The main premise of Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is simple: altering even the most minute detail in the past can have grave, unforeseen consequences in the future. That's exactly what happened to the Soviets in Electronic Arts' Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3.

EA Executive Producer Chris Corry explained that the Reds actually set the stage for the third installment in the series. By traveling back into the past to take Albert Einstein out of the picture, the Soviets have restored the Soviet Union to its former glory in the present time. Unfortunately, by doing so, they also inadvertently helped to establish the Empire of the Rising Sun as a formidable opponent.

Exactly how formidable are we talking about here? Corry didn't go into any specific details, but he did mention that the Empire of the Rising Sun is the dominant naval power in the game. Unit transformation reportedly plays a big part in that faction, as the Empire is the most technologically advanced of the three factions. As Corry put it, the Empire will be quite different from the Allies and the Soviets:

I really like to call them the Empire of the Rising Sun because it makes them more ominous and it makes them different. And they are different. At the same time we've got full license to make them a little bit mysterious and maybe confound expectations a bit as well.

For the Empire of the Rising Sun, we're keeping information about that faction a little close to the vest, but there are some themes that you see there. There's certainly a lot in that faction that you don't see in the Soviets and Allies.