C&C Generals: Zero Hour - Could this potentially be the next game by Uber?

I honestly didn't know there was such a huge fanbase for Total Annihilation and I certainly didn't know Supreme Commander was so big either. While I haven't played any Supreme Commander game, I have countless hours invested in Total Annihilation alone and with friends. Another childhood game similar to TA (for me) is Generals Zero Hour. I feel like this game had such great potential and was rushed out the door or underfunded. Then before ya get to know anything about it, EA thinks it's terrible and moves on fast. Don't quote me on this history cause I just played the games and loved 'em. We had dial up at the time so I wasn't caught up in what was happening. Anyway... years and years later I see a post, "EA Announces C&C Generals 2". I just about excreted all my bodily fluids - I had exactly $65 to spend on a game and this would be it! Not long after development, the corrupt community of EA's newer games of course tags along and mixes with the classic community and for some reason EA decides they can't handle it and cancels the game. Yeah I wanted to cry but it would be pointless. EA ruined all my hopes, dreams, and aspirations of playing Generals 2 with friends. Okay, but seriously I would love to see Uber continue or at least recreate the C&C RTS series the way it SHOULD have been. Zero Hour was by far the best of the best and is still far better than any modern C&C game, period. Yes, there are other good C&C games like Red Alert II and one or two others in which I can't remember the names of. I played all ten games of the classic series in C&C: The First Decade and liked them all. While I'm disappointed that EA canceled Generals 2, I can't trust a company with a series that it wanted dead initially, anyway. EA also had plans to do some weird things with Generals 2 and I'm not sure how that would have turned out but it's not something I care to speculate on. There is still a big fan base out there for the classic C&C series and I really feel like a Generals Zero Hour successor has the potential to be successful in Uber's power. I would really like to see one game company reviving older games so we can relive them in new ways. Most of the great classic games I know of are all RTS, so Uber: keep up the good work. I have found confusion in why you consider PA to be at an official release but as long as development continues I guess I'm fine with it. Regardless, I'm more than glad to at least have the game to relive with friends from those ole' Total Annihilation days.

Assuming Uber can continue sufficient development of Planetary Annihilation, do you think Uber should create a successor to C&C Generals: Zero Hour? Vote in the poll and leave your response below.

Two main points I'd make against this being even a remote possibility:

1. Uber does not own the Command & Conquer IP. They could not make a game with that name on it without EA's say-so (good luck with that).
2. Uber recently tried to bill Human Resources as a game in the same genre as Command & Conquer. It failed.

There'll be a new C&C title released eventually - if there's one thing EA knows how to do well it's milk old titles for cash.

You may be interested to know that @scathis worked on Zero Hour - I wonder what he'd have to say on the game being rushed out the door and incomplete?

Yay for nostalgia. This is why innovative games are rarely made.

I didn't think Zero Hour was rushed out the door or incomplete. I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

The only thing that makes me sad is that you played it in your childhood and I was 28 when we finished it. #imold

And yes, Human Resources was going to take a lot of inspiration from Zero Hour, since it was one of the games I loved working and and am very proud of. But, we cancelled the Kickstarter and who knows if we'll ever find the funding to build that game.

It would likely be difficult but I don't see why one wouldn't at least try. The reason we have what we do in this modern age is because people tried.

I was hoping we could leave that out of the picture since Uber is still a very new company whereas EA has existed for decades.

I can already say I'm not interested unless it is going to be a Generals successor. I could care less about the stupid modern C&C games. Those are just trash and I'm glad I stopped at Tiberius Wars. Yes I had fun but no it wasn't the experience I wanted. EA Does not know how to properly deliver and that can be said for numerous games. If the devs who worked on Generals didn't have some [insert bad word here] to tell them Generals and Generals: Zero Hour were bad games (along with the other 8 games of The First Decade) EA would be a much better company. Even if that means no Battlefield or Bad Company, I really don't care. My favorite RTS series was destroyed.

Yeah now that you mention it, I would like to hear what he has to say about it too. Whether it was rushed out or not, it was a great game and it didn't just stop at the campaign and a bit of multiplayer, but anyone could develop their own maps and mods. This is why Zero Hour STILL exists.

Just tell everyone it's a space MMO .

Regardless of how you thought it turned out, that doesn't stop it from being rushed/incomplete.

I'll just leave this here: http://tcrf.net/Command_and_Conquer:_Generals/Unused_content_in_the_expansion


I played Generals and Zero Hour all the time five years ago and loved it, but it's quite obvious how many things in it were rushed/incomplete. If it wasn't, then please explain to me why the infantry and demolitions generals were missing maps in the generals challenge?

Yeah there are always scrapped ideas in games. When I played it there were some minor things that could have been fixed but nothing really annoying from what I can recall. I wonder if Uber would be allowed to revamp Zero Hour with a different title.

Pretty much every single game I've shipped shipped with unused content. It's very common.

Just because there wasn't a mission for every single General doesn't mean it wasn't a complete game. The game had a ton of content for a cheap expansion pack.

