Tiberium

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We're ordered into a field of suspiciously glowing rocks by an unseen godlike commander...

Another level was demonstrated, this time an outdoor urban environment with destroyed buildings, chunks of concrete and metal debris littering roads. The main character of Ricardo Vega was backed up by a squad of soldiers, and reinforced by a large Titan mech, gently lowered into the battlefield by a GDI dropship. The display in the bottom left-hand corner of the HUD now showed that two out of four squads were available, and after a quick tap of the relevant button, the robot hulk blurted “Executing order!” and stomped off down the street looking for things to kill.

A real-time map was then brought up on-screen, showing all the units and major strategic points in the area. From here, you can order a squad to protect a tiberium spike, ask for reinforcements or just check out the battle - all done with one button press, and no RTS frippery. “The map actually started out in the prototypes as grid-based,” says Plummer, his face lit by the on-screen mayhem. “There was a great deal of experimentation and part of the thinking there was that it might be easier under the gun if you had a grid for placing squads. However, freeform squad control works great in first-person, so why not use that control on the 2D map?”