Cancelation of Tiberium

I was recently looking through a few old On The Spot videos by Gamespot and one of them had a developer commentary of a unreleased game called Tiberium. The game was suppose to be a First Person Shooter developed in the Command and Conquer universe that features tactical gameplay as well as the more standard FPS game play.

A few of the main points that the developers stressed in the video were the inclusion of commandable AI units that were of course part of the C&C universe like the Orca or the more standard footsoldier, all of them being on the GDI side because as I found out later, the entire game was about the invasion of the Scrin from the perspective of a GDI commando. Another point was having a transforming gun that took the form of 4 weapons including something that seemed like a railgun, a machine gun, shotgun, and while I don't remember if this was mentioned, or I might be guessing it, the last one was a rocket launcher. The final last point was that the game used audio technology (Adaptive Surround Experience) that the developers emphasized on that it would continuously alter the sound by looking at the player's actions and perspective moment to moment where it would affect the sound mix to give the player the best possible sound effects.

All of that sounds very interesting, but even the fact alone that it's a command and conquer FPS game is appealing and new enough (especially considering the low reception of the first and only other C&C FPS) that even if it didn't have any of those unique features in it, it would still pretty much appeal to a certain audience; or so I thought. That trailer was about 4 years ago and since then the game has been completely canceled, the reason provided was that “the game's level of quality was not high enough to meet EA standards, and that a low quality game was not suitable for consumers and would not survive in this market”.

Judging from the trailer alone and nothing else, everything in the trailer looked great, it's graphics easily rivaled many of today's games, and there haven't been many squad based shooters at all since then and now. It was also a chance to find out how well the technology of Adaptive Surround Experience actually worked, to me it sounds like the AI director of audio technology and if it works out as well as labeled, then it would be a great thing to have for the game. Finally on the transforming gun, that's probably just flavor for the game rather than a actual selling point, for most people anyway, but regardless based off footage in the game, it looked pretty good, and while I personally prefer the 2 weapon load out swap system, I wouldn't mind the transforming gun.

Of course, the reason why it was canceled was the only official word, and again, all of my opinions are solely based off the trailer. I did not see how the NPC AI functioned, or even how well the story played out. However on technical basis (except for judgment on the AI), the game looked fine, and it is somewhat of a disappointment it never saw light.