Countdown to Launch!

BrynS

BrynS

Mr Kat says...
Howdy all,

In anticipation of what looks to be a fairly imminent launch -- hopefully by the end of July 2007 at the latest -- I've put together a little trailer to celebrate the return of Wing Commander to the wider gaming public in a big way, when it will launch on XBLA shortly, and also to show my appreciation to the devs and EA for investing the time, money and consideration to not just reignite the universe we all enjoy so much, but to do so with gusto; above and beyond the call of duty in appealing to the hardcore Wing Commander community. Hope you enjoy the tribute! :D

arenashotze7.jpg


The 2m:42s video (XviD) is available for download (27MB) and streaming at FileFront. Also available to watch on YouTube:

Cheers,


BrynS

P.S. Forgot to mention in the various info boxes, but thanks to WildCat for his neat Logo renders. :)
 
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Great job. It definitely brought out the nostalgia factor.

Oh how I miss my old friend....the thrill of battle.
 
I liked it BrynS. And I loved how you transitioned from the WC3 arrow launching to the gameplay footage of Arena. The only major complaints are the pacing of the first half of the trailer with the WC3 footage (it could actually be shot choice more than pacing) and how the sound drops out between most of your edits when it switches songs. It's a little jarring. I think I would have rather picked one continuous piece if I couldn't get the various music tracks to blend very well. And the StarCraft bit made me laugh, but I'm not sure it was in a good way. Your effort is obvious though and I thought the titles worked really well. I might have extended the white of the logo pictures through the whole frame too.

Over all I like the concept and I can see the structure of of a really great piece of work. I had been contemplating something like this but had only been planing on using arena footage. So it was nice to see you go in an unexpected direction. Congatulations on being the first to the punch :).
 
I'm rather cold towards the whole "fan trailer" thing but yours was really tasteful and professional. You also featured all the right clips from Arena. Cheers for a great trailer.
 
I enjoyed the trailer, but I disagree with the comment on the front page. What set Wing Commander apart was the combination of incredible space combat and a gripping storyline. I love to see Wing Commander back, but I'm disappointed to see what I perceive as half of a WC offering- the gameplay and graphics are there (albiet a new perspective), but the background is not.
 
Check out LOAF's breakdown of all the neat references as well in this thread I don't understand how you couldn't see the greatness of this gesture. Arena may not be the huge single player campaigns that dominated the main games and they know that, this is meant to be a fun game that expands the WC fandom. Star*Soldier is a work of love by people who care about WC and did an amazing amount of research to add the things to the WCU and give tribute to things that hardcore fans like us appreciate immensely.
 
And this very thread proves the point from my update - the regular media *isn't* getting across how much Wing Commander there is in this game.
 
rtheriaque said:
I enjoyed the trailer, but I disagree with the comment on the front page. What set Wing Commander apart was the combination of incredible space combat and a gripping storyline. I love to see Wing Commander back, but I'm disappointed to see what I perceive as half of a WC offering- the gameplay and graphics are there (albiet a new perspective), but the background is not.
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I don't get why flying with/against fellow wing commander fans is such a bad thing. Flying a torpedo run on LOAF's wing sounds just as awesome as some player character saving the universe from whatever.
 
pretty solid video there. i definately can't wait for Arena, went out and got my xbox yesterday...seriously stoked!

Brad
 
Thanks for the feedback, guys -- glad you enjoyed it! :)

As LOAF and others have mentioned, there's so much to go on and so many cool references and developments we're really spoilt for choice. It is a bit unfortunate that a lot of the media coverage has not grasped and/or conveyed the huge amount of work and effort put in to make Arena a Wing Commander game.

A couple of weeks back, I had the thought of putting together a short video based around the WC3 Arrow (due to the similarities between it and the base Arena variant) scramble sequence as something that could be put together fairly quickly just before Arena hit XBLA. When I arrived home from college two weeks ago and got the sense that Arena could possibly have been launched last Wednesday, I rushed into it last weekend and nearly put it out then, but when it was confirmed on Monday/Tuesday that Arena would not launch this past Wednesday, I held off and expanded it yesterday by putting it in rough context.

But, again there's so much to work with and just in the past few days I've wanted to do a number of other videos -- would have loved to have got some WC1 in there or indeed even some kind of WC1 through to Arena evolution, amongst others -- unfortunately, I haven't got much free time at the minute. I look forward to seeing any other takes.

