WCM in Starlancer?

Jason_Ryock

Vice Admiral
Okay, so here I am playing through the Starlancer Campaign and I come across this video clip. Great video clips in the game. Great game.

And there in the clip is this image, that is so very clearly from the Wing Commander movie, right smack in the middle of the Starlancer game.

Just thought it was odd. But then, in the process of editing my Starlancer game I also ran across a file with the Lucasarts Logo and another that appears to be a Battlestar Galactica splash screen.

Don't ask me to explain this combination - because I can't.

Someone tell me I'm not crazy and that is the scene from WCM in Starlancer.
 

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Man welcome to five years ago, everyone knows about that one and about three or four others. Heck some of the enemy ships in the cutscenes are taken straight from the WCM Kilrathi craft.
 
Yeah, but they at least altered it in some way, didn't they? Of course this was also probably discussed 5 years ago too :). But then again the whole WCM penny arcade thread was basically a cut and paste of tons of previous threads- but I still enjoyed it!
 
I did a search. As for the Cutscenes in-game being similar to the WCM Kilrathi Craft...clearly you do not have enough experiance playing Starlancer. Those are quite obviously not Kilrathi craft.

in fact, while there are certain design similarities, you have to consider that when one is dealing with large space dwelling ships of death, there are only so many original designs, and a number of features are going to be the same on all of them.

The only ship in the game that looks remarkably like any Kilrathi ship is the Shroud. This is also the ship pasted on the cover I believe, why I'm not sure. Personally, that sort of light fighter is a piece of crap. I like something heavier, like the Pheonix or the Reaper. The only advantage it has is cloak, and you only really get to use that effectively on one mission.

Other then that, I think the ships designs for Starlancer are great. Especially the Carriers. Some of them, like the Endevor, are on crack. But the Coalition carriers especially, are nice. The Reliant is ugly as sin. The Yamamoto looks like something from Battlestar Galactica...and well, if you've seen the Victorious I don't think I need to tell you what it looks like.

You're obviously confusing Starlancer with another game. Your post doesn't make any sense, BTW. The ships seen in cutscenes are the same ships seen in game, with the exception of that video clip (Which is obviously ripped from the WC Movie, however, since the Movie and the Game are both Chris Roberts creation I don't really have any complaints about that, it just confused the hell out of me when I saw it). So how can the ships in cutscenes be ripped from Kilrathi Ships in WCM and the ships in game not be? Maybe you just phrased your post wrong and meant to say both. I don't know.

As for it being discussed before...I did a search and read all the relevent threads I could find, and found nothing. I know that Starlancer and Wing Commander are closely related, their origins are the same, and that they are often compared to each other. But still...using footage straight from the movie and dumping it into the game like that...it's just a bit disconcerting. Especially when you consider that every other scene in the entire game is Rendered, and that's the only one that's not. And by rendered I mean animated with characters whose faces look believable and whose hands never move. It just doesn't fit.
 
I think it's very wise and economical of them to use a multi-million dollar movie clip that costs them nothing to enhance the game. I thought the cutscenes looked great. It was better than spending more money thereby earning less profits in order to get inferior looking game engine type cut scenes. The only people who could be confused by it might be WC buffs who have seen the movie many times. I have to say, I've played through Starlancer several times and never even thought about how the cutscenes were a ripoff of the movie. It is interesting to note it though..

I'm also not sure what SonOfStorm meant by Kilrathi craft in the cutscenes. I can't recall any, and would need to see a reference.
 
Yeah, this is old. Numerous clips digital anvil people did for the movie wound up in Starlancer.
 
Yet again, I fail to understand how it was cheap enough to produce some rather fantastic CGI (in my opinion) for the Starlancer game but too expensive to do it for the Wing commander movie...
 
What are you talking about? For all the other shortcoming s of the movie, the CGI was excellent.
 
I thought the WCM CGI was pretty above average considering that they didn't have a really big budget. The dogfight scenes were pretty cool, as was the assault on the shipyard. Keep in mind this opinion has nothing to do with the fact that the "Tiger Claw" wasn't right, the Kilrathi looked funny, or any of the other WCM arguments. It still looked good.
 
