命令与征服：红色警戒3过场动画背后的故事

译者按：本文译自《命令与征服》官网，原文写于2009年4月17日。头图作者为@黑边疆工业集团 所绘的突袭驱逐舰，特此感谢！

As a long time fan of the Command and Conquer games, I was always perplexed as to how the guys at Westwood Studios came up with their stories and how they made their live-action cut scenes. At the time, I had no idea how they did it, and I was sure glad that I wasn't the guy who had the pressure of having to come up with all that crazy stuff! Now of course, 13 years later, here I am writing/producing the story and cut scenes for C&C: Red Alert 3. It's my first time in this role, but creating characters in a C&C game isn't actually new to me. I've been writing the in-game characters' unit responses for EA's RTS games since the last Red Alert in 2000. So now I had to take that and my familiarity with RTS story telling and create something that was going to hopefully blow away everything that we've ever done before.

作为《命令与征服》系列游戏的老粉丝，我一直对西木工作室的员工是如何构思他们的故事，以及如何制作真人过场动画感到困惑。当年我根本不知道他们是如何做到的，我很庆幸自己不是那个背负着必须想象出这么多疯狂创意的巨大压力的人。然而，13年后的今天，我正在为《命令与征服：红色警戒3》编写故事剧情并负责制作过场动画。这是我第一次担负这种使命，但在《命令与征服》系列游戏中创建角色对我来讲已经不是什么新鲜事了。自2000年上一作《红警》以来，我就一直在给EA的即时战略游戏编写游戏内角色的单位反应。所以如今我靠着这些经验，以及对讲RTS故事的熟悉程度，创造着一些有可能颠覆我们以前成就的东西。

The creative leaders for Red Alert 3 were hugely excited about working on a RA game from the start. The immediate concern looming over our heads though was defining the basic premise and setting of the story. Unlike the Tiberium universe, we didn't have a reoccurring villain and conflict that we can immediately go back to. Having the Soviets going back in time and getting rid of Einstein seems like an obvious choice now. But when we started this process with all of our options open, it wasn't as clear. Anything can happen in the alternative history of the Red Alert universe, which creates many questions for us to answer. Should we continue from where the last Red Alert left off? Should we start over and reset the universe? How will the Empire of the Rising Sun fit into the equation?

《红色警戒3》的创意团队领袖们从开工起就对开发红警游戏感到非常兴奋。我们当时最紧要的问题是定义故事的基本前提与背景概念，这可不像《泰伯利亚》宇宙那样，有随时能打复活赛的反派和冲突。于是，让苏联人回到过去并摆脱爱因斯坦的影响似乎就成了一个显而易见的选择。但当我们在所有选项都开放的情况下选择走这条路的时候，它还并不是那么明晰。在《红色警戒》宇宙的另类历史中，任何事情都是有可能发生的，这也给我们制造了很多需要回答的问题——我们需要从上一作《红色警戒》中断的地方开始吗？我们需要重启世界观吗？升阳帝国又该如何融入进来呢？

We met regularly with countless pitches from all sorts of directions. This part of the process might appear to be the most fun, but it was actually the most grueling, considering the task at hand. All in all, I was really happy with what we ended up with. The "getting rid of Einstein" story was very much in line with the RA universe, and was also easy to explain to people who weren't familiar with Red Alert. I remember mentioning the idea to my girlfriend at the time (who had no idea what Red Alert was), and her immediate reaction was, "Oh no! They can't get rid of Einstein!" I knew at that point, that we were probably safe in terms of accessibility.

我们当时经常在看来自四面八方的不少投稿，从手头的任务上说，这部分过程可能看起来是最有趣的，但实际上也是最累的。总而言之，我对咱们最终的结果还是非常满意的。「干掉爱因斯坦」的故事非常适合红警宇宙，向不熟悉红警的人科普起来也非常容易。我记得当时跟我的女朋友（她不知道什么是红警）提了这个想法，她的第一反应是：「我超，他们怎么能干掉爱因斯坦呢！」那个时候我就知道，就剧情可读性而言，我们大概稳了。

Another early challenge for us was defining the exact tone of the RA universe. We all loved the tongue-in-cheek direction of the movies and characters of RA2. But where do we draw the line between lighthearted fun and poorly delivered comedy? Getting this balance was important enough for us that we actually produced a proof-of-concept movie with script and characters which had nothing to do with the final story. This exercise was a success on many levels and was one of the best early decisions we made. From a tone perspective, one thing was clear: the RA universe is about personalities- exaggerated to the point that it's obvious that this isn't a serious world. One reference that often came up was Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and how most of its humor came from these extreme characters all coming together around a serious situation.

