So if you didn’t already hear, Westwood Studios - those guys and gals that made Command & Conquer - has been given the Industry Icon Award at this year’s Game Awards. That might seem a little strange considering the developer hasn’t actually been around for many years now (thanks EA), but it’s always good to recognise a developer’s importance.
And boy were Westwood Studios important. You might only think of them as the Command & Conquer developer, though admittedly the series hasn’t maintained the prestige it once had - but here was a team of innovators who pushed every aspect of videogames. It created and ultimately standardised the RTS genre with Dune II, pushed the quality of cutscenes and storytelling with Command & Conquer, highlighted the worth of context-sensitive mouse clicks in adventure game Legend Of Kyrandia and even proved dungeon-crawling RPGs didn’t need to be turn-based with Eye Of The Beholder.
So to celebrate Westwood Studios we look back through its heritage, and remember the developer’s greatest achievements.
Roadwar 2000
Year: 1986
Westwood Studios’ earliest work wasn’t exclusively its own. Co-founders Brett Sperry and Louis Castle began with work-for-hire tasks for Strategic Simulations Inc, better known as SSI. It was Roadwar 2000 that was the first title for the company to get its teeth into. The developers didn’t do all the work on the game themselves - which was a post-apocalyptic RPG the predates even Wasteland, let alone Fallout - but the developer certainly began to make a name for itself at this point. The game was well-received and, as a result, lead to a raft of more work for SSI.
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge]
Year: 1990
Don’t you just miss classic videogame names like this? Within only a couple of years of existing, Westwood Studios found itself working with SSI, Electronic Arts and - in the case of BattleTech - Infocom. The developer’s first original title - Mars Saga - began the company’s history with EA, while Questron II continued its success at SSI.
It was BattleTech, however, where Westwood Studios - then known as Westwood Associates - began its love affair with real-time strategy. This title was actually preceded by another BattleTech game - The Crescent Hawk’s Inception - but that still used a familiar turn-based system. With Revenge, Westwood switched to a real-time version and, while very rough, would lay the foundation for what would later become the developer’s legacy. It was slow and clunky and not easy to play, but it was the beginning of something oh-so-special.
Eye Of The Beholder
Year: 1991
Up until now Westwood remained something of an unknown force within the games industry, working away at various games for publishers: enter Eye Of The Beholder. D&D RPGs were particularly popular on PC around this time, so it was lucky for Westwood that the developer was put to work by SSI on this 3D dungeon crawler - the likes of which we’d already seen numerous of years prior.
The difference here was the shift to real-time, however, a concept that Westwood was becoming increasingly enamoured with. It made for a much quicker, faster-paced RPG experience than any before and the quality of its production was incredible. Slick, animated 2D cutscenes introduced the story, but it was an utter revelation that you could move in real-time as you chased after - or escaped from - the numerous beasts you encountered. It was a huge success, and as a result was later followed up with sequels.
Dune II
Year: 1992
It was with Dune II where Westwood really hit its stride. The work done with BattleTech was only the beginning, and believing the concept of real-time strategy was likely to be a huge success the team began by creating a prototype. This was originally set to be a fantasy game called Swords And Sorcery, with the prototype allowing the player to issue commands in real-time as the units carried them out instantly.
As far as the RTS genre goes it was clunky and primitive, but it was hugely innovative at the time. Up until that point strategy games had played out in a series of turns, but with Dune II everything suddenly sped up. It introduced elements that would later become RTS staples, too, such as base-building and resource gathering. It was so novel, in fact, that ‘real-time strategy’ wasn’t even how they described it, with some in the media describing it as ‘SimCity goes to war’, on account of the base-building features.
The Legend Of Kyrandia - Book One
Year: 1992
It’s kind of unfair that Westwood became pigeonholed as ‘the RTS developer’. Sure it helped form what would become the template for the genre, but it was a developer capable of so much variety. The Legend Of Kyrandia - a graphic adventure game - proved just that. It maintained the high quality that the developer was becoming known for with high-resolution (for the time) graphics and slickly presented gameplay.
It was here that Westwood snuck in another secret innovation, one that was largely overlooked at the time. As the world of computer UI’s began to advance, it became clear the developer could do more with context-sensitive mouse clicks. Taking inspiration from Apple’s then-brand new operating system, Westwood implemented a context-sensitive mouse click, allowing the player to simply drag the icon of an item and click onto the object they wanted it to interact with. It sounds obvious now - how many point and click adventure games use this same method? - but at the time most similar games required multiple clicks to initiate an action.
