Hypothetical: They decide to redo Wing Commander 3

Y

yoyoyojo

Rear Admiral
Let's say they decided to remake WC3. You are the decision maker.

Obviously everything will be upgraded and completely redone. However they have the original unedited footage of the live action sequences.

Do they reuse this original footage (assume it is relatively high resolution) or do they instead use in game graphics engine to render the movie sequences with computer models? If the later do they record new audio or do they resue the audio from the live action footage.

Pros and cons from both a technical/project stand point and from the fan perspective.
 
I have to admit im a bit confused, why would you want to remake WC3? even if you did the only thing that would need updating is in game graphics? IMHO if you change the film its no longer WC3
 
Computer generated movie sequences.

This could allow for more ground-assault first person shooter type missions like Mass Effect. Assault on Vulkar Tag, anyone? Oh, wait, wrong storyline.

If there is a remake of WC3, A DVD version (a la WC4 or the Prophecy HC1 patch) would be sufficient for me. Upgrading the in-flight resolution per HC1 or the Standoff mod is more than "good enough" for me.

Personally, I hope the Secret Project is a prequel along the lines of the Wing Commander Academy cartoon. Heck, I'd take almost anything, even a video game of the Movie!
 
Reuse the footage for the main game. I remember at one time they were thinking about having Wing Commander 3 set after the Cenfederation had been counquered, and if I'm in charge I would have them include that campagin as a bonus feature after you beat the game, and have new cutscenes plus some changes to the fighter inventory to reflect the new status of your forces.

Say Demons or Talons from Privateer replacing the Arrows, leave the Hellcats but replace the Particle weapons with Neutron Guns, Raptor's modified to carry a Torp replacing the Thunderbolts, and Avengers from WC4 replacing the Longbows and maybe downgraded slightly. Add Leech guns so you can capture Kilrathi fighters as well, and possibly unlock the Arrows, Particle cannon Hellcats, Thunderbolts, and Longbows if you do well wnough in the campagin.
 
As much as I'd love to see a new WC release more than anything... I'd be worried if it were a remake about the canon that got mangled in the remake.

Somebody sort of suggested above, an End Run game might feel fresher.

If it were to be WC3 again though, well, I like Rogue's idea of seeing some of the older ships make a cameo (as I've bemoaned before, WC3 ships are great but the break from the series is a little too drastic for my tastes...)

We wouldn't see the Avenger though - IIRC, that's a Border Worlds designed ship and I doubt Psaab Engineering sold any vessels to Confed! I'd also keep the Arrow (the Talon is something of a dinosaur by 2669...Arguably so is the Arrow) but I'd replace the Hellcat with the Rapier II.

I'd keep the FMV, remastered of course, perhaps warm-over some sound FX, and more than anything, have George Oldziey conduct a real orchestra to replace all of the existing music but from their original compositions.
 
We wouldn't see the Avenger though - IIRC, that's a Border Worlds designed ship and I doubt Psaab Engineering sold any vessels to Confed!
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It has to be a Confed or a civilian design--the Border Worlds as a political entity (that is, the Union of Border Worlds rather than the region of space called the Border Worlds) comes into existence during Wing Commander IV... so there's not really time for them to start designing and building their own fighter types (and of course Seether got one somewhere, in the intro... and we see an Avenger used by pirates on Wing Commander Academy!)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It has to be a Confed or a civilian design--the Border Worlds as a political entity (that is, the Union of Border Worlds rather than the region of space called the Border Worlds) comes into existence during Wing Commander IV... so there's not really time for them to start designing and building their own fighter types (and of course Seether got one somewhere, in the intro... and we see an Avenger used by pirates on Wing Commander Academy!)
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My bad. So does this mean that the Border Worlds were governed by Confed prior to WC4? Is it covered in the novel? The game makes reference to the BW being a 'loyal ally' during the Kilrathi war.
 
Legally they weren't part of the Confederation but they were allied with them during the war. Confed ignored the fact they were part of it however to the point of commisioning Border Worlds citizens as part of the Confed military.
 
Redoing the movies by rescaling the original footage and fixing it up is big-budget work, think among the lines of the re-rendered starwars(ep4~6). From what I understood the original cutscenes were shot on videotape(VHS or possibly Betamax for quality?), and "not that great. You would end up with something like "under a killing moon". It think it would be best to rescale the footage and apply some blurring here and there to fix the pixelized issues.

Any remake would end up looking worse then you remember the original in your mind...
 
My bad. So does this mean that the Border Worlds were governed by Confed prior to WC4? Is it covered in the novel? The game makes reference to the BW being a 'loyal ally' during the Kilrathi war.
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You do get more details in the novel, but it shows up in the game too--one of the scenes with a TNC report talks about how they're now the Union of Border Worlds.

