Command & Conquer: Generals 2 developed by BioWare Victory for EA will be free to play, with no single-player mode.
The news was revealed by John Van Caneghem, general manager BioWare Victory in an interview to PC Gamer. There will be more of "co-operative and competitive" skirmishes with additional modes to be added based on community feedback. There might even be a story mode that also will be added later on, but "it is something we haven't announced yet how we're going to do it."
The studio "really want to get back to the roots of what made Command & Conquer great," Van Caneghem said. The game will let you grow and build more bases so that you can "build a zillion units" and "go out and kill all the bad guys."
Generals 2 during its launch will be a decisive online experience, despite Real-time strategy traps.
"As a live service I think the exciting part is you can try things," Van Caneghem said. "You can see what the community wants, you can give it a shot, you can put it up for a weekend and see how it goes, develop towards what the fans like."
Generals 2 is going to be the first in the series of online, high fidelity Command & Conquer games which will include all the repetitions from the series' history.
"We decided to choose Generals as the first set of games we build under the universe, but we'll be expanding after that, like Tiberium and Red Alert as well as some others as well," Van Caneghem said. "But Generals 2 was the first one, and it was one of the biggest sellers, as well as the fanbase has been asking for it for some time."
Generals 2 will be connected to an online account, with each new match you can go a level higher. Another important feature in this game is that Regular DLC, both paid and free formats will be getting additional maps and modes with time.
"We're obviously open to the concept. I know another person asked me the other day if they'd be able to fight games between factions. I guess that's something we can look at at some point," said Van Caneghem.
There will be an integration of e-sports features in multiplayer deathmatch and co-operative modes.
"We're really going to run the gambit of what people enjoy in a multiplayer environment," he said. "I don't think we're making a list of the features yet, but I think you can basically make a list of the assumed ones that you'd need to be an e-sports game, and it's definitely part of the plan."
We can only wait to see if there will be a spectator mode with camera mode, shoutcast support, and tournament support. To have an online RTS that is powered by Frostbite is very attractive. We have to wait until the release to see if hard-core C&C gamers will be happy with this.
