Future of Wing Commander
- Thread starter Bladewhirler
- Start date
Bladewhirler
Spaceman
Ok, obviously, I'm not that familiar with all teh races. Forgive me, but it's been a while since i played prophecy.
I will refer to the race i talk about as "bugs". The bugs apeared in prophecy. They started to whack the humans . Then the Kilrathi come along and tell about an ancient prophecy, about a foe that has already mopped the floor with them, then disapeared with the promise to return when the Kilrathi have been defeated by someone else.
A race that had been in this part of the galaxy but left. Sounds like the steltek to me. The humans don't know why they left , but the Kilrathi knew about the steltek in Privateer. They didn't share their knowledge though.
And here they are, with guns that shoot green stuff that looks suspiciously like the goo that came out of the stelltek gun. The Lamprey class (I think it was the lamprey, the oval one, you know?) looks suspiciously like the steltek drone and the large battleship which is destroyed at the end looks suspiciously... Heck no! It looks EXACTLY like the steltek ship which powered up the steltek gun.
Sorry, but either the designers had absolutely no fresh ideas, or the bugs are the steltek, no matter how the Kilrathi or anyone else calls them.
I will refer to the race i talk about as "bugs". The bugs apeared in prophecy. They started to whack the humans . Then the Kilrathi come along and tell about an ancient prophecy, about a foe that has already mopped the floor with them, then disapeared with the promise to return when the Kilrathi have been defeated by someone else.
A race that had been in this part of the galaxy but left. Sounds like the steltek to me. The humans don't know why they left , but the Kilrathi knew about the steltek in Privateer. They didn't share their knowledge though.
And here they are, with guns that shoot green stuff that looks suspiciously like the goo that came out of the stelltek gun. The Lamprey class (I think it was the lamprey, the oval one, you know?) looks suspiciously like the steltek drone and the large battleship which is destroyed at the end looks suspiciously... Heck no! It looks EXACTLY like the steltek ship which powered up the steltek gun.
Sorry, but either the designers had absolutely no fresh ideas, or the bugs are the steltek, no matter how the Kilrathi or anyone else calls them.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The Steltek, the Nephilim and the Mantu are all distinct - there's an article about this very subject in Wing Commander Prophecy's ICIS Manual.
Bladewhirler said:
The Kn'Thrak never stated that the Nephilim had fought the Kilrathi before and then promised to return. It merely stated that a dark race would slaughter them once the rest of the prophecy became true. By definition a prophecy is something that has not happened yet. I dont believe the Kilrathi knew anything about the Nephilim. The prophecy explained that Sivar himself appeared before the FIRST prophetess of Kilrah. This is undoubtedly before the Kilrathi were a space-faring race, they couldn't possibly have fought the Nephilim at a previous time.
Bladewhirler
Spaceman
Ok, at this point my memory fails me. I will look into it more deeply.
Nevertheless, the similar apearance of the bugs and the steltek is a bit too much of a coincidence for me. Ships which have long arms with green "lighbulbs" at the end are not exatly a comon design.
Nevertheless, the similar apearance of the bugs and the steltek is a bit too much of a coincidence for me. Ships which have long arms with green "lighbulbs" at the end are not exatly a comon design.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The Nephilim look like bugs, the Steltek look like ameobas.
NuclearPenguins
Spaceman
I doubt there is any future in the WC series.
Maybe some new sci-fi adventure will come into the light but I'm pretty sure the WC license is rotting in EA's lawyers file cabinet somewhere.
Maybe some new sci-fi adventure will come into the light but I'm pretty sure the WC license is rotting in EA's lawyers file cabinet somewhere.
spiritplumber
Spaceman
The future of the WC series is fan-made games. 
This said: WCU expands upon the Priv Remake letting you roam the totality of the WC universe. See related forum on this server.
This said: WCU expands upon the Priv Remake letting you roam the totality of the WC universe. See related forum on this server.Ok, I'm new to this forum but I've been hooked on Wing commander since I was 12.
The Wing Commander games do need a Public rebirth. Between the Cheese found in Prophecy and the lack of depth in the WCM, it was no wonder EA decided to tank Wing Commander.
The Wing Commander Movie is what happens when you hire the screenwriter who did the Mortal Kombat movies to write an epic.
Here's what needs to be done...
1. Wing Commander Prophecy 2 needs to be made, but the story needs to be the most important part of it.
2. FMV is just plain gone when it comes to computer games... the interactive movie has gone the way of interactive anime and that's not a bad thing. Stick to the voice acting.
