Generals was met with instant controversy from both Media Watchdogs, who objected to the national stereotyping and the fact that you could play as totally-not-Al-Qaeda, as well as longtime Command & Conquer fans, who objected to their franchise's name being associated with an RTS that more strongly resembled a Blizzard game than traditional Command & Conquer gameplay. The game is canonically unconnected to the other C&C series, and in fact bears more resemblance to Ensemble's Age of Empires and Blizzard's StarCraft and Warcraft series.
An Expansion Pack followed, Zero Hour, which introduced more missions, more units, and three specialized generals to choose from within each main faction. The Global Liberation Army, an Arab-ish terrorist organization Ripped from the Headlines after 9/11, has declared war on the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, forcing the two superpowers to cooperate against the militants. Command & Conquer: Generals is a Real Time Strategy game set Twenty Minutes Into the Future, using more-or-less existent, in-development, or theorized technology.
