Rise of the Reds

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A Game Mod for Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour that picks on the events of the original game and presents its own story on what happened afterward. The GLA came back stronger than ever before, the USA went isolationist for the meantime, China managed a near economic take-over of the world before Russia got its industrial power rolling again and fights the ECA on their ground who themselves rebuild their military might as well.

More information on the mod can be found here and here.

Tropes used in Rise of the Reds include:

European Continental Army


Global Liberation Army


People's Republic of China


Russian Federation


United States of America


Multiple / Non-faction

  • Artifact Title: Unlike the original Revora version, SWR no longer depicts the Russians as neo-communists, making the 'reds' part somewhat obsolete.
  • Big Badass Battle Sequence: The climactic battle of Kurmuk depicted in the main menu. It's China and the US versus Russia, it's epic as all hell and it smoothly repeats forever. The scripting alone took three weeks.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Getting shot by bullets is probably the least nasty cause of death for the average infantryman. Getting dissolved by toxins, burned by napalm or disintegrated via Tesla bolt... not so much.
  • Cavalry Refusal: The Europeans did this to the Russian expeditionary forces in Africa, leading to their wholesale slaughter at the hands of the GLA. Russia didn't take kindly to it to say the least.
  • Continuity Reboot: SWR's ROTR is very different from the mods original incarnation.
  • Cool Versus Awesome
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Plenty, but the epic Russian folk song Polyushka Polye from the main menu stands out in particular.
  • Days of Future Past: To a certain degree, with the Chinese and Russians using updated versions of Cold War-era methods.
  • Dead Line News: Implied to be the fate of Eric Bryce from ECAN news after the Russians conquer Berlin.
  • Danger Deadpan: Most of the various pilots. Understandably, many of them do lose their cool when they get shot down.
  • Deconstruction: ROTR started out as a futuristic spin off of the Cold War gone wrong but the story has started to reflect a lot about the world of today and what it could become in a near future.
  • Fan Sequel: The mod as a whole is this to Generals, although some consider this to be the one Zero Hour should have been.
  • Faction Calculus:
  • Fix Fic: In addition to expanding on the backstory of the Generals setting, the mod through its many updates also goes through great lengths to improve and fix the at times thoughtless "canon" plot, especially regarding the GLA "invasion" of Europe in Zero Hour.
  • Growing the Beard: The team-change / reboot is generally regarded as this.
  • Gunship Rescue: Normal occurrence in a game.
  • History Repeats: Africa gets re-colonised by foreign powers, including Europe, the US, Russia and China, sometime in 2020 and all of them are in it mostly for the rare untapped resources. In addition, another full-scale war in Europe erupts in 2045, precisely 100 years after the end of World War II.
  • It's Raining Men: The US and Russia can call in paratroopers
  • Melee a Trois: Although all factions have at least one common enemy in reality they are all working against each other.
  • Mobile Factory: Vehicles are manufactured IN the battlefield.
  • Moral Dissonance: Applies pretty much to all factions, though some more than others.
  • Nintendo Hard: The Hard AI setting on some maps. The AI in general has been revamped to put up considerably more challenge to the player.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Applies to all factions with exception of China and General Zhukov.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The US and China, though with inverted colors; they are at opposite ends of the spectrum but very much alike.
  • Self-Destructive Charge: Applies mostly to the GLA with suicide units and the Scorpion tank managing to get cross several meters when the unit is already dead (possibly managing to bring infantry down with him). Also applies to all infantry in the game since they keep fearlessly advancing even when they are crippled and an inch away from death.
  • Space-Filling Empire: The creation of large, supra-national organisations like the corporate NAU, the pro-Russian NSAU, the powerless African Union and the pro-Chinese SSAN appears like this, although they only make an appearance in the backstory. Played somewhat straighter with China and Russia who annexed some of their neighbours.
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The timeline starts in 2016 with the ending of the Zero Hour expansion while the actual war between Russia and Europe breaks out in 2032.
  • United Nations Is a Super Power: Inverted to hell and back. The UNO has been rendered obsolete by trade blocs and superpowers, lacks any kind of even nominal power and has been reduced to a curiosity in New York.