EA considering Command & Conquer PC remasters

[JPB]

https://hexus.net/gaming/news/pc/123206-ea-considering-command-conquer-pc-remasters/

Electronic Arts producer Jim Vessella has taken to Reddit to ask for community feedback on the return of the franchise to PC. Vessella has a long history at EA and was on the production team for the likes of Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3, along with being the Lead Producer on Kane’s Wrath. In those roles he remembers the fun and value of interacting with the gaming community online and at events like Gamescom.

The most recent C&C game you can play is Command & Conquer: Rivals, a mobile game set in the Command & Conquer universe but people still pine for the old games on PC and many would like to see the games evolve on the PC. Thus EA has something already in the pipeline to mark the upcoming 25th Year Anniversary of the C&C games.

Vessella wants to make more of C&C beyond this 25th anniversary special (though we don’t have any solid indication of what the celebratory output might be). So he asks for “feedback to help influence our current thoughts for PC and what comes next”. The feedback isn’t limited to Reddit though, as EA will be “talking to fans in a variety of ways,” over the next few weeks.

To wrap up his Reddit post Vessella assures that he isn’t just a long time C&C developer he is also a fan and is “just as passionate about the C&C franchise as you are”.

I would count myself among the horde of ardent C&C fans. I’ve re-bought the games more than once over the years due to platform and compatibility issues (though they are often in the sale nowadays very cheap at Origin etc). My favourites are the Red Alert and Generals titles. A common concern with EA as it is now might be with so called microtransactions. However, Vessella has been quick to respond, via Reddit, to this thorny question as follows: “We will not be adding any microtransactions to a C&C Remaster.” Others have asked EA to avoid; lootboxes in any form, any online only requirement, or pay-per-faction/commander.

I for one, hope the Generals titles get a Remaster. My favorite of all of them.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Nah, I'm good.

 

[KMFJD]

^^same

 

[Rifter]

Im good, i replay Dune occasionally it fulfills my super old RTS needs. C&C is just a dune knockoff anyways.

 

[DeathReborn]

I'd like the earlier games to be able to run on W10 & High Res without issues, if that takes a remaster to happen then so be it.

Funnily enough I first played Dune II on the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) and the gamepad controls were fine but now I can't do an RTS with a controller at all, funny how that goes.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I get turned around with some of these terms so I'll just ask: what exactly is a remaster?

They're just going to GOG the series so it's all compatible with Windows 10, or are they going to update the assets so the older games won't look like garbage on modern monitors... Or what?

The C&C series always provided an alternative playstyle and format to the "craft" series of games and we're always fun. I've played Tiberian Sun and RA2 more times than I can comprehend. They always included more emergent gameplay mechanics that didn't fit the mold of esports, but always proved to be absurdly fun to play.

That being said, I'm done playing them now and will likely never go back, rebooted/remastered/redone or otherwise.

 

[Borealis7]

if C&C games aren't made by Westwood studios, then i'm not interested.
besides, RTS and base building is so 00's. this is 2018, dammit! get with the times.

 

[JPB]

if C&C games aren't made by Westwood studios, then i'm not interested.
besides, RTS and base building is so 00's. this is 2018, dammit! get with the times.

I agree. Lets just release another "Call Of Duty"

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I have a soft spot for the old C&C games and I'd buy them all again online except that EA has locked them to Origin and I refuse to install that POS, so no sale for them. Same goes for any re-masters, I'd happily buy remasters of the entire catalogue to date to play them through again but not if they're going to it to Origin. Not releasing stuff on existing and established platforms like steam is just utterly stupid.

 

[DigDog]

Back in the 90s this place i worked at, had 4 PCs in LAN. Back when the boss still gamed with the employees.

We played Doom2 and C&C95. I sucked at doom but was UNBEATABLE at cnc. The games would always start 4 player FFA and end 3v1 with me winning ... nearly every game. I was that good.


So sit down because im about to piss you off.


I think red alert was bad.

Not TERRIBLE, but not as good - and the later cnc games all made the same mistakes.