我们面临的另一个初期挑战便是定义红警宇宙的确切基调。我们都喜欢红警2过场动画和角色掺杂了喜剧色彩的方向。但我们要在哪里划清轻松愉快与糟糕的喜剧风格之间的界限呢？保持这种平衡对于我们来说非常重要，所以我们为此制作了一部概念验证电影，其中的剧本和角色与最终的故事没有任何关系。这个练习在很多方面都获得了成功，它是我们前期做过的最棒决定之一。从故事笔调的角度来讲，有一件事情是非常明确的，红警宇宙是很有个性的、夸张到很明显不是一个严肃的世界。我们经常会参考库布里克的《奇爱博士》（译者注：非常有意思的是，这部电影改编自Peter George的一部小说，而这部小说的名字正是《红色警戒》/Red Alert），尤其是它将极端角色在一个严肃的情况下安排到一起的那种幽默感。

As anybody who's played our games knows, watching a Command and Conquer movie is a very different experience than watching a traditional movie. The main contrast of course, being that the viewer is actually part of the story. This means that the actors in the movies look straight into a camera and address the player as if they're really interacting with him. This can easily come off a little awkward, since this "4th wall" is almost never torn down in regular theatrical movies or television. The question is how do we do this and minimize the awkwardness of the first person experience?

任何玩过我们游戏的玩家都知道，观看命令与征服过场动画和看传统电影的体验是不一样的。这其中最主要的区别就在于，观众实际上也是故事的一部分。也就是说，电影中的演员会直视着镜头并称呼玩家，就好像他们真的在与他互动一样。这很容易让人感觉有点尬，因为这「第四面墙」在一般的戏剧、电影或是电视剧中基本上没人会拆除它。所以问题就来了，我们怎么去实现并最大程度的减少第一人称体验带来的尴尬呢？

One of the reasons why it can be awkward is that there is a blending of moments where the player isn't part of the scene and moments where the player is part of the scene. Taking some inspiration from the RA2 movies, I pitched to the team a specific "vidcon" model, whereby whenever the player was part of the story; all characters would be speaking to each other through a video conference type of environment And when the player wasn't part of the story, the scenes were shot like a regular movie with multiple camera angles, etc.

造成这种尴尬感的可能原因之一，便是玩家不参与场景的镜头与玩家参与了场景的镜头混淆在一块了。我在看红警2过场动画的时候找到了一些灵感，于是我向团队提出了一种特别的「视频通讯」机制：也就是当玩家参与剧情的时候，所有的角色会以「视频会议」的环境相互交流；当玩家不参与这部分剧情的时候，场景就按照一般电影的形式拍摄，比如安排更多的摄像机位角度等等。

Part of my pitch was pushing the idea that we can get a lot more personality from the characters by allowing each of them to speak from their own exaggerated set (as opposed to characters sharing sets like they did on C&C3). The Soviet premier (Tim Curry) speaks from his office with a giant Lenin painting with giant red curtains, while Emperor Yoshiro (George Takei) speaks from his "zen" throne room with its bamboo walls and geisha girls. When everything came together, this style really ended up being very successful, and very much played into the Red Alert tone.