3. Make Wing Commander have more of a TOP GUN attitude. Our hero needs to be a hotshot pilot with an attitude instead of a stuffy by-the-book pilot like Blair... that was the major flaw in the old wing commanders. Blair was always doing the "right" thing. Always playing by the rules... scolding others.
4. The freelancer development schedule is just plain out... 6 years to make a game?! ok, yes it was gorgeous, but the planets never orbited their suns and the in-game non-story dialogue cheapened the entire game! How did they spend 6 years without decent voice acting?
5. No more mouse driven combat... bring back the joystick! I want to FLY I don't want to click!
6. There needs to be more of a "halo" feel to the game play... Wing Commander should bring about a more immersive game engine. When you exit your space craft, you can walk around using 1st or 3rd person perspective control, much like GTA. Once in the cockpit, it's space sim time! 1st person piloting all the way!. This way you can also go on marine missions.
7. Make the game plot a little more complex... let it challenge and surprise the audience. PC gamers are more sophisticated than console gamers, especially Wing Commander fans. Challenge the brain instead of providing some predictable and Idiotic mush. I want to feel the same way I did when I found out that Darth Vader was Luke's father or when the world was completely destroyed in the middle of Final Fantasy 3. I want my head to spin a la post Mission Impossible 1 and my finger needs to tap my chin like it did when I played Deus Ex 1!!!
Remember the way you felt when the Behemoth was blown to bits in WC3? I liked that. Remember how you felt when you saw the mission briefing for the T-Bomb? Who didn't groan and think "star wars ripoff!!"? Mark Hamill aiming a missile/bomb in one tiny spot on the enemy's primary base/stronghold to destroy it... Kinda ruined WC3 for me... I was laughing at it for the last 5 missions.
8. Dump the Pilgrims from the story. Sorry Chris, but the Pilgrim idea just doesn't fly. Keep the Wing Commander Universe Simple... Kilrathi, Humans, Nephilum.
9. Make the Nephilum (Nephs) darker... more of a true evil. Let them talk less and do more, like insects. They're supposed to consume so bring about something horrible... a bio weapon/teraformer. Something that causes the most painful death possible while quickly creating a planet for the Nephs. Let this usher in the near devistation of Confed and the Kilrathi... show people actually bathing in their own blood! Make us wretch and hate our enemy Half-life style!
It's about time that Wing Commander was reborn into the epic that it was to be before the Wing Commander Movie.
Wing Commander Prophecy plot idea:
Prophecy 2 - Wing Commander: Dawn of Blood
The Nephilum open 3 wormholes in the rim areas and launch a massive attack/terraforming campaign. Thanks to the research on kilrathi and human biology, they've adapted a teraforming Spore to painfully kill off all enemy life on target worlds and reformat them to fit their needs. The spore has an end result much like the gen-select weapon in wing commander 4 but it destroys the connective tissue of all non-nephilum beings while they live so the victims can see their own bodies turn to liquid and melt into their own blood (we will be bathed in our own blood)... the spores then start building Nephilum flora and fauna that act as both teraformers and weapons. This eats the core out of Confed even infecting earth at the end. Everything looks bleak as allied forces retreat over and over again. The Nephilum have all but won the war.
Prophecy 3 - Wing Commander: Black
Basically this will be a massive attempt to hit the Nephs hard. This will fail. Casey will even die at the end. The Nephilum will be victorious and the human and kilrathi races will be forced out to another area of the galaxy or even another nearby galaxy through captured Nephilum wormhole technology. A powerful and massive attack group of joint Confed and kilrathi forces will retake earth using a captured Neph wormhole and cleanse it of the spore. Everything will start looking up until the Nephs attack earth in full force. The Final scene will be the immense Nephilum force actually destroying the Midway Carrier group and earth as well. The allied forces are crushed and the remaining small convoy escapes to a random distant location via the captured wormhole. The Wormhole is destroyed by a small allied force so that the Nephs cannot follow. This fulfills the prophecy and opens the story up for a fighting triumph saga.
Thoughts?
The Wing Commander games do need a Public rebirth. Between the Cheese found in Prophecy and the lack of depth in the WCM, it was no wonder EA decided to tank Wing Commander.
The Wing Commander Movie is what happens when you hire the screenwriter who did the Mortal Kombat movies to write an epic.
Here's what needs to be done...
1. Wing Commander Prophecy 2 needs to be made, but the story needs to be the most important part of it.
2. FMV is just plain gone when it comes to computer games... the interactive movie has gone the way of interactive anime and that's not a bad thing. Stick to the voice acting.
