"Nooo no no no. We don't make products, we make games" What a beautiful word, can't say the same with AAA game companies like EA

Forged Alliance Forever is amazing, keeping Supreme Commander alive to this day. still the best RTS to date

The collision detection is honestly one of the most impressive things in supreme commander. All projectile attacks have their own hitboxes and they don't home in on the enemy like it many other RTS games. A shot can miss the target, fly past it and hit an enemy unit behind it. I've seen ridiculous things like fighter planes intercept incoming nukes and artillery shells by being exactly on their ballistic trajectory, saving an entire base by pure chance. It's all simulated to a ridiculous degree, it's one of the reasons why the game has performance issues. But nobody would have it any other way.

No. I do not remember Total Anihilation. And I do not still get trembling limbs whenever that game is mentioned. I did not spend entire weeks on end tactically dismantling the enemy to the last single unit and then denying it access to any resources, basically taunting and torturing it until I had the entire map covered and that lone enemy only had one tiny corner left in which my units just tore it apart. No. I do not remember any of that. I am not going back into rehab, goddamnit!

Forged alliance forever guys and girls. I still play this all the time. Join the community!

I'm still shocked that RTS gaming has not evolved past what Supcom did...its quite sad. To this day supcom is still the ultimate RTS gaming experience.

Supcom, one of the rare games being hyped at E3 that actually mirrored what happens in the game.

I also love how the projectiles have actual physics instead of the basic "hit-scan", simplistic model with near perfect trajectories that most games use.

We need more designers like Chris Taylor who make games they'd love to play. It really shows in supreme commander and his excitement then and now in talking about it.

You forgot to mention one of the defining features of Supreme Commander - reclaim. It's unique among strategy games of its era and is important from a thematic and mechanical aspect. While games like Warcraft, AoE, CnC etc. have their units disappear when they are killed, SupCom takes a more realistic approach and its units leave behind the mass and energy of their wrecks when killed. Learning how to reclaim is extremely important in PvP as it adds another layer of macro economy and decision making. If you miscalculate and your super expensive experimental dies in front of the enemy base then you have just given them a massive economy boost. Not only do you lose the advantage, but the tables have actually turned against you. This allows for some insane comebacks against difficult odds which makes matches very unpredictable a lot of the time.

I'll admit, I almost cried when I watched this. I was about 10 years old when I got this and I was rightaway blown away by the variety of units and buildings, and it was before I found out there are TIERS that bring even more. I spent hours a day playing this and it didn't get boring, I was also surprised by how difficult campaign could be compared to little number of RTS games I had chance to play. It was truly something unique, something new. As I grew up and decided to give it a go once again, I was even more surprised by how many thing I was missiong out as a child. For example projjectiles of every unit being an actual physical entity, which has to actually HIT the target. The unique economy system where resources don't run out, but rather slow down your progress. Still a great RTS, still great today. Playing this and hearing this calm ingame music as the match begins, brings me an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. It maybe not the most well known RTS, it may not have an overly large playerbase, but it will forever stay as one of the best RTS games I have ever played, entirely unique on it's own. Thank you a lot for making this.

also god-DAMN the soundtrack's good.

Is nobody going to talk about the amaaazing Soundtrack SupCom had? Jeremy Soule did such an amazing job, i still find myself humming the melodies at the bus stop, only realizing afterwards that i just hummed the melody from a game i have not played in 5 years.

My favorite thing had to be capturing an enemy engineer and then building a research lab of their type to get the best of all the factions into one army

