Game Info Publisher Westwood Studios Developer Westwood Genre Action Origin U.S. Number of Players 32 Net Support YES Accelerated YES Release Early 2000 Blowing up the Hand of Nod will cut the enemy troops off at the source. Now you know it ain't right to be a'fightin' in front of church...and on Sunday of all days. Mmm, mmm, mmm. The Temple of Nod will afford you many opportunities to bring peace to the world.

While at Westwood we sat down with the team behind the new Command and Conquer third-person action/shooter, Renegade. Louis Castle, the executive producer of the title, talked us through the basic concepts of the game while lead designer David Yee actually sat down and played through a few hours of it for us. Also present was Colin McLaughlin, the game's technical director, who threw in the obscure but important technical clarifications as needed. The game has been in development for over a year now and is due out sometime after the holidays. From what we've seen, it's going to be pretty amazing.

The ability of a license to transcend its original genre has been a topic of discussion around here for a while. X-Com's Interceptor attempted it with mixed results and the recent Warcraft Adventures was finally cancelled. If anything, this proves that the ability to cross over into new fields is apparently beyond the reach of most genre bound franchises. The key is in preserving the concept of the original while adjusting the gameplay to suit the limitations and possibilities of the new game's style. It looks like Renegade will do just that.

Lou describes the game as "C&C up close and personal." Those of you who remember the sixth GDI mission of the first C&C game will remember the Commando unit. He was the ultimate super soldier and could take on a whole Nod army without too much fuss. In Renegade, all the missions are commando missions. What's more, they take place in a beautiful 3D world, that's rendered with all the design elements from the first C&C. Lou says that the idea was "to make a game within the C&C universe but make it an action game" instead of a strategy game.

The guys at Westwood stress that this game isn't just a shooter. It combines action and adventure elements within an "objective based" narrative. The game avoids relying on a linear script, Lou explains. "C&C is about the big strategy and the big plan, not about small levels and certainly not about linearity." The objectives include rescuing Dr. Moebius, blowing up SAM sites and generally spoiling Kane's plans for world domination.

You'll be doing all this as the Commando. Tal's the one who got a chance to actually play the game while at Westwood, so I'll let him fill you in on all the details…"It is safe and lucky play of the recovery, more like trunks than the robber of the grave. I like it. Therefore my name is hot and is my body. I am then for taking the juice." Thanks, Tal, that's great. Go get some juice. What Tal meant to say, was that the game controls a lot more like Tribes than like Tomb Raider. The reliance on third-person perspectives allows you to get a better sense of the scale of the world than would be possible with a first-person viewpoint. You can also get a much better sense of character from the Commando himself. It's really cool watching him run around all those Nod buildings.

Although the game is played from the third-person perspective, some of the weapons allow you zoom in to a more familiar, at least to me, first-person view. Weapons include a sniper rifle, a shotgun, an M16 grenade launcher combination, a gatling gun, rocket launcher and three, count 'em three, types of C4. But you don't have to rely on brute strength. Lou says the game can be played a little more stealthily a la Metal Gear Solid. But the best thing of all is that the Commando's has the same voice he had in the first game. "I got a present for ya!"

Even though the game is set within the context of the C&C universe, Westwood has broadened the environments to include "a lot of different terrains that you didn't see in C&C." Now you'll be able to take on the evil Nod in alpine mountains, Petra caves and volcanic jungles. And the maps aren't tiny, either. Lou and the team feel that "the sheer sense of scale is important to the C&C universe, and we plan to use some huge, continuous maps." The vistas we saw were huge, and you can see clear definition all the way to the horizon. There's none of that weird, leveling effect that you get with the far views in some other 3D games. The environments were among the most detailed we've ever seen and, more importantly, had a real organic, natural feel to them.

