Which WC games had the best visual style?
I was just curious about your opinions on which Wing Commander game had the best visual style.
The early Wing Commander games, as we all know, used brightly-colored bitmaps, bitmap art of characters and rounded ships.
Armada used a 3D engine and had a visual style that was an interesting mixture of the early and middle Wing Commander art styles.
Wing Commander III and IV used a high res (for the time) engine (I think it was an upgraded version of the engine used for Armada?) and had sharp, sleek, gray ships. Just about everything had sharp edges.
Prophecy and Secret Ops came out at a time when 3D engines could feature rounded shapes, and they made use of them. Ships remained gray, but restored a good deal of the roundness of the early Wing Commander visual style.
I'm not sure about the Arena visual style, as I haven't played it, so if anyone could fill me in, it would be appreciated.
My opinion is that the original art style was the best of the bunch, followed by Armada and Prophecy, which retained the - for lack of a better word - plumpness, or sense of size of the different craft from Wing Commander I and II. That Armada was able to pull of a polygon version of the Wraith in an early 3D engine is no small feat!
For the sense that there is a real, live universe out there, it's a toss up between the early Wing Commander games and Secret Ops. Here, too, the early Wing Commanders manage a victory, thanks in no small way to the vastness of Privateer.
In any event, I feel that something very special was lost in the transition from 320x200 to 640x480.
I was just curious about your opinions on which Wing Commander game had the best visual style.
The early Wing Commander games, as we all know, used brightly-colored bitmaps, bitmap art of characters and rounded ships.
Armada used a 3D engine and had a visual style that was an interesting mixture of the early and middle Wing Commander art styles.
Wing Commander III and IV used a high res (for the time) engine (I think it was an upgraded version of the engine used for Armada?) and had sharp, sleek, gray ships. Just about everything had sharp edges.
Prophecy and Secret Ops came out at a time when 3D engines could feature rounded shapes, and they made use of them. Ships remained gray, but restored a good deal of the roundness of the early Wing Commander visual style.
I'm not sure about the Arena visual style, as I haven't played it, so if anyone could fill me in, it would be appreciated.
My opinion is that the original art style was the best of the bunch, followed by Armada and Prophecy, which retained the - for lack of a better word - plumpness, or sense of size of the different craft from Wing Commander I and II. That Armada was able to pull of a polygon version of the Wraith in an early 3D engine is no small feat!
For the sense that there is a real, live universe out there, it's a toss up between the early Wing Commander games and Secret Ops. Here, too, the early Wing Commanders manage a victory, thanks in no small way to the vastness of Privateer.
In any event, I feel that something very special was lost in the transition from 320x200 to 640x480.