Supreme Commander 1 was an Epic in a time where the word "Epic" lost all meaning. A detailed strategy game with a lore and story that runs across worlds and factions. You save people, not persons. Forged Alliance developed on the excelent foundation and polished it to a shining beacon. The Story was breathtaking, the gameplay holds up even today and the Hardware Requirements are not too big of a deal, when you know what to do: Single-Thread-Speed. The Problem with Supcom 2 was ... it took what was epic and made it mundane. The modern problem of the "more more MORE" mentality. MORE Experimentals for a lower cost! But that diminished what made them special. MORE Upgrades! But that negated what made your Commander special. Subcom 2 also was a massive scaledown. Nukes where tiny, normal units where huge. The AON Illuminate faction *does not have NAVI.* Experimentals can be taken out by a small group of normal units. The FATBOY Quadtank Mobile Artilery Mobile Factory Mobile Shieldgenerator Submergable Airstaging Platform has been turned into a Tank with moar GUNS! Then there is the Story. Gone are the conflicts with rational thinking. Gone are relatable villans. We have a Father that goes against dudebros and the "army is bad" cliche. We have a Naive Illuminate Terrorist that gets tricked by a maniac that has "I will nuke you" written on his forehead. (Spoiler: He nukes a city for no reason) We have a Super-Smarty boy that goes after the maniac. Did I forget to mention that all of them where in the same class? As in: They went to school together? There are amazing things about the Sequal. The Pathfinding is breathtaking. But even with those systems, important gameplay ballancing gets ruined, since units cluster up so much, that AOE weapons are overpowered while Point-Weapons are next to useless. A Perfect version of Subcom would be: The Optimisation of Subcom 2. The Pathfinding of Subcom 2 with the Army Layout options of Forged Alliance. The Scale and Tier System of Forged Alliance. The Ballancing of Forged Alliance. The Story depth of Forged Alliance. But it seems we will never see that ... Good thing, that we still have Forged Alliance Forever.

I am proud of my Children in this comments section and those who watched the video. Supreme Commander was my childhood video game and it still is a favorite to this day! Thank you for making this video, it has reminded me that I need to formally join Forged Alliance Forever and jump back into the game.

Dude I would pay a thousand bucks for a Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Remake with updated graphics, multi core support and fixes to some of the issues the old game had (pathing, projectiles hitting terrain, matchmaking, desyncs, rejoin after disconnects, etc.) and then maybe one more faction or at least some more units. This game is unbelievably good.

Kane's wrath and Forged Alliance are masterpieces

To this day Forged Alliance is still my fav strategy game, despite the flaws it has (mostly engine related, game's old after all)

I would pay full price for SC FA Remaster, I love it so much... Better animations, more threads usage, better pathfinding and so on

I remember the campaign in this. 9 hours 1 mission :D WHAT A BLAST!

Time to reinstall Supreme commander!

Come join the FAF community, we have cookies!

Here to chime in for the Forged Alliance Forever community. I mean I suck at the game, but the guys there are pretty damn amazing!

Supreme commander forged alliance is hands down one of the best war games in history!

SC2 was my first foray into Supreme Commander. Got Forged Alliance later. As of right now I have 279 hours on Steam for Forged Alliance, so that should say a lot about what I think about it. I also still have SC2 on Steam, although I have modded it to bring it closer to the original. Both are fun, both are good, I like them.

Gas Powered Games hold a special place in my heart, not quite as big a place as Westwood Studios but right next door in the nicer part.

Respect for the devs & designers who worked on the Supreme Commander franchise. The games are great even today. Superb work.

Supreme Commander please stay alive! 🙄 🙏

The biggest problem with Supreme Commander 2 is that it's called Supreme Commander. Same thing with Civilization: Beyond Earth, and I bet there are a lot of others out there. When you take the name, you have to live up to the expectations unfortunately.

I played Supcom for over 4000 hours. That's how many hours one works full-time over two full years!! Supcom is and remains the greatest RTS ever made. Like chess, it can never be mastered but always improved upon. I stopped playing only because I needed to do real life more and setup personal boundaries around my video game consumptions (lol). Thank you Chris Taylor for a masterpiece.

To this day i remember when my friend got my a box copy of Supreme Commander on my birthday. I was kinda suspicious, i rarely trust cheap games from supermarkets but i have to say he chose good. Next 3 days i spent totaly immersed, churning out fatboys and mavors. I really hope ill live to see the day of SC remaster, where we would get something akin to pc burning Crysis, full 8x8 battles on those massive 100x100 km maps with no slowdowns...

There’s this game on steam right now called Zero-K...it’s basically an Open Source SupCom. It’s actively being worked on and may be able to carry on the torch

16:35 hahaha, "Supreme Commander 2 era" idk.... i just tryed it and moved back to playing FA, and many people that i know were playing FA did exactly same.

Been playing SCFA for about the 5th time since it came out. Each new computer/laptop, SC gets installed and played! For the 1st time I'm having 1000 unit battles with out any lag. Possibly my favourite game of all time!

It is amazing to hear of this game history from Chris Taylor.

Ahhh the good old days of TA and Supreme Commander. What i also loved about these games was the soundtrack. By Jeremy Soule if i remember correctly.

I'm watching this as a long-time Command & Conquer fan. I can't believe I haven't heard of this franchise before! I need to check it out. Both games and their expansions are in a bundle on Steam, so I want it now. I love the quote by the creator, "We don't make products; we make art."