C&C95 had a really good balance of production speed versus tiberoum mining. The "economy" was balanced so that a war of attrition was a viable tactic.

Red Alert increased the amount of resources you got, which led to the piles of tanks and head-on tactics that frankly as a high skill player, i find bad. Not bad as ineffective, but badly balanced.

The later games have no semblance of balance, it's just unit spam. The only game that got it right (almost) was Generals.

But Generals was too little too late. By that time i already had Supreme Commander.

And SupCom is more of a "pc rts" while C&C95 is more like chess. The limits of having few resources and few units make the game more interesting and allow for more complex tactics.


That's it. I have enlightened your miserable lives with PURE TRUTH. Now go forth and preach.

 

[DigDog]

Oh yeah and to maybe actually answer the OP,

1. I do not trust EA to be able to remaster C&C
2. I wouldnt care about anything if not C&C95

Besides, there already is a cnc95 modern mp client. But the game would need a proper reboot, yet keeping in mind what i said before. Which is not gonna happen.

 

[Exterous]

Oh man I played the heck out of C&C games back in the day. I'd consider it but the best part was playing against friends and I don't think they would be as interested in picking it up again.

to mark the upcoming 25th Year Anniversary of the C&C games

25 years!? Oh man I am getting old

 

[PottedMeat]

best part was playing against friends

aww yeah memories of being almost beaten but with that one last guy in the middle of nowhere finding a crate with an MCV

good times

 

[Borealis7]

i remember playing over modem, sending out my little bike to explore and suddenly finding 20 invisible tanks massing not far from my base.
and how we knew the exact pixel to aim for with the Ion Cannon to destroy buildings with one shot.

 

[Stg-Flame]

The memories of C&C Generals staying up all night long because my friends and I were at a stalemate (couldn't beat my defenses yet he'd crush all my offenses). That being said...

Nah, I'm good.

 

[Zenoth]

It would 'work' if it does things beyond just supporting higher resolutions and making sure it's compatible with Windows 10.

- They would have to contact Frank Klepacki and pay him to remaster / remix at least part of his soundtrack (and I do mean the original C&C OST). The thing is most tracks are 'fine' today, but some specific ones have pretty bad sound quality, or some sound effects and voices are muffled or sound a bit too distant (such as "Act on Instinct", and "Just do It") and just generally not on-par with the rest of the OST where it's still good enough. Maybe he'd take this opportunity to compose new ones, too.

- I assume that since the game is so old by now, they'll have to pretty much re-do almost everything (pixel art, textures, support for higher res, GUI scaling, redoing menus, creating control schemes and support for modern game pads, etc), so... if I was EA I would honestly just try to contact all the original team members from Westwood, really. It's not just "porting", where their current employees would technically know how to do it (well... ok, nvm; maybe even that is pushing it a bit too far). It's a remaster of a classic that belongs to the Hall of Fame of video gaming. If you want to touch C&C1, then do it right, or don't do it at all (Garrus' father was right on that one). That's my take on it. Try to contact the guys, and if they show their middle fingers (and I wouldn't blame them at all) then just DON'T DO IT, EA, please; just don't (why? because they WILL fuck it up somehow).

- Do NOT make it Origins exclusive (too late for that, because it WILL be Origins exclusive).
- Do NOT include any form of DRM or Microtransactions (now THAT one will be tough to resist for EA).

The biggest one, and I guarantee that it will never happen; but should:

A retail re-release of this remastered version. Because C&C is part of video gaming history and should NOT be something that's exclusive to the Internet. It belongs to all of us, to all gamers. AND... also, by 'retail' here I do mean everything included, DVD / Blu-Ray (whichever format they choose), manuals (properly redone and complete with information as it used to be) AND, even MORE importantly, can be installed WITHOUT having to access the Internet or to log-in to Origins. And, can be played without being online (obviously).

Now, since NONE of the above will be done, we can move on and forget about this "news", and continue playing the original versions.

 

[DigDog]

Obligatory Frank Klepacki reference

Now with 100% more Big Tits(tm) !

