The Borst There Is (December 11, 2022)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Today's update is one of those 'under our noses the whole time' events! It turns out that Wing Commander III and IV co-writers Terry Borst and Frank De Palma actually wrote and spoke quite a bit about the game at the time. Both gave lectures and provided interviews for academic books relating to interactive storytelling... and we've found three fascinating ones that were published in the wake of Wing Commander IV that go into detail we've never seen before about the process behind scripting the game!

The first and most detailed is Chapter 10 of a book called The Multimedia Scriptwriting Workshop (Douglas J. Varchol, Sybex, 1996). The book spends a full 50 (!) pages walking through the development of Wing Commander IV's script, complete with screenshots and script extracts. Even more shocking is the fact that it was published in January 1996... some six weeks before Wing Commander IV even came out! If only we'd been reading screenwriting self help books as teenagers. The book also reproduces the games credits as an appendix which surely wasn't at all a move to fill space. You can download the chapter and appendix as a PDF here here.





Next up is a comprehensive 1996 interview with Terry Borst which appears in a similar book called Interactive Writer's Handbook, Second Edition (Carronade Group, Jon Samsel and Darryl Wimberley, 1996). The book also prints a script page from the game! You can download the chapter as a PDF here here.





Finally, there's one straight out of the most obscure depths of academia: Euphoria and Dystopia: The Banff New Media Institute Dialogues (Sarah Cook, Riverside Architectural Press / ABC Art Books Canada, 2020). It's a recent collection of archival material created over the past several decades for Canadian university Banff's media school. Of interest to us is a presentation about interactive media (and his experiences with Wing Commander) which was given by Mr. Borst in September 1998 as part of a lecture series called The Big Game Hunters (September 19-21, 1998). You can download the chapter as a PDF here here.




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Original update published on December 11, 2022
 
I just got through reading the first one. It's clear the author isn't the Wingnut that we are (the plot synopsis introductory joke felt a bit odd plus the Kilrathi 'struggle' was way more than a decade), but it's still nice to see how our universe is portrayed to a more 'mainstream' audience. Six weeks before the game release makes sense since the synopsis describes parts of the Blair's and Maniac's introductions that never made it to the final product.

The villain is a man who believes deeply that what he's doing is right - it just happens to be terribly unhealthy for a lot of innocent people.
That's putting it mildly.

The dichotomy of Panther and Hawk coming from Chris Roberts is noteworthy.

So the scriptwriters helping with mission design probably explains why the variety of missions in WC4 feels a lot different (in a good way) to WC3. WC3's mission designs, IIRC, largely followed what we already knew from WC1 and 2, with a handful of exceptions. Nice that they had such a good working relationship with the developers.

In Wing III you were always just taking orders. And the story shifted or changed on how well you shot down the bad guys while you were flying.
Just as applicable to WC1 and 2.

I'm surprised they give away the villain in the discussion of the final scenes. A shame if this was published before the game was released too. Perhaps it's just as well the community was not aware of this beforehand.

You can't get more interactive then [sic] in a flight sim.
...it can lead to winning, or loosing [sic].
Oh dear. Internet-level typos in a paper publication.

I don't recall the possibility for Paulsen to find you when Blair is trying to find who the incoming VIP to the Lexington is. I think that one was left on the cutting room floor.
 
I [sic] friend of ours who used to be a creative exec at Fox was working as a story editor/creative exec at Electronic Arts.
I wonder who else might have been considered as potential scriptwriters.

I would have liked to see the nearly 300 cards indicating the flow of the story, as compared to the 50 or so for 'normal' feature films.

We modem stuff back and forth constantly to make changes to each others [sic] work.
A reminder that this was before the WWW and mainstream Internet, I suppose.

They (Origin) had tried unsuccessfully to create a script in-house.
This was for WC3. Do we have any hints on what this unsuccessful script was like? Given that they say the mission design was already done on WC3 before they were hired to write the script, I imagine it couldn't have been that much different from the WC3 that was released.

I guess Myst is a game but there is no winning or loosing [sic]. Winning and loosing has always been associated with games.
I'm surprised not one, but two paper publications make this rookie mistake.

Or is it an emmersive [sic] exploratory device like Myst or 7th Guest?
(starts to cry) I'm pretty sure word processors had spell check even back then...

The experience of watching lice-action [sic] video, for example, on a computer screen is simply not going to compete with a 70mm theatrical film. Why in the world should anyone sit down in front of there [sic] computer and involve themselves with this new experience?
(tries to block out mental image of lice dancing on a video) Interesting, I thought most cinematic releases were on 35mm film. But I suppose the point stands - until the DVD video release of WC4, even with the previously-thought-of-as-high-capacty CD-ROMs, video on PC was not going to be the same level of fidelity as a movie theatre presentation. It's the interactivity aspect that was novel at the time.

I've seen enough people wave mousses in front of their computer screens hoping that something would work.
Now I have a mental image of people waving cakes in front of their screens...

An interactive Jack and Jill nursery rhyme, that's pretty good for on the spot writing.
 
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a half-hour movie at the beginning of Wing Commander III. When do we get to play the game?
I don't remember it being that long. But it's a fair point. For people who don't care about story, it can be a rather long time - but then why are they playing a game like WC? Anyway, I suppose WC4 tried to mitigate this by adding interactive choices part-way through the introduction.
 