LOUD Mod is also another great addition to SupCom:FA that optimizes the game heavily, improves the AI and incorporates some popular mods kinda like FAF! No multiplayer lobby, but steam multiplayer works and its great fun with friends. Great video and really cool you got to interview Chris! I hope I get to meet him one day.

Hey, love your vid! 15:30 you recommend buying both even though the rule about only being able to play with seraphim online if you only bought FA was only true back in the GPG.net days. now on steam, you're allowed to play every race online with only FA. and, of course, the same applies for using steam FA with the FAF multiplayer client.

It’s my boy. Supreme Commander

I play this game from time to time just to remember the good times I had. Thanks for making this.

What a lovely dose of nostalgia! I loved TA & SC. My oldest son who is now in his early 20s cut his gaming teeth on games like MechWarrior 2, Age of Empres (another epic classic) as well as TA & SC. I think I still have SC sitting around & may just have to dust it off.

I remember building a new computer for playing Sup Com and glad I did.

Supreme Commander is alive and well over at www.faforever.com. Join our community and learn why SupCom (and its expansion, Forged Alliance) is considered one of the best strategy games of all time.

Very unfortunate that this series had an abrupt end.

"For it's time Supreme Commander was massive in it's scale" I dare you to name a bigger RTS. No, Planetary annihilation *isn't bigger* . It is still the biggest RTS to date.

I remember being in middle school when I woke up in the middle of the night in the living room, with the G4TV channel on. As I woke up, I saw the the Supreme Commander trailer and was instantly hooked. I would constantly get on my DSL connection so I could check out the units on the GPG website as they released them, eating up the bits of lore they posted along with it. I was super excited and worked hard to scrape some money to have a "gaming" computer that could play it at a whopping... 18FPS on low. It didn't matter, I didn't care, I loved it. I played it for YEARS, and I am sure I have placed several thousand hours of game time in over the years before it faded off. I don't say this lightly when I say it changed my life. I even made mods for that game, including a decently large modpack that, sadly wasn't able to be fully finished before it sadly had to be abandoned due to the team breaking up. Making those mods, that all started with wanting a cooler Cybran Battleship, made me go to college to hone my 3d Modeling, Animation, and programming. I got my current job as a 5 year software engineer at a major power company because of my skill in writing the language of supcom: lua. I owe this game a lot to my success. In my spare time, I am working on my own RTS; slowly, methodically. I hope when it comes out, people can see some of the influences SupCom had on it, and on my life.

Supcom was the reason I had to go out and buy the biggest graphics card my PC could handle. It was awesome, but FA was just that little bit better. I'll always love games like C&C, but supcom was in a league of its own. All the problematic mechanics and idiosyncrasies of games like Command & Conquer were patiently annihilated by the developers of supcom. No more micromanaging. True air to air combat. And finally...FINALLY, everything from units to landscape, to nuclear explosions were made to true scale. The fact that even GPG had to scale back the concept makes me wonder if this game can ever be matched. A big shout out to the modding community for keeping it alive!

The soundtrack brings back so many memories. This and aoe are my favourite RTS games of all time

So much respect to Chris and and you Zade. I mainly got into Sup Com 2, and went back to Sup Com 1 with friends. We'd play it at almost EVERY lan party. It was EASILY my favorite RTS series, and left a lasting love for mecha within many people. Cheers for the great video.

God speed you magnificent bastard! I bloody love this game and everything it has to offer!

the clip from firefly almost made me drop a tear, what an undeserved fate for such a masterwork

Thank you for the history lesson and interviewing Chris. SupCom is a legend

I've always really wanted to sit down with Chris Taylor and pick his brain about the Dungeon Siege mythology. Probably my favorite game of all time.

This is honestly one of the best retrospective's I have ever seen for a game, the fact that you actually got the mind behind the game to put some additional context into it raised this to the next level.

I still from time to time go back and play TA. So many memories of playing it LAN with my dad.

It's not gone, it's still there. FAF is still best RTS to date.

