There is a lot of interesting information on it. So, let's spotlight some of the features that deserve some comments. First of all, it's not the same old game, for both Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert 1. If you want to play the original games, you don't need to wait until June 5th. You can download Command & Conquer: 95 and Red Alert 1 right now. These are from The First Decade, and they were released for free by EA itself. For the Remastered, they've added some quality of life features as shown on the picture captured below:
One of the most interesting things is the addition of skirmish for Tiberian Dawn. You can choose all player types (AI difficulty level for each player or observer), the color, and the team on the left side. On the map, you are able to choose each player's position. There are also custom rules, that allows players to choose the Mode, Game Speed, Starting Units (probably up to 10), Tech Level, Starting Credits, Unit Queueing, Tiberium Regrowth, Crates, Redeployable MCVs, Super Weapons and Visceroids. It is not clear what would be the other game Modes at the moment. The list of options is poor when compared to mods hosted here and OpenRA. There could be Multi-engineer support, Build of Allies, Fog of War or Explored Map options, but so far, this is something we couldn't see there.
The match selection screen has a limitation of 8 slots when you create a Red Alert 1 game and 4 slots for Tiberian Dawn. It is not clear if observers may affect this limit. So, if our internet connection gets better through the years, it might not be possible to have 8 players games with observers. For those wondering, OpenRA supports 12 players plus spectators (observers).
Another addition is a Mission Selection Browser that lets you to replay missions, check their introduction and ending videos and, select the difficulty mode. And that's an interesting feature: I don't remember Tiberian Dawn missions allowing you to choose the difficulty level. So, the difference between Casual, Normal, and Hard difficulty levels is something mysterious at the moment. Also, it is worth mentioning that you can select missions by faction and even by other means. You can play secret dinosaur missions or even missions that were exclusive to videogame versions.
Replays is also a big addition for the game. You can play and pause the game and probably select a part of the replay to skip. Apparently, it shows how many units and buildings each player destroyed and their money in real time. Compared to the original game, it is a breakthrough. However, compared to OpenRA, it is very poor. OpenRA allows you to view economy data, faction production in real-time, kill/loss data for units and structures, superweapons and much more.
Camera and zoom controls is also something that should be more useful when observing the game, however, it can also be used when playing it, of course. It should be a simple keyboard shortcut. Here's a video showing it in action:
And a picture with a zoomed-in Red Alert battle. Note that OpenRA also has a similar feature in the latest PlayTest.
The evolution of the game also reaches the controls. You will be able to choose between the legacy and right mouse attack/move click options. And it is not just that. You can control when it displays the unit's health bar, if it is either only on selection, for damage or every unit. I have the feeling that if you have the health bar being displayed for all units, it would be a solution for the problem of highly detailed terrain deteriorating the visibility of enemy units (especially soldiers). You can also choose if you want to always display Harvester resource capacity/use and probably APCs too. And, yea, you can finally queue units. The limitations of queueing units were not informed publicly yet. But the lesser, the better. Planning your upcoming units and buildings in advance is important to allow you to better schedule your actions and your attention to what is going on at the battlefield. Unfortunately, you can only queue units, not buildings in this game.
I'm wondering if I uncheck the Constrain Mouse Cursor to Game Window, it would allow me to play the game in one screen and do other things on other screens. That's something that would be interesting. In OpenRA, I need to do ctrl + alt + tab to do that, and it is quite annoying.
Another important addition is the quick save. With Shift + P, you can quick save the game, and it can help you to not loose countless hours after a failure. Thumbs up for this addition. The picture above shows some other shortcuts, where you can toggle classic graphics with Space, access different tabs, with W E R T, etc.
Bonus Gallery with the possibility to watch all videos, including ones from Red Alert 1 Retaliation, as well as all musics, including from Tiberian Sons band, is something very exciting for die-hard fans. However, we need to call the developper's attention to the average joe user because, it greatly increases the storage requirements of the game. The best thing to do is to make such content optional at Origin and Steam. So far, it is not clear if this is what is gonna happen, but the 32 gb of minimum storage requirements and the same value for recommended storage requirements gives a hint that it might be an obligatory content.
There is no public information of the Map Editor yet, except for its compatibility with Steam Workshop (on Steam's version at least). So, there isn't much I can comment about it so far.
Finally, but not the least, the new sidebar is fantastic. I love the new cameos and the organization is perfect! For those wondering if there is a room for improvements, some transparency would be a room for improvement, since it would allow players to have a bigger view of the battlefield itself.
And that's it for now. What do you think of what has been revealed so far about this game? Share your comments here!