But yes, they were governed by the Confederation* during the war (in fact, if you look at the WCU map you'll see that most of the Union of Border Worlds systems in 2681 are places you fought for the Confederation in the games.) Basically, the planets that make up that region of space are the more recent colonies of Terran Confederation member worlds--so they are places that didn't sign the initial Articles of Confederation, but were spun off of worlds that did.

* - that said, it's not exactly clear what "governed by the Confederation" means; there's some indication that the Confederation is a... uh, confederation, where worlds retain their own disparate governments at a planetary/national level.
 
Wow great discussion everyone. After reading the posts and thinking about it I would side towards the idea of using the original FMV as much as possible. Upgrade the green screen graphics, controls, redo the the flight graphics engne (just to update quality), and create a better overall game flow shell (for lack of a better word). Of course there are limitations, mainly you only have what you have with the video. I would have to imagine that they shot this using professional video (i.e. not consumer VHS or betamax). I think you could get impressive results and "fool" the eye by improving the green screen, and upconverting the actual FMV. No real limitations on the flight engine.

It really is a perfectly magical game and as a fan i would want to preserve the original feel as much as possible. I am having a ton of fun playing it again. The flight engine is fantastic even after all these years. I of course had to get used to the low res FMV but even that doesnt really bother me.

So now I wonder if there is a larger market than just us for an updated WC3.
 
The problem with upgrading wc3's footage, is it was shot on tape, so the best quality they would be able to get out of the green screened shots is about the level of the Privateer 2 raw footage that the CIC has. It might not even be that good. I don't know if Priv 2 was shot on Tape or film. If Priv 2 was shot on film then an upgrade of the Priv 2 graphics would be a more interesting project. Upon looking online, it looks like Privateer 2 was shot on Film since it was made in 1996 around the same time as Wing Commander IV. I'd love to know if a DVD version of Privateer 2 would be possible. Would be a very interesting project to see made. Better yet, a HD version by converting the film using normal transfer processes used today. (assuming it was shot on 35mm)
 
Digital Tape would be my guess... But WC3 was constructed backwards from how everyone is thinking. The SGI machines rendered the sets ahead of time and those were combined with the CG background on the fly by the computers. If you rewatch the making of WC3 video you will see all the actors talk about acting in front of a green screen and then being able to go down and see the combined footage on the monitor. Any "raw" footage already has backgrounds and isn't the greenscreen style shots you are thinking of . You wouldn't be able to redo them quite so easily. The good part is that pretty much *all* of the WC3 camera angles are static. There's zero camera movement in WC3 in any scene involving live action.
 
Apart from the fact that it doesn't really make any sense to remake WC3, the only way it would REALLY work, imo, is if they were to COMPLETELY remake it. Everything, even cut-scenes (and somewhat reduced cut-scenes at that) would have to be redone in the latest and great 3D graphics... but that said, how awesome would a WC3 look in current graphics? We recently discussed how awesome even Freelancer still looks today, well imagine WC3 like that. They'd have to of course, re-record voice actors, and I'd like them to use the original cast although sadly that wouldn't be possible for all.

Yep. I'd play that.... :)
 
ChrisH said:
They'd have to of course, re-record voice actors, and I'd like them to use the original cast although sadly that wouldn't be possible for all.
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I'm pretty sure the sound was recored and mixed in seperate tracks(just to really mix it with the music), if the original masters are still intact, you could still get briefings from Eisen. As for the graphics, just use the original models and re-texture them. The one upgrade the game would really need is a multiplayer option.

But why not start with Wing1?
 
Just an additional thought (over a year later). I've been playing L.A. Noire (got it on sale via Steam for $4.99!!!). What's different (at least for me) is they hired real actors (B and C level actors you would recognize) and not only recorded their voices but rendered their faces using the in game graphics engine. (FWIW reading facial expressions are a key part of LA Norie's play). Every time I play this I keep thinking how they could do something like this for Wing Commander.

As for other comments on redoing WC3 I do agree, leave it alone. I wasn't so much thinking about WC3 redo as I was thinking about a new WC title and how they would approach it. I do like the branching stories (which BTW I have seen in a lot of games lately) and mix between the story and the action.

I though it was a shame that they took out the interactive story in Prophecy.
 
yoyoyojo said:
I though it was a shame that they took out the interactive story in Prophecy.
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Your actions and mission results in Prophecy still effect the outcome and following missions, there is a winning and losing tracks, it is actually the fixed points in the story(Blair has to get kidnapped, you have to take out the shipkiller, Dallas will die) that limits the freedom you'd have in the first place. Same thing as learning you chose Rachel in WC4 when you chose flint. In FMV footage it would cost five times as much to cover EVERY possible story angle.
 
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