Wing Commander in the modern age

Karakkaze

Spaceman
This is something I've wanted to ask especially since this article was posted.

What would need to be changed about the game to make it appealing for more than just existing WC fans?
 
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1. Achievements.
2. Skins; ability to customize either your character (i.e. Shepard from Mass Effect) or perhaps your ship! (maybe for a Privateer-like game only huh)
3. Sex; WC always had quite adult storylines, unlike many other games of the time, so keep that thing going.
4. Bloom/HDR/ShaderFX/FantasticoGraphicoAwesomeo; Although I suspect given its history of groundbreaking graphics it would be no issue for WC
5. Multiplayer. For real this time.

There are many things that WC had that are still relevant today that many games lack - branching missions & interactive music being just a couple. I also liked seeing the players hands in wc1-3 - that could really be amped up using today's tech - hands flying around the controls (even some fist-pumping when you down a capship - heh heh). The interactive briefing room/bar menu systems. All these things that really make you feel connected to the game world that I find lacking in today's games (Menus suck. Thats what I go to restaurants for).

One other thing - game length. Too many games blow you away with awesome set pieces and story and all that jazz but only last a couple of hours. I love going back and playing WC1 & 2 again - short missions that I can fit in between other things - almost like a casual game by todays standards (gasp!). But having LOADS of them strung together with a storyline made me feel like I got my moneys worth - and I felt a much greater sense of achievement (there's that word again) when I finally finished the game - as opposed to the "Oh. Is that all?" feeling you get when you finish a short game of today.

And does anyone else NEVER get sick of the little WC1 intro? I still watch it through every time...

M.

PS loving the new forum layout.
 
Simplifying it would probably be the most important thing. Make it playable with a gamepad and scrap all the flight sim stuff that made WC more and more complex with each iteration.
 
To my mind, the most important thing will be adding variety to the experience. The original games would build one experience--the basic combat mission--that you would experience twenty or so times. Today I think you need more variety... in addition to big changes like adding ship-to-ship first person stuff, I'd focus on improving lots of set pieces... make asteroid fields truly unique, nebula effects really game-changing, make cap ship battles really massive and so on.
 
Simplifying it would probably be the most important thing. Make it playable with a gamepad and scrap all the flight sim stuff that made WC more and more complex with each iteration.

I'm not so sure it needs to be *that* simplified. WC was always the more arcade versions of all the flight sims. I've played P2, Prophecy, Secret Ops on my PC with the buttons mapped to a gamepad with relative success. Without using combos I think I only missed a handful of essentials that were fine to use a keyboard with. Something like the comms could for sure be simplified but as far as gameplay, it should be easy for most players to jump into but should reward players looking for a more complex experience.
 
I always thought power management was a wasted feature... at the beginning of every mission in wc3/4 I would (A.) lock the engine power & (B.) divert all the damage repair power into shields & guns, without fail. After that I never touched it again, unless I was damaged, in which case I would transfer the whole lot to repair, sit and wait for it to finish, then put it back the way it was, above. I guess prophecy tried something new, but I never really found the need to play with it... Just didn't seem to make enough of a difference to bother with. I think damage repair kind of broke the gameplay too - something about limping home with a hobbled craft, or finishing off one last enemy with the one remaining gun I had left was very satisfying. It also encouraged you to occaisionally miss a waypoint out - and in doing so varied the debriefings & experience as a whole. And lets not forget the death scenes - I don't think I ever died once in my first prophecy playthough (not until I started setting the difficulty to hard).

Bring back actual DANGEROUS asteroid fields!

Also, what exactly do you mean by ship-to-ship stuff, Loaf? You mean boarding actions? A little like Space: Above & Beyond style? (where the pilots were also combat trained marines) I guess the movie did that a little huh? Interesting... would certainly sell the concept to the FPS crowd... after seeing the space combat in Halo: Reach you wonder if reversing the concept (space combat with a little fps gunplay thrown in, rather than the reverse) might be a winning combination.

Funny, when I first read that comment I kind of scoffed, but the more and more I think (and write) about it, the more enticing it sounds!
 
Not to mention massive bomber formations for you to intercept or escort.. installations to bomb.. minefields to navigate or clear..

a series of missions involving a massive multi-day cruiser battle is the stuff of dream and legend.
 
Regards the Damage Repair, I best enjoyed the system employed in the I-War games where you had a panel (in WC - say a VDU) where you allocated damage repair capability against your various systems in order of preference (drive, lds drive, intersystem drive, weapons, missle launcher, shields, engine core etc etc). The idea was you made decisions on what you wanted up and running first, drive to maneuver, weapons to finish off that last opponent, shields back up so repairs could be a net positive, core so you didn't blow up....

