Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection

Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection is a remaster of the first two titles in the real-time strategy video game series Command & Conquer with rebuilt graphics and sound improvements, and bonus materials. It was developed by Petroglyph Games with Lemon Sky Studios, and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on June 5, 2020, for Origin and Steam. A physical edition intended for collectors was released by Limited Run Games.

The compilation includes remasters of the first two Command & Conquer games originally developed by Westwood Studios, Command & Conquer (1995) and Red Alert (1996), along with their expansion packs and content that had been exclusive to console ports. It features 4K graphics, remastered music, upscaled full motion video cinematic footage, enhanced sidebar UI, modern online features, and an unlockable gallery of unused and "making of" content.

The source code for the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert was released on June 2 (three days before game's release). This code, which was used to create the remastered games' back-end game engine, allows people to create game mods that can be played through the games' built-in mod loading system.

Gameplay

Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection is a collection of remasters of the first two Command & Conquer video games: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. It includes three expansion packs: The Covert Operations, Counterstrike, and The Aftermath as well as additional missions and briefing videos from the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation ports, totaling about 100 campaign missions. The sidebar UI was revamped to be easier to use, and other features were added.

Synopsis

Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection consists of two games: Command & Conquer: Remastered and Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Remastered. They contain the same plot as their original counterparts, with visual changes and upscaled full motion video cinematic footage.

Development

During EA Play 2018 Electronic Arts presented Command & Conquer: Rivals, and subsequently received feedback that gamers would want another PC release in the Command & Conquer franchise. They contacted Petroglyph Games, which was founded by previous programmers of Westwood Studios (developers of the original Command & Conquer video game), who said they welcome the collaboration. The whole development process was marked by close collaboration between the studios responsible for developing the game and the community surrounding the franchise. At first, the team was not sure whether to create a remake or a remaster of the original game, but because of the popularity of remasters such as Age of Empires: Definitive Edition they decided to do a remaster. Petroglyph opted to use the original game engine from 1995 to keep the game as familiar as possible, with minor tweaks and bugfixes where needed. One such improvement was a port of Red Alert's artificial intelligence to the original game, because of similarities in the codebase. The graphics and animations were updated by Lemon Sky Studios in Malaysia. During the development Petroglyph Studios has frequently contacted the franchise community about feedback on art and direction of the production, to a point where they recruited some of the top figures in the community (including modders, competitive players, shoutcasters, etc.) in private Discord server for continuous feedback. The box art for the game was also previously made by a community member, and later commissioned by Petroglyph for the game. The multiplayer component of the game has been rebuilt from scratch. Achievements and level editor have also been added. The game launched on Steam and Origin on June 5, 2020.

Music

Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection contains the original music of the games, remasters of those tracks, and some music that was either cut or lost for the original titles, done by Frank Klepacki. In addition, Klepacki, along with the fan band The Tiberian Sons, remixed and performed 22 more tracks specifically for the remaster, based on their performance at MAGFest 2019, featuring tracks from the first two games, as well as a few tracks from later games (Renegade, Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2, the expansion Yuri's Revenge, and Red Alert 3).