The Lion King
Year: 1994
Here’s yet more proof of early Westwood’s flexibility. At this time Virgin Interactive had been dealing with Disney in producing what would become some of the best licensed games in history (we all remember Aladdin on the Mega Drive, right?). This would go on to lead to Westwood being given control of creating a Lion King game to be released for DOS, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis and Amiga.
While it might not have been an especially innovative game, it still maintained that sense of quality and would go on to become the most popular platforming game of the generation. It’s hard to point to any particular reason why, but the game did include a humorous pun when pressing start to ‘paws’ the game. Get it?
Command & Conquer
Year: 1995
This is why we’re all here, right? If Westwood is known for any game, it’s Command & Conquer - and it’s easy to see why. Though much of the work in forming the RTS genre began with Dune II, it was Command & Conquer that standardised it with the context-sensitive mouse controls from Legend Of Kyrandia and a streamlined interface to make controlling multiple units - even different groups - a breeze.
Though Blizzard beat Westwood to the punch with its fantasy reskin of Dune II in WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, Command & Conquer was ultimately crowned king thanks to its smooth controls, the underutilised modern-day military setting and unparalleled production values in its cutscenes. Every RTS since owes Westwood for C&C, the game set the template for the way to handle resources, unit management, context controls, base building and tech trees and even asymmetrical units across different playable factions.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Year: 1996
Did you know that Red Alert originally began life as an expansion pack to Command & Conquer? The original had proven to be a success, but during development there were a number of unique missions that had been prototyped that just didn’t fit into the Command & Conquer world. As these new units and missions were designed, it became clear to the team that something new, something different would need to be created for this. Thus, Red Alert was born.
With this revelation came a new direction, and Westwood switched the modern setting for something a little more tongue-in-cheek. It had earned its wealth from C&C and could afford to spend a little more on Red Alert and increase the overall production values over its predecessor. It’s for this reason - alongside the unique b-movie style setting and radically different unit types - that Red Alert is often more fondly remembered than even the game it was spun out of.
Blade Runner
Year: 1997
Returning to point and click adventures for a spell before becoming almost solely focused on Command & Conquer and RTS development, Westwood’s Blade Runner remains a classic to this day. The game itself was a technical marvel, using complex voxel-like technology to create visuals that were - at the time - some of the best out there, especially when compared to other adventure games.
Sadly the game was pretty expensive to make and so made very little profit, despite the fact that it sold as many as three times the amount of its competitor The Curse Of Monkey Island. And did you know that a sequel was in the works too? Westwood and Virgin were offered the opportunity for a second Blade Runner game, but it was decided that the cost of making a game that would be an improvement over the original deemed it an unviable venture.
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Year: 1999
With Tiberian Sun Westwood really went all out. It had to, after all this was the height of the developer’s battle with Blizzard’s WarCraft and StarCraft series - with WCII releasing two years prior and SC only a year before. It introduced all new units, really went to town of creating a distinction between GDI and Nod forces and threw as much as it could at the production of cutscenes - even going so far as to hire Hollywood actors.
As you might expect the game was highly anticipated; it had been four years since the original and back then that was an incredibly long time to wait for a sequel. It would go on to sell over a million copies in its first month - which, again, was rare at the turn of the millennium - and was the fastest selling EA game of the year.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Year: 2000
Though Red Alert 2 was not the last game that Westwood created and nor was it the last RTS game it would produce it was, sadly, its last truly successful title. Many would argue, however, that Red Alert 2 was the company’s best title, and perhaps a fitting swansong prior to the studio’s closure.
It once again returned to the quirky, what-if alternate reality setting and broadened the gap between the Soviet and Allied forces. Many of the original creators of Red Alert had since left after the developer was purchased by EA, resulting in a more juvenile humour than had been intended with the previous Red Alert’s admittedly campy style. All the same it is widely regarded as one of the best RTS games ever, and rightly so.
In a way there’s a bittersweetness in the fact that Westwood Studios departed this planet. EA purchased the company in 1998 and by 2002 barely any of the original staff members remained… and, honestly, how many times in the industry’s history can we point to an EA intervention closing a once great studio?
But think of it this way; had Westwood Studios remained in its original form, it’d still be churning out Command & Conquer to this day, never to innovate or tackle other genres. Would the series have remained as stellar as it once was had this been the case? The hopeful side of us says ‘yes’, but let’s be honest… EA’s whip never stops cracking.
