In The Picture: Wing Commander III Lost Scenes (September 13, 2005)

[KrisV]

Between our Files and Music sections we've collected nearly ten gigabytes of Wing Commander downloads here at the CIC. The really interesting things can get lost in the crowd, so from time to time we're going to put something in the spotlight.

A number of movie clips were cut from the PC edition of Wing Commander III for a variety of reasons. The in-game interface for the TCN Newsbriefs was not finished and there were disc space constraints. Wing Commander 3 was produced on the first generation "60 minute" CD-ROMs. It was not until Wing Commander 4 or the console ports of WC3 that the more standard 650 megabyte/74 minute discs were used. Fortunately people have been able to recover the "lost" scenes that were later added back to the PlayStation and 3DO ports.

Last year Tolwyn made high quality DivX files of a dozen movie clips. Many more are available as older, medium quality DivX files. You can mix and match from these two sets, available from our WC3 section under Extra Scenes.

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Original update published on September 13, 2005

 

[baphomet_irl]

i know they didnt have room, but seriously i cant believe they left out the hobbes holo message from WC3 on PC - it was so important - in fairness it probably was more important than the 'love triangle' sections

 

[McGruff]

The story ended up being better without it. Without the whole imperial brainwashing subplot, one is left to assume that Hobbes consciously chose to betray the Confederation that he had fought with for so long because he couldn't bear to see the Kilrathi homeworld destroyed. It makes his betrayal and the entire game all the more powerful without Thrakhath's scheme included.

 

[ChrisReid]

The story ended up being better without it. Without the whole imperial brainwashing subplot, one is left to assume that Hobbes consciously chose to betray the Confederation that he had fought with for so long because he couldn't bear to see the Kilrathi homeworld destroyed. It makes his betrayal and the entire game all the more powerful without Thrakhath's scheme included.

Unfortunately, it's in no way a correct assumption though. Even before higher capacity ports of the game included the cut scenes, the WC3 Official Guide and novelization detailed the identity overlay experiment's influence on Hobbes, so those following everything, even at the time of the PC version's release release, got the full story.

 

[gwydion]

Also - in the game Thrakhath refers to sending "The Trigger" which is a direct reference to what they did to Hobbes and how he was being used... I believe in an alternate cut-scene it is also referred to as "The Message" which obviously doens't have quite the same connotations... however I've played the game in so many ways trying to find every available cutscene (which obviously can be achieved in other ways now!) that the Hobbes scene really was something I wish had been left in the game.