Defecting to the Kilrathi
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McGruff
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Has anyone else bothered to pause the WC3 scenes to look at the kilrathi grunts in the background? Like during the end scenes on Melek's ship? The guards look more like something from the original planet of the apes than cat-like. It could be that mostly kilrathi pilots and nobels have manes and hairy faces. Besides which the poster in the movie Pilots mess hall suggests that there *are* kilrathi with more fuzzy lionesse-like faces as well.
Dran
Nothing is written here
LeHah said:
I am not convinced this is a vague description at all. Besides pedigree breