You're brought in by the princess as her champion, meant to be someone who wrests military influence from Marxon and brings the army back under her sway. Military leader General Marxon wants to break away from the more compassionate Aeon princess, who functions as the Aeon's leader. The Aeon may be the dominant faction, but they're suffering from internal turmoil. Though their engineers and commander units still use energy beams to bring units and structures into existence, the build sites are always surrounded by rippling liquid metal, adding a unique flair. Unlike the red and black jagged designs of Cybran units and the blue, blocky UEF, the Aeon's rounded green ships and vessels appeared the most distinct. As the game opens, the Aeon are the most powerful of the factions, which may have contributed to why we preferred this campaign to the others.
Instead of air or land units, this campaign starts you off building naval units, which help make this first mission feel a little different from the UEF and Cybran. Your mission is to set down, acquire the technology, build your own gate, and return to Cybran headquarters.
Unfortunately, the planet is swarming with Aeon fanatics and there's no return gate. Before that can be dealt with, you're told the Cybran require something called a Quantum Interface Device, which can be extracted on the planet Orionis. Sounding vaguely like the Death Star, we're not actually sure what this looks like, if it's restricted to the game's narrative, or if it actually factors into gameplay. At the start of the second mission it's revealed that he has some kind of lead on a mysterious UEF planet-killing weapon known as Black Sun.
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Near the end of the first Cybran mission you'll free Jericho from the UEF, a Symbiont with valuable information for Dostya. Once Tier 2 and 3 tech levels open up later on, you'll be forced to make more complex build decisions and have to pay closer attention to what they enemy is up to. You get units like tanks, artillery, and anti-air batteries that don't do anything outside of their primary function. During the first mission of any of the factions, the process is rather monotonous since the Tier 1 units have very basic abilities and aren't all that powerful. This means you'll need to amass a substantial force to assault the enemy base within which the dastardly commander is always hiding. Like in every mission we played, the final objective is to kill an enemy armored command unit. As you do this the area of play continuously expands and you'll receive frequent communications from Dostya as she explains what your next objectives are, updates you with news of the Cybran Nation's status, and tells you to hurry up.
After the air factory pumps out five bombers, you're instructed to wipe out nearby UEF patrols, capture a UEF radar, and commandeer some of their mass refineries. Unlike the UEF campaign which assigned you to build a land factory, you'll be going the air route first with the Cybran Nation. Once your armored command unit lands on Theban 2, you first must construct three mass extractors and three power generators. Once those are completed, the map area is expanded, your build options increased, and a new objective assigned. Like in the UEF campaign, each mission is broken down into numerous sub-objectives. Your first mission is to free captured Symbionts from UEF forces on a planet called Theban 2. He brings you in as a new commander, under the care of Elite Commander Dostya, who for some reason has a Russian accent. Brackman, the Cybran leader, fears the prospect of the UEF's destruction, since afterwards the Aeon would have nobody to target but the Cybran. At their campaign's outset, the seemingly all-powerful Aeon Illuminate is on the verge of wiping out the UEF. Visual differences aside, playing as the Cybran Nation initially feels very similar to the UEF. With a little patience, you'll eventually uncover Supreme Commander's strategic core. Though playing the early missions with only basic Tier 1 units at your disposal can get pretty boring, the action definitely picks up as you continue through each campaign and more build options become available. Well, that's just as true with the Cybran and Aeon factions as it is with the UEF. You may remember from our preview a few weeks ago that we said the single player missions take a long time to complete. Plunging further into Supreme Commander's single player content, we checked out a few of the Cybran and Aeon missions, as well engaged in few skirmishes.