I don’t know if Westwood intended it or not, but the writing and world building of C&C:TS lays out almost to a tee looming ecological disaster we are facing and the total unwillingness to deal with it in a meaningful way. This is despite the fact it was released at the height of the “End Of History, All The Problems Are Solved” 90s
Tiberium, the strange crystalline substance that serves as the in-game resource you use to fund the construction of your base and army, is sweeping across the planet. Tiberium gathers valuable minerals from the soil, but also emits radiation and gases that are toxic to all life. Vast swaths of the Earth lie covered in tiberium, leaving nothing but total ecological devastation in its wake. Millions of climate refugees flee North, the colder climate slows the rate of Tiberium spread. Much of the earth’s surface is almost alien, foot infantry needing to wear basically spacesuits to survive. Scientists warn the governing powers that without interference tiberium could push humanity towards extinction
So what do the two superpowers, the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod do, facing this cascading catastrophe? Nothing. Instead, they harvest tiberium for the valuable minerals it contains (thus ensuring its spread). High exposure areas are openly abandoned by them, the residents of such zones literally calling themselves The Forgotten. All of their resources are not put towards saving the biosphere, ensuring humanity’s survival, are instead put towards the globalized, permanent war economy. GDI and Nod fight to the death while the world burns so they can be kings of the ashes. It was hard to miss as I replayed the game for the first time in over a decade how starkly reflected our current civilizational dilemma with accelerating climate change, and the total apathy of the people who hold power in our society. Dark stuff indeed
This misses how it was pretty much implied that Kane (more on him later) is the entire reason tiberium even came to earth in the first place. Now with that being said, there were initial efforts to try to keep the stuff contained, but here comes the Brotherhood of Nod being led by a man named Kane (again more on him later) who decide to go around doing stuff like, massacring a whole village because one person in it disagreed with them, and going far and well out of it’s way to hinder any meaningful research done on tiberium by anyone not Nod because Kane (seriously more on this fucker later) has a very vested interest in spreading tiberium.
So about this outright evil and immortal motherfucker who goes by the name of Kane, he leads the Brotherhood of Nod, he sees himself as a messiah, in one game (Renegade) it’s kinda implied he’s actually Cain from the bible story of Cain and Able, he also believes that humanity must embrace tiberium to evolve. So good fucking luck getting any sort of help from Nod on any sort of tiberium containment, at least when Kane is around that is. Which brings us to the problem of the Brotherhood, Nod itself is pretty okay with cooperating with GDI in a crisis, unless Kane is around, then Nod does anything and everything to keep kicking GDI in the balls over and over.
See the CABAL crisis (the expansion, firestorm), both GDI and Nod worked together because firstly, Kane is “dead” (again), so he’s not there to fuck shit up yet again. If Kane was alive, i’d put good money that he’d let CABAL run amok and do what he can to stop GDI from stopping CABAL, because of his stupendously great not going to backfire one bit idea of cyborgification and tiberium must be embraced by humanity in ordor to evolve.
Instead, they harvest tiberium for the valuable minerals it contains (thus ensuring its spread).
So we’re at the basic problem, Kane has a very vested interest in spreading tiberium, and kicking GDI in the balls. So GDI is stuck in a problem where they need to actually build a military force to do a basic thing of researching tiberium in order to find a solution to containing it. So yeah, the story of the tiberium saga is one of how the planet just keeps getting more and more fucked all because one man wants to “ascend” or some shit like that.
This is the kind of theory I need. Tiberian Sun was way ahead of its time. I still remember and quote a line of that game with my brother from time to time. In one of the early NOD campaign missions the AI computer (CABAL was the name, in retrospect, not the best choice) says doing a thing will lead to a ‘favorable outcome.’ The human NOD commander says, “Define ‘favorable outcome,’ CABAL.”
CABAL replies simply: “They all die.”
Best part was in Kane’s Wrath where they have an Obama-like leader of the Black Hand after Kane disappeared.
Implying Kane didn’t have everything planned out in advance as part of his grand plan towards ascension? That’s a paddlin’, straight from the Black Hand.
