I can't think of any plot decisions in WC more controversial than the decisions taken to set up Arena's rather abstract setting.
Agree 100%, and for the record this was top level meddling. The high level rules passed down that we had to work around were a cluster:
- It had to have the Kilrathi as the enemy.
- It had to follow Wing Commander Prophecy.
- ... but it couldn't continue Wing Commander Prophecy in any way.
- It had to use the 'most popular' ships from the classic games.
(I will say that if I were involved today and I had more influence, I would fight very, very hard to at least have a more appropriate roster of ships.)
Edited to add: on the other hand, I don't think there's a true sense of betraying some ideal of Wing Commander or going against something the series' creators intended. I know we don't want to believe this about our favorite franchises, but Wing Commander was always very much done one story at a time without some long term intent for how the universe would work long term.
If we're talking about what I want as opposed to what I think is a viable product for today's market, then I'd love there to be a follow up to prophecy. There's also a story LOAF and I discussed that would take place after WC4 but before WC Prophecy where you play a pilot that end up working with the Kilrathi faction that Confed has decided should be the "legitimate" Cat government when Civil war breaks out, that I think would make a fantastic new story without breaking the things that made us love the originals.
Yes! We have established that there's a five-way Kilrathi Civil War going on and obviously the Confederation would be very interested in making sure it is won by an ally or puppet instead of another Thrakhath. If the original trilogy was World War II in the Pacific, this would be Vietnam. You would have the Confederation allying with a particular clan and supplying them weapons, support and eventually taking over the war. It would be a shades-of-gray thing where you come to realize you aren't necessarily fighting for the right faction, etc., etc. (This has always been ideal in my mind because it addresses the one thing that gets every Wing Commander project stuck, the marketing requirement that it be about fighting the Kilrathi instead of humans or bugs WITHOUT being a reboot/prequel.)
The other, possibly safer idea I'd do with a big budget Wing Commander game would be to go back to the first days of the war and have you play a familiar character's younger equivalent: Tolwyn, Eisen or Paladin fighting the first battles of the war (likely starting with a space Pearl Harbor that you play through as the first mission.)
What I would expect of any kind of official new game would be some kind of reboot. If you had to distill what suits would say make something a WC game it would be mankind fighting space cats on a space carrier flying fighters called Rapier's and Dralthi. The game should be about space combat with and feature strong character development.
That is exactly my experience: suits want Kilrathi, the Tiger's Claw and Mark Hamill. A straight reboot of Wing Commander I is probably the most likely thing we'd ever see.
(The other pitch I've been involved with is exactly the opposite, where no one gives a flying Jrathek about Wing Commander's background or the details of the IP and instead they want to attach the name to Space GTA or a Facebook game that's unrelated...)
I always hate when franchises reboot - so often we're told there is no choice, it's a new audience, but I'd take the Dr Who reboot over Star Treks any day of the year.
I would say Doctor Who did exactly what I'd want and Star Trek at least tried. My bigger problem with the Trek reboot is how terrible it often is... I will give them a lot of credit for at least 'explaining' the reboot. (Which matters to me as a Trek fan!)
You know who did this well? Richard Garriott, with Ultima Online... where they literally open the game showing the world of Ultima shatter into individual shards for the MMO. Keeping it in the consistency of the world while still earning room to do whatever they want.
I'm far less fond of straight 'rebuilds' like Battlestar Galactica or Maguyver or even the recent Star Wars split where they're using the same toys for a different story without any connective tissue. Many of these new stories are great (BSG and Star Wars at least) but it irks me when they don't pay lip service to the old stuff.
I'd want VR support, it's such an obvious fit. We know two things work in VR - seated cockpit titles and teleportation. Think about how the navigation of your carrier worked, and you see everything it would be easy to support without making it a VR only game (very few titles work well both with and without VR).
I would want VR support as well, but I wouldn't expect it. If we're going into production today, VR will be a thing of the past by the time we ship.
What is most telling to me is that Wing Commander's RealSpace engine had a truly fantastic VR implementation... in 1995 (in Wings of Glory.) It was just too hard a sell then despite being a wonderful idea and I think we're just seeing that on a larger scale today.
I'm sure this will sound extremely arrogant and self-righteous from someone who has invested so much energy into WC modding, but I honestly believe that the only people who today could create a good continuation of Wing Commander are us - the fans, the modders. And there may perhaps come a time when there are game developers who include so many WC fans, that they can actually take on an official Wing Commander game and do a good job of it. But nobody else will, and I don't want to see them try.
I strongly agree, we should be the ones to continue the franchise.
I will add that I do not especially want a new Wing Commander game. I don't believe anyone would do it justice and I'm not eager to see it tried... but I do think there's ample room to expand the franchise in ways that would be interesting to us. In the short term: obtaining the book license. I'm starting to see this with a number of smaller old franchises where the people who love them revive them in mangeable ways that the rest of the world doesn't notice.
Take a look at what folks are doing with Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium/War World franchise... there's a group that has purchased the rights and they're publishing (in small numbers because it doesn't matter to regular audiences) new books, RPG supplements and world building stuff. We don't need a hundred million dollar game to tell new Wing Commander stories or to expand and organize the universe... we just need EA to be willing to license a playground...
... or since Wing Commander is now a split franchise, it could be the folks who have the movie rights...