Interface & Interactivity

Point of View and Interface

Although Westwood has mainly tried to preserve the interface from previous titles in the CnC series, one thing that has changed is your point of view of the battlefield. Normally Westwood RTS games give you an overhead view of the battlefield, like in Dune 2, CnC, and Red Alert. The bird's eye view has been changed in Tiberian Sun to a lower angle, isometric view. This provides a richer graphic experience for the player, because sometimes that overhead view makes you feel too detached, like you're looking at things out of an airplane. The way I see it, the isometric view brings you more into the heat of the battle. There were likely more practical reasons for the change as well. Since the game is in 3D and will feature varying levels of elevation, it might have been too difficult to differentiate how high up or how low you are from an overhead point of view. No matter what the reason was, it's a good thing Westwood dumped that dry, bland overhead viewpoint.

Interactive Environment

Perhaps the most exciting part about the upcoming Tiberian Sun is the extreme interactivity of the environment. Units can move both over and under objects, so be careful - someone might bring that bridge crashing down over your head. Random effects will also be part of the game, like ion storms which disable your high tech units, and destructive meteor showers that can deform the landscape, creating craters to hide inside. Objects will also obey a real world kind of physics, so the explosive discs thrown by some GDI infantry will bounce differently depending on where they land. Units move slower on steep slopes and depending on the terrain; look for infantry to move briskly on roadways but scramble more slowly over rocky terrain. This makes hovercraft ideal because they do equally well on any terrain.

I wouldn't wanna be under there

Forests are great for hiding your foot soldiers but vehicles will have to slowly pick their way in between the trees to get through. But hey, since the environment is fully deformable, you pyromaniacs can just burn down the forest and make your own path through. Smokey the Bear be damned, this is war! Just be careful you're not in the forest when it's burning because the fire will hurt your units. Fire's not the only thing you get to play with; the icy rivers in the arctic tileset will gradually freeze over and melt again, allowing you to move units across when the surface is solid enough. Just be careful about moving heavy machinery though because the ice may give way and sink your vehicles! Even the parts of the units are interactive. Since the units are in 3D, components may come flying off in heavy combat - sucks to be you if the chassis of a wrecked vehicle comes flying over on top of your head!