Damaged components had varying degrees of damage (green-light, yellow-medium, red-heavy, grey gone or somesuch). You could re-allocate on the fly e.g. get a system to yellow so it was functional then get another system functional. I typically got lds drive up for interplanetary travel (you couldn't be hit by normal weapons), which let me continue running repairs....
 
We were just remarking during the CIC get-together in Austin that the single thing that REALLY drags down the console versions is the communications system. That NEEDS to be streamlined for a future game--nothing was less fun than trying to figure out how to communicate with a wingman (or worse: being FORCED to communicate to land at the end of a mission) with a six-button controller.

Also, what exactly do you mean by ship-to-ship stuff, Loaf? You mean boarding actions? A little like Space: Above & Beyond style? (where the pilots were also combat trained marines) I guess the movie did that a little huh? Interesting... would certainly sell the concept to the FPS crowd... after seeing the space combat in Halo: Reach you wonder if reversing the concept (space combat with a little fps gunplay thrown in, rather than the reverse) might be a winning combination.

Yeah, think the reverse of Halo: Reach. The ability to seamlessly go between space and ground missions (and boarding capital ships) is something Chris Roberts has been talking about since at least 1999... so I'd expect it to play a major role in a future Wing Commander game!
 
Regards the Damage Repair, I best enjoyed the system employed in the I-War games where you had a panel (in WC - say a VDU) where you allocated damage repair capability against your various systems in order of preference (drive, lds drive, intersystem drive, weapons, missle launcher, shields, engine core etc etc). The idea was you made decisions on what you wanted up and running first, drive to maneuver, weapons to finish off that last opponent, shields back up so repairs could be a net positive, core so you didn't blow up....

Damaged components had varying degrees of damage (green-light, yellow-medium, red-heavy, grey gone or somesuch). You could re-allocate on the fly e.g. get a system to yellow so it was functional then get another system functional. I typically got lds drive up for interplanetary travel (you couldn't be hit by normal weapons), which let me continue running repairs....

I really enjoyed I-War and its Sequel, I think this might prove to be a bit fiddly for a fighter based game, now, if you happened to be the captain of a Corvette like the Johnne Greene say........
which might also allow customability of the ship!!!

I think, if a new game was made to have wide ranging appeal, it would need good controller support, and a really strong story line.
Perhaps somesort of Covert behind the frontier operations like in Action stations would suit this? and allow a mix of flight and first person?

Oh yeah, and dangerous asteroids and mine fields as well, miss those from WC1 and 2
 
This is something I've wanted to ask especially since this article was posted.

What would need to be changed about the game to make it appealing for more than just existing WC fans?
Not much.
Retain the cockpits and don't use all that cheap heads up display stuff. Kind of like what X-Wing Alliance did. Retain the large amount of mission, don't do twelve mssions and end the game.
A mission builder would be AWESOME! I mean, that would make this game very replyable!
 
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I like Loaf and Mahak's ideas. Landing/boarding/covert ops, where you get to steal an experimental enemy fighter, a bit like Mitchell Gant, in Firefox, or remove enemy technology or maybe pilot a Marine landing ship. Character customisation....not everyone who plays WC and the like, is male and thats just for starters. Ship customisation, so that different squadrons, bear different colour schemes and insignia, with a choice of 'gun load-out'. You'd think that, that far in the future, weaponry would be interchangeable or 'modular', although on 'lesser' ships, you may not carry as much, due to power requirements and physical hard-points. Yes, to the massive fleet battles, asteroid fields and mine fields. Most definitely multi-player, but would that mean going down the MMORPG route? Then, you'd be up against the likes of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which looks visually stunning and of course has that 'franchise' and then there is EVE online. Whilst I mention EVE online, lets stick with sitting in a cockpit and it looking like a cockpit....I can't fly something if I'm sitting above and behind the tail of my ship - some can, but I hate it and it doesn't feel right. Obviously, with modern systems, the graphics would be quite something, but if any new game, were to be, say DirectX 11 only, it might not reach sufficient numbers of players to make a good return - I'm quite happy with XP and have no need to buy Win 7 and nor would I go through all that grief with finding drivers that work, to play one game....never mind the cost! I've upgraded PC hardware, in the past, to run WC4 and Privateer 2, but I'd be a little miffed to find that my current machine specs were not high enough (although a CPU upgrade is in the pipe-line) and also needed Win 7. I would hope they'd bear this in mind, but, it was often the case that the Wing Commander games would, as Maniac would say, "push the envelope a bit".
 
You'd think that, that far in the future, weaponry would be interchangeable or 'modular', although on 'lesser' ships, you may not carry as much, due to power requirements and physical hard-points.
The Secret Ops fiction has two interesting articles on the development of the Dust Cannon and the Cloudburst guns which suggests that gun designs are very much tied in with the internals of a given fighter till at least the 2680s. Of course, there are also interchangeable weapons of Privateer, but then that could be due to differences in military and civilian fighter design philosophies. Yes, there are model variants of military-standard fighters with different weapon load-outs (there's the laser-only reconnaissance Excalibur in Prophecy, for example), but I think they are not very common.