3. Make Wing Commander have more of a TOP GUN attitude. Our hero needs to be a hotshot pilot with an attitude instead of a stuffy by-the-book pilot like Blair... that was the major flaw in the old wing commanders. Blair was always doing the "right" thing. Always playing by the rules... scolding others.
4. The freelancer development schedule is just plain out... 6 years to make a game?! ok, yes it was gorgeous, but the planets never orbited their suns and the in-game non-story dialogue cheapened the entire game! How did they spend 6 years without decent voice acting?
5. No more mouse driven combat... bring back the joystick! I want to FLY I don't want to click!
6. There needs to be more of a "halo" feel to the game play... Wing Commander should bring about a more immersive game engine. When you exit your space craft, you can walk around using 1st or 3rd person perspective control, much like GTA. Once in the cockpit, it's space sim time! 1st person piloting all the way!. This way you can also go on marine missions.
7. Make the game plot a little more complex... let it challenge and surprise the audience. PC gamers are more sophisticated than console gamers, especially Wing Commander fans. Challenge the brain instead of providing some predictable and Idiotic mush. I want to feel the same way I did when I found out that Darth Vader was Luke's father or when the world was completely destroyed in the middle of Final Fantasy 3. I want my head to spin a la post Mission Impossible 1 and my finger needs to tap my chin like it did when I played Deus Ex 1!!!
Remember the way you felt when the Behemoth was blown to bits in WC3? I liked that. Remember how you felt when you saw the mission briefing for the T-Bomb? Who didn't groan and think "star wars ripoff!!"? Mark Hamill aiming a missile/bomb in one tiny spot on the enemy's primary base/stronghold to destroy it... Kinda ruined WC3 for me... I was laughing at it for the last 5 missions.
8. Dump the Pilgrims from the story. Sorry Chris, but the Pilgrim idea just doesn't fly. Keep the Wing Commander Universe Simple... Kilrathi, Humans, Nephilum.
9. Make the Nephilum (Nephs) darker... more of a true evil. Let them talk less and do more, like insects. They're supposed to consume so bring about something horrible... a bio weapon/teraformer. Something that causes the most painful death possible while quickly creating a planet for the Nephs. Let this usher in the near devistation of Confed and the Kilrathi... show people actually bathing in their own blood! Make us wretch and hate our enemy Half-life style!
It's about time that Wing Commander was reborn into the epic that it was to be before the Wing Commander Movie.
Wing Commander Prophecy plot idea:
Prophecy 2 - Wing Commander: Dawn of Blood
The Nephilum open 3 wormholes in the rim areas and launch a massive attack/terraforming campaign. Thanks to the research on kilrathi and human biology, they've adapted a teraforming Spore to painfully kill off all enemy life on target worlds and reformat them to fit their needs. The spore has an end result much like the gen-select weapon in wing commander 4 but it destroys the connective tissue of all non-nephilum beings while they live so the victims can see their own bodies turn to liquid and melt into their own blood (we will be bathed in our own blood)... the spores then start building Nephilum flora and fauna that act as both teraformers and weapons. This eats the core out of Confed even infecting earth at the end. Everything looks bleak as allied forces retreat over and over again. The Nephilum have all but won the war.
Prophecy 3 - Wing Commander: Black
Basically this will be a massive attempt to hit the Nephs hard. This will fail. Casey will even die at the end. The Nephilum will be victorious and the human and kilrathi races will be forced out to another area of the galaxy or even another nearby galaxy through captured Nephilum wormhole technology. A powerful and massive attack group of joint Confed and kilrathi forces will retake earth using a captured Neph wormhole and cleanse it of the spore. Everything will start looking up until the Nephs attack earth in full force. The Final scene will be the immense Nephilum force actually destroying the Midway Carrier group and earth as well. The allied forces are crushed and the remaining small convoy escapes to a random distant location via the captured wormhole. The Wormhole is destroyed by a small allied force so that the Nephs cannot follow. This fulfills the prophecy and opens the story up for a fighting triumph saga.
Thoughts?
AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
draiko said:
I don't think that had anything to do with EA's decision.
It was made. It's called Secret ops.
I agree the story is an important, integral part of a wing commander game. However, wc4 was more movie than game. While I enjoy that portion of the game, I think a balance more akin to wc2 is ideal. Where as prohecy started with decent balance but it seemd like the story all but disapeared in the final act.
Basically you want to be maniac... I don't ever remember Blair scolding anyone in WC 1 and 2. Maniac and Flash deserved it in wc 3 and 4, and everyone else had to do with his outranking them...
