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C&C: Alarmstufe Rot 3

Year:	2008
Developer:	Electronic Arts Los Angeles
Publisher:	Electronic Arts
Original title:	C&C: Red Alert 3
Abbreviation:	RA3
Executive Producer:	Chris Corry
Composers:	James Hannigan, Frank Klepacki, Timothy Michael Wynn, Mikael Sandgren
Rating PCG:	79% (12/2008)
Newest version:	1.012
Add-on:	Der Aufstand

Story:

After the Allies drove the Soviets back to Moscow, and their defeat is nigh, they decide to send back several hitmen in time to kill Einstein, the single person they see responsible for the Allied superiority. Although the act is successful, and Europe seems is in peace (With the second war never happening) in this altered timeline, a third party comes into play with the Empire of the Rising Sun (Japan), which gives birth to plans of world domination they, given their technological advancements, are set to realize and achieve, throwing you into this manage a¡ trois.

Trivia:

RA3 was distributed with DRM and SecuROM as copy protection. By that also honest C&C gamers were punished and dispossessed of their rights. At least: Patch 1.05 added the deauthorization tool.
On 02/12/2008 it leaked slowly out, that RA3 was going to be announced officially (again) on 02/14. It was released on 10/30/2008.
The engine being used is once again SAGE 2.0 (RNA engine) and real actors (George Takei among others) in the FMVs. There are three factions, the known Soviets and Allies ones as well as completely new Japan as Empire of the Rising Sun. Also featured again is Tanya, Tesla technology, ore as resource, Kirovs and the attack dogs.
In place of ore fields only ore mines exist. By that typical management of miners per field does not apply and (intentionally?) path-finding issues of them.
Gems as resource does not exist – this is reminiscent of EA's attempts for TW to pass on blue Tiberium as a second, more valuable, resource.
Water plays such an important role unlike any other RA title before: Many units are amphibious and one can build entire bases on water incl. defensive fortifications.
Initially not Japan but the Swiss with light and fast units was planned as the third faction, Greg Black tweeted on 01/18/2019:
Stumbled across this super early Red Alert 3 design doc, back when the Empire of the Rising sun faction was a literal Swiss Army faction.
For the first time since Westwood's destruction Frank Klepacki is involved in the soundtrack again! By "Hell March 3", "Grinder 2" and "Nuclear Death" he had contributed three tracks to it. Since he initially did not know he would only produce fewer tracks, he ended up with plenty of ideas and adapted them on his fifth solo album "Infiltrator":
So once the hand full of themes for the game were done, I was left with this overflow of some cool ideas for songs that could fit into that world, as if it could have stylistically picked right up from RA2. So I decided to finish them and release them for the album Infiltrator, knowing that it would be more of a nostalgic return for the fans of C&C Red Alert 1 & 2.
Ed Del Castillo criticized the game as circus, which has damaged the brand fundamentally, in a podcast dated 03/10/2014:
It was always supposed to be you know this alternative history of what happens if Einstein were to go back in time and and kill Hitler. And... and you know by by Red Alert 3 was this markery of dancing bears and you know and and just crazy like "let's just have fun and do this crazy stuff". And it's like I think when you do this you you fundamentally discredit your own brand.
HM3 would "normally" sound differently, Frank Klepacki told in an interview on 09/05/2010:
The only major difference was, they wanted to stick close to the feel of HM2 rather than go in a different new feel, which is what I would've done otherwise. So I had to provide what the client wanted rather than have the creative freedoms I was used to. Which is fine.
Greg Black criticized in retrospect on 06/23/2010 in an interview the corporate policy of EA and denounced a lot of drawbacks:
Unfortunately although we had a very talented team of passionate gamers, EA simply would not give us the time we felt we needed to make a truly great C&C game. In the case of C&C:3 our development cycle was something like 11 months. Compare that to Blizzard or Relic who was spending 3-6 years on their RTS titles. Our longest development cycle was 18 months on RA3, but at that time the team was split in half and added another platform (PS3), so the extra dev time was kind of a wash. EA simply needed us to keep cranking out games to keep the LA studio afloat while many its other teams floundered. So to answer your question I was not happy with how C&C3 or RA3 turned out, our games were always rushed, our engine technology aged and degraded over the years, our path finding was horrible, our online implimentations were embarassing, and ultimately our games did not, in my view, live up to the orginal C&C, or RA2, or Generals (which I also worked on but in a very lowly capacity).
The game has been rushed, the SAGE engine always outdated, the path-finding gruesome, the online technology embarrassingly implemented and simply not doing justice to its predecessors. It is not looking much better in terms of balancing and design:
Unfortunatly our schedules usually meant we couldn't do any real iteration on the design. We were essentially shipping out "first pass" work as final across all areas of the project, balance and design included. Additionally the schedules precluded us from having meaningful multiplayer betas. This was always a huge source of frustration and disappointment for me. I can not blame everything on time pressure though, Dustin Browder was under similar time pressure with Generals and that game had great multiplayer.

