Command & Conquer  Remastered SECOND MISSION GDI FULL HD 4K
Channel: DreamBIG
Date: 2021-07-26

One of the brilliant things about Command & Conquered Remastered is how it remains faithful to the original real-time strategy classic while updating it in all the right areas.

But one area the developers left alone was a 25-year-old exploit. You'd think they'd want to fix it - but not this one, because it gave players a fighting chance against the rock hard AI.

I'm talking about Command & Conquer's infamous sandbag exploit - aka the best strategy against the AI on the hardest missions.

For the uninitiated, Command & Conquer has an odd bug that causes the enemy AI to consider sandbags an impassable obstacle. And they don't seem interested in blowing them up, either. Weird.

Back in 1995, players discovered this bug and used it to their advantage. They'd build long lines of sandbags, creeping out from their home base and stretching across the map to wrap around the AI base, effectively trapping the enemy in place.

This provided players with a crucial advantage: with the AI safely sandbagged in, the enemy couldn't send waves of soldiers and tanks onto your position. Enemy units would simply sit still, like gormless ducks, behind your lines of sandbags, clueless as to how to proceed, paralysed by an inability to chart a path to your position, the thought of blowing one of the little sandbags up never popping in their little virtual heads.

This sandbag exploit is a broken, overpowered tactic that makes use of a bug - but given how hard Command & Conquer was and remains, it was for a generation of players their only chance of completing the campaign.

Fast forward to 2020, and I was surprised to find the sandbag exploit present and correct in Command & Conquer Remastered. Had EA missed the bug? Or, was it left alone on purpose?

And then I thought, if the developers left this bug in the game, what else did they leave untouched? What was their thinking?

I decided to find out, setting up an interview with producer Jim Vessella to get stuck into the nitty gritty of Command & Conquer's bugs - 25 years after they were discovered.