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« NEWS ARCHIVES »
July 2003 |
| Moo's Mumblings 4: Storyline Realism | | - MooMan65 | July 24, 2003 | Recently I have been receiving a number of e-mails on the topic of why I even bothered to do the History's for the three sides in Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge when it really has nothing much to do with YR˛. I just want to clear up a few things and pour my heart out with explanations.
It is common belief amongst the community that Electronic Arts has done many questionable things to the C&C series since they bought out Westwood all those years ago... Many people dislike the fact that RA2/YR changed the entire C&C series from serious to comical in one swoop, they also didn't explain much in the way of how the original Red Alert led into RA2/YR. It is kinda like they developed the game and threw together the extended storyline at the last moment, it also didn't help that there were many new people on the C&C scene from RA2/YR onwards. But regardless of the way it turned out, it still is the official storyline, and I've done my best to provide more details (many unofficial) to help provide plausible explanations to the events between 1962 (Red Alert) and 1979 (Red Alert 2), and some of the strange things and discrepancies in the storyline people have picked up. I want YR˛ to make the storyline seem as realistic as it should be in a fantasy timeline, and also satisfy people's curiosity to just how Red Alert led to Red Alert 2.
-First we have the issue of the US, why would the Soviets totally concentrate on dominating the US and ignore the very people who defeated them 17 years past? We are given no explanation from EA themselves, so I created a conversation in which Yuri advised Romonov to, instead of going after the Allies a second time in which the US would almost immediate provide assistance, they attack the US first, as since the Allies are still recovering from the previous great war, they will be less reluctant to assist the US. At least this is better than no explanation at all eh? 
-Next we have countries, EA overall did a good job at involving most of the playable countries in the storyline itself, with all the Allied countries covered. However the Soviet countries Iraq and Libya had absolutely no mention in the storyline, nor were they ever used. Remember Cuba was used in the later RA2 Allied mission to protect the Florida Keys which were close to them, but both Iraq and Libya were seemingly thrown in mainly for the benefit of their special units. Now most of you probably know YR˛ replaces these two countries with more involved ones and I did the history to explain their involvement, otherwise I would have been no better than EA was. First we have Ukraine, a country that I couldn't believe was not in RA2! They were in the original, and they would not stand idly by and watch the second war, so their participation in the storyline is much more convincing than either Iraq or Libya was. The other country added was China, which I'll go into on the next point...
-Then we have the issue of how such a massive force was able to sneak into the US within minutes? And how on earth was the Soviets able to construct such a huge army without the US and Allies even knowing about it? Well I can't really explain the speed issue too much, as considering the way Kirov Airships move in the game, it would have taken them years to cross the Atlantic (lol!), but this is where China comes into the picture. After Stalin's defeat Yuri is assigned to make sure that conquered China's affiliation is not revealed. Since the country was in isolation during the first war it wasn't too difficult. China was the main source for the resources and manpower that was used to construct the new Soviet army, and was made possible as the US was not monitoring China as it was Russia and Ukraine. When the civil war broke out in Mexico, the Romonov sent a large majority of his force to Mexico and in the Atlantic to give the impression he was protecting the interests of his puppet organization, the World Socialist Alliance. However, when the word was sounded, the ground troops instantly broke through the border, the Atlantic force suddenly altered course to the US West coast, and China sent their contributions across the Pacific to the US East cost. Overall the forces were pretty close to the US before the alarm sounded, so hence why it didn't take long for them to invade. At least that is my unofficial theory, and that is what I am going by considering there is not any official explanation on the matter.
Those are the three main reasons why I decided to do a History of my own, to explain the change of countries in YR˛, to add to the existing storyline and fill in gaps here and there, and to make it as realistic as this fantasy world should be. Of course you can have your own explanations for certain areas, and I'll leave you to your own opinions, I just wanted to explain mine. | |
| The Big 20,000! | | - MooMan65 | July 11, 2003 | Sometime during my night MooMan's Corner passed the 20,000 hit mark (I missed the 10,000 mark so I thought I'll do one now)! For a specific mod site that has not actually been in existance for too long this is a great achievement! It's pleasing to see so many people still interested in Red Alert 2 even with the gaming world striding on. It makes my work just that little bit more worthwhile!
Two things I should update on as well, once is that I have uploaded the Yuri History using the same format as the other two. Yuri's history was much harder to figure out, and I ended up extrapolating on more than one occasion where there was no evidence. Although I must stress again that a lot of the information in these histories are NOT official, as they were not mentioned in the official storyline and history's. It it primarily a more in-depth approach to how the events from the Allied defeat in Red Alert 1 lead up to Red Alert 2, since we know nothing official about that.
The other update is something you should know already, and that is I have modified the title banner above to include some more Red Alert 2 related images since that IS this site's primary focus after all. If you recognise it, it is part of the same MooMan's Rules screenshot that is in the Screenshots page. It is rather easy to tell that it is not the normal Red Alert 2.
Well I have completed my provisional information pages for YR˛, I cannot really put any proper mod information pages up until I am sure that what I'm putting into the mod will be staying in for the first beta. And since I don't want to be putting up half-completed pages before that I'll leave the whole lot until then. You will still see regular 'Moo's Mumblings' updates so you know what's going on of course, just no permenant information pages just yet. But do not worry! I have been progressing on the mod very well lately because of the school holidays, so the majority of my work left is to finish off the major changes that I have started (see previous Moo's Mumbling) and make balance corrections to the existing game, and I will be all set to get the whole beta-testing procedure ready! | |
| A Little Light Reading? | | - MooMan65 | July 1, 2003 | I have just added some more information pages for YR˛. They do not actually discuss proper mod features, more the history of the entire Red Alert series conflict in more detail that EA has not gone into before, now of could being as I don't work for EA the extra information is all unofficial, I am just providing you with maybe a nice explanation for a number of things that looked out of place with RA2/YR compared with the original Red Alert masterpiece. This also shows exactly what I refer to to get my ideas for mods I create and also in-depth reasons why I switched two Soviet countries to Ukraine and China.
So if you are looking for something to read while waiting you should check out the new Allied and Soviet History pages. And before you ask, I will be getting a Yuri one up, his background is harder to decipher so that is why it's taking longer. | |
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