Character depth

A

Assassin

Spaceman
I'm sure this has been posted before, but I haven't seen anything discussing this.

I've only played WC1 and WCP. The impression I've gotten is that most people think WCIV is the best of the series, in both gameplay and storyline. I'm going through Prophecy again and I really think most of the characters are very shallow. In fact, the more "developed" characters seem to be Maniac, Dallas, Blair, and other veterans that may have been in earlier games. (I need to play WC II-IV, badly). Prophecy's storyline isn't horrible, but it just seems to be trying to ride the coattails of earlier episodes. What's the general consensus, people?
 
Keep unsure remarks until you have experience.

Go through the Wing Commader series (games, novels, movie) and then see what you say.

There is a 98.9% chance you'll be laughing at your previous statement.

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-the other 1.1% would mean that you had a heart attack; and couldn't breathe enough to laugh.

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I meant Hawk instead of Dallas, that was a typo, if that's what you are referring to. And how am I going to become sure if I never post "unsure" remarks in the first place? Humor your large ego and let a newby post his stuff.
 
I've always argued that WCIV was the best of the series, but it was that way because it had the rest of the series to build upon. I look at the early games in the series like early episodes of most TV series, the one I use the most for this argument is Star Trek. If you look at the first couple seasons of STNG, DS9 or Voyager the characters for the most parts are stereotypes of some variety. It takes the writers and actors a while to get to know their characters and add some depth to them.

I think the same goes for WC which, imho, finally hit its stride late in WC2 or perhaps even WC3. By the time WCIV came out, the writers had the 3 main games, plus some spin-offs and several novels to build on. The direction the story went in was new and fresh but it used familiar characters. I think to truly appreciate WCIV, though, you need to have played WC1-WC3, at least. I know that is hard to do these days, but those games lay out most of what you need to know about the Kilrathi war (though the novels End Run and Fleet Action fill in some of what happens between WC2 and WC3) to appreciate the situation after the war that set the stage for WCIV.

I think Prophecy was an attempt to move into a new generation and ween us of of some charcters we'd known for a while, like Hawk and even Blair. I think Prophecy is not as bad, character wise, as WC1 and I think it had a lot of potential to keep the story new and fresh. The biggest gripe I would have with Prophecy is the lack of your ability to make shipboard decisions. However, since Casey isn't high up in the ranks, his actions wouldn't have the same impact on morale and other things that Blair's did in WC3 and WCIV. I think that may have been planned for later games, but now, who knows.
 
Yeah, I can see how games get better with stuff to build on. I think that if Prophecy were a new storyline, say if WCI-IV had never been created, few people would have liked it. But that's the beauty (for a company) of building a huge series. You can afford a dip (though Prophecy is still a good game) in the quality in a game and still sell well. I just experienced that with Tiberian Sun, Westwood's latest RTS.
 
I think the biggest problam about Prophecy is that it's been cut: I don't think that the original idea was the destruction of the gate in the first game in the *new* trilogy, but in the last. when you think about it, SO's story is almost the same like Prophecy's (though I really enjoyed SO
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). THe same goes for the characters: IMO the original idea was to let the *evolve* during the next episodes, and only intoduce then in Prophecy.


Then again, I may be wrong
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The destruction of the first gate made sense. It lead to the death of Blair (I haven't actually seen this argued here, but I heard it has been, so please don't let this rekindle it) or at least continued to push him to the periphery of the storyline. It gave the game a major battle to end on, just like all the games have, but it didn't rule out future battles (as the case of SO proved.) In fact it kinda follows at theme in the game where it seems like Confed should have won the war, or at least been well on the road to victory, but the fighting never really seems to end.

[This message has been edited by Shane (edited July 13, 2000).]
 
True, that didn't rule out the option of a another battle, but IMO the options were much wider if the first gate wasn't destoried in Prophecy. And as I said, SO was too much like Prophecy to me, and the outcome of it kinda rulled out any future for wing commander: Ok, so Confed can get into Bugs' space, but what then? If another game would to be made, I really don't see any way to make a story out of it, only having many missions against the bugs in bugs' space (even better, there's no way Earth can get in the way
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). As I see it, the game will be many strick missions that repet them selves with minimal story. However, like I've proven many times before, I can be wrong, and I change my mind about things faster then lightning-bolt hitting the ground
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Take a look at my notes over in the Nephilium topic. I could see Confed going into bug space. I haven't played SO, though I know the general plot. I'm partway through replaying Prophecy and after that I'll finally play SO. (I was out of the country during the Internet release and it took me a while to track down Prophecy Gold and a machine that wasn't my wife's that I could play it on. Now I just need to find the time. <sigh> ) Anyhow, if you look at a game like Warcraft II; Beyond the Dark Portal, the heroes finally realized they needed to cross over to the other side and take the battle to the enemy.

As far as mission variation, you could have escort missions as more ships come in. You would need to defend the gateway, the Midway or Cerbeus. You'd have Strike missions, etc. It's quite doable, I think.

[This message has been edited by Shane (edited July 13, 2000).]
 
Story-wise, I don't see much options left: Ok, the material portal story is nice, but if you're already there, why not destory all the bugs?

Game-wise, ok, you can have many kinds of missions, but without the story to back them, what point do you have to playing the game?

Fighting in bug space can be interesting, but currently I don't see any way to base a story around that
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I was arguing elsewhere that perhaps the Nephilium are only able to create a limited number of these portals because they require a rare element and they've used up most of it. ConFed's mission would be to try to track down the stores the bugs have left, take them, destroy them, whatever, and close the door in a sense. They wouldn't be able to create the portals and would no longer be a threat.
 
I got that, but what I'm saying is that if Confed's already going into bugs's space, I'd think they rather destroy the Nephilim completely instead of trying to take out this rare matirial (which will probably be guarded like hell).
 
True, but that makes it a challenge and doesn't make it an endless series of go out and shot down 100 bugs ships. Repeat. The size that they hint at of the bug fleet on the other side of the gate makes it clear they woould be a handful in head on action. I think the gates are the key, but it's just speculation. Sort of like WC3 where you don't actually defeat the Kilrathi fleet, though a good chunk is taken out since it was orbiting Kilrah, but you take out their homeworld and they yield.

[This message has been edited by Shane (edited July 13, 2000).]
 
Taking out their Homeworld (and don't forget, you have to find it, and get a force there) may not make them surrender. Hey, the Nephilium are a completely different race from any experienced. Who knows how their philosophy will take it?

Heck, they may not even have a homeworld?
 
I think Confed does'nt want any foray into a world beyond its reach. The gateway is 'alien' to them. Besides, they are not even sure where to start from the other side!
 
Must be my day to be unclear. I think the gates are the key, I don't think a homeworld scenario would be that great and it would be a bad imitation of WC3. I was trying with the comparison that instead of killing all the bugs or enough of them to surrender, if they even would, you destroy their means of getting to Confed space.

JoeyRP: Perhaps, and again this is speculation, Confed may be able to get charts or other info from some of the stuff they captured or recovered. Or they could start mapping points like you had to do in Privateer. A game set mostly in bug space would be doable.



[This message has been edited by Shane (edited July 13, 2000).]
 
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