Welcome Back, Commander: The No-“Good” Scenario of Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Command & Conquer video game series.
One of the most iconic and revered Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games for the PC, Command & Conquer (later unofficially named Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn to fit within the continuity of the series) has been faithfully remastered and re-released this month to much fan acclaim and enjoyment.
The game was developed by Westwood Studios and published in September 1995 by Electronic Arts. Arriving just as the Intel Pentium and hardware graphics acceleration entered the enthusiast consciousness, the game was hailed as a masterpiece by fans and the press. It further established and expanded the scope of the genre as previously defined by Westwood’s Dune II (released December 1992) and Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (November 1994).
The RTS genre was — and to a limited extent still is — unique insofar that a player is expected to roleplay as the commander of one faction in order to defeat another; then, once the campaign is over, to switch sides and play as the faction you’d worked (and sometimes, it really would feel like work) so hard to defeat.
Though in games such as Dune II and Warcraft, where factions, families, or nations fought for their survival or expansion, there is no clear “good” side to the world of Command & Conquer. One can join the UN-led Global Defense Initiative or the shadowy, sinister Brotherhood of Nod. As the campaigns for both sides progress, the morality of either “side” feels ever more ambiguous.
As we point and click our units and vehicles toward battle and sometimes certain death, who is to say we’re commanding the good guys? Or had interactive entertainment taken for granted that the person in the action seat is always morally justified in his or her actions?
An Overview of Real-Time Strategy — The Early Years
RTS is an evolution of Turn-Based Strategy (TBS) games which originated in table-top form. The critical difference between RTS and TBS is that the players or AI interact at the same time instead of taking turns. RTS was a term coined by Westwood CEO Brett Sperry to market the C&C series. The first RTS was Japanese Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) title Herzog Zwei released in December 1989. This and subsequent games shared the following genre hallmarks:
- A “world map” that depicts progress of the overall campaign
- All players play on the same playing field or map at the same time
- Both sides vie for command or control of a common, yet finite, resource
- The collection of the resource funds the construction of one’s fighting force
- Base building: players are (often) required to build a base of operations and defend against enemy attack, while the elimination of the enemy’s base and units is a primary objective
- Unique faction unit types: variable yet equal strengths and weaknesses much like a “rock-paper-scissors” scenario, e.g. a rocket soldier is effective against enemy vehicles, but poor against enemy infantry, while an enemy minigunner is effective against a rocket soldier
- Technology trees: more advanced structures and units are dependent on the construction of simpler structures
- Use of a mouse or pointing device as primary control method, which directs units to move, attack, or perform context-dependent actions
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (there is no first RTS Dune title, due to a complicated copyright situation) was the first title to include all these attributes as part of main gameplay. It also included three factions (Houses) to play. Though Dune is high fantasy, C&C is closer to real world politics and conflict situations. In the lore, Tiberium first appears in 1995; the year C&C was first released. The conflict begins four years later, a deliberate story choice by the team, as lead designer Erik Yeo told Computer & Video Games magazine in 2002: “War was in the news and the threat of terrorism was on everyone’s mind. That definitely had an effect on the fictional world of C&C; though a ‘parallel universe’ was created to avoid dealing with the sobering issues of a real war.”
Though it wasn’t a real war, the issues arising from a war and our consciences wrestling with them remained.
The Self-Serving Elite against the Insurrectionist Masses
The Global Defense Initiative, a globalist army under the aegis of a supra-national United Nations government is shown to be a technologically advanced fighting force with one goal: “to eliminate multinational terrorism in an effort to preserve freedom.” The GDI is funded primarily by the Group of Seven nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. As of 2018, the G7 represent 58% of global net wealth and 46% of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP.)
The GDI in the continuity of the first two games (the prequel Command & Conquer: Red Alert, released November 1996) is built on the foundations laid by these Allied nations against the Soviet Union, which were the primary combatants of an alternate Second World War. In the mid-90s, when an unknown, extra-terrestrial substance dubbed Tiberium is found near the Tiber River in Italy (though disputed by Kane, the leader of the Brotherhood of Nod), the world faced an ecological crisis. Tiberium, while rich in precious metals also leeches nutrients from the soil. Spreading across the globe by “conveyance unknown,” exposure to Tiberium is poisonous and often fatal.
Third World nations, left in the cold to the technology and advancements of the G7, turned to the Brotherhood of Nod as a benevolent economic and military force. According to the Brotherhood philosophy:
“As long as man has had breath the Brotherhood has existed. For from the beginning — when man’s struggle was with nature, not knowing where he might sleep, how he would eat, or whether he would survive to see the light of dawn — there have always been those who would lord over others. People who believe that they, by some unseen right, are granted power over others, and would push others down so they might climb, are the greatest threat to mankind’s existence. For many years has one man or one race prospered on the sweat and work of others.
Such injustices are not just a sin against mankind, but also a sin against God. The Brotherhood had its beginnings with the first downtrodden who looked for a better way. These oppressed sought a path that would allow them to gather fruits of life and achieve enough resources and wealth that they and their families could survive and advance with the rest of mankind.”
The GDI claims that Nod uses terrorism and propaganda to advance their aims of a cult-like government and control of the world’s Tiberium supply. The Nod counter this, saying “The GDI hides behind the façade that they are here to help the free nations in their struggle against those they would name terrorist. We in the Brotherhood know the truth. Our fight is for all mankind, not for those cherished few.”
