Question about canon...

[nivao]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum, and I've just finished WC4. I have enjoyed all the games so far and plan on going to play more and possibly read the novels.

But what I wanted to ask is, what events/history are actually canon to the main universe as seen in the games? The encyclopedia and the wiki shows information from all sources including the movie, such as that Taggart is a Pilgrim and Blair partially. But it is stated that the movie has significant differences over the games while it takes place around the same time as the first game. Does the movie take place in an alternate universe? Or is there another explanation? The same counts for the movie novelizations which expands on the events from the movie, not the games.

It is just that I find the wiki not as organized as the Star Wars or Stargate wiki for example, no offense to whoever maintains it, which makes we wonder what events actually occur together with the events in the games to get a clear timeline.

I hope someone can bear with me and that it's a bit clear of what I ask...

 

[-danr-]

Good question - and the answer is somewhat subjective. Rightly or wrongly, the games tend to be regarded as the foremost source of canon, but there's no reason other Wing Commander sources can't be accepted as part of the 'actual story'. Some will say that material external to the games can't be taken entirely seriously because they often contradict the original game series.

But the games actually contradict their own canon as the series goes on, starting in WC2 with the way the Tiger's Claw appears to look in the intro scene. The novelizations do the same, as does Academy at times, not to mention the movie -- thus it's very difficult to judge what 'canon' is.

I think the answer is: It's up to you. As long as your source comes from something official, there's no reason you can't argue it isn't canon - regardless of contradiction. Personally, I like to think of the games as primary canon, the novelizations and academy as expansions of said canon, and the movie as a dramatization or 'legend' version of events.

 

[nivao]

Thanks for your quick response. I'll just regard it like how the different Star Wars canon is handled, with different levels starting with games like Star Wars starts with the movies. Thinks are a little clearer now as to how it sits in the WC universe. I plan on watching the series as well so I pretty much get up to speed with the entire franchise.

EDIT: there's another thing. How do the dates work? Where do the numbers after the decimal stand for?

 

[AD]

Yeah, you can typically consider all events in each show/game/movie as canon. For an example of how this works you can check out the Timeline in Star*Soldier which is the downloadable manual/book for Arena. The basics are that the details might change but all the big events are there.

As for dates it's usually the year and then the number after the decimal is the day of the year... so something like 2654.054 would be sometime in February of 2654.

 

[ChrisReid]

Everyone is right that you can personally choose to enjoy whatever you'd like, but the purpose of the "canon" is to understand what is officially counted in the timeline for the purpose of future official products to consider in its backstory. And so for that definition, canon is all official products - this includes the games, novels, movie, cartoon, CCG, etc. There are just a couple of non-canon products - "Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe" by Mark Minasi, the "Unauthorized" strategy guides to WC4, etc.

This is borne out in the most recent product, Wing Commander Arena. Within the Arena game, you can find references to the Pilgrims and other later Wing Commander products. The manual to Arena, Star Soldier, does an excellent job of showing exactly on what dates the events of the first game, movie and cartoon occur on in order to show how they are not mutually exclusive. You can download it at https://www.wcnews.com/news/2012/07/25/happy-birthday-wing-commander-arena