Hi, I was wondering how much information is there about cancelled wing commander projects? I've heard Loaf mention things like a second privateer 1 addon that got canned, as well as special operations 3 which got rolled into WC3. Is there any more information on these projects? All I know of so far is that there was a plan to have Kilrathi Stealth craft (Strakha) in the second Privateer addon. Any additional details would be great.
Cancelled Wing Commander Projects
- Thread starter Darkmage
- Start date
frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
I recall someone talking about the original plot of WC3?
Basically, humanity has already lost the war against the Kilrathi and Blair is a member of the last remaining resistance movement against the Empire.
Basically, humanity has already lost the war against the Kilrathi and Blair is a member of the last remaining resistance movement against the Empire.
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
Actually, it would be nice to see a complete list of the canceled WC projects with a summary of each one.
It's not really all that far off from WC3's actual storyline, at least in my mind. All that needs to change is that the Kilrathi decisively win the Battle of Earth, thus defeating the Confederation in much the same way that you defeat Kilrah at the end of WC3. There's a surrender, but not everyone puts down the guns....
*waits for a more experienced CIC member to tell him that this is an oversimplification, or direct misrepresentation of actuality...*
heh
The confed insurgent idea sounds like they'd run into technology problems. stuff like terrain engines wouldn't be advanced enough at the time to portray earth well. Also as people said the story would be difficult to make fit well.
I hadn't heard of an insurgency plotline. I had heard that some of the Super Wing Commander models were slated to be in special operations 3. Particularly the Drayman model.
The confed insurgent idea sounds like they'd run into technology problems. stuff like terrain engines wouldn't be advanced enough at the time to portray earth well. Also as people said the story would be difficult to make fit well.
I hadn't heard of an insurgency plotline. I had heard that some of the Super Wing Commander models were slated to be in special operations 3. Particularly the Drayman model.
Iceblade
Admiral
No I mean with regards to winning the later part of the plot. They have to make up a bit too much to make it fesable....unless they happened to have moved all of their ship building, RD and government to Geminai (sp) sector. Otherwise the game would win without a decisive victory for either side and WC4 would a long long to Kilrah. (then again the behemoth was a bit far fetched to begin with)
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, anything is possible, I suppose, but given that I'd never heard anyone talking about this (let alone anyone credible), I would say you've been had. Fans do on occasion make up stuff like that (see for example the "original" WCP script... if you must
) to make themselves appear more important.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
This is a hard question to answer - what constitutes a cancelled game? Any project that saw release started with dozens if not hundreds of proposals, concepts and even mock-ups... and any development process would necessarily have involved abandoning all sorts of features for all sorts of reasons. There were certainly a great deal of projects that were developed to some degree (most never mentioned, some spoken off in the press)... but the 'official' line would have to be that a project must have been officially announced in order to be cancelled. In that stricted sense, we have:
* 'Wing Commander 3 Saturn' - Electronic Arts showed a Saturn port of Wing Commander III at the 1995 E3. Wing Commander III was originally planned as part of EA's 'launch wave' of Saturn titles (with Wing Commander IV coming later)... but it was held back. EA saw the writing on the wall early on and dropped Saturn support early on, and Wing Commander III never made it out the door. It's unknown what the design philosophy for this project was - Wing Commander III PSX tried to emulate the PC experience as close as possible, while the 3DO version rebuilt it with gameplay oriented to the console.
* 'Wing Commander 2 SNES' - Everyone should know about this title. It was developed by Origin's in-house SNES team (which is to say, not Mindscape) from the ground up in 1995. The few screenshots that have survived are impressive, featuring things like altered cockpits and full color comm VDUs. Word from the development team is that the game followed the same concept as the 3DO release, with a focus on quicker action-based gameplay. The game was finished, tested, reviewed in magazines and shipped off to Pony Canyon in Japan... and then never released because the SNES was at the very end of its lifecycle.
* 'Wing Commander Strike Team' - I hesitate to include Strike Team in this tier, since it was only barely announced. A 1998 Electronic Arts UK pamphlet reported that Origin was working on Strike Team. It was a broad title for Maverick's followup to Secret Ops. It's the same development process that gave us Multi-Commander and Phantom Force (both variations on the theme, with the latter possibly being the same project with a different name). The idea was to do a cost-effective Vision engine game with multiplayer capabilities that would also (hopefully) reinvigorate the Wing Commander world. You can see a lot of concept sketches from this one in our recent archives.
* 'Privateer 3' - This was the second attempt at developing a single player (focused) Privateer game. It was developed by the No Prisoners (Crusader) group and targeted for a late 1998 release. The project was unveiled in a magazine cover in April, 1998... and cancelled the next week. A number of art pieces and design documents for this project are available in the CIC archive (it's sometimes called Privateer: Retribution).
Then we have a whole mess of games that were mentioned in public, developed to varying degrees but never officially announced:
* 'Wing Commander II Amiga' - Origin and/or Amiga unofficially promised this to the Amiga userbase at European conventions in 1991-92. The (one!) man doing the Wing Commander I port for Origin became deathly ill and that game was delayed for quite a bit -- it's likely Wing Commander 2's Amiga prospects ended there.