The Nod, a quasi-religious, Marxist-flavoured paramilitary organisation that emphasises collective will and prosperity is in stark contrast to the neo-liberal Global Defense Initiative, beholden to the rich and elite and operating without benefit to disenfranchised nations. Tiberium could even be used as an analogue to the real-world threat of global warming, or as it’s known today, Anthropogenic climate change.
With all this known, we might ask: are we the heroes because we’re the star, or are we actually villains?
Is The Video Game a Heroes’ Journey?
Video games’ first popular age (1977–1983, before the great video game crash) featured players taking control of avatars that performed one or two singular functions. It wasn’t important why the invaders from space in Space Invaders (1977) were coming, it was only important to defeat them. Likewise for Donkey Kong, Galaga, Centipede, Pac-Man, and other simpler games by today’s comparison.
As hardware advanced and reduced in cost, more role-playing elements emerged. In Adventure (1980) for the Atari 2600 video computer system, the player (represented by a single square) is required to “recover the Enchanted Chalice that an evil magician has stolen and hidden in the kingdom and return it to the Golden Castle.” This gave the player a motivation for completing the quest. Other text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) also gave players similar motivations. However, these motivations were virtuous or moral in nature.
In Adventure, the player is correcting an injustice by returning stolen property. In Commander Keen (1990) by id Software, the player is tasked with rescuing a babysitter abducted by aliens. Most of the adventure or role-playing titles had the player assume a morally “good” persona of some description. As described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, role-playing games traditionally depict a character who “ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (30).
This is especially true in games such as The Bard’s Tale, Ultima, Wizardry, and Might and Magic. Your character is thrust into a hostile world where they must improve their skill through combat or trial (quests) to achieve an ultimate victory over a primary antagonist which sets the world back to rights.
When it comes to military simulations, the journey is inherently less heroic. Conscripted soldiers could be compared to a monomyth “hero” — thrust from their ordinary world to take part in a struggle greater than oneself, though their objectives could be called into question.
Simulations (published by MicroProse) such as F-15 Strike Eagle (1984), Gunship (1986) and F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988) all place a player in the cockpit of a U.S. Air Force plane or helicopter, tasked with eliminating enemy installations and aircraft; or conducting clandestine reconnaissance.
Many theatres of war depicted were (then) modern-day conflict zones and/or realistic hypotheticals: the Persian Gulf, the North Cape (Finnish-Soviet border), North Korea; F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 (1991) even included a recreation of Operation Desert Storm, with the player pushing back Iraqi forces from pro-Western (and oil-rich) Kuwait.
These games offered three rules of engagement or “levels of realism” — Cold War, Limited War, and Conventional War. Cold War restricted the player to reconnaissance or surgical strike missions against military targets or firing back in self-defence (in the case of stealth simulators, firing at any enemy unit that spotted or detected your aircraft.) Limited War opened the player to strike targets of military significance, forbidding actions against civilian buildings. Conventional War gave the player free reign over any enemy target; civilians included. In Conventional War scenarios, the player is rewarded for bombing villages, hospitals, oil refineries; even shooting down commercial airliners. Should a populace living under the thumb of dictatorial regime be punished for the aggression of their subjugator? According to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “No protected person may be punished for any offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”
In other words, collective punishment is a war crime. In short; no, they shouldn’t.
Commander, Conqueror, or War Criminal?
In C&C, the ambiguity of one’s moral character (as commander) is as much in conflict as the two sides. In certain missions for Nod, you are required to punish a village population and assassinate its leader for holding views heretical to the Brotherhood (Silencing Nikoomba, NOD Mission 1). A clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
As the Nod campaign progresses, we’re told by leader Kane that the GDI has neglected third world nations, leaving them without medical care and economic re-development. This underclass is fleshed out in subsequent games as “The Forgotten” — barbarous and mutated inhabitants of Tiberium poisoned zones.
The theatre of war for GDI is the rich nations of Europe with scant mention of how the former Nod-controlled territories will re-build or transition to a stable, liberal democratic government. In the game itself, we’re assured that the Brotherhood is pure evil with no redeeming qualities. Though, isn’t that what a controlling order with its power base under threat would say? Who is “really” telling the truth?
Muddying the waters further was a provocative advertisement (see above) depicting war criminals as “previous high score holders.” The ad referenced Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin (who featured in Red Alert), Genghis Khan, Benito Mussolini, as well as (then) contemporary criminals such as Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Radovan Karadzic, and French president Jacques Chirac, criticised at the time for testing nuclear weapons at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.
As we send our units into simulated battle, are we morally right in doing so? C&C was one of the first games to present the player’s actions as a moral conundrum instead of a cut-and-dry “good vs. evil” scenario. Much like John Ford’s 1956 film The Searchers did with the Western genre, C&C upended well worn clichés and tropes. The key difference is C&C subverted an already established yet rapidly evolving medium — interactive entertainment — through establishing a new genre within this medium. It was a feat that few other creative endeavours can lay claim to.
Though one of the more fun games out there, it was a landmark in terms of nuanced, immersive storytelling. And it’s one of the reasons why Command & Conquer’s multi-faceted lore remains almost as popular as the game itself.
Works Cited
Campbell, J. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton UP, 1968, pp. 30.
