Wing Commander IV Teaser (April 3, 2012)

[Bandit LOAF]

The first image fans saw of Wing Commander IV was the teaser below, showing Tolwyn and Blair on opposing sides with a shadowy figure between them. It's a compelling image on the surface, but it's also problematic--since there's no actual reveal in the game itself. The shadow figure is just Seether, an entirely new character who is actually Tolwyn's henchman. The biggest problem, though, was that the first run of ads had a date promising the game on December 8, 1995. That would come back to haunt Origin when the title was delayed until February, 1996...




--
Original update published on April 3, 2012

 

[LeHah]

Whats funny is that they had the right idea - and did it wrong. Tolwyn should've been the one in the background and Seether to the right of the image.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Yeah -- or Blair and Eisen, playing up the idea that you have to make that choice. As a new character, Seether just didn't seem to matter so much...

 

[LeHah]

Yeah -- or Blair and Eisen, playing up the idea that you have to make that choice. As a new character, Seether just didn't seem to matter so much...

I remember enjoying the character the first playthru, but within a year, I saw how thin they wrote him (though he was a bit better in the novel, even if it didn't gel with what we saw in-game.)

 

[Quarto]

But isn't this just the hindsight talking? Both of you can't help looking at the image with today's perspective, and the knowledge of WC4. Try imagining seeing it as the very first thing you see for WC4, when you do not yet know anything else. The only real point being communicated in that teaser image was that there is a new Wing Commander, the Kilrathi are not involved, the bad guys are humans, and that Blair and Tolwyn are both in it, in unknown capacity. The shadowy figure, as far as you would have been concerned, is not actually Seether - it's just an ominous shadowy figure, who is only there to tell us that the bad guys are humans.

What if it had been Tolwyn in the background, and Seether in front? Well, all that your 1995 self would have gained from such an arrangement is the knowledge that there is someone new involved, and he looks mean. Presumably, Tolwyn in the background would have been as unrecognisable as Seether currently is (you can only recognise him today because you know who he is)... or, if he were recognisable, then this would be a major spoiler, because the dark shadowy position is much more ominous than standing back-to-back with Blair, with whom he's always had a rocky relationship anyway. At the time, a much more plausible interpretation of the image as it is, would have been that Blair and Tolwyn must set aside their differences to combat a dark new human menace. But put Tolwyn in the background, and that no longer works.

I also don't see how replacing Seether would have helped. Setting aside the difficulty of putting Tolwyn in the background, what would be the appeal of seeing Blair and Eisen up front? We just had a game with Blair and Eisen in the lead roles. Why would this be exciting? The message that this is just like WC3, except without the cats, seems rather anti-climactic. And if you think about it, there really isn't anyone else from the WC4 cast that you could place there. If Seether were placed in the foreground, he'd work far better than Eisen or any other character, for the exact reason that he is new.

 

[LeHah]

But isn't this just the hindsight talking? Both of you can't help looking at the image with today's perspective, and the knowledge of WC4. Try imagining seeing it as the very first thing you see for WC4, when you do not yet know anything else. The only real point being communicated in that teaser image was that there is a new Wing Commander, the Kilrathi are not involved, the bad guys are humans, and that Blair and Tolwyn are both in it, in unknown capacity. The shadowy figure, as far as you would have been concerned, is not actually Seether - it's just an ominous shadowy figure, who is only there to tell us that the bad guys are humans.

Heres the other side to it: who in the PR department - knowing the plot of the story - could go ahead with this image in good faith and not assume its (at best) misleading or (at worst) false?

 

[Quarto]

Heres the other side to it: who in the PR department - knowing the plot of the story - could go ahead with this image in good faith and not assume its (at best) misleading or (at worst) false?

But is it? I mean, it's an image with three people on it. One is clearly the good guy (which is true in the game), a second is clearly the bad guy (which is also true), and the third is not immediately clear (and this is also true). Honestly, I think this image does a very good job, considering the inherent difficulties of teasing about a story where one of the key good guys turns out to be the key bad guy.

Now, if we were talking about the trailer... that's another story entirely. Particularly the one that shipped with the Kilrathi Saga was spoileriffic.

