To be honest, I am not good with words or the way of expressing them; I am only an artist not an orator. However, I feel like I wish to express my opinion towards my brothers and those who will heed my words or care about my thoughts as of what I think of Command and Conquer 4 and of those that express their feelings about it, the way EA is taking care of it and the way how I feel about it all. I do not believe many will listen, nor will they respond... But I guess it is better that way, I don't really have as much time to do so.

I will start of that I am not a true Hardcore fan of Command and Conquer for I have only started paying the game in 2002 and my first game was Red Alert. I heard stories where they played the game and loved Westwood for longer than I have and I cannot truly sympathize with them of these current events.

But I do have some fear, not fear of how CNC4 will look and how it will possibly ruin the franchise as quoting most of those my friend would call "fanbrats," but fear that all that extreme pessimism would immediately turn for the worse and will automatically cancel Command and Conquer all together. I mean, it does not help to say that "Westwood is the only one that can make Command and Conquer" or "EA is only milking it as much as they can before it runs out and would abandon it," That is helping NO ONE AT ALL! Yes you have the right to fear that Command and Conquer 4 is extremely different from the other games (other than Renegade, of course) just saying that it sucks even before the beta comes out doesn't help. I do say that it is just a matter of "Time will tell, sooner or later, time will tell" (Einstein: Red Alert) scenario and I do say that it should be given a chance.

Besides, from what I read on the CommandCom Report by JohnWE from C&C Files (info gathered by the Lion) they are working really hard on the FMV, making it extremely unique where you can do like a 360-like view and it is more grittier. The missions, although lesser than CnC 3, can be more replayable and in addition of the return of Tiberium Fauna and Flora. I hear many good things about it and I think it is really positive, just that the only thing is most of us have to get used to not building bases anymore or spamming tanks to win the game. In addition, no more harvesting operations (or harvesting spam) to actually support tank spamming. But even though with all the change of gameplay and change of mechanics, I would still buy it just to enjoy the cinematic and the storyline of it all. I mean, does mechanics really count that much to start a fan war all over it?

Though it isn't as bad as it is, though from the same CommandCom Report, the developers were completely roasted from the feedback session of the CommandCom. It became worse when they tried to alternate the responses with suggestions of trying the other classes or the specialized units or different maps. I am not trying to defend them, but maybe the negative response was so overwhelming, there was no way to recover from it all without reveling more about the game than they are required to. Besides, stating it once again from the beginning, it is only early in the process; March 2010 is still far away. However, I feel that the Development team were so caught up with a good idea, that they forgot how tied up most of us are with the normal mechanics of base building and harvesting Tiberium, that and (again from the Lion) EA is trying to appeal to the casual and social gamers instead of the Hardcores and the develop team is stuck obeying orders from the higher up. I do agree that EA need to let the Hardcore fan have their words heeded, but they need to find ways to compete with the games such as Final Fantasy or Mario. It isn't so great to try to ignore the hardcore community, but at the same time it isn't fair to criticize them of running their business and trying to make money in their table ( which they gave additional budget for the improvised FMV stated in the CommandCom Report.)

In addition, it isn't really cool to say that one "misses Westwood" or "Westwood is the only one that should make CnC games" whenever posting how much EA is deteriorating the game as most would respond, because as you all know, Westwood is dead (well, most are in Petroglyph now, but that is beside the point.) There is no point in poking them with a stick and asking them to return and buy CnC franchise back. EA owns the Command and Conquer franchise and their story developers are actually trying their best to make the best out if for the fans, not themselves (storywise, that is.) Even Command and Conquer 3 storyline was decent, even though it wasn't adjacent towards the continuation of the Firestorm storyline. To prove that they knew that they made mistakes, they introduced Kane's Wrath to try to tie it all. Even from the beginning, stating in this Petroglyph Forum, it was Westwood's management that decided to consolidate Westwood Studios and EA Pacific into EALA along leaving CnC with so many contradicting stories and ideas for the future of CnC. Saying that Westwood would have made a great difference is sort of a giant overstatement as they were as confused as EA was when EA was making CnC 3.

Overall, I think the CnC developers are doing a good job of making CnC 4, but I think it has to wait until it is released. Do I think it should take longer to make it? To be honest, as long it makes it where no one complains to the point of firing the developers and discontinuing the franchise all together because a bunch of "fanbrats" have to ruin it all because of jumping into conclusions, then I say yeah... Why not? I am not EA fanboy, nor a hardcore Command and Conquer fan, but what I am is appreciative that the franchise still continued on... I mean it took Seven years to finally get EA to restart the franchise. I just hope, with all the stupid comments about how EA sucks or how Westwood should have stayed and made CnC games, EA doesn't end it because of a wide load of insults and not because people lost interest in CnC... I mean, we all can agree that we love Command and Conquer and despite being EA or not being Westwood, we still want it to continue on. I mean, I am starting to see it shine and growing to the point of seeing artwork of it (excluding myself) and knowing that as long we show our love and concern about it, then it shall stay.

Plus, I GOTS A KANE BOBBLEHEAD!!!!!!