Man, your video was excellent. I`m from Brazil and Total Annihilation was the game that made me passionate with RTS and PC games. I bought TA even before had my first PC. I guarded the CDs (with the original magazine) more than 2 years before I could play it, because I played it at a friend`s and bought it as soon as I could hahahaha, was magical. Several years later I could play Supreme Commander, SupCom FA and SupCom 2... I`m a big, big fan of the series and of Chis Taylor. That guy is a true genius. I really don`t see myself not playing his games. Yesterday and today I played TA and SupCom 2 (steam versions) and I play every time I can. There are lots of players of TA at the world today. TA Universe has a huge area for the fans and tons of projects ongoing. It`s a shame that people didn`t give these games the importance it deserve. I really can`t believe we don`t have big world championships of TA and SupCom. I play some of these ''famous'' games like LOL, StarCraft, CS-GO and others, but none of them worth more to me than TA and SupCom. Please, Chris, make a TA2 and a SupCom sequel, we need it :( and pls, never give up, the industry has to recognize your games. Players are kind of dumb. They prefer stupid games like CS-GO (a worst version of CS Source to me and full of cheaters) than intelligent games as TA and SupCom (are different styles of course, but nevertheless). Oh, you got one more subscriber for making that Master (Chris) appear, congrats!!! At Brazil we had a great TA clan up to about 10 years ago (I`m 33 years old). It was called Anaconda`S. My nick was and still is SharkCode. Oh my, wonderful time at my life. We are a poor country and I remember when I played using a 56 bps dial-up connection to play TA with my teammates hahahaha... lags, crashes and other issues, but we never gave up. Patches, bugfixes, updates... thanks GOD that I live in these days. Thanks to all the players and developers who make everything on their range to make things improve. Bring it on Chris, let`s make these games live FOREVER!!!

Proper dual-screen games are so rare and most are just bad spanned attempts. The ability of SupCom to do most of what you wanted on both screens was so good that I cry every time I see a new RTS come out that is limited to a single screen. Still my favourite game to just zone out on!

Absolutely loved this mate, it's a great look into everything around SupCom. Gave me a bit of closure after all these years. Good job!

Favourite RTS of all time, thanks for bringing attention to it.

That was a well-written retrospective, Zade. Well done. Interesting, informative, and accurate. And nice work getting Chris to comment. It's a delight to see and hear the creative mind behind my favourite RTS ever, Total Annihilation, in the flesh.

This game still brings cpu's to their knees. I look forward to the time when this type of scale of combat can be in mmos. some sort of command level guy pumping out thousands of bots, and players that can play heroes on the ground fighting with and against said bots.

dat interview doe......you really stepped up the quality in this one. congrats my man

Supreme Commander Retrspective AND a facereveal in 1 video, damn son im honored :D

I was a Bone yards Core Commander in 1998 under Total Annihilation I was a proud beta tester of Supreme Commander ten years later. Cheers Chris. :)

as someone who played this from 2009 onwards, this is a game me and multiple friends still come back to. It's so hard to find a 'real' strategy game now a days, where they all want to be something like Starcraft, or others that build around a 'competitive' scene. It's frankly aged well, simply because nothing else has actually chosen to listen to the design philosophy. I've seen a couple games attempt this, but then they fail to grasp the scope required to actually play the game. I'm so glad I got to see this video, because what it means to me is that many people understand just how good this game actually is, despite it's failure in 2012.

great video loving your love of the games you show and the dedication to it even enough a developer interview thank you

I got the upgrading TA on GOG Galaxy, and have played dozens of times. (yes I played it when it first released). Tons of fun. Also own SC and SC2 on Steam. Played several times. Thanks for sharing.

I somehow never comprehended how utterly massive the units are, the tiny little Engineers are already bigger than the trees.

I have wonderful memories of playing TA with my brothers. Thanks for all your effort going into the making of this video.

One of the best RTS. Many unique mechanics, still love it!

I loved supreme cammander so much. I used to play one match and then look at the game timer and it will be 2 hours long

Best RTSs ever. Total Annihilation was awesome, Kingdoms was strange but Zhon empire was really unique at the time, Supreme Commander was absolutely insane and Forged Alliance was a masterpiece. I look forward to his future projects and wish him well.

