*clears throat*
Your attention, please.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has been announced.
This is not a drill.

No details other than the confirmation have surfaced just yet - but as soon as we get any, we'll share them with you. In the meantime, it might be time to subscribe to PC Gamer, as they've got the exclusive dirt in this new chapter in the Red Alert series.


Games media paint the town red
You may have heard a bit of buzz leading to a "major event" happening on February 14th - well, that appears to be the street date of Hungarian magazine PC Guru - who have the world-wide exclusive on the game, hitting newsstands two weeks before the US PC Gamer.

While this is all very exciting, it's not the first time that such a thing has been hinted at. Way back in December 2004, EA sent out the following information:

Having said that, we have a MAJOR announcement to make and we are making it exclusively to our long time C&C fans. This announcement is not going out to the press and it won't appear on the EA website or anywhere else online. We are very proud to announce that the team that brought you Command & Conquer(TM) Red Alert 2(TM), Command & Conquer(TM) Yuri's Revenge, and Command & Conquer(TM) Generals has officially started work on our next project set in the Red Alert universe!

Story goes that not long after making this announcement, then-C&C lead Mark Scaggs left EA, and news of the game disappeared for three years... until today.

...wait a minute, though. What is all this Red Alert stuff, anyway? How does it relate to the Tiberium storyline?

Well, as best I can understand it, Red Alert is an alternate timeline, a history where Albert Einstein has travelled back in time to eliminate Adolf Hitler - in an attempt to avoid World War II from every beginning. Of course, as often happens when meddling in the space-time continuum, this plan backfires, resulting in Joseph Stalin and the Soviets invading Europe in the 1950s.

The first Command & Conquer: Red Alert game, from 1996, was set among the Stalin-led invasion. Two expansion packs - Counterstrike and The Aftermath were released soon after, bringing new units, missions, music tracks and multiplayer maps to the game.

2000 saw Red Alert 2, where the Soviets take over the United States - using mind control technology - capturing US forces and deactivating the nation's nuclear arsenal. The first expansion pack to the sequel, Yuri's Revenge sees Soviet Premier Romanov's advisor Yuri attempting to overtake the world with his 'psychic dominator' technology - and a second (and last) attempt to stop his plans sends the player back in time to the beginning of the conflict featured in the original Red Alert 2, but this time the player must battle against Yuri, rather than the Soviets/Allies at large.

For more information, it's probably a good idea to look into the Command & Conquer: The First Decade pack, released a couple of years ago and featuring all 12 C&C games released to that point - including Red Alert 1 and 2, and all three expansion packs.

So - as you can see - there's a very healthy, complex back-story for the Red Alert universe - so plotlines for Red Alert 3 seem to have a few options to choose from. Only time will tell just which way the game will head in - and as soon as we find out, we'll share. I promise.