Besides, considering that you are the main character, how Blair flies and what choices he makes are more reflective of you. What might be cool (or stupid if done wrong or if ends up useless) would be a system where you could chose your pilots attributes at the start and that affects the outcome in combat. So you could choose to balance or weight your pilot in accuracy, reflexes, tactical assesment (ability against multiple fighters etc.) and/or other attributes. Some kind of phsycological attribute could affect the effectiveness of your comm orders and taunts.
Not a bad idea, but it could lead to a lot of needless wandering trying to figure out where the next conversation is on the carrier(if implemented wrong) but could lead to some unique gameplay opportunities. Purists though would think that a wing commander game is about space combat.
The wing commander universe is what it is. You can't pick and choose. It may be beneficial to limit the scope of the factions involved etc. But a reference or two here and there to say, blair's pilgrim heritage wouldn't hurt. Fans usualy like that kind of thing. Maybe when you walk around the carrier there's a pilgrim cross in the drawer beside blair's bunk. (Of course not if it's a follow up to secret ops)
Part of what I didn't like in prophecy was that the Nephilim lost their mysteriousness too quickly. They just became like every other enemy. Making them more disgusting doesnt make us fear them any more. Most horror movies aren't scary, just repulsive. The ones that are scary are because of the suggestion and anticipation of violence. Being startled isn't the same thing as dread. (mind you i usualy end up dreading having to sit through the rest of a crummy horror movie). I'm not sure I understand your half-life reference.
I'm not even going to comment on your story idea...
Bladewhirler
Spaceman
My take is that they never should have ended the Confed-Kilrathi war in Wing Commander III. Granted playing against the same enemy in three games would be enough, but the Nephilim and the Border Worlds didn't have the same impact as the Kilrathi did for me in the subsequent games.
When did the whole "Pilgrim" story get introduced anyway? I haven't heard one single bit of it untill I saw the Wing Commander Movie. It made the movie so much worse imo.
I also think they waited too long with new gameplay stuff. It took till Prophecy untill you could destroy parts of a ship. The ship to ship battles were also almost non-existant. Heck WC2 had better ship to ship battles.
Perhaps it was also the change in "culture" that put people off. The new engines and the new look of ships were so much different from WC1 and WC2. I didn't like the look from WC3 and the later games because they were so much different from the earlier games. It was like a culture shock. If the changes would have been more gradual it might have helped.
When did the whole "Pilgrim" story get introduced anyway? I haven't heard one single bit of it untill I saw the Wing Commander Movie. It made the movie so much worse imo.
I also think they waited too long with new gameplay stuff. It took till Prophecy untill you could destroy parts of a ship. The ship to ship battles were also almost non-existant. Heck WC2 had better ship to ship battles.
Perhaps it was also the change in "culture" that put people off. The new engines and the new look of ships were so much different from WC1 and WC2. I didn't like the look from WC3 and the later games because they were so much different from the earlier games. It was like a culture shock. If the changes would have been more gradual it might have helped.
Dyret
Super Carrot!
Bladewhirler said:
I'm getting tired of you. Those arms you keep talking about are WINGS, and the damn LIGTHBULBS are guns/engines. If you take a look at the other ships in WC you will notice that almost all ships has this funny thing called wings(arms), and that most ships have their weapons (ligthbulbs) attached to the wings. If you imagine a hornet made from steltek technology you'll know what i'm talking about.
So i'm quite sure your "LOL! THEY GOT WING WITH GUNS ATTACHED TO THEM, THEY MUST BE NEPHELIM." claim is quite wrong.
draiko said:
Yes it has but ironically:
Windows Media High Definition Video
At least see the Robotica clip if on 56k modem.
Add in DVD storage capacity... You got exponentially better image quality, for both live video and CG animation (better than MPEG-2 DVD video) in a fraction of the space (relative to past WC video on CD-ROM)
To me this is a far more dramatic leap in technology than comparing any new versus old graphics engines. And that's coming from a bloom shader fanboy ho what loves his 3D.
Unfortunately today's game system requirements want new graphic cards less than a year old, while at the same time assume there is no two year old DVD drive sitting in the same tower. I think its a conspiracy by a consortium of CD-ROM drive manufacturers with overstock
And shooting live video is cost prohibitive in today's "meager" eight figure game budgets. Obviously a conspiracy by west coast CG animator unions.
Bashing aside, Microsoft has about the deepest pockets and long term patience of any game publisher. Devs may go away for more autonomy but they go TO Microsoft when wanting more of these two assets. I won't hazard to say what happened I just know that somehow DA exhausted both.