We just got our first look at how Command & Conquer Remastered is shaping up, and it’s lookin’ pretty sweet.
Last November, Electronic Arts announced that they were going to do something that fans had been begging them to do for years. Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Command & Conquer: Red Alert were going to be remastered.
To do it, EA would partner with a bunch of old Westwood studio developers over at Petroglyph Games, the indie studio that sprung up following the death of Westwood way back in 2003. There’s a certain irony to EA shutting down the studio and then going to the former devs’ new studio to do the remaster, but the human race seems to have evolved beyond irony in the year 2019.
Development of the remastered game is well underway, with EA producer and creative director Jim Vessella posting to the C&C subreddit to let everyone know how they were doing. Vessella reported that they’d reached some key milestones in March, such as having "delivered our first playable campaign mission (GDI Mission 1), which included multiple samples of the remastered art running at 4k."
Now, EA and Petroglyph are busy getting multiplayer up and running--a key component of the old real-time-strategy games--as well as finalizing all the game’s art assets.
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Additionally, Vessela dropped the first screenshot of one of those assets: the GDI Construction Yard. This is the heart of any player’s base, the main epicenter from which every other structure can be built.
We’re told that EA would try to default to the original game designs wherever possible, and whenever in-game models conflict with cinematic art of a UI portrait, it’s the in-game art that would take precedence. However, that doesn’t mean that the original game art couldn’t be improved with some of the cinematic features, such as the textured blue door just behind the crane which was only shown in the cutscenes but never in-game as graphics technology hadn’t progressed to the point where such fine detail would be visible.
We still don’t have a timeline on when the remaster will come out, but it’s good to know that EA hasn’t screwed this up just yet.