This is from part of an interview with former Westwood Studios head Brent Sperry on Gamespot.com:
"Red Alert actually started as an idea I had for a Command & Conquer game that, in retrospect, would have been in poor taste. What I wanted to do was re-create the whole World War II phenomenon in a C&C game - supergritty and visceral, depicting the worst parts of the war, with the Germans serving as the bad guys. After all, the Germans were, unfortunately, really cool bad guys. They had the iconography, used avant-garde design, and really mechanized the whole idea of warfare."
"I pitched the game to Virgin right after the first Command & Conquer, because I liked the idea of alternating between time periods and somehow tying it all into C&C. I wanted to approach the story of C&C from two ends. "
"As you might expect, Virgin didn't think World War II was cool at all. In fact, the idea went over like a lead balloon. And it was an epiphany for me, because I wasn't sensitized to a lot of the issues surrounding the war. Yes, the Holocaust was a terrible thing, but sometimes I forget how international our games are. If we had done that game, there was no way it would have been sold in Germany. "
So, suppose Westwood had actually gone through, somehow, with a C&C game based in WWII. What would happen, besides endless arguements about the unbalanced nature of the Zyklon Gas Tank? Would this cause a lot of angry sign-waving, or would most accept it?
(Granted, a part of me still relishes the idea of Kane dispaching Hitler in the final movie of the German campaign).
"Red Alert actually started as an idea I had for a Command & Conquer game that, in retrospect, would have been in poor taste. What I wanted to do was re-create the whole World War II phenomenon in a C&C game - supergritty and visceral, depicting the worst parts of the war, with the Germans serving as the bad guys. After all, the Germans were, unfortunately, really cool bad guys. They had the iconography, used avant-garde design, and really mechanized the whole idea of warfare."
"I pitched the game to Virgin right after the first Command & Conquer, because I liked the idea of alternating between time periods and somehow tying it all into C&C. I wanted to approach the story of C&C from two ends. "
"As you might expect, Virgin didn't think World War II was cool at all. In fact, the idea went over like a lead balloon. And it was an epiphany for me, because I wasn't sensitized to a lot of the issues surrounding the war. Yes, the Holocaust was a terrible thing, but sometimes I forget how international our games are. If we had done that game, there was no way it would have been sold in Germany. "
So, suppose Westwood had actually gone through, somehow, with a C&C game based in WWII. What would happen, besides endless arguements about the unbalanced nature of the Zyklon Gas Tank? Would this cause a lot of angry sign-waving, or would most accept it?
(Granted, a part of me still relishes the idea of Kane dispaching Hitler in the final movie of the German campaign).