我的部分任务就是推动这样的想法，让每个角色可以在他们自己夸张风格的场景中发声（而不是像他们在《命令与征服3》中那样共用场景）——苏联总理（蒂姆·克里）在他的办公室里讲话，办公室里布置着巨大的列宁画像和红色窗帘；而天皇芳朗（乔治·竹井）在他禅意风格的御座房间内发表讲话，还有竹制的幕墙和艺伎女仆。当这一切都安排到一块的时候，这种风格最终获得了极大成功，而且它也相当融入了红色警戒的基调。

Being able to play the game from any of the three factions creates a common philosophical question about story telling in these games. Do we tell one long story whereby we skip through the different factions one at a time? Or do we have 3 different stories which begin and end for each faction? We ended up going with the latter because we really felt it was important to give a strong statement at the end of each faction play through. Many of the original C&C games did this, and there was a great sense of gratification after finish playing through a faction's story and "conquering the world". So the plan was for our opening movie to set the stage for which all three stories would be based on. Then from there, the three stories don't intertwine or intersect, even though they share all the same characters and themes. The one main drawback to this was that it meant that each story had to be a lot shorter than they really would have liked, and hence suffered as a result.

既然能够从三个阵营中的任何一个派系开始战役，那么必定会涉及到一个跟讲这些游戏故事相关的哲学问题，我们是要讲一个很长的故事，把这些阵营一次次的串联起来呢？还是让这些阵营有三个不一样的开始和结尾呢？我们最终选择了后者，因为我们真心觉得在每个阵营战役结束时给一个燃点是非常重要的。很多《命令与征服》游戏都是这样做的，在玩完一个阵营的战役，「征服世界」之后，有一种极大的满足感。所以我们的计划就是让咱们的开场电影给所有的三个战役奠定基础，在那之后这三个战役即使有相同的角色和主题，它们的故事也再无任何交集。当然这种做法带来的一个主要缺点，就是每个战役比预想得要短得多，所以这也会带来一些负面影响。

The basic backbones of the stories were drawn up by Mike Verdu and me. Mike was the executive producer on C&C3 and played a similar role as mine on that project (since then, he's moved on to become the General Manager for EALA). He has great instincts for what basically works and I have to say, I learned a lot from his participation at this early stage. But after the basic stones were in place, Mike backed off and now it was time for everybody else to get involved. One thing unique about writing for a game is that I can't just make up a story and run with it. Every step of the way I need to get buy-in from other people who are going to have to support it in their areas. The lead designer, Jasen Torres who was directing how the missions were to be played, was the one person I collaborated with most. Luckily for me, his input didn't stop with the gameplay coverage; he provided tons of great ideas which made the whole story much better. As I collected these notes, I would then feed them all to our contracted writer, Haris Orkin who flushed out the conversations and scenes into something we can shoot. Haris was a great fit because he was already a huge fan of the Red Alert games and had a personal attachment to making sure we were making something that wouldn't disappoint. Haris and I sent each script back and forth to each other, editing and tweaking each other's work...until the cinematics production team finally yanked the script from us so they can actually prepare for the shoot.

故事的基本大纲是由Mike Verdu和我拟定的，Mike是命令与征服3的执行制片人，他在那个项目扮演的角色跟我差不多（那个时候他已经是EA洛杉矶分部的经理了）。他对基本有效的方法总是有着良好的直觉，说真的，我从他早期的参与中学到了很多东西。但在基础的准备完成之后，迈克就抽身了，让其他人都参与了进来。为游戏写作的一个独特之处在于，我不能只是编一个故事然后就让它这样展开，这其中的每一步我都要获得其他伙伴的支持，他们会在自己的专业领域中提供支援。首席设计师Jasen Torres负责指导战役制作的执行，他是跟我合作最多的人。幸运的是，他不仅只是关注于游戏的玩法上面，他提供了很多好主意，让整个故事变得更棒。当我用笔记整理完成之后，就会把它们统统发给我们的签约作家Harris Orkin，他会将对话和场景塑造成我们可以用于拍摄的剧本。哈里斯非常擅长做这些工作，因为他早就是红警系列的忠实粉丝了，他会确保我们制作的东西不会令人失望。哈里斯和我会把每份剧本来回传阅，再彼此进行编辑和调整，直到电影制作团队最终从我们那拿到剧本，这样他们才能为真正开拍做准备。

I've had a lot of experience casting voice-over talent over the years, but casting for actors who actually show their faces was a much different experience. The main thing being, it meant that a lot more people were going to be involved in this decision making. Friends often ask me how we went about choosing the cast for RA3. All I can say is that there were a lot of factors which led us to the cast that we ended up with (budget, personality, public familiarity, etc). Many of them weren't necessarily our first choices, even though they ended up working out great for us. I'm just really thankful that EA allowed us to spend the money to get such great talent. It really made a huge difference having people like Jonathan Pryce, JK Simmons, etc. adding credibility to our final product.

