A month ago, we let the Command & Conquer™ community know we were bringing the franchise back to the PC, starting with a remaster initiative. The reaction from fans has been amazing, with many of you sharing your favorite C&C moments from the past 23 years. We have been reading these comments and listening intently. And now, we are ready to reveal our first PC offering and how your suggestions are already influencing our approach.
Today, I’m thrilled to tell you we are going back to the beginning. We have decided to remaster Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn. And while this is incredibly exciting on its own, we’re also aware of how passionate the community is about the Red Alert universe. So, we will also remaster the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert™. But what about the classic expansion packs you may ask - Covert Ops, Counterstrike, and Aftermath? Well, C&C and Red Alert wouldn’t be the same without them, so all three expansion packs will be bundled with the base games into one remastered collection - without microtransactions.
Now, in addition to the excitement and support of this remaster initiative over the past month, there has also been a healthy skepticism that we can pull this off. How are we possibly going to remaster these titles while maintaining the authenticity of the original experiences? Bottom line, there is no better way to achieve this than to partner with some of the talented developers who brought these original games to life.
So, after years of the fans asking for their involvement, I am humbled to announce that EA is going to partner with Petroglyph Games to develop the C&C remastered collection.
Petroglyph Games includes many of the original developers from Westwood Studios, and some of the most influential members of the original Command & Conquer development team from 1995. Joe Bostic is known as the co-creator of C&C, having also served as the Lead Programmer on Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. Steve Tall joined Joe as a Lead Programmer on Red Alert, and Ted Morris was the original community manager on the C&C franchise. And Mike Legg contributed to all forms of audio systems at Westwood, having been an employee since 1986! All four members helped start Petroglyph Games in 2003 after the closure of Westwood and are joined by a veteran group of RTS developers from the past 15+ years.
On a personal note, I can tell you the past few weeks have been surreal. During my first visit to Petroglyph, I was able to brainstorm “C&C feel” with Joe, reminisce about the jukebox with Mike, and gab with Steve about whether we should fix the Tib Dawn Harvester AI. Getting to chat C&C with the original developers has been one of the highlights of my gamer journey, and I can’t wait for all the incredible conversations to come.
In addition to the fantastic team at Petroglyph, we will also be partnering with Lemon Sky Studios to help bring these original games to 4k glory. Lemon Sky is one of the premier art studios around the world, with a unique specialty in remastering classic RTS titles. After meeting their team and hearing their passion for C&C, we are incredibly lucky to have them team up with Petroglyph to develop the highest quality C&C possible.
The exciting part is that we haven’t started development yet. The community is literally getting in on the ground floor of this project and have every opportunity to help influence how we build this remastered experience. Please continue to engage on Reddit and community channels and help us create the best possible remasters of C&C and Red Alert!
To kick things off, be sure to read the message below from Joe Bostic, and then watch the video at the bottom for one more surprise…
Welcome Back, Commander!
Jim Vessella
Jimtern
Command & Conquer community,
It was over 25 years ago when Brett Sperry and I (at Westwood Studios) worked to create a game that mixed together elements of Populous, Civilization, Herzog Zwei, and Military Madness games. Brett Sperry was visionary and I was lead programmer and designer. The result was Dune II. The first game of a new genre -- Real-Time Strategy. The subsequent game, Command & Conquer (C&C), is where the RTS genre really took off. It combined video recorded actors, rendered 3D video sequences, alternate story endings, an enigmatic villain (Kane), free multiplayer for your friend (only 1 CD was required to play and the game came with 2 CDs), context-sensitive mouse control, and two unique factions that didn’t play by the same rules.
C&C didn’t turn out as we originally envisioned. I had initially designed the game to be set in a fantasy world with three factions -- humans, wizards, magical beasts. Some months into development, Brett Sperry decided to redirect the game toward modern military for two main reasons. The gulf war was in the news so this was more relatable to gamers at the time, and also because we believed fantasy was too niche. I saw this new direction for C&C as being closer to turning my childhood experiences of playing with plastic soldiers in a sandbox into “reality” so to speak. Thus Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn was born.
The positive reaction to the game was intense. C&C was the right kind of game that arrived at the right time.
We should have seen the clues that C&C would be a success. The QA department would have difficulty testing for bugs since they could not resist losing focus to play for fun and try to win against each other instead of the more “boring” bug-testing they were actually assigned. The rest of the studio would play the game in the late afternoon and into the early evening. I would take careful notes and then make changes overnight to start the process over again the next day.
