Slowly, however absolutely, we’ve been drip-fed extra deets on Command & Conquer Remastered – EA’s upcoming HD re-release of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert. Last 12 months we acquired a short have a look at C&C Remastered’s scaled up assets. They’re very good, too, sharpening decades-old artwork to deliver it as much as a contemporary commonplace with out going overboard on fancy results. But what about Command & Conquer’s (in)well-known FMV cutscenes?
Worry not, commanders. EA have introduced C&C’s B-movie appearing chops into high-definition, displaying off a short clip earlier this week. But scaling up decades-old footage didn’t come with out tactical challenges of its personal.
It’s one factor to spruce up constructing and unit textures. It’s fairly one other to upscale 320 x 200 decision recordings {of professional} actors chewing up surroundings like an all-you-can-eat buffet. For producer Jim Vessella, this meant happening a treasure hunt to trace down some unique HD recordings.
Despite unearthing a Blockbuster’s value of previous tapes in an LA storage unit, Vessella was disheartened to seek out these had been the identical low-res recordings used in-game, and never the HD masters he was searching for. Instead, Vessella notes that the workforce ended up working with cutscene recordsdata taken from the PlayStation ports of the games – pictures present in EAs personal archives, or else tracked down with the assistance of group archivists.
The file format of the PlayStation vids was supposedly simpler for the workforce to work with. Over the final 12 months, the builders have managed to upscale each FMV cutscene in Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and every of their respective expansions in crisp high-definition. ‘Course, the acting’s nonetheless hokey and the CG continues to be very mid-90s, however that’s all a part of the appeal.
Granted, these ports lacked a few of the PC unique’s pictures. Vessella notes that there’s a noticeable (if minor) drop in remastering high quality for cutscenes that by no means made it to console. It does, nevertheless, imply that PS1-exclusive cutscenes will make their method into C&C Remastered, together with never-before-seen B-roll footage the workforce unearthed. Bonus clips like that might be included as unlockables in a brand new “Bonus Gallery” Vessela introduced this week.
Teased all the way back in 2018, Command & Conquer: Remastered nonetheless has no launch date in sight. Hopefully, it hasn’t but escaped to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism.
