WC and the future of space sims.

Ghost said:
*Sigh*
I want a new space sim :(

I finished WCP and B5: IFH the sunday, and i´m currently playing SO and Macross VO (isn´t a space sim).

Is X2: The threat any good...because i'm thinking in buying it.
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You finished B5: I Found Her? I kept getting lost trying to follow the jumpgate beacons in the training mission. :p
 
I think there could be another Wing Commander game. I would love to play one, by the way, but also many say that the WC1-2 story telling is better than the movies in wc3-4 I disagree.
I started with WC1 and I loved that one, but the extensive stories in the later games really pushed the fun I had. (I still know most of the lines from the wc3 beginning and the end of wc4...)
What makes these games different is the quality of the story. I also played both Freespace games, Starlancer and Freelancer, but I never experienced the same intense story feeling.
I could imagine a WC game that tells the story after Prophecy, but perhaps not with real actors but with computer generated characters like in Freelancer. I found these quite good. But the feeling must be right, the look of the game, and concerning this there was never a better game like WC.
 
Shipgate said:
I always wanted to show other people the Wing Commander games because I felt like not enough of them were getting to see it. It just seemed so underrated to me.
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I know exactly how you feel. I was one of the first guys in my group of friends to get a PC, the rest had consoles. I'd show them what WC was about and let them fly a few missions. They really liked it- thought it was way cool in fact, being on a PC with a joystick and all- but they always wound up back in front of their Segas and Nintendos (A.D.D., I guess). When many of them finally did get computers their interests seemed to gravitate in other directions rather than to "back-track" and play WC1 and the SMs in order to catch up to where the WC story line had progressed.

If we were to ever get another shot at having a new WC game I'd like to see it involve the Kilrathi somehow. The Bugs were good for what they were, but I always thought battling the Cats was more fun. Then again, if the opportunity presented itself, I doubt I'd raise a whole lot of objections.....
 
They really liked it- thought it was way cool in fact, being on a PC with a joystick and all- but they always wound up back in front of their Segas and Nintendos (A.D.D., I guess).
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I don't know - Wing Commander for the PC isn't significantly different from Wing Commander for the SNES or the SegaCD... (G)
 
I doubt we'll ever see a new official WC game for numerous reasons. The genre is being neglected to death by companies, and they seem to have good reason to neglect. I mean, if games like Starlancer and Freelancer are hailed as the future of space sims, then we're in trouble. They were fine games in their own right, but by no means are they going to bring about a space sim revival with the scope needed to warrant a company to spend millions on a space sim in WC style. Besides, who in their right mind would want to make a game with comparable grandeur to WC's 3 and 4 when simpler, cleaper games in other genres can return a much higher profit? It's also not good business practice to have faith in a small fanbase that claim a new (*insert game type*) will be extremely sucessful...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't know - Wing Commander for the PC isn't significantly different from Wing Commander for the SNES or the SegaCD... (G)
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I should have been clearer in my last post- they were playing other titles on their consoles not WC, usually sports games like Joe Montana Football, EA Hockey, etc. None of us had a Sega CD either, just the standard cartridge model.
 
Grimloc said:
The genre is being neglected to death by companies, and they seem to have good reason to neglect. I mean, if games like Starlancer and Freelancer are hailed as the future of space sims, then we're in trouble. They were fine games in their own right, but by no means are they going to bring about a space sim revival with the scope needed to warrant a company to spend millions on a space sim in WC style.
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Yep, and therein lies the problem, IMHO - games like FL, SL or FS2 are entirely the wrong type of game to use to revive the genre. What's needed is a big, expensive WC-like game, with a great storyline, great characters, and relatively simple gameplay (WCP, despite being marketed as a combat simulation, really was pretty simple to play compared to Freespace or the earlier Star Wars sims - and this was one of its big strengths, I think). In short, the only way to prove that a big, expensive WC-like game will be profitable is to make such a game.
 
Haesslich said:
You finished B5: I Found Her? I kept getting lost trying to follow the jumpgate beacons in the training mission. :p
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Autopilot is your friend :p

I never lost a beacon using it, just autopilot to the beacon and the ship does all the corrections to mantain the +50% beacon signal.
 
a lot of starlancer reminds me of wing commander one. i think they focus more on gameplay, less on the storylines.. which is what matters once you finish the story.

if there will ever be another wing commander game, it will have to be better looking than anything on the market, with a budget bigger then the average hollywood movie, and you should have to buy a new PC for it, just to live up to the old standards.

it's just a matter of finding someone crazy enough to make it. and let that someone please be smart enough to create a descent multiplayer....
 
Mace said:
it's just a matter of finding someone crazy enough to make it. and let that someone please be smart enough to create a descent multiplayer....
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And someone who produce it AKA the one who pays the millions to produce it.
 
I don't see the problem with just using talking CG heads really, the actors were a cute addition but I really don't think they were a huge improvement over the talking heads of the first two games as far as story telling goes.
 
I guess the big problem is that no matter how uncessary we recognize them to be, the live actors were/are a huge selling point - EA is understandably skittish about spending money to develop a Wing Commander game without Mark Hamill in it (and then equally unwilling to spend the amount of money necessary for a film shoot).
 
Spien said:
I don't see the problem with just using talking CG heads really, the actors were a cute addition but I really don't think they were a huge improvement over the talking heads of the first two games as far as story telling goes.
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Unless you do action scenes like kicking Flash out of his rack, Thrakhath gutting Angel, Dekker "Dekking" Maniac, etc. :D
 
All of that can be easily done with modern technology (the only thing preventing more 'kiss' style animation in WC2 was the lack of storage space...).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
All of that can be easily done with modern technology (the only thing preventing more 'kiss' style animation in WC2 was the lack of storage space...).
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They can do pretty well with CGI and in-engine animations these days anyways - the other reason they probably didn't have as much in animation in WC2 beyond talking heads was also that Rotoscoping was a pain in the posterior, IIRC. These days, they mostly need actors for voicework, but they don't HAVE to get them to actually film.
 
Consider: I keep coming back to an almost unavoidable conclusion, that being that the addition of live actors into the creation and development of games has added a now expected dimension that in many ways has hurt gaming in the long run. Was it unavoidable? Probably, for live actors have now become almost standard bill of fare for the “modern” video game, in one way or another. And of course, bigger names require bigger salaries. But I often question how much of a hurdle having live actors really is, or if I’m placing too great an emphasis on something tertiary in nature. Personally, I really could do without live actors if it meant keeping production costs down and increasing the likelihood of another good title being developed. I say spend the money on the game itself and keep the fluff to a minimum.
 
The fmv's are what you remember best... but you don't need the most expensive actors on the market. also i think(personally) that the "wing commander" character should just incarnate in luitenant casey(as it did), maniac is getting chronoligically to old to be a funny overconfident wisecrack, make him captain of a ramming ship or something, bring back paladin...

when i finished s.o., i though it would be six months or so till the next game to put you back in the seat at the frontlines in an all-out war with the nephilim..

next thing i knew i was playing starlancer.....
 
Mace said:
The fmv's are what you remember best... but you don't need the most expensive actors on the market.
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The only thing about that is without the big actors, such as Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies, people wouldn't be as interested in it, especially if there were other people playing their characters. There were a lot of people that got into the Wing Commander series because of such actors, such as myself. I was mostly drawn to WC4 because of Mark Hamill (although I did watch and like WCA). If they had different characters (and good actors) then that wouldn't be a problem. I for one wouldn't like the game so much if they had a sequel with Blair or Maniac with a different actor who couldn't act, unless it was like a prequel and the person CAN act.
 
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