Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is a 1999 real-time strategy video game developed by Westwood Studios, published by Electronic Arts, and released exclusively for Windows in August 1999. The game is the sequel to the 1995 game Command & Conquer. It featured new semi-3D graphics, a more futuristic sci-fi setting, and new gameplay features such as vehicles capable of hovering or burrowing. The main story of the game focuses on a second war between the UN-backed Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the cult-like Brotherhood of Nod, both seeking to rule over an Earth which is undergoing rapid ecological collapse.
Tiberian Sun was one of the most anticipated games of 1999. Its development suffered numerous delays, with several features being cut before release. However, it was a commercial success and received positive reviews from critics, despite some of the technical bugs in the game. The dark atmosphere, foreboding soundtrack, and slow-paced gameplay of Tiberian Sun received a mixed reception from fans upon release. Its story of a military–industrial complex preoccupied with terrorism rather than environmental failure has been hailed as a metaphor for modern times. Several additional features were added to the game with the Firestorm expansion pack, including new units and a multiplayer global war mode. The game was later succeeded by the 2007 sequel Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and was later licensed by Electronic Arts as freeware on February 12, 2010, with a Steam release on March 7, 2024.
Gameplay
Tiberian Sun sees players taking on opponents by building bases, gathering resources, creating armies, and then defeating their opposition by wiping out their units and either capturing or destroying their bases. Gameplay functions similar to the 1995 game, though both playable factions in the games received significant changes to balance out units but retaining notable differences with new structures and units for each - GDI rely on heavy strategic attacks, with new technologies including special defensive walls and units that can traverse bodies of water; Nod rely on unconventional, fanatical methods of attacks, with new technologies including deployable units for defensive purposes and units that can burrow under the ground and emerge behind enemy defences.
The game operates on a new isometric game engine featuring varying level terrain to give the impression of a true 3D environment, and dynamic lighting that simulates day/night cycles and special effects such as ion storms. Some buildings and armored units are rendered with voxels, although infantry is still rendered as sprites. Tiberium, the game's sole resource required to fund construction of structures and units, now consists of two types - the standard green tiberium, and a more valuable blue tiberium - while bridges in the game that are destroyed can be repaired by using a faction's engineer unit on a special hut building connected to the bridge. Crates can be found that convey bonuses such as extra credits, or healing a set number of damaged units.
While the game features network and online multiplayer modes, the game's campaign mode allows players to choose one of two factions who conduct missions across three different theatres of war - North America, Europe, and North Africa. Each faction's campaign features different missions, though a number of these include optional side missions which can be undertaken, and if completed confer a bonus that reduces its difficulty, ranging from additional units, to a reduction in enemy units.
Plot Setting Tiberian Sun involves two factions - the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), and the Brotherhood of Nod - and an alien substance called "Tiberium", and occurs after the events of Command & Conquer. Tiberium has become a serious problem for the world since its arrival in the 1990s, not only in causing a conflict between GDI and Nod over control of the valuable crystals it creates from leeching precious metals from the soil - leading to the First Tiberium War - but also allowing the substance to slowly spread and terraform the planet's ecology and landscape, including causing mutations in humans, the formation of new alien lifeforms, and the development of new weather patterns called Ion Storms. By the 21st century, GDI is focused on researching the means to combat Tiberium's spread, making use of an orbital space station called the Philadelphia to command its forces, while Nod has splintered following the presumed death of its leader Kane, with both factions working to develop new technology to provide each with equal strength in their armies, including armoured walkers, cyborgs, advanced defensive measures, and armoured infantry.
The campaigns of Tiberian Sun focus on a new global conflict erupting in 2030, when Kane returns and re-energises Nod, forcing GDI to combat their efforts, and resulting in the Second Tiberium War. GDI's campaign focuses on the efforts of a commander who must combat the sudden surge of attacks, working alongside a faction of mutants known as "The Forgotten", in order to thwart Kane's latest plans with Tiberium. Nod's campaign focuses on the efforts of an officer who escapes execution by a de facto leader, controlled by GDI, and works to reunite Nod in order to complete Kane's plans.