I just got through reading the first one. It's clear the author isn't the Wingnut that we are (the plot synopsis introductory joke felt a bit odd plus the Kilrathi 'struggle' was way more than a decade), but it's still nice to see how our universe is portrayed to a more 'mainstream' audience.

This is probably the exact demarcation line between super fans and regular people! It's very likely that these writers and most of the peple who actually worked on the game have no idea that the war has specifically been going on for 35 years in Wing Commander III. It's an element of lore that gets added after the cake was already baked... and so while it flows out to all the tie-in material by virtue of the fact that the creative services guys did the manuals and advised on outsource stuff... it really doesn't go back to the actual game developers.

And you see it when you start to look: for instance, Paladin tells Blair that they haven't known peace "in a long time"... except Blair hasn't known it /at all/, the war has been going on his whole life. We're so close to the metal there that it's hard to believe, but consider Star Wars: at what point is it decided/revealed how much time takes place between any of the two movies? Certainly not in the films themselves because it didn't matter and George Lucas didn't care whether there were a month or five years between Star Wars and Empire... it's something that gets debated by fans and nailed down by a tie-in years after the fact.

Six weeks before the game release makes sense since the synopsis describes parts of the Blair's and Maniac's introductions that never made it to the final product.

Yeah, this would've been written long before the game was actually finished... possibly before the film shoot in the summer of '95 was even done. (The game's formal release date was intended to be December 8 and it was delayed at the last minute... so what happened here is that the book was locked and printed with that in mind and then it couldn't be deplayed... or it wasn't something anyone would have thought/cared about, given the niche audience.)

Oh dear. Internet-level typos in a paper publication.

I think the content of the chapter from Borst and De Palma is entirely genuine, but the book itself is pretty sketchy... it's trying to fill space as quickly as possible to sell books to people who think they're going to be interactive screenwriters. So more LOSE WEIGHT NOW than a sacred tome for the ages. (Also why you have pages and pages filled with credits!)

A reminder that this was before the WWW and mainstream Internet, I suppose.

The Wing Commander community was pretty active in late 1995! But you didn't quite have this level of discovery... we were in our little silo and the screenwriters were somewhere else. Nobody could search the contents of books just yet.

This was for WC3. Do we have any hints on what this unsuccessful script was like? Given that they say the mission design was already done on WC3 before they were hired to write the script, I imagine it couldn't have been that much different from the WC3 that was released.

I believe this is referring to the G.P. Austin "movie" script rather than something specific to the Wing Commander III missions. If you go back to the interviews in Origins WC3 guide you can read about how the game followed the same design philosophy as WC1: a framework of technically achievable missions came first and then the story was to be added on top. Which is how the entire industry thought until WC4!

I don't remember it being that long. But it's a fair point. For people who don't care about story, it can be a rather long time - but then why are they playing a game like WC? Anyway, I suppose WC4 tried to mitigate this by adding interactive choices part-way through the introduction.

11m21s, for the record! Unless y..............ou were................... watch.......... ing on............. a 386.
 
This is probably the exact demarcation line between super fans and regular people!
I didn't mean it as a criticism (of 'regular people'). I just felt it was a bit jarring for us 'super fans' to read something like that. It's fine, though.

The Wing Commander community was pretty active in late 1995! But you didn't quite have this level of discovery... we were in our little silo and the screenwriters were somewhere else. Nobody could search the contents of books just yet.
I was more considering the aspect of the writers sending each other updates via modem. Dunno if that means BBS, e-mail, or some other means. Just contrasting with all the messaging systems people commonly use today, that's all.

I believe this is referring to the G.P. Austin "movie" script rather than something specific to the Wing Commander III missions. If you go back to the interviews in Origins WC3 guide you can read about how the game followed the same design philosophy as WC1: a framework of technically achievable missions came first and then the story was to be added on top. Which is how the entire industry thought until WC4!
Which I suppose was the point - the collaboration between mission design and story/script-writing started from the beginning in WC4. Which I suspect is a big part of why so many of us consider WC4 the pinnacle of story-telling in the main games.
 
(With regard to spoilers earlier, Origin themselves famously did worse than this by bundling the game with the official guide when you ordered it directly and then putting the picture of Tolwyn hanging himself opposite the first page of the ship guide...)

I was more considering the aspect of the writers sending each other updates via modem. Dunno if that means BBS, e-mail, or some other means. Just contrasting with all the messaging systems people commonly use today, that's all.

In 1995 (in the US) that would've meant e-mail, either like we know today or through an additional layer of service like Compuserv, Prodigy or AOL.

Which I suppose was the point - the collaboration between mission design and story/script-writing started from the beginning in WC4. Which I suspect is a big part of why so many of us consider WC4 the pinnacle of story-telling in the main games.

Totally, and I think now it's something people don't understand looking back... it's BECAUSE of how Wing Commander IV changed the game development process that games are made like a movie with narrative being a giant priority at the start... but that would've been a totally alien idea to developers in, like, 1992, who would've been used to starting with tech or a gameplay idea and working from there.
 
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