One of the best real time strategy game series of all time, the “Command & Conquer” will be back as a Remastered collection ready to be played in 4K come June 2020. This collection will have the include Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, and the three expansion packs as well: Covert Ops, Counterstrike and The Aftermath. Ever since they announced the Remastered Collection last year, fans of the series have been keenly following updates from the developers.

In a blogpost at EA, the developers announce that the games can run in 4K resolution with completely redesigned textures and models and they have included a feature to toggle back and forth between the classic graphics at 320 x 200 and the enhanced 4K graphics at 3840 x 2160 during solo gameplay plus you can zoom in to see even more detail.  Along with the famous Hell March soundtrack, new soundtracks have been added.

We’re ready to share the Remaster has been developed in the classic 2D visual style, unlocking our ability to stay as authentic as possible to the original games.  Below we’d like to provide more details on how we’re approaching these visuals, and why we felt the 2D style was the best fit for the project.

As you may remember from one of the first posts, our plan is to remaster (not remake) the classic games.  Creatively, this means our guiding light has always been to remain authentic to the original feel, and we’re constantly on the lookout for ways to achieve that goal.  When we recovered the source code to C&C Tiberian Dawn and C&C Red Alert, this gave us a viable avenue to accurately match the core gameplay, feel, and signature look of the legacy titles.  We felt the 2D style was the best way to bring all these elements together, and ultimately achieve the authenticity we were looking for.

It’s been wonderful to see the passionate, artistic care taken by Lemon Sky and the team with this creative approach. Lemon Sky has re-concepted, re-modeled, and re-animated every gameplay asset from scratch - examples of which you’ve seen with the Construction Yard and Tesla Tank.  Once it reaches the final stage as seen in those previews, we render and export the assets in 2D so they lineup frame for frame with the original visuals.  In some cases like the Grenadier, this can mean over 600 frames for a single unit.  This creative process has allowed us to modernize the game assets as you originally imagined them, and stay true to the gameplay you’ve known and loved for 25 years.

In addition to the authenticity, we’re excited to reveal an extra benefit of this 2D approach is that Petroglyph has been able to utilize their deep familiarity with the source code to enable the real-time switching of Legacy / Remastered graphics in Campaign missions.  This means at any time when playing a Campaign mission, you can tap a single key to smoothly toggle between the original assets at 320 x 200, to the Remastered assets up to 3840 x 2160.  Playing with this toggle over the past several months has been a true joy, and we believe will be one of your favorite features in the Remaster.  Along with the real-time toggling, you’ll have the ability to zoom the camera to take in all the high definition detail, with an effective zoom distance between the DOS and C&C Gold camera heights.

Other enhancements are updated controls and the UI has been tweaked and the Collection is multiplayer ready. There will be will be one-on-one quick matches, elo-based matchmaking, leaderboards and replays.
Another endearing part of the series is their cut scenes, which are live action footages which WestWood studios introduced in the 1990s and were a hit. These have been upscaled so you can get more detailed look at the actors in these cut scenes.

“Command & Conquer Remastered Collection” is now on pre-order and fans can choose from the Standard Edition (US$19.99) which is a digital download and the Special (US$59.99) and 25th Anniversary (US$149.99) Editions that are physical editions come in boxes. These will be playable with 64-bit Windows 8.1 or 10.