Guttridge talks to Dan Cermak and the Renegade team at Westwood, regarding the highly-anticipated move into the first-person perspective for the C&C world. Read-on to find out much much more...
1. The most exciting element of Renegade I've witnessed to date seems to be the palpable sense of a real full-scale war going on around the player as he undertakes his mission objectives. What will the player experience to create this impression?
In developing Renegade, the idea is to constantly give the player the sensation of being right in the middle of a larger conflict. Consequently, the mission structure and game design reflect this. A player may encounter an area where a GDI Mammoth Tank is squaring off against a squad of Nod minigunners and rocket soldiers, while a Nod Light Tank is getting ready to fire on a group of GDI soldiers. And you get the fun of navigating thru all of this chaos, lend a hand if you want, and get to the power plant to complete your primary mission objective.
This larger war will provide the player with the opportunity to address and complete a variety of secondary mission objectives. The player isn't required to participate in them to progress through the game, but completing them might provide them with some sort of bonus that could help them along in the game, whether it's data on a future mission, additional power ups or weapons, or even a vehicle that Havoc can enter and drive.
2. What sort of missions will the player find themselves undertaking? What effect will the outcome of these missions have in the grand scheme of things; how will the story and action change as a result of the player's actions?
In general, there will always be a primary mission objective, something that the player must complete to move the story along. This might require the destruction of a Nod power plant in order to slow down enemy production or blowing up a Nod communications center. So in that regard, the story is pretty straightforward.
Keep in mind that just like in the RTS game, there's always someone "upstairs" controlling the action in a sense. So while the player is focusing on completing the primary mission, this "voice from above" might interject a secondary mission objective for Havoc to complete. He doesn't have to, but completing the secondary missions more often than not will provide some benefit for Havoc that he can use in his current mission, or later in the game.
Here's a perfect example: Let's say Havoc's on his way to take out a Nod base. Along the way, his superior, Gen. Locke, tells him a Nod Apache helicopter is making life tough for his forces and asks Havoc to lend a hand. Havoc takes out the helicopter and the helipad. For helping out, along comes a GDI Chinook and drops off a Humm-Vee that Havoc can jump in and drive. So in completing a secondary mission, the payoff is added manuverability, armor and firepower.