 

[AD]

But is it? I mean, it's an image with three people on it. One is clearly the good guy (which is true in the game), a second is clearly the bad guy (which is also true), and the third is not immediately clear (and this is also true). Honestly, I think this image does a very good job, considering the inherent difficulties of teasing about a story where one of the key good guys turns out to be the key bad guy.

Now, if we were talking about the trailer... that's another story entirely. Particularly the one that shipped with the Kilrathi Saga was spoileriffic.

I didn't wait to buy WC4... We picked it up almost immediately. Even then, I had already expected or known that Tolwyn was the main bad guy. I don't know if it was the trailer or other promo material before hand, but I can't say I was particularly suprised by the "twist".

 

[LeHah]

Honestly, I think this image does a very good job, considering the inherent difficulties of teasing about a story where one of the key good guys turns out to be the key bad guy.

Was Tolwyn ever *not* a foil or antagonist to Blair/the player? While that may not make him a villain, he'd be on a very short list of "Confed characters who would turn evil", second only to Jazz and Hobbes.

The whole of that add is not great, if only because it creates an obvious divide between - if not the characters - then *certainly* the actors, whom are well-known for playing specifically good/evil characters in their career.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I didn't wait to buy WC4... We picked it up almost immediately. Even then, I had already expected or known that Tolwyn was the main bad guy. I don't know if it was the trailer or other promo material before hand, but I can't say I was particularly suprised by the "twist".

It was two things: the 35mm theatrical trailer and the hint book. The hint book was the big one that enraged fans at the time (it had a 'spoiler' section at the start which it warned you to skip... but when you skipped ahead to the ship specifications, Tolwyn's body hanging from a sheet was on the page opposite the Arrow.)

We didn't have ready access to video at the time (I remember my dad downloading the demo and bringing it home for me on 30-odd diskettes!) and so we didn't pick up so much that the 35mm theatrical trailer also directly spoiled it, playing up Tolwyn as the villain. Interestingly, the TV trailer released at the same time uses the same footage and a very similar narration... and it implies that Seether is the mastermind--it follows the 'fueled by the horrors of war, a deranged human mind unleashes terror upon the innocent' with a picture of Seether threatening Blair instead of Tolwyn in his Black Lance uniform.

(Kilrathi Saga trailer I'll give a pass to -- it shipped over a year after Wing Commander IV. That's not long today, but it was a lifetime in game development terms back then.)

With a few years of game marketing under my belt (this is an old thread!) I understand that both the theatrical trailer and the print ad above are the way they are because Electronic Arts wanted to play up the quality of the cast to the new audiences they needed to justify the expense of the game. But at the time for me (and the Wing Commander community) the 'shrouded figure' felt like it was supposed to be an intentional reveal... and we all lost our minds arguing over it (I remember one especially stupid post... from me... about how it HAD to be Stingray because he was the only character whose fate we didn't know...)

(There's a longer discussion to be had about the role of marketing in a narrative, which I will contend was especially important back then. In the age before instant information, the reveal of the first print ad for a Wing Commander game was a massive deal.)

 

[Quarto]

Was Tolwyn ever *not* a foil or antagonist to Blair/the player? While that may not make him a villain, he'd be on a very short list of "Confed characters who would turn evil", second only to Jazz and Hobbes.

The whole of that add is not great, if only because it creates an obvious divide between - if not the characters - then *certainly* the actors, whom are well-known for playing specifically good/evil characters in their career.

Again, I think you're looking at this from a different perspective than you would have had back then. Tolwyn was always an antagonist to Blair - but the idea that he'd turn evil would have seemed ridiculous at the time. I'm not saying someone wouldn't come up with it anyway, but imagine the reaction. This is Wing Commander, not Star Wars. No crazy defecting admirals here. I think at the time, most people would have simply imagined that the game will make Tolwyn more central than he had been in WC3, and that the conflict between Blair and Tolwyn will continue, perhaps getting in the way of them overcoming this unknown new threat.