这些年来，我在选择配音演员方面积累了不少的经验，但选择真人出镜的演员是一种截然不同的体验。最主要的是，这也让更多的人能够参与决策。很多朋友经常问我是怎么给红警3选择演员的，我只能说，有很多因素影响了我们最终选择的演员阵容（预算、个性还有公众熟悉程度之类的），他们中的很多人并不是我们的第一选择，尽管他们最终给我们提供了很大的帮助。我真的很感谢EA允许我们动用资金来招揽如此优秀的人才，让乔纳森·普雷斯和J·K·西蒙斯等人令我们的产品蓬荜生辉。

We shot most of the mission intro movies in April 2008 in a West Hollywood stage called "The Lot". This was probably the most exciting time in the whole project, as everything that we've been working on for the past 9 months was now going to finally come together over the span of a couple weeks. Unlike in the CG cut scenes of other video games, we can't go back and tweak animations to make these characters perform better after we shoot them. If we don't get the performance that we're looking for on a few takes, then we're going to be stuck with them. Our director, Richard Taylor has tons of experience behind the camera (including C&C3) so I had some confidence that things were going to be run smoothly. But for Red Alert 3, I was the person on the set who was most intimate with what the player's experience ultimately needed to be. Thankfully, Richard understood this, and didn't have any problem with me jumping in and directing the actors if I had something very specific in mind. And lucky for the both of us, all of the actors were a true pleasure to work with. They were all professionals and understood our goals of a colorful and fun vibe of the Red Alert world.

我们于2008年4月在西好莱坞的一个名为「The Lot」的摄影棚里完成了大部分战役动画，这可能是整个项目中最激动人心的时刻，因为我们在过去9个月中所做的一切工作，现在终于要在这几周内杀青了。与其他游戏的CG过场动画不同的是，我们没法回头调整动画以使这些角色在拍摄后表现得更好。如果我们在几次拍摄过程中都没有得到想要的效果，那就会陷入困境。不过我们的导演，Richard Taylor拥有丰富的幕后经验（包括命令与征服3），所以我对拍摄顺利进行是很有信心的。对于红警3来说，我是拍摄现场最了解玩家体验和需求的人。值得庆幸的是，理查德也理解这一点，如果我有一些非常具体的想法，他不会介意让我加入进来并指导演员。对我们来说更幸运的是，和这些演员一起工作真的很开心。他们都是专业的人士，理解我们的目标——为红色警戒世界营造丰富多彩、生动有趣的氛围。

Not everybody is going to be a fan of the tongue in cheek style of the RA3 movies. And not everybody is going to be a fan of watching live action cut scenes in a video game at all. But the one thing that was always in the forefront of my decisions was to make sure that the player is being entertained. I'm very aware of the compulsion for players to skip the movies altogether (from firsthand experience). I feel like we did a good job fending off this compulsion by keeping the conversations snappy and fun. Of course, there are plenty of things I'd do differently if I had to do it all over again. But considering the realities of the schedule and budget, I'm very happy with what we created.

然而，不是所有人都会喜欢红警3过场中的搞怪风格，也不是所有人都会喜欢看电子游戏中的真人过场动画，但在我的所有决定中，从始至终最重要的一点就是让玩家开心。我非常清楚玩家也会有直接跳过电影过场的冲动（我自己也是这样的），但我觉得我们可以通过让对话风格更活泼一点来很好地消解这种情况。当然了，如果让我能重新来过，我也许会做很多不同的事情，但考虑到日程和预算的实际情况，我对我们创造的东西还是非常满意的。

Mical Pedriana

Writer/Producer Red Alert 3 Cinematics

米卡尔·佩德里安娜

红色警戒3过场动画编剧/制片人