That soundtrack still gives me chills to this day

Been a fan of supcom since release, still religiously watch Brink and Gyle here on youtube. I was super excited by the idea of supcom 2. I remember hearing about its features - like flow field pathfinding, which was released 4 months before starcraft 2 was released touting the same feature!). But the thing that put me off SC2 was the visuals. You can even see the problem just watching this video. Nothing is distinct. Buildings for any single faction look very much alike. The problem may be that they put *too* much detail in. Supcom 1 buildings and units are visually distinct (with a few minor exceptions) because of their simplicity. This lets you spend concentration on gameplay rather than having to figure out what's what. Supcom 2's attention to detail ultimately makes it more bland. Sure, you can zoom and and watch the neato mass extractor animations, but why? You will do that once, say "that's nice", and never really look at it again. From that point forward it just becomes visual pollution which harms the overall game experience. I think the tech three had a similar problem. It's claimed to be simpler, but I really thought it was way more complicated. Supcom 1 is simple: 3 types of units (air, land, sea), each with three tiers, including engineering tiers, and experimentals as the cherry on the 3 layer cake. It's conceptually very easy to remember. The supcom 2 tech tree, on the other hand, is a web of weird and sometimes unintuitive dependencies, and also requires the management of a fourth resource (the other three being mass, energy and time). It also makes any particular upgrade less strategically significant, which means you don't get such well defined phases during the game. In supcom 1 the choice to move to tech 2 land comes with a strategic cost that has to be balanced against your tactical choices. In supcom 2 those strategic and tactical decisions get smeared out, making them less impactful and therefore less interesting. The extra detail does more harm than good.

This was a really great video Zade, keep it up!

This was a fantastic video with great insight into the series. I was a long time total annihilation fan and launched into sup com as soon as it was released. It is the pinnacle of RTS in my humble opinion. What's great is that so many obviously share this sentiment. I really hope Chris Taylor can work his magic again someday and deliver a remake of this epic title.

Excellent little documentary! And what a **GREAT** game - one of my all-time favourites! :)

Best RTS ever made. Forged Alliance Forever keeps it alive nicely though.

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is simply amazing.

Supreme commander and Warhammer are the games that really made me, watching as Supreme commander die so abruptly was genuinely sad to think that such a vast rts series was gone and that there wouldn't be a third installment of the series. It was truly gone too soon

Thank you for this video. I really wish Chris good luck on his journey!

Great video and interesting interview with Chris, I'm looking forward to what hes working on :D

so many fond memories of matches with 3 frames per minute xD This game will always have a special place in my heart

I got my first computer in 98 and Total Annihilation was included. I was young and didn't even understand English at the time but I got the basics off it and thought it was fun. Years later when I revisited it then I truly understood what a behemoth of a game it actually was, you had so many options and the scale was epic. When I started to play other RTS games then I finally grasped what a masterpiece it was, nothing came close it even many years later.

Great docco! Really enjoyed watching the interview with Chris.

I hope you don’t forget to mention that you can capture enemy engineers to gain access to their tech tree. I almost always did that when i could in the campaign.

Playing Supreme Commander Forged Alliance online in 2008 as been a wonderful experience, despite loosing most so many matchs ! it was brutal. It was easy to participate to community events, I even created maps. This is art indeed, not a product. It is still relevant today ! Never forget.

Thanks for making the video. Made great sense when He explained the reasons and the whys.

Fantastic video! I loved how well researched it was and how you had parts of your interview with Chris in the video. I also appreciated the mini breakdowns of the featured sup com games and the music as well! I can't wait for intergalatic space empire and I definitely can't wait for another proper spiritual successor to Chris's rts games.

Ouch... an RTS that you play in the cloud... I instantly lost all interrest in that project :c

Woha I saw 2 videos and you talked about my favourites games, incredible

Bring me to tears the way you explained the things you can can do and the faction lol good musics too

I have had an intense love for this game since I first bought it. I knew when I saw it on the shelf those years ago that I was buying a gem that I would play for the longest time. Every now and then I take a break from my current games like Starcraft 2 and Total war games to play this beast of a game. The I find myself playing it for like a week or two or more before playing anything else again xd. The first Supreme Commander was my favorite. There really is nothing like that feeling of making a beautiful giant burst from the ocean waves to lay waste to your enemies, or sending in a fleet of troop carriers to an island with fighter and bomber escorts, landing them in the thick of battle to support a loosing engagement, bringing home a win. This game will live on for me as one of my great old homes to visit.

Man, you are on a whole diferent level.I wished 1/10 of youtubes were so professional as you are. You make others content creators look like frauds. You made a excent job on this video. Thank you and congratulations.

Supreme Commander 2 is the best example that RTS games should not be developed with Consoles in mind. If you can port it, that's good, but they are core PC gaming experiences.

your review helped me with deciding what game to buy next for my gaming lounge. something simple and close to zero hour: Supreme commander 2 :) . Many thanks! Keep up the marvelous quality content !

if there was a supreme commander 3 you would probably find me glued to it