 

[Stuka87]

- Do NOT make it Origins exclusive (too late for that, because it WILL be Origins exclusive).
- Do NOT include any form of DRM or Microtransactions (now THAT one will be tough to resist for EA).

Nothing wrong with Origin (no 's'). It runs well, uses less resources than steam, has sales all the time, gotten quite a few free games for no reason other than they give them away. EA has done plenty of 'meh' things, but Origin actually works well.

I am sure it will have the normal DRM that any online sold game has, no different from steam. Most origin games check in once a week or something, and have an offline mode. And if its a true remaster, there won't be any microtransactions. If its a remake or a new game, then all bets are off.

 

[Zenoth]

Nothing wrong with Origin (no 's'). It runs well, uses less resources than steam, has sales all the time, gotten quite a few free games for no reason other than they give them away. EA has done plenty of 'meh' things, but Origin actually works well.

I am sure it will have the normal DRM that any online sold game has, no different from steam. Most origin games check in once a week or something, and have an offline mode. And if its a true remaster, there won't be any microtransactions. If its a remake or a new game, then all bets are off.

I didn't say there's something wrong with Origin itself. I'm saying it shouldn't be exclusive to it (but it will be). You might like Origin. I myself don't have problems with it now (I did initially when it was new, because it simply sucked giant horse balls at the time), it's fine yeah, it 'works' (its UI still looks ugly though, but that's subjective). However, not everyone even has it installed, not everyone wants to use it. Not everyone buys stuff from EA (crazy I know, but after about 15+ years of damaging the industry at some point some people got fed up with 'em, ya know).

It's only logical to release it elsewhere as well as on Origin, to make more money (since that's all they care about). Even if the other platforms it'd be released on gets a cut, so what? EA can poop money, they're practically a financial institution. So let the Steams and the Uplays of the digital distribution world get it too. They COULD do it, if they wanted to. I just... don't care, that the franchise belongs to them, really. It's C&C; release that thing everywhere. And I still had to mention that I don't want MTXs in that "remaster" simply because, oh you know, we're talking about EA here. If there's someone out there ready to fuck up something like a C&C Remaster, it's definitely them.

 

[Stuka87]

I didn't say there's something wrong with Origin itself. I'm saying it shouldn't be exclusive to it (but it will be). You might like Origin. I myself don't have problems with it now (I did initially when it was new, because it simply sucked giant horse balls at the time), it's fine yeah, it 'works' (its UI still looks ugly though, but that's subjective). However, not everyone even has it installed, not everyone wants to use it. Not everyone buys stuff from EA (crazy I know, but after about 15+ years of damaging the industry at some point some people got fed up with 'em, ya know).

It's only logical to release it elsewhere as well as on Origin, to make more money (since that's all they care about). Even if the other platforms it'd be released on gets a cut, so what? EA can poop money, they're practically a financial institution. So let the Steams and the Uplays of the digital distribution world get it too. They COULD do it, if they wanted to. I just... don't care, that the franchise belongs to them, really. It's C&C; release that thing everywhere. And I still had to mention that I don't want MTXs in that "remaster" simply because, oh you know, we're talking about EA here. If there's someone out there ready to fuck up something like a C&C Remaster, it's definitely them.

It could also be argued that with a lot of people getting sick of the shovel ware that Steam keeps shoving in our faces, that its an opportunity for EA to pull more people over to Origin. But this assumes the remaster is done along the same lines as the Starcraft Broodwar Remaster. Which was done about as perfectly as it could be.

 

[Zenoth]

I'll just leave this here:

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ea-original-makers-to-create-remasters-of-command-conquer.html

 

[Elcs]

Yeah, I am not excited for this news.

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah, I am not excited for this news.

Not a C&C fan?

 

[Elcs]

Not a C&C fan?

Petroglyph are the Devs behind the remake. They haven't really produced anything of note since forming, and the whole 'ex-Westwood Studios employees' doesn't fill me with any additional hope.