A more interesting question, all things considered, is whether there was similar speculation about Blair. I don't actually remember if the uniform we see on the image is the BW uniform (not that anyone knew about the BW at this point), but it certainly does look different to Tolwyn's - a noticeably darker shade of blue, the black thing with all pockets, etc. Would people have thought that this is just because it's a flight uniform, or would they speculate about Blair joining the Landreich (which, I suppose, would be the only plausible alternative to Confed at this time)? Interestingly, both characters have insignia shrouded in shadows, but you can just about make out the Confed star on Tolwyn's shoulder, while Blair's insignia is impossible to recognise. Would this have seemed intentional (looking very closely at the image, I'm pretty sure it was intentionally obscure - I'm 99% certain that's UBW insignia he's got).

With a few years of game marketing under my belt (this is an old thread!) I understand that both the theatrical trailer and the print ad above are the way they are because Electronic Arts wanted to play up the quality of the cast to the new audiences they needed to justify the expense of the game. But at the time for me (and the Wing Commander community) the 'shrouded figure' felt like it was supposed to be an intentional reveal... and we all lost our minds arguing over it (I remember one especially stupid post... from me... about how it HAD to be Stingray because he was the only character whose fate we didn't know...))

Hehe. We all had some pretty crazy comments at one point or another, but that one is definitely very funny. Amazingly enough, I can kind of see the logic behind it. If you make the assumption that the audience is supposed to recognise the figure, then it must be a returning character. But why Stingray in particular? Why not Bear, or that Landreich guy - Kruger? We didn't really know what was going on with them either.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Hehe. We all had some pretty crazy comments at one point or another, but that one is definitely very funny. Amazingly enough, I can kind of see the logic behind it. If you make the assumption that the audience is supposed to recognise the figure, then it must be a returning character. But why Stingray in particular? Why not Bear, or that Landreich guy - Kruger? We didn't really know what was going on with them either.

I bet you thought that question wouldn't have an answer! While we didn't have the idea of a Community Manager way back when, "Origin Publications" used to post to Origin's Official Chat Zone and answer questions about the tie-in stuff... so we were aware that Bear, Doomsday, Sparks, etc. were considered 'book characters' whose fate had been handed over to Baen.

 

[LeHah]

Again, I think you're looking at this from a different perspective than you would have had back then.

I have distinct memories of seeing WC4 and thinking "Oh, its Soren from Star Trek Generations... and Alex from Clockwork Orange... and the bad guy from Moon 44... and..."

I know at some point, in some other conversation, I think LOAF made the right statement: that they casted the roles to type, meaning that *of course* McDowell would play the Space Antagonist against Not Luke Skywalker.

 

[Quarto]

I bet you thought that question wouldn't have an answer! While we didn't have the idea of a Community Manager way back when, "Origin Publications" used to post to Origin's Official Chat Zone and answer questions about the tie-in stuff... so we were aware that Bear, Doomsday, Sparks, etc. were considered 'book characters' whose fate had been handed over to Baen.

Ah, right - there was that strong division between the books and the games to take into account. In that case, short of the unthinkable notion of the shadowy figure being an actual new character, surely Stingray seemed a reasonable deduction . If you think about it, the silliness of it stems not from a lack of logic (however peculiar), but from the lack of awareness that people working on WC4 probably do not even remember a minor character from four years earlier. I think that's probably the most common mistake made by fans to any number of franchises - the assumption that the creators know the franchise just as deeply as they do.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Ah, right - there was that strong division between the books and the games to take into account. In that case, short of the unthinkable notion of the shadowy figure being an actual new character, surely Stingray seemed a reasonable deduction . If you think about it, the silliness of it stems not from a lack of logic (however peculiar), but from the lack of awareness that people working on WC4 probably do not even remember a minor character from four years earlier. I think that's probably the most common mistake made by fans to any number of franchises - the assumption that the creators know the franchise just as deeply as they do.

Even more than that, they don't have the same priorities as fans. I suspect Chris would remember a minor character (he has great recall for that stuff)... but I also know he would have been much more interested in the technology of the game and the art of the film shoot.

I also think that's a very good thing. One thing I've observed the last several years in Star Trek is front-facing creatives clearly trying or pretending to think like fans... and the end result is a bunch of lore nonsense they read on Memory Alpha showing up in the films.

The great thing about being the fans who are custodians of a universe is that we can enjoy the heck out of ourselves with minutae. I'm working on an article for the front page right now that's just all the tiny details about Confed politics... but I also do not ever want anyone revisiting Wing Commander to find that and think it matters to whatever story they want to tell.