AD said:
I liked it BrynS. And I loved how you transitioned from the WC3 arrow launching to the gameplay footage of Arena. The only major complaints are the pacing of the first half of the trailer with the WC3 footage (it could actually be shot choice more than pacing) and how the sound drops out between most of your edits when it switches songs. It's a little jarring. I think I would have rather picked one continuous piece if I couldn't get the various music tracks to blend very well. And the StarCraft bit made me laugh, but I'm not sure it was in a good way. Your effort is obvious though and I thought the titles worked really well. I might have extended the white of the logo pictures through the whole frame too
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Thanks for comments, AD. :) Yeah, as noted above, the trusty Arrow was the bird that got me thinking! I agree with all your other points and should have also extended the logo white to the entire frame. I wasn't too happy with one or two of the audio fadeouts, particularly after the surrender sequence on the Victory, which is a pretty crude fade (and I appear to have cut a few frames there too); unfortunately I've been using Windows Movie Maker recently, as my previous editing software crashes too often with many of the codecs I use and Movie Maker is a fairly blunt instrument at times!

Saying that, I can appreciate how the structure results in the jarring you mentioned and also felt that the first half was a bit slow and could have been punchier. I was thinking earlier today that some of the fighter footage from the Kilrathi Saga intro, for example, might have been more appropriate there. Time permitting, I would have liked to have also done a shorter (~1-minute) video with one continuous audio track and quicker FMV cuts (perhaps with some WC4 and WCP too), intercut with specific Arena footage. Because I wanted the sound effects in the original Arena footage that I was using to be audible and as I couldn't filter out the music in that footage (so that I could then overlay a main audio track that would not clash with the Arena music) I had to structure the scenes (and audio) around it, but it could have been smoother.

On the Starcraft 2 point: :p he he... There's probably a perfect Maniac taunt that could have been used instead!

Cheers,


BrynS
 
I liked the trailer very very much, I thought it was very well done.


Dundradal said:
(...) Arena may not be the huge single player campaigns that dominated the main games and they know that, this is meant to be a fun game that expands the WC fandom. (...)
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Absolutely. I think you can only be disappointed with Arena if you expect it to be a classic WC game with a focus on a single player campaign. But they made very clear that this was not their intent.
Arena is like Academy and Armada (only at a lesser price): it brings a new element to WC. And they all have some of the best manuals (if not the best). And from what I understand, fans have always demanded MP WC. Now they have it, it was the one thing that was lacking (for those who don't know Armada and the WCP patch).



Dundradal said:
Star*Soldier is a work of love by people who care about WC and did an amazing amount of research to add the things to the WCU and give tribute to things that hardcore fans like us appreciate immensely.
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I'd even say that only the hardcore fans can really appreciate it because only we get the references (and most of us don't even get all of them). That manual is really made for us - a tremendous present.
 
Nice trailer.
I loved the part where toylwen (did I spelled that right?) said "where you will be united with an old friend" and then the arrow lifted off from the hanger deck (The arrow is one of my favorite old friends that I look forward piloting in arena again)
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
Also, the Arena shots are very well chosen.
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You should thank EA for that. While I still apreciate the effort as much as you folks, the Arena portion of this trailer is one continuous segment. BrynS built his WC3 montage *around* the capship strike video/trailer available at the EA arcade website (and also available for download here - http://download.wcnews.com/files/arena/WCARgenCAPITALSHIPeV10hd.mov - at the CIC).

So, it was actually whoever put the video together over at EA that chose the Arena shots, and put them in that order, and to that music actually.
 
Yeah, that's correct; the entire Arena gameplay section is unedited and basically bookended by the other clips.

If the the Arena footage had just included the weapons and sound effects without the accompanying music, I probably would have cut a few different pieces together from the other three EA trailers. Alternatively, if I was using just one "master" music track for the trailer, then I could have muted and mixed up EA's trailer footage a lot more without the varied music from each trailer clashing.

The four Quicktime trailers that EA released were nicely done. Hopefully they'll continue to add more!

Cheers,


BrynS
 
AD said:
You should thank EA for that. While I still apreciate the effort as much as you folks, the Arena portion of this trailer is one continuous segment. BrynS built his WC3 montage *around* the capship strike video/trailer available at the EA arcade website (and also available for download here - http://download.wcnews.com/files/arena/WCARgenCAPITALSHIPeV10hd.mov - at the CIC).

So, it was actually whoever put the video together over at EA that chose the Arena shots, and put them in that order, and to that music actually.
Click to expand...

I do a lot of thanking to EA. Nevertheless, it was BrynS that chose these particular Arena shots (or the single shot, to be correct) for his little trailer and I still think it was well chosen. :)
 
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