As soon as C&C was released, we immediately started working on an expansion pack that would pivot to alternate history with a post WW II feel. We kept adding more units, backstory twists (w/ Kane), more elaborate interstitial video sequences (still campy though), and new gameplay features. It became so massive an expansion that we just had to turn it into a stand-alone game in its own right -- C&C: Red Alert. Players seemed to love this game just as much as the original C&C!
Over the years, I’ve received C&C related gifts, fan mail, and anecdotes, and two fans even got matching GDI and Nod tattoos! The most common request is to bring C&C back to its roots like the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert. My answer was always the same: “Yes that would be great! Electronic Arts (EA) is the gatekeeper for C&C though. If they are on board, so am I!”
So here we are 20+ years later and EA has reached out to us regarding C&C. They had decided it was about time to revisit the original C&C games to give the fans what they had been asking for. Petroglyph has many former Westwood employees and is a perfect fit for bringing the original Command & Conquer games back to life. I’m excited to revisit the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert for our legacy fans, along with introducing the games to a new audience! Our battle-plan mission is to “remaster” rather than “remake” the original C&C games. That definition is a little fuzzy around the edges and that is where you come in.
I’m looking forward to re-engaging with the fans of the series as we bring the Command & Conquer franchise back to its roots of “easy to play, difficult to master”. We’re eager to provide an experience that takes advantage of enhanced connectivity, graphics features, and other technology improvements that weren’t around back in 1995. As we begin to craft the plan that will kick off the development phase of the project I’m eager to hear what else fans are looking for. If you could turn back the clock, what would you have wanted in the original C&C games? How true to a remaster should we adhere do? What modern improvements can be added without deviating from the core game? Balance changes? We will be starting development soon, so now is the time to let your voice be heard.
Men of War games are still going strong in the classical RTS sense. It would be nice to have something with building though... COH used to fill that void a little, but even that has gone to hell now.
Dang. I still remember COH: Online.
That was a fun game before it was shut down sadly.
Sounds great on paper that we are getting remasters of the best RTS games ever made, but i think this does not work in modern world how its supposed to be, they will fuck it up somehow with some kind of "modernization".
First preview look at EA’s Command & Conquer: Remastered. (The construction yard)
Quote:
Fellow Command & Conquer fans,
We are approaching the conclusion of our pre-production phase, having achieved several of our key milestones since our last Reddit post. During March we delivered our first playable campaign mission (GDI Mission 1), which included multiple samples of the remastered art running at 4k. This was accompanied by a more complete Visual Target image, which helps the dev team align around our goals for the artistic fidelity. We are now in the middle of getting Multiplayer up and running for the first time, along with dozens of art assets iterating towards their finalized look. Last week we showed many of these items to the Community Council, and continue to receive fantastic feedback via their contributions.
With that in mind, today we wanted to share a glimpse of the pre-production work with all of you here in the C&C community. And this is the first time anyone outside of EA or the Community Council has seen work from the Remaster. In this spirit, we felt it appropriate to start with one of the first assets you see in Command & Conquer - the classic Construction Yard.
Now, if you’ve been reading our previous posts, our primary goal with the visual approach is to maintain the authenticity of the original in-game asset. It’s worth calling out that if there’s a conflict between the in-game asset, cinematic asset, or UI portrait, we’re always going to side with the in-game asset. That being said, if there are opportunities to pull in details from the cinematic footage to enhance an asset, we’ll do our best to incorporate those details. A good example here would be the blue pattern / texturing on the Con Yard door (Inspired by the classic Con Yard unpacking cinematic).
As always, we are eager to hear your thoughts in the comments, and looking forward to sharing more details about the visual approach down the line.
Will they be releasing higher quality versions of the cinematics? Those wonderfully cheesy bits are so important to what gave C&C its unique character over the years - I still remember quite a few of em'!
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
i think there was already some remasters on the 10-17y old dvd collection, on youtube u can watch all the videos put together in quite good quality that didnt seem to be interlaced
no way my brain can cope with interlaced stuff anymore haha
but as i already have the originals and that collection, no way im shelling out more money to ea for anything else after their mobile betrayal
but as i already have the originals and that collection, no way im shelling out more money to ea for anything else after their mobile betrayal
Same here. I appreciate the attempt and I hope it will be a decent one that doesn't reek of laziness, but it takes a lot more than this to earn back my trust. Sorry not sorry EA
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