* 'Wing Commander II: Special Operations 3' - This was spoken of in a 1991 COMPUSERV chat. The Origin representative mentions SO3 at one point, a chatter asks him to confirm (since only 2 had been announced) and he does. I can find no evidence that any work was ever done on SO3, though. There was no development team, no budget, no time scheduled between SO2 and the Deluxe SKUs... it's likely something that was talked about for a very brief period and then dropped (or, like Secret Missions 2, something planned to bridge to Wing Commander III and then dropped when that project took on a very different form).
* 'Wing Commander III Pentium' - Several interviews in 1994-5 had Origin staffers talking about a version of WC3 optimized for Pentium processors (top of the line at the time). Supposedly working, but never shipped (or even planned as an SKU).
* 'Privateer: Secret Operations' - A second Privateer addon was apparently solicited to software stores for a mid-1994 release. Again, though, there's no development material, no planned budget and absolutely no time between the release of Righteous Fire and Privateer CD. It's likely this was something that died early in the process.
* 'Privateer 2' - This was the "Chris Roberts" Privateer, worked on around the same time as Wing Commander IV. They had a crazy concept in which Roberts would develop Privateer 2 and 3 as bookends for a Privateer TV show, with all the products launching simultaneously. This was canned and 'Privateer: The Darkening' became Privateer 2.
* 'Maniac Missions' - A Tom Wilson-focused game, developed alongside Wing Commander Prophecy for a time. Concept work was done and it was spoken of very often in magazine articles.
* 'Privateer Bridge Game' - Origin's President mentioned this concept as a possibiility in a 1997 PC Gamer - it would have connected Privateer 2 to the rest of the Wing Commander universe. I dont' think this went anywhere.
* 'Wing Commander Academy (TV) Game' - Also mentioned in PC Gamer. An outside group did some work on this project in 1997 (which was regarded unfavorably by the Maverick people) and Electronic Arts later considered rebranding an existing game to tie into the show a la Darkening (I can't remember what it was offhand... it's in our archive).
* 'Wing Commander Prophecy Multiplayer Patch/Addon' - Producer David Downing promised this in an online chat during Wing Commander Prophecy's rollout... but it was never a real possibility, as anyone else on the team would have told you at the time. Downing left during or immediately after Prophecy's release.
* 'Wing Commander the Movie the Game' - There is a notable rumor that StarLancer was developed with the hopes that EA would be willing to license the Wing Commander rights to Digital Anvil. Didn't happen.
* 'Wing Commander/Privateer Online' - Two separate major attempts (to date)... you all know these stories.
... and then there are games that had some degree of development but that never became public knowledge:
* 'Wing Commander Armada Windows' - A Windows 3.11 port of Wing Commander Armada, developed by an outside contractor. They had everything but the modem working.
* 'Wing Commander II Genesis' - This project shared development resources with Wing Commander II SNES, but died much earlier in the process. Surprisingly, we recovered some WC2 Genesis advertising material at Mythic.
* 'Wing Commander Prophecy PSX' - Given the success of the Wing Commander III and IV ports and the increasing market share of consoles in the late 1990s, Origin set out to develop Wing Commander Prophecy PSX in parallel with the PC version... going os far as to plan the game's resources based on the Playstation's limitations. Cancelled some months into development when the team was restructured.
* 'Privateer 3' - Some work was done on a Privateer 3 concept from the Maverick team in 1996-7. It had a story by noted author Tracy Hickman. This predates the No Prosioners project.
* 'Wing Commander IV 3DO' - Mentioned in asommers' list of cancelled games.
* 'Wing Commander III M2' - Mentioned in asommers' list of cancelled games. Presumably died with the M2.
* 'Wing Commander IV Saturn' - Mentioned in asommers' list of cancelled games. Presumably died with the Saturn.
* 'Wing Commander RTS' - Prototyped internally circa 1996-7 but never funded. There was a working version put together with various elements that were (according to the team) revolutionary for FPS games at the time (3D shaded whatevers).
* 'Wing Commander FPS' - Similar to the RTS, but with a bit more support from higher up. The Wing Commander FPS was up and running in a very early state, with network battles between Kilrathi and space marines being fought at Origin.
* 'Wing Commander: Genesis' - Chris Roberts/Mark Day Wing Commander pitch from ~2003. Restarted the series on next-gen consoles with a focus on doing the interactive movie with CGI.
* 'Wing Commander: Mercenaries' - Wing Commander pitch from the UO lead developer, circa 2005. Would have been Battlefield 1942/Battlefront but with a Wing Commander setting.
* 'Wing Commander Arena DLC' - Many, many things were spoken of as DLC -- but the two heavy fighters (Gothri and Centurion) were the most likely since they were essentially ready to go.
* 'Untitled EA Burnaby Project' - EA began testing a 'full' Wing Commander game after Arena signed off - had a prototype for doing first person space combat online working.
The Strakha you're asking about are actually from Privateer itself - they would have been a third Kilrathi ship (cut for space/time/budget/etc.). You can see them in the early line drawings for the manual.
The Wing Commander 3 concept mentioned is actually the *rumor* that first hit the bulletin boards in early 1994 -- not something Origin had necessarily planned.
The original WCP script was a bit more sinister -- the guy who wrote that wanted (and got) a job in the game industry.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
I remember talking to Steve Coallier, who was part of the team that ported WCIII and WCIV to the Playstation, and he said that the PSX didn't have the power to run Prophecy unless EA wanted to start from scratch.
Sad about the lack of DLC for Arena. I had hoped against hope it was still going to pop up.
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
This is really interesting. Do we think this project is completely dead or still in development?
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I think it's dead.
