Kane's Wrath Tacitus Thursday - Storyline Origins

[Dark Warrior]

It's Kane's Wrath Tacitus Thursday. Remember, every Thursday up until the launch of Kane's Wrath on March 24th, we will be bringing you an exclusive feature for Kane's Wrath which you will only find here at our official Command & Conquer website. Check out the latest update below.





Lead Designer Sam Bass and architect of the storyline for Kane's Wrath spills some of his darkest secrets about the origins of this new story which spans 20 years - from the rebirth of the Brotherhood of Nod after the Second Tiberium War through the dramatic events of the Third Tiberium War and beyond. Do we have your attention now? Also check out somne new cinematic stills from the game.

The Sweep of History – The Origins of the Kane’s Wrath Storyline

It's Monday afternoon, the office is quiet and I'm sitting here in my lavishly appointed hex, waiting on a build and pursuing what has become a favorite hobby over the last few months - gazing blankly at my whiteboard and attempting to determine what the barely comprehensible scrawlings that adorn it actually say. In most cases, this is beyond hopeless, but one sentence keeps popping out at me from the multicolored murk…

"The sweep of history"

…written in bright red, underlined multiple times. Accompanied by a blue blob that I think is meant to be CABAL and perhaps the worst drawing of Joe Kucan known to man.

In other words, it looks important, and, well, it is.

Why?

To find out, we need to journey back to the halcyon days of mid-2007 and the very beginnings of Kane's Wrath.

When we first started work on the project, we spent a significant period of time taking stock of Command & Conquer 3's failings, from both a development and community perspective. From a fictional standpoint, we hit upon a biggie; simply put, the Tiberium Wars narrative gave short shrift to the events of Tiberian Sun and Firestorm, our direct predecessors in the Tiberium Universe canon, and was consequently dinged by the community for leaving so many questions unanswered.


KANE STARES DOWN BROTHER MARCION
(CLICK IMAGE FOR HIGHER RESOLUTION SCREENSHOT)

While I still believe that our reasons for doing so – to provide a 'clean' entry point for those new to the franchise – were valid, as a gamer and long term C&C fan I completely understood the frustration. After all, if I had waited nearly a freakin' decade to find out what happened to CABAL, or to learn what was up with Kane’s mask, or what became of Anton Slavik, only to be met with a lone IntelDB entry and a distinctly unadorned Joe Kucan, I’d likely be camping outside the EALA offices with torches and pitchforks too.


KANE & CABAL
(CLICK IMAGE FOR HIGHER RESOLUTION SCREENSHOT)

With Kane's Wrath, I felt that we had a perfect opportunity to address those concerns, to create a compelling narrative that would also meld thirteen years of Tiberium Universe canon into a unified whole. Fired up with creative inspiration, I took this somewhat grandiose idea to the team, proposing that the Kane's Wrath storyline eschew the traditional "here's what happened next, folks" sequel narrative in favor of something more epic, something that both looked to the past and at the same time pointed us towards a post-Tiberium Wars future.

In other words, I pitched them a tale that really captured the…(drum roll)… sweep of history.

To my surprise, they were totally down for it, and so I got down to business, mapping out the specifics of this ever more ambitious, epic storyline. After drawing up a list of the various canonic issues I wanted to address (CABAL, the Tacitus, Kane's mask and so on), and then sketching out a narrative thread we could use to drive the storyline proper, I came to the conclusion that our tale would be best be told over a sixteen year stretch, kicking off in 2034, shortly after the end of Firestorm and Nod’s collapse, wending its way through the back alleys of Tiberium Wars and ending up in 2050, three years after the Scrin Invasion and Kane's "death" at Temple Prime.

My next step was to determine exactly what did happen post-Firestorm. Since this was to be the foundation for the Kane's Wrath storyline, it needed to be as clearly defined and well thought out as possible. Thankfully, Firestorm itself provided me with a clear starting point - that is, having lost Kane, the Brotherhood was rife with infighting and factionalism.

From there, I came up with the following…


ANTON SLAVIK & KANE
(CLICK IMAGE FOR HIGHER RESOLUTION SCREENSHOT)

Anton Slavik, already in a weakened position due to CABAL and the loss of the Tacitus, finds himself besieged from all sides by internal dissent, most notably from his former comrades within the Black Hand. These tensions quickly spiral out of control, before long exploding into a full on schism. When the smoke clears, Slavik lies dead, murdered by one of his own, and the Brotherhood has ceased to exist, splintered into a cornucopia of militant factions, none powerful enough to challenge the GDI oligarchy.

In other words, when our story begins, Kane finds himself without his cult, without his army. He is completely, utterly alone.


KANE IS NOT QUITE ALL ALONE
(CLICK IMAGE FOR HIGHER RESOLUTION SCREENSHOT)

After locking down this basic concept, I fleshed it out into a full narrative – one that you can read in the Kane's Wrath Intelligence Database, should you so desire – and, in doing so, began to feel confident that our story would indeed be worthy of the Command & Conquer franchise. Here’s hoping that you agree with me when the game comes out.

If not, feel free to queue up outside my hex, pitchforks, torches and all.

Kann mal wer übersetzen?^^