Earthbreakers is a spiritual successor to Command & Conquer: Renegade, out in 2020

Command & Conquer may have died in the early 2000s (I refuse to believe in the existence of Bigfoot, the Queen of England or Command & Conquer 4), but the franchise is currently poised to make a comeback in the 2020s. The classic spirit of real-time strategy games lives on in the form of Petroglyph, a studio largely made up of former Westwood developers who know a thing or two about the genre.

With games such as Grey Goo, Rise of the Immortals and Conan Unconquered in the bag, Petroglyph is currently bunkering down for hefty remasters of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert, but that’s not all that they’re working on. Back in November, Petroglyph released a trailer for a game that goes by the name of Earthbreakers, a first-person shooter with RTS elements that has you waging war in a race to gather the precious resource of Vilothyte. Here’s a trailer for it:

Satellites rain death as factions fight for control of a Broken Earth. Protect your team’s harvesters, build factories and vehicles, and assault the enemy base. Earthbreakers is team FPS action in an RTS world!

Is it just me, or are you also getting heavy hints of Command & Conquer: Renegade in this mixture of action and strategy? Whereas Renegade was a boots on the ground shooter that took you right into the Tiberium War in an age when digital lumps of flesh could pass for hands so long as they had stripes drawn on them, Earthbreakers leans deeper into its RTS roots.

While you will be able to kick ass as a lone wolf, having the option to call in reinforcements ala a handy terminal sounds like a blast. In addition to that, the overall game will feature two factions, 12 infantry classes to choose from, six vehicles to drive and 11 unique buildings to build and make use of on a map. With targetable satellite superweapons and 32-player games, Earthbreakers sounds like a revival of a cult classic some 18 years after it first arrived.

Last Updated: December 2, 2019