First time playing C&C storyline. Which campaign should I play first?

[Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es]

I just finished the remaster of Red Alert, I played Allies First, then Soviets. I might be wrong, but I feel this order will fit the overarching story-line better.

Which do you think would be better to start with?

(also, i'm aware i've messed up by playing Red Alert first. My nostalgia glasses blinded me into not researching which came first chronologically)

Also, another question - why so the remastered cutscenes (video, not CGI) in Command and Conquer so overwhelming clearer/crisper than those in Red Alert? did I miss a setting?

[Nyerguds]

The GDI campaign is generally seen as the easiest of the two (mostly due to having less missions without a base), so it's probably a good bet to start there.

As for the cutscenes, there's a technical reason for that. The cutscenes in C&C: Remastered were upscaled from the Playstation mpeg videos, which have a measly resolution of 320x176 (slightly better than the PC versions, but not much). The technique to upscale the videos was neural network scaling, or "AI-upscaling" as it's generally called; a technique that predicts lost data from the patterns in the available data, based on image material it analysed before.

However... in Red Alert, your briefing videos usually show a briefing room with two or three people in it. The actual faces of those people are very small compared to the full size of the video canvas. In C&C1, in contrast, all briefings are one-on-one, with those same heads taking up a lot more space on your screen. So there is a lot more detail already there for the AI-upscaling to work with, and the end result is, consequently, much better.

So yea, the blame there lies squarely on Red Alert's briefing style.


Note for completeness' sake: the Red Alert: Retaliation videos are 320x240, which was actually fullscreen on 4:3 monitors, but the main games all had this "movie theater view" thing going on with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The Retaliation videos are also more one-on-one, so their quality is also better than the briefings in the main game.

[Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es]

What a perfect reply!

Thankyou for your succinct and knowledgeable input.

I had a rough day, but strangely enough, the effort you just put in made it a bit better. Things are gonna be ok.

[Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es]

Thanks for that edit too. Good to know i've got more good stuff coming!

incase you're still lurking, do you know if there's a way I can bring up mission objectives? I know the Escape menu gives a brief description of the mission, but no way to view the specific mission tasks/objectives.

[engitect]

Originally posted by Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es:

What a perfect reply!

Thankyou for your succinct and knowledgeable input.

I had a rough day, but strangely enough, the effort you just put in made it a bit better. Things are gonna be ok.

Nyerguds was on the Community Council and the beta testing team. He also ported missions & maps from the N64 version - Spec Ops, along with Fun Park missions so you can thank him for those. :)

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es:

Thanks for that edit too. Good to know i've got more good stuff coming!

No problem :)

Originally posted by Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es:

incase you're still lurking, do you know if there's a way I can bring up mission objectives? I know the Escape menu gives a brief description of the mission, but no way to view the specific mission tasks/objectives.

The video and text briefing are really all there is. C&C1 isn't a very complex game in terms of mission scripting, though, so the objectives are typically also very simple. You rarely have more than one objective, and even then, usually the first is "find a damaged base" and the second is "wipe out the enemy".

However, games from that era in general are somewhat notorious for making the player figure out certain things on their own. For example, in one of the GDI missions, you are tasked with evacuating someone by helicopter, but at the mission start, the helicopter that flies in is immediately shot down by anti-air installations. The actual objective of the mission is to take out all anti-air defenses on the entire map, including some that are hard to get to because they are part of an enemy base.

In this case, the briefing specifically mentions something about making sure there are no SAM Sites in the area, but sometimes you need to be able to read between the lines. The C&C1 expansion missions, The Covert Operations, are especially notorious for this type of thing. Though if you have trouble there, I wrote a guide for them.

Oh, and in the Nod campaign, you get to deal with a jealous commander deliberately giving you misleading or downright wrong information. So, fun ahead, there
("Naaah, there's no GDI there. Just destroy the village! It'll be easy!" Yea, sure, Seth. I'll believe that.)

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by engitect:

Nyerguds was on the Community Council and the beta testing team. He also ported missions & maps from the N64 version - Spec Ops, along with Fun Park missions so you can thank him for those. :)

I didn't have anything to do with the dinosaur missions, but I am the only one who ever made tools to convert files from that Nintendo 64 ROM, yes. In fact, they weren't aware of the Special Ops missions at all before Tore and I mentioned them :)

(I also nagged them to implement the "special Orca upgrade" in the "Secret Mission" from the Playstation version, lol )

Though the team did an excellent job on recording and upscaling the 3D cutscenes from the N64. That was all them

[Chumley Battlebus Cumberbatch Es]

Thanks so much for all the info and input.

I've had such a blast playing this game, and it's so great that there's a strong community.

Can't wait to start playing multiplayer, even if I get destroyed because I most enjoy playing this game like it's sim city.