After the group returns to the “present” – effectively creating a new timeline and averting the events of Red Alert 2 entirely – Cherdenko not only finds himself Premier but also in command of a triumphant USSR just as the Allied Nations are about to be pushed out of Western Europe. Gregor Zelinsky (the man who created the machine), he goes back to 1927 with the aim of (and succeeding in) erasing Albert Einstein, the man who made the Allies invincible. Anatoly Cherdenko decides to put a secret Temporal Displacement Device into use. The year’s 1986, and with Moscow itself on the brink of total collapse, Gen. The story, though set following the Allied ending of Yuri’s Revenge, turns the whole timeline on it head to put it bluntly.
While it’s not hard to see why it remains divisive, time and hindsight have vindicated the third (and as of this article last) main game in the series as good fun in its own right. And instead of being seen as nigh-unanimously surpassing or equal to those classics, it was met with a rather mixed reception. Inevitably, comparisons were made with its predecessors. But while a new title in the esteemed series was unofficially announced as early as 2004, it wasn’t until February 2008 that Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 was formally revealed to the public, which was then released for PC on October that same year a Mac OS version came out on March 2009. As time went on people wondered when the next Red Alert entry would come, if it’d ever be released at all. EA Los Angeles in particular, which originally included members from Westwood, had earned praise through the work done on Generals and Tiberium Wars.
The Command and Conquer saga continued to meet solid success during the initial years following the fall of Westwood Studios.