GDI Campaign (Evolutionary Response) GDI commander Michael McNeil is recalled from a training exercise to assist in combating Nod, after being informed by his superior, General James Solomon (player character in the first game), that Kane has returned. McNeil is assigned with initially pushing out Nod forces from GDI territories in North America, led by Nod general and drug lord Vega, before Solomon assigns him to assist a recon team in securing a ship of alien origin that the Brotherhood have taken an interest in. Although the ship is secured, GDI finds it cleaned out by Vega and proceed to track him down, coming across a mutant named Umagon who requests their help in rescuing Tratos, the leader of the Forgotten, who can help explain what Vega stole. Discovering that the ship contained an alien database called the Tacitus that Kane sought, McNeil pursues Vega to his base in Central America. Cornered and learning that Kane has no further use for him, Vega takes a fatal drug overdose before his base is nuked, informing McNeil before he dies that the Tacitus is already being shipped to Nod's base in North Africa.
Learning that Nod is targeting GDI's research in Northern Europe, which focused on creating sonic crystals that can help combat Tiberium's spread, McNeil is assigned to reclaim an important GDI base in the region, before pursuing the stolen crystals. GDI soon learns that Kane has developed chemical missiles that can accelerate the spread of Tiberium across the continent, forcing McNeil to combat the imminent threat it poses along with eliminating a factory developing a new aircraft for the Brotherhood. Eventually, GDI moves towards Egypt to combat Nod at their main base in Cairo, only to learn that Kane's ultimate plan is to launch an ICBM missile containing a warhead of pure, concentrated Tiberium, that can transform the entire planet. Against the advice of Solomon, McNeil launches a direct assault on Kane's base, ultimately destroying the missile and killing Kane, ending the conflict once again, and securing the Tacitus for GDI's research team to analyze.
Nod Campaign (Deus ex Kane) Anton Slavik, an officer of Nod's elite unit called "The Black Hand", is arrested by the Brotherhood's new leader Hassan, who is a GDI spy. Before he can be executed, Slavik is rescued by a member of his crew, posing as a Nod journalist, and begins working to reunite Nod in Northern Africa, with the assistance of the Brotherhood's AI CABAL. Shortly after capturing Hassan and ending the internal conflict within the Brotherhood, Slavik reveals him to be a GDI puppet. Before Hassan is executed, Kane announces his return, fully reuniting Nod's splinter factions. Pleased with Slavik's work, Kane assigns him to disrupt a GDI excavation at Nod's former temple in Sarajevo, in order to prevent them locating an alien database and a special project housing it. However, Slavik finds the project missing, having been taken by Vega. Forced to North America to retrieve it, Slavik and his crew recover the missing project and the database (the Tacitus), but are tricked by GDI into attacking a research facility, leading to them being captured.
Imprisoned in a base in Northern Europe, Slavik receives a message from CABAL that a Nod strike force has arrived to rescue him, and executes a plan that leads to his escape. Learning from Kane that he has completed a new missile that will give Nod an ultimate victory and shape the future of the planet, Slavik implements operations to disrupt GDI's research into a new advanced battle walker, and captures a member of a highly advanced GDI base in order to infiltrate it. With Kane's plan nearing completion, Slavik attacks the base, captures it, and uses anti-satellite weapons to destroy the Philadelphia. Kane then launches his missile, achieving ascension and vanishing, while transforming the Earth into a Tiberiumized planet that he had envisioned as humanity's evolutionary future.
Development Tiberian Sun was announced after the release of the original Command & Conquer, with a trailer featured on its discs. After Virgin Interactive Entertainment was facing financial difficulties and was selling some of its assets, Electronic Arts acquired Westwood Studios in 1998 and published Tiberian Sun, and had no direct part in its development. Tiberian Suns development was troubled before and after the acquisition, and was delayed numerous times - first for November 1998, then for spring 1999, then ultimately summer 1999. This resulted in a number of engine and gameplay features being omitted from the game, some of which were later included in the Firestorm expansion pack, as well as numerous bugs which have not been fixed even after the patching period.
Several images and references in the Tiberian Sun "rules" file indicate that more features were planned for the release. A former Westwood employee, Adam Isgreen, who was working for Petroglyph Games at the time, elaborated upon them in March and May 2007. Drop-pods were intended to be customizable for GDI before deployment. Lighting was intended to make a huge difference for day/night play, as units spotted by light posts/towers would be susceptible to enemy fire at greater ranges, and in turn would suffer a reduction in their own range ability. Westwood planned the Hunter/Seeker Droid option to support selection of target types, but ultimately the droid was made to attack at random. Developers also did not have enough time to finalize balanced differences in terrain types.