Of course, these are all in-universe considerations and there may be plenty of game-balance/implementation reasons for keeping fighters with a fixed weapons configuration.
 
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Yes, to the massive fleet battles, asteroid fields and mine fields. Most definitely multi-player, but would that mean going down the MMORPG route? Then, you'd be up against the likes of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which looks visually stunning and of course has that 'franchise' and then there is EVE online.

No, I think the age of the big-budget MMORPG is behind us--Old Republic is going to be the last dying gasp. They just can't turn a profit in the era of free-to-play/freemium/whatever games. Warcraft is down some huge number of players this year... and SWtOR has been such a mess in development that it's never going to make money even if it's somehow something approaching a hit.

I've upgraded PC hardware, in the past, to run WC4 and Privateer 2, but I'd be a little miffed to find that my current machine specs were not high enough (although a CPU upgrade is in the pipe-line) and also needed Win 7. I would hope they'd bear this in mind, but, it was often the case that the Wing Commander games would, as Maniac would say, "push the envelope a bit".

I think Chris coming back to Wing Commander locks us into a very specific future. It means all the Privateer Online/Battlefield-style/do-it-as-an-FPS talk probably goes out the window in favor of something huge and cinematic... because *that's* the kind of experience he wants to create--one where you live the movie.

... and yeah it probably means it'll push the envelope in terms of PC specs (if there is, indeed, a PC port.)
 
Track IR support would be a must--can't play space sims without it once you try it (Freespace 2 is amazing with it). The boarding mission idea would be soooo sweet (haven't played a space game since Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic that allowed that sorta thing back in 1988). As for complexity, make it as complex as you can, as I enjoy all that Independence War and Freespace type stuff.

A branching storyline is a must as well as amazing story and cutscenes (don't even need to be FMV) w/interactivity aboard the ship.
 
I love WC, but I am against a branching storyline in a new game because in order for it to profitable we need to keep the budget down. That is why I am skeptical that Roberts will get to make his new WC. Big budget games now have to sell an absurd amount of copies to make a profit, and the space sim genre does not have the popularity it once had. It might make the most sense to make an inexpensive game, market it as "the return of Wing Commander", and see if you would be justified in a big budget sequel.
 
Well, it's interesting, I expressed a very similar concern back in August when we met with Richard Garriott -- Chris Roberts wants $45 million to make the new game, who was going to take that risk in a day and age when so many of his peers have moved on to social gaming? And his reply was that if there was anyone in the world who could do it, it was Roberts. That he'd known a lot of visionaries in his years in the industry and that none of them compared to Chris Roberts' ability to come in with a fully formed idea for a game in his head and to then work tirelessly to make sure that's the finished product. The whole exchange left me feeling very good about the project.
 
Well, it's interesting, I expressed a very similar concern back in August when we met with Richard Garriott -- Chris Roberts wants $45 million to make the new game, who was going to take that risk in a day and age when so many of his peers have moved on to social gaming? And his reply was that if there was anyone in the world who could do it, it was Roberts. That he'd known a lot of visionaries in his years in the industry and that none of them compared to Chris Roberts' ability to come in with a fully formed idea for a game in his head and to then work tirelessly to make sure that's the finished product. The whole exchange left me feeling very good about the project.

I think the safest bet for a new WC game is a proper Privateer sequel with multiplayer support. If your player character is Maniac (voiced by Tom Wilson), so much the better. Sadly, the gaming industry is increasingly moving in directions that, in general, do not interest me. It sucks to get old.
 
It sure does.

I've long held that you could do a "Maniac Missions" game pretty cheaply, with FMV. Have your pilot be at the Academy with Tom Wilson as your flight instructor and go from there -- do cheap FMV where he briefs you and your wingman in the first person. Probably not likely today, but it would have been a great idea ten years ago.

I actually don't think Chris Roberts has the Privateer rights now... so EA could theoretically resurrect that brand themselves.
 
Since I played the first Mass Effect game I am convinced that FMV is not necessary anymore to convey emotion. It would be great to have it, but not if it was more $ than CG characters. I would definitely want to plays as Maniac. I mean I can totally see him as a merc/privateer (as long as we ignore the WC4 novelization - which the games do). I would have a character arc in which he matures as a pilot and re-enlists with Confed at the end of the game (like Magnum PI in space!). Then he would be your Wing Commander in WC6. We would set WCP3 after Prophecy, with WC6 as the proper sequel to Prophecy.

I would work with Chris Roberts or EA for free to see this realized.
 
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