Command and Conquer Red Alert Remastered shows off its brand sparkin’ new Tesla Tank

The year has been a treat for strategy game fans so far, hasn’t it? They Are Billions is now fully realised, Conan Unconquered is putting its own spin on the survival RTS sub-genre and later this month sees squad tactics on the go with Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There’s another older game on the horizon that I’m chomping at the bit to get my teeth on, now that it has some remaster sizzle to it: Command and Conquer.

Two new remasters are on the way, each one taking place at the very beginning and end of the storyline of the series. Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn are still fantastic examples of the strategy franchise at its peak, and producer Jim Vessella recently updated commanders on the progress of the two cult classic RTS titles.

“Positive momentum continues and earlier this month we completed our first production milestone. This milestone included several key improvements to Tiberian Dawn, most notably delivering our first Campaign mission to full Alpha quality,” Vessella explained on reddit.

This means all the mission visuals are now showcasing the 4k assets from Lemon Sky, and the mission can be completed with all the core gameplay mechanics. I’ll admit when playing this full mission experience, the game started to transport me back to when I first played C&C, and I hope it does the same for all of you when the game is released.

However, one of the more exciting accomplishments of this milestone actually had nothing to do with Tiberian Dawn. That’s because we were able to get Red Alert playable for the first time. We are now able to load Red Alert missions, and the game is already being populated with several of the remastered visual assets.

That’s because even though Red Alert just became playable in the software, Lemon Sky has actually been creating assets for Red Alert over the past several months. So to celebrate this first step for Red Alert, we thought it would be fun to share a preview for one of the most iconic Red Alert units – the Tesla Tank.

If you’re wondering what the new Tesla Tank looks like while telling Elon Musk to go suck a lemon, here you go. CHARGING ELECTRODES!

“In the same fashion as our approach of the structures, our primary goal for units has been to maintain the authenticity of the original in-game asset. In an effort to take advantage of the 4k resolution, many of our earlier unit concepts included extra widgets and details, but we often found this compromised the unit’s readability at camera game height,” Vessella continued.

So we continued to iterate, and over the months we’ve begun to hone in on these elements, and feel like the Tesla Tank here strikes a good balance between readability and those added details. Of note, we only interpreted one Tesla ring from the legacy in-game asset, but there’s already been a healthy debate with the Community Council whether the Tesla ball should have two rings to match the cinematic reference.

More details will be revealed in the near future, so until then, you’ll just have to be patient. Or you can air-drop into the Petroglyph game studios from a Kirov blimp.

Last Updated: July 18, 2019