I remain very impressed with the opening shot of the asteroid field and the rings of the planet 415
 
TheRedDuke said:
I thought the WCM CGI was pretty above average considering that they didn't have a really big budget. The dogfight scenes were pretty cool, as was the assault on the shipyard. Keep in mind this opinion has nothing to do with the fact that the "Tiger Claw" wasn't right, the Kilrathi looked funny, or any of the other WCM arguments. It still looked good.


Hmm, I think you misunderstand. They used an old fighter cockpit and equipped it like a WW2 fighter in space...the general reason given for doing this was the cost of the CGI. Yet (IMHO) they could have just used CGI to create a fighter (one that looked a tad more sightly and more original). They did such an impressive job with the video clips to Starlancer that I can only imagine what an addition it would have been to the movie to use CGI fighters instead of that eyesore called the Rapier. Don't get me wrong, the movie is great, I love it. I watch it all the time but I don't understand how much money they could have saved by using an old fighter cockpit and not using good CGI developed by inhouse salaried Digital Anvil employees.
 
The movie did use CGI for almost all of the fighters -- the cockpits were constructed for the scenes where the pilots had to be seen in their fighters. (Like how they constructed a shuttle cockpit and a Hellcat cockpit for scenes in WCIV.)
 
Jason_Ryock said:
The only ship in the game that looks remarkably like any Kilrathi ship is the Shroud. This is also the ship pasted on the cover I believe, why I'm not sure.
Yep, it's the Shroud.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The movie did use CGI for almost all of the fighters -- the cockpits were constructed for the scenes where the pilots had to be seen in their fighters. (Like how they constructed a shuttle cockpit and a Hellcat cockpit for scenes in WCIV.)


Yes, and I thought it looked quite top notch (i.e. the Tiger's Claw, Kilrathi capitals etc.) But the Rapier, as I understood it, was not CGI and since we saw so much of it, we kinda came to hate it. :) I understand why they would need a cockpit for when the ship is in hangar or such but I think they could have masked the cockpit into a "familar" rapier if they had wanted. I don't know, this is very much off topic, I'm not going to debate the merits of the movie because, quite frankly, I like the movie!!!
 
Maj.Striker said:
Yes, and I thought it looked quite top notch (i.e. the Tiger's Claw, Kilrathi capitals etc.) But the Rapier, as I understood it, was not CGI and since we saw so much of it, we kinda came to hate it. :) I understand why they would need a cockpit for when the ship is in hangar or such but I think they could have masked the cockpit into a "familar" rapier if they had wanted.

Right, they could have.. which makes the whole thing about "CGI" being the reason for the Rapiers' look kinda weird. :) I've never heard that theory before, are you sure you're not thinking of something else? If anything, the Rapier was the Rapier because they were redressing actual WW2 fighters and going for a WW2 feel, not the cost of any computer generated stuff.
 
Watch the video of the REliant's destruction, I actually liked the reliant thought it was well designed, in cutscene form at least. Anyway in that cutscene the ship that the Reliant crashes into bears a striking resemblance to the movie Rarali, or maybe the Fralthi its been a long time.
 
Watching the video again right now...I think your analysis is way off. I don't seen any Kilarthi like ships in that scene. Though, if you look carefully during the first fly-by of the Volga battle group (that's the name of the carrier that the Reliant rams) you can see a remarkably WCM Concordia-type ship in the background.
 
ChrisReid said:
Right, they could have.. which makes the whole thing about "CGI" being the reason for the Rapiers' look kinda weird. :) I've never heard that theory before, are you sure you're not thinking of something else? If anything, the Rapier was the Rapier because they were redressing actual WW2 fighters and going for a WW2 feel, not the cost of any computer generated stuff.


I think we're saying the same thing in different ways, I'm not saying the WCM had bad CGI, I thought it had some really good CGI. What I don't understand is why they used live action shots of the tricked out fighter cockpit instead of just using a CGI fighter instead. That's really what I'm getting at I suppose.
 
The CS Volga is a Kilrathi Destroyer, and there is a Concordia-Class there too. Also the Coalition Flag Ship in the Into is a Kilrathi Battlecruiser
 
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