PS: I played Dune 2 on the A1200 until I got a PC in December 1996 and my third game (behind MechWarrior 2 and Quake) was C&C Red Alert. I stopped after Generals because C&C4 and RA3 do not exist, and I try to pretend that Tiberian Sun was made with pixels.

 

[Zenoth]

Petroglyph are the Devs behind the remake. They haven't really produced anything of note since forming, and the whole 'ex-Westwood Studios employees' doesn't fill me with any additional hope.

PS: I played Dune 2 on the A1200 until I got a PC in December 1996 and my third game (behind MechWarrior 2 and Quake) was C&C Red Alert. I stopped after Generals because C&C4 and RA3 do not exist, and I try to pretend that Tiberian Sun was made with pixels.

To each their own, but (about the bold quoted text above) I beg to differ on that one.

Granted, most of their games weren't very good, but they did make two good ones before (in my opinion) it started to go down the drains for them. The very first, Star Wars: Empire at War, and followed by its expansion pack (Forces of Corruption) was - overall - a very solid, enjoyable game. I wasn't a fan of the ground-based portions (but they weren't completely horrible, it was 'okay'), but the space branch was very good. The story wasn't bad at all (in the base game at least, since I didn't really like the story in Forces of Corruption much; pretty forgettable villain), the graphics at the time were good enough, and the whole 'switching' between surface and orbit / open space battles in a Star Wars game was a fresh take that (to my knowledge) had never been done before. It received generally favorable reviews all around, nothing ground-breaking worthy of a spot in the Hall of Fame of video gaming, but it was a pleasantly enjoyable game, all things considered.

And Universe at War: Earth Assault, for me anyway, was a sleeper hit. It was surprinsingly better than I had anticipated. It had more depth than I thought it would, and it was a much superior RTS than the ground battles of Empire at War attempted to be. All three factions were well distinguished and crafted from each other (very much in the fashion of how distinct the Zerg / Terrans / Protoss are in SC), the story was alright (I suppose either you'd hate it, or you'd enjoy it enough; it's nothing worthy of writing a novel and making a documentary about, but it was an acceptable typical popcorn sci-fi ride; and it takes some unexpected turns here and there). Also, the soundtrack was memorable (and much better than Empire at War's, in my opinion), and composed by Frank. I also appreciated how, for once (very rarely seen in general gaming), none of the factions were humans. Well, not 'modern' humans (Masari were more of a 'dormant' ancient civilization approach, rather than the usual "hey here comes Big Brothers' army to save the world" Hollywood-inspired fanfare).

After those two games though, well... it took them many years, but they did come up with Grey Goo. Admittedly, I still haven't played (or bought) that game, yet. I have, however, seen a good number of gameplay and playthrough videos of it at around the time when it was released and it seemed to be perfectly solid, well crafted and - at least visually - looked like it was probably their first 'serious' "AAA" title (as far as they could produce one such game) since Universe at War.

So anyway, completely isolated in and of itself, I do think that they did produce games 'of note'. But that's irrelevant to how their veterancy in the industry will actually help with anything regarding their ability to do their own work justice; especially under the breathing noses of EA that will most likely hang not too far above their shoulders during the making of those remasters. However, the fact - the mere fact - that EA actually contacted them to start with (along with Frank for the music) is in and of itself an astonishingly unexpected move, one that I genuinely still have to process to be able to believe in.

Do I think that it automatically means that the remaster(s) will be a great success? No, I still 'demand to see' to believe it can even still happen despite any official news pointing at it being made (and being made by the original team; even with that photo of the guys together is a nice addition for comfort). But I absolutely do prefer to know that this is how EA apparently wants to approach the situation (of remastering none other than C&C1, among even more than that, supposedly), rather than to simply use in-house, most likely too-young-to-know-anything-relevant-about-C&C employees whom would just know nothing more than the usual EA cycle of production, and been 'bred' that way internally since 'x' number of years; manipulating anything about that remastering project. Yeah, I'll take the original team instead, and I'll take their expertise from C&C, EaW, UaW and Grey Goo, over ANY in-house team that EA would have otherwise spit at such an undertaking.