Westwood Studios' Command and Conquer released 25 years ago and helped to revolutionize the burgeoning real-time strategy (RTS) genre of gaming. Last week that game, now subtitled Tiberian Dawn, alongside its 1996 prequel Red Alert were packaged together with their expansion packs by Petroglyph Games in the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection. The collection boasts updated and 4K-capable graphics, expansive online battling and map editing functionalities with source codes released by EA, and multiple quality of life improvements. It also has over seven hours of remastered music.
Petroglyph's audio director Frank Klepacki was the composer for Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert during what he described as a "pioneering era" for Westwood Studios, just off the back of publishing Dune II — its first go at an RTS based on Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel that is currently being adapted by Denis Villeneuve. The games' scores have never been heard before, in their entirety, in high quality Klepacki said, and on top of that there are also 20 tracks included in the remastered collection that were recorded by a band in a professional studio. Game Rant sat down with Klepacki to talk about how the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection's official soundtrack, available today, evolves what the originals had to offer.
After a childhood spent performing with his parents in Las Vegas and joining rock bands, Klepacki was officially hired as a composer at Westwood Studios about the same time as he was graduating high school in 1991. He said he was already a gamer coming into that job, and was interested in trying to put his music onto computers using devices like four-track recorders at home. The "spirit" of the work he and the other developers at the studio did before it was closed by EA in 2003 was open to creativity and trying different things, but he said a big part of the job was conforming to the technology of the time.
The first program Klepacki said he used was Dr. T's Music Software for the Commodore Amiga personal computer, software that was also developed for devices like the Commodore 64, Atari ST, and the original Macintosh. When working on gaming consoles such as the NES, SNES, and the Sega Genesis, he used the Sound Blaster and AdLib Music Synthesizer cards for audio playback. Most technology at the time was not capable of full music or dialogue. It was instead constrained to musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) playback, computer sound effects meant to approximate instruments; and FM synthesis, essentially pitch-shifting basic audio frequencies through modules like the Roland MT-32. That all changed with Command and Conquer utilizing streaming audio.
"Command and Conquer presented a new technological challenge ... That was a cutting-edge technology we were using for the game, and of course we had full-motion video."
On top of full-motion video (FMV) cinematics, all of which have upscaled resolution and frame rates through the remastered collection, audio streaming allowed Command and Conquer to play real audio mixes that give players "a sense of what the song was supposed to sound like." This was still limited, as Klepacki said MP3 had yet to be invented, so to fit the rest of the game they needed to use WAV files compressed to 22K that could only play in mono. One lesson Klepacki said he took away from having to use this kind of technology at Westwood Studios was how to maximize his workflow and efficiency: Creating samplers to record sections of music he could play back rather than having to track and mix individual songs for approval each time he received minor feedback or edits for versions they needed on trailers.
When it came time to start working on the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection, announced in 2018, Klepacki said the first thing he did was look for the original source material to remaster in high quality. However, there were five tracks he was not able to find that had to be entirely recreated from scratch "with the original synthesizers and instruments" he used back in the 90s. Another "unique" facet of the remastered collection's soundtrack is that it includes bonus tracks "never heard by anyone before," unlockable in the game, that were not deemed the right fit at the time. "They still feel like Command and Conquer because they were written for it, and they are included as unlock able bonus tracks in the game."
Klepacki said it's hard to narrow down his favorite pieces of music from the remastered collection, as there are a "ridiculous" amount of quality tracks that he feels close to because Command and Conquer's fans have helped it become his composing legacy. He also said his favorites change based on his mood, but that a good indication of his preferences can be seen in the set that he performed live at MAGFest 2019 with a band of fans known as the Tiberian Sons. Those songs, alongside "Just Do It Up" from the original Command and Conquer, were later recorded to be included in the remastered collection based on the suggestion of Electronic Arts Producer Jim Vessella.
"It's cool to have that as a bonus because it's how we would do it today; it's how we actually perform the music."
Going from the 1990s, where everything about composing for video games was hardware-based and required workarounds to be efficient, to the modern-day process with professional studios and computers is "insanely over-the-top" according to Klepacki. However, even if he is excited to give Command and Conquer fans what they want by providing the original games' soundtracks in high quality, the audio director fondly remembers the "exciting golden age" of game development that bred a passionate team. He said, "Though the course of development, we would often play late into the night at the office and taunt each other over the intercom system." That passion should bleed through into the remastered collection's soundtrack, which Klepacki hopes fans appreciate experiencing in a new way.
Command and Conquer Remastered Collection is available now for PC.