Articles & Editorials: Connecting Red Alert to Tiberium: Mission (Im)possible

Inspired by a possible feature of the cancelled Renegade 2 in the next season of C&C Legos, I found myself in the need of imagining how would Red Alert 2 merge with Tiberian Dawn as Westwood had originally planned. Could have two completely different universes, connected only by the presence of Kane in the Soviet campaign of Red Alert 1, been one?

Just by taking a glance at the factions in both universes, there are similarities – both Nod and the Soviet Union have their ranks filled with the angry proletariat that fights against the so-called “good guys” from the West – GDI and the Allies respectively. Both Nod and the Soviets attempted to gain supremacy in the world in the shadows, as we have seen in Romanov’s attempts to spread communism to his neighbourhood and Kane’s actions in Eastern Europe. If that failed, they launched invasions. On the other hand, GDI and the Allies propagate their own politics through peace and, of course, technological advantages in terms of sophisticated armaments.

Let us now take a look at C&C history. Nadia announced the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s and the rise of the Brotherhood of Nod that would replace it as a superpower. However, according to Westwood’s never achieved plans for Renegade 2, a living member of the Romanov family started a rebellion against the Scavengers, a transitional pro-Nod faction, attempting to restore the Soviet Union. Apparently, the rebellion failed in its mission, resulting in the Brotherhood’s spread through the world, with a special influence of a now questionably war-torn, but still freshly dissolved Yugoslavia, eventually creating a headquarters in Sarajevo, the capital and one of ethnically most diverse cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Kane’s affiliation towards (ex-)communist countries is understandable, as multiethnical communities can spark rivalries and even conflicts. The loss of Soviet technological achievements like the Tesla coil and Kirov airship may have been a result of intense battles between the Scavengers and Romanov’s rebels, as well as Scavengers’ attempts to create new weapons from what they find around them, as smaller armies required mobile units and smaller bases, for which purpose complex technologies seemed inappropriate, hence Nod’s arsenal is filled with raider buggies, attack bikes, and later in the wars, with stealth tanks.

However, the transition from the Allies to the UNGDI does not have anything near to a clear explanation. It is possible that the Allied forces found no adversary after the events in Yuri’s Revenge, so a military force of that size seemed unnecessary, resulting in a dissolution of its own. Advanced weapons like mirage tanks, weather control devices and the Chronosphere seem to have simply vanished, with no successors to those technologies to be seen in any of the Tiberium wars, though prism technology may have inspired the later Nod beam cannons’ ability to charge Obelisks of light in the Third Tiberium War, yet the side change also raises many questions. The Allies might have scrapped their arsenal due to the expenses their maintenance caused. At the start of Tiberian Dawn, GDI seems lost, overwhelmed and in inferior in firepower to Nod. Although attacked by the media and a not-so-supportive Europe, GDI managed to rise from its ashes, restore its arsenal with unique weapons like the ion cannon and defeat Nod within three years. This might have been the result of their generals’ experience with the Soviet Union preceding the First Tiberium War.

All of this may be irreversably obsolete, since the events of Red Alert 1 and 2 are nullified by Cherdenko’s trip through time, but before Red Alert 3, the two universes could have been merged by a transitional game like Renegade 2 or something similar. In a fashion of our well-known TV stars, I would like to call this myth – plausible.

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