With every game I've worked on ultimately all I can see are it's flaws. Its hard to not look at something every day and just see the problems. Pathfinding and UI responsiveness were the two things that always drove me nuts with the sage engine.
From all areas the first runnable version had to be used and the implications of the multiplayer beta were therefore meaningless. Greg Black was additionally most upset about the path-finding and response time of the engine.
The logo:
On 02/27/2010 it became public knowledge per interview, that Mark Skaggs left EA back then in protest: That RA3 was supposed to be rushed to the finish line in only nine months.
mark skaggs said:
the real reason i left ea in 2005 is because i was tired of continually being given deadlines that were too short to make c&c games
me said:
ha i knew it
mark skaggs said:
we were ready to start red alert 3 and then they told me it had to be done in 9 months
rather than make a big fuss about it, i decided that it was time to do something different
there was a big meeting to try to convince me to stay, but i decided to take some time off and that turned into an exit.
Due to similar reasons Greg Black among others had also left EA. In an interview from 06/23/2010 he reported about his leaving:
It was not an easy decision for me to leave, EA is where my career in game development got started, but ultimately I needed to do something new. By the time I left EA ma y of my good friends from the RTS team had gone. EA had broken many promises to us and was continuing to make bad decisions at the expense of the C&C franchise and over the protests of the development teams. I just needed a break from the EA insanity.
He needed a break from EA insanity (!). Many broken promises and enduring bad decisions over the developer's head had lead to it.
On 12/06/2004 Mark Skaggs made this announcement via email:
Hi everyone,
I hope everyone is enjoying one of the best years ever for PC gaming.

On the eve of one of our own major releases, The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™, the one thing we've grown to understand is how important the community - our most loyal supporters - is for industry. This started back in our days at Westwood where the community for our games has always been a big priority. We understand that you are the most important and influential group for us and we are constantly amazed at the amount of talent used to create quality assets and mods.

Having said that, we have a MAJOR announcement to make and we are making it exclusively to our long time C&C fans. This announcement is not going out to the press and it won't appear on the EA website or anywhere else online. We are very proud to announce that the team that brought you Command & Conquer™ Red Alert 2™, Command & Conquer™ Yuri's Revenge™, and Command & Conquer™ Generals has officially started work on our next project set in the Red Alert universe!

As I mentioned, we're very proud to ship what we feel is one of the best RTS games ever released. Most of you have probably heard of The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ which hits stores this week. We've introduced some really innovative features and gameplay mechanics, which you should definitely check out when you get a chance. You will also see a major enhancement to the Sage graphics engine we originally created for Command & Conquer Generals. Expect us to leverage and continue to evolve this powerful engine as we start work on our new Command & Conquer game.

Thanks again for all your support over the years. This entire team is incredibly excited to work on the next Command & Conquer chapter. Look for an official announcement soon and have a wonderful holiday.

Mark Skaggs
VP and Executive Producer
Electronic Arts
Luckily he was fired 2005 in time before he could damaging C&C even more. Maybe a little to late, because the separation of Tiberium and Red Alert in different universes EA pursues to this very day and was also not reluctant regarding a Generals 2. Anyway RA3 was put on hold for more years and should only attract interest after TW again.

Red Alert 3 by Westwood?

Even at times of Westwood one kept already busy with RA3. For a long time these URLs have been the only evidence:
At each adress one ended on the homepage of Westwood. Another possible and very interesting link to RA3 was this one:
- http://www.dawn-of-war.com/
Already registered on 09/03/1998: "Dawn of War" – this could mean the beginning of the First Tiberium War (Tiberian Dawn – Dawn of War) and also a possible subtitle for RA3.
Louis Castle on 02/15/2002 about two new C&C RTS titles, possibly having one of them also belonging to RA3:
We're working on Earth & Beyond, the space-based RPG, and we're also working on another Command & Conquer real-time strategy title in addition to the one that's coming out [the recently revealed, next-gen C&C RTS], so we're actually working on two of those right now.
The arguably last sign of life regarding a RA3 by Westwood appeared on 03/10/2002 due to this poll creation on the offical site:
Which game would you like Westwood Studios to work on next?
Choices were Red Alert 3 and Tiberian Twilight.
Maybe there would have been a mission at the Tiber River...