Highly doubt it. EA doesn't tend to have outside companies use their IPs.

Generals/Zero Hour were my favorite RTS's for years. Great games.

It's also one of the rare cases where I like the expansion and unexpanded games separately for different reasons. Usually expansions are more of the same(which is good). Zero Hour was like a completely different game(which is also good).

i dont mind uber to someday try and make an rts for a broader appearence no matter if generals succesor or own ip like HR ... but that time is not now ... the biggest problem to go out of the way first is that pa needs to be fixed along with ubers cracked reputation ...
other than that i dont know ..
maybe try some smaller games to get the funding for larger projects ... the recent lay offs to me are an concerning indicator that uber does't seem to be all that well on overall budget ... pa alone isnt enough .. no idea how much they get from toyrush ... smnc is rather dry and i dont think too many peops buyed outlandgames ...
kickstarter wont likely work again ...


.... hey uber remember that smash mnc april fools you made back then??? why not make that a reality? but as androidgame this time as well ...

Dear mr. Schathis,

If I'm correct, it shouldn't have been an expansion to begin with.

I remember reading a preview about C&C generals in the biggest games propaganda pamphlet of the benelux (even thought they themselves insisted on being a ' games magazine' with seroius ' reviewers' they rarely rated a game below 7/10) stating that the original generals would have 3 factions with different generals each.

When C&C generals was released however... the generals where nowhere to be seen.

The 'games magazine' in question forgot they ever mentioned it and a couple of months later happily featured a preview of zero hour, an expansion pack in which you'd be able to choose different generals for each faction.

Not that I care because I had a blast with both the original generals and the expansion.

But can you tell me if the game magazine in question was telling the truth?

Generals was by Westwood before it dissolved, Zero Hour was by a separate team at EA.

Zero-Hour was a fantastic game. I used to play it over LAN when I was at Uni....

I actually beat all the other house mates (6 of us) the first few times we played it by going USA and *rushing / expanding like crazy TA Style* The downside was that my approach only worked if I could win before they got to the higher level stuff. Once everyone has super weapons there's no winning a 5 v 1 haha.

Now in TA I think I'da had them, but oddly enough they wouldn't play me at that

I also had great success with the USA Air General (combat helicopters were *win*)...

Generals was developed by Westwood Pacific. A secondary Westwood Studio in Orange County, CA. Westwood itself was in Las Vegas, NV. Which is where I started my career. Before Generals came out, Westwood Pacific was renamed to EA-Pacific. Then in 2003, EA shutdown EA-Pacific and Westwood and merged the RTS teams from those two studios and EA-LA, who was working on the "Medal of Honor" series, into one big studio in LA. Zero Hour came out of that studio. It was built by many from the original team that made Generals, along with myself and a few others than came over from Westwood.

I can't really speak to that. I was at Westwood Vegas at the time. I will say that it's very typical for a game to hope to include certain features and content only to have them cut for very viable reasons down the road.

I would say, "maybe". Zero Hour will probably always be my favorite game of all time. It helped me through some things, and I've met a lot of awesome people because of it (Same with MNC/SMNC). I would love to see a proper sequel. However, after EA cancelled the new Generals game (which was great, had a great team, and got better every patch), I doubt EA really cares about C&C.

If Uber attempted to make a spiritual successor to Generals: Zero Hour, I might be interested. I'd be even more interested if there was a focus on a single player campaign, a single player/co-op Generals Challenge like mode, and if the multiplayer maps weren't procedurally generated (and a public map editor!). I doubt those things will happen, but I can wish.



Anyways, thank you very much, Scathis, for working on the C&C and MNC franchises! They will always be very near and dear to me. I hope to see more awesome games from you in the future.

Well they have the engine, and actual player map editing is just now becoming a thing so... Maybe!

@scathis

Actually since the cancellation of Generals 2 EA is in search for a new development studio that takes care of C&C. I think it is highly probable that an outside studio will revive the C&C franchise for EA. Since the shut down of Victory games I can't think of any current EA studio that has the expertise left to do an RTS. I don't know if they already found someone yet, but there was speculation about that going on months ago. I think it is most likely that some studio gets chosen that has C&C dev blood in it, so why not Uber?
If Uber was not asked, maybe you should knock on their doors? . Making some contract work in between may be a good money for Uber to stay afloat (similarly to how GPG handled Age o Empires for Microsoft). Personally I would love to get a C&C by Uber on the PA engine

people don't understand game design. I was modding naval redux the other day, and noticed I left unused assets in the mod. Does that make naval redux rushed? Or does it mean I went through an idea and didn't erase my work completely. If you were my teacher, I would carve in pencil "my teacher is a jerk" in a blank space and lightly erase it...

so, Uber should collaborate with EA on a C&C rts. As well as Totem Arts on a C&C fps. However, EA will only annex and buy out to make these deals, and that scares the hell out of me. No. **** no. They must only agree on cooperation and not a merger, otherwise ABORT OPERATION DO NOT PROCEED.