I thought it was a cop-op that Jazz was the traitor in WC2. It would have been more significant if one of your old buddies from the original game sold you out, instead of a guy custom-made to be a traitor from the word "go." The game plays with the idea of Spirit working with the Kilrathi, and I would have liked if they went all the way with that idea. Or maybe someone completely out of left field, like Hunter.
I would give them some more credit for this one; it's kind of impressive that they introduced him as a fairly likeable character knowing full well he was going to be the traitor in a *different game*. It's a lot more planning than you'd expect. His dialogue in SM2 is actually very clever -- it's all blatant foreshadowing *after* you know he destroys the Tiger's Claw... but we didn't get that sense at all in early 1991.
5) Wing Commander Prophecy: You're not the son of Iceman. I never did like that aspect of an otherwise great game.
I disagree, I think they chose that very well... and, quite frankly, better than they should have. The idea was that Wing Commander Prophecy would go back to the original and be a '3D space combat simulator' instead of an 'interactive movie'... so the fact that their single thread of continuity is connecting the main character to someone who's essentially a throw-away character from the original game is pretty neat. For a game that rebuilt its fanbase for WC3, it was very cool to see a nod to a character nobody else cared about or remembered. (It's also an admiral de-Blairification; I want very m uch to believe that the Wing Commander universe recognizes heroes *other* than me.)
2) Wing Commander II/Special Operations/Special Operations II: Would have switched the roles of Angel and Spirit. Have Spirit the romantic interest and CAG, whereas Angel would be the one sabotaged by Jazz.
I don't think it would work, for a few reasons -- including the existing fact that she was engaged (in WC1) and just the fact that Angel was the one everybody in 1990 had a crush on... but most importantly her role from day one was as an entirely sympathetic character; Spirit is the one who tells you how great you are after your first mission no matter how badly you fail. There's no tension if the [love interest/commander] likes you *no matter what* (and can you really imagine Spirit standing up to Tolwyn? Or disciplining Stingray? It's not her character.).
In Academy we were under the impression Blair's father was some important figure,
but the movie changed things a lot.
The idea in Academy was going to be that Blair's father (... I mean uncle...) was a politician who lead the 'anti-war' opposition. This would have been explored in Season 2.
It added depth to Blair's angst, but it would've been better if the movie's main character wasn't Blair, but a totally new character made up for the movie.
There's a reason you don't see this basically ever -- the people who fund movies are a lot more interested in making sure licensed films touch on the things that made the game property valuable than they are with respecting every aspect of continuity. "Hey, we created a pretty popular character in Blair/Super Mario/The Mortal Kombat guy who freezes people, we need to take advantage of that..." beats "but this isn't what they planned for an unused second season of the short-lived animated series, we'd better just make this entire movie without the IP elements we paid to license in the first place" every time.
1) Wing Commander/Secret Missions/Secret Missions II: Crusade: Less Drakhai in SM2 - these guys were pretty annoying to fight.
Nahh -- one thing people forget is that the original point of addons was that they were created and sold specifically for people who were *really good* at the original games. The idea wasn't so much that you got an extra story as you got an extra *challenge*. That has certainly faded away in recent years...
WC3: Don't make Hobbes the traitor! Or at least do it differently. The "hidden personality thing" was rather dumb (and unoriginal), but cutting it out of the game made Hobbes' betrayal completely inexplicable
One thing Wing Commander III assumes, which I don't think panned out for players, is that the player is genuinely going to resent being assigned to the Victory. That's why you have things like special videos where Eisen will lecture you if you only fly with pilots you knew in Wing Commander II -- the intended reaction was that the new ship *was* really crummy with a dubious crew.
... but the fact that they used amazing-beyond-belief first-time-ever full-motion-video-with-live-actors! kind of negated that; as crummy as the Victory was supposed to be, it was still the most amazing thing any of us had ever seen ever in 1994. But with that in mind, for story purposes the traitor *had* to be someone Blair knew and that the player would have considered above suspicion compared to the Victory's crew... which leaves you Paladin, Maniac, Tolwyn and Hobbes.
WCP: Would have got rid of the sillyness at the end with Blair single-handedly saving the day. "Oh, man, an entire platoon of marines isn't able to fight their way through the enemy defenses, but just one aging ex-pilot with a pistol can save the day!"
Well, those are two separate things -- Blair needed to save the day and he needed to die... but he needed to do those things
in the cockpit.
Instead, they at least could have included an in-game fiction viewer like Standoff did, so you wouldn't have to exit out of the game between missions to read the storyline developments online.
Blame the Germans for that one;-) Apparently the team actually developed a fiction viewer to include with Prophecy Gold, which was rejected by EA Germany (including the fiction in the game would mean they would have to re-rate it).
This wasn't such an issue before the game came out -- you got your fiction updates *before* you got the new set of missions each week.
Then again, perhaps that length of time is supposed to demonstrate to us just how backwater his posting is - especially given Blair's passion to being loyal towards his comrades.
I think the point is exactly that it's so unpleasant an amount of time; the game genuinely makes us resent Tolwyn and Blair's situation only a few lines after both are introduced for the very first time. The 'my God, ten years!' reaction is certainly part of that.
Me? I might not have made that time gap so large - and I definitely would have used different animations for the character's 'before and after' trial shots.
This was actually the original plan, and it made it into an earlier build of the game; the extra face (and the court backdrop) were cut for disk space (WC2 had a SKU that shipped on low density 5.25" disks, IIRC...).
What would I change?
- In general: Don't forget your roots. Later games should have worked harder to include the 'little things' that made the original Wing Commander(s) such a success: medals, cockpits, takeoff scenes, etc. Prophecy, especially, needed these things
- Wing Commander Armada. I would release Armada two years later, when people were actually playing multiplayer net-based stuff.
- Wing Commander IV. It was brilliant and amazing and wonderful... but why the heck did they write it as a *coda*? Wing Commander IV should have been the clear start of a new trilogy of games, not a strange one-off example of FMV extravagence.
- Privateer 2. Darkening is so frustrating because it's an obvious layer of mechanical shine away from being one of the greatest games of all time. If they could have done all the things the original Privateer did effortlessly (proper faction system, economy, etc.) we'd be praising it forever.
- Arena. I would have some kind of button that I could press to horrifically murder everyone from the modern 'gaming press' who bitched about the game installed. I would press this button a lot. (Seriously, though, it needed a single player 'text based' campaign as once envisioned. Also, Star*Soldier ended up being too referential.)