C&C Labs News Wire

— Sunday, August 4, 2002 —

Posted By: Mike at 10:42:41 AM ET

Generals Info

Most of you are probably aware that Harvard Bonin recently traveled to Germany to present Generals. Our German partner site, Generals-World.de has found a 3 page article at Ice-Bird.net (another German site) discussing what they were told during their interview with Harvard. I've put together the major points of the article:
  • The vehicles and infantry units are beautifully animated.
  • Civilians no longer stand around as in other CNC games, but now show fear of an advancing army.
  • Units and buildings can be upgraded.
  • Unlike other strategy games such as Warcraft III, you will be able to select and build virtually as many units as you like.
  • In order to play well, a GeForce 2 card or better will be needed.
  • There will not be a navy in Generals, though there will be air units able to move over the entire map.
  • In the version shown, the level of difficulty could be adjusted in three stages.
  • The campaigns (either 24 or 29 missions total) will each contain an intro video and serveral other video sequences throughout the campains.
  • As for Custom Matches/Multiplayer, there will be a new feature that will be able to predict how many disconnects or lags your opponent may have.
  • So that Generals can be better balanced, EA Pacific will have statistics about how often each side won and how often/easily one unit kills another. This way, the game may be more evenly balanced in a shorter amount of time.
  • Harvard Bonin expressed that EA Pacific intended to support Generals much longer than other CNC games have been supported.
  • Everything in Generals (up to those partially somewhat exaggerated explosions) works quite realistically without becoming too strict.
  • A lot of the information was already known, but some is new. I'm interrested in learning more about the multiplayer feature that supposedly can predict how many disconnects an opponent might have. Hopefully EA Pacific's idea of getting online statistics to better balance the gameplay will work well.

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