One of the real challenges for a 3D engine is to be able to render interior and exterior spaces. There's no disappointment here. In addition to the outside locations, you'll be taken inside cargo ships, chateaux, huge bases and even the Temple of Nod. It's a real thrill for those of us who played the original C&C to actually see these buildings up close; not to mention being able to walk in and explore them. And it doesn’t stop with the temple. Rounding a corner and finding an Obelisk of Light or Hand of Nod blocking your path will cause you to loose your Commando cool.

Renegade's physics models are also realistic. I know, I know, everybody says that. But trust us, we took a look at some of the inner workings of the game and while we couldn't really understand it all, it sure looks complicated. Complicated equals real, right? At this point in the conversation, Colin and David began to take over. Ballistics and vehicle physics are modeled with extreme realism and accuracy. There's even a damage location function included so you can shoot the enemies in the arm, leg or head and obtain different results. David shot a guy right in the crotch just for our amusement.

One of the more interesting rendering technologies in use here is radiosity. Radiosity is way to model light's physical behavior within an environment and some people feel that it's the future of lighting graphics. Basically you recursively divide a given surface into patches, scale down the light equation to a linear system predicated on the pairwise interaction between the individual patches…still awake? Viewing the effects is a lot cooler than having them explained to you. Suffice it to say that the light model is spectacular.

Let's move on from the environment to its occupants. The Commando will eventually do battle with hordes and hordes of Nod soldiers. You've definitely got the edge here. The Commando can mop the floor with these guys, if you put a little thought into your plans. The trouble is that the enemy does a little thinking too. We've been lamenting the sorry state of enemy AI in shooter games but it looks like Westwood may set a new standard…or at least introduce some new features into the equation.

First off, the enemy AI lives up to the term by actually being intelligent. Artificial we've seen. There are several different layers of awareness and alarm for the enemy soldiers. Lou explains, "If the enemy AI hears something, they won't be terribly alarmed. But if you shoot someone and another soldier sees it, they get terribly alarmed and start looking for you." The enemy will also run to help his fallen comrade with a health kit. That makes it easy to pick off a pair of enemies. Drop one, then when the second one rushes over to help, you can take him out without having to adjust your aim too much.

The AI also knows the map and will make some pretty intelligent decisions about where to go. One of the characters is supposed to run from the interior of a huge base all the way to the outside. We followed the path of this AI character all the way out. The pathing is built along splines instead of vertices which means that the enemy paths are more flexible. The enemy takes advantage of this fact, too. They constantly cut corners and find other shortcuts.

The enemy will even do some of the animations from the original game if they've got nothing better to do. Like shooting you or being shot at by you. Leave 'em alone long enough and you'll see 'em doing sit-ups.

We've seen a lot of the vehicles from the first C&C in Renegade. "In fact, most of the vehicles from C&C are in," according to Lou. When asked if players will be able to commandeer these vehicles, Lou answered with a big ol' honkin' yes. "Any vehicle in the game that you can see, you can jump into and drive if you can figure out how to get into it." We're anxious to get in the driver's seat of the Nod Attack Cycle or Flame Tank. Renegade is a lot like Halo in terms of ground vehicular combat, and it's got the same teamwork element too. You can jump in a jeep and drive while your buddy mans the machine guns mounted in the rear.

After all this discussion, the guys at Westwood loaded up a multiplayer server. Although Renegade may stand out among other shooters as a consequence of the depth of its single player campaign, the game has a strong multiplayer element. In fact, Lou says that "multiplay is so inherent to the design of Renegade. Everything that's gone into the engine has gone in so that multiplay would be smooth as glass. Rather than set-up all sorts of different modes for multiplay, Westwood has decided to stick with three standard modes-capture the flag, fortress assault and deathmatch. But it's not all standard stuff. The capture the flag option is actually titled Capture the Moebius. You and the other team compete for "ownership" of good Doctor Moebius.

So it'll be at least a few months before the game is out, but Renegade shows a lot of promise. With everything that's already in place, it's hard to imagine that this game won't be a success. If so, it will be a treat for C&C and action fans alike. For those of us who are fans of both, it's a rare opportunity to jump into the action and participate in some of the battles that first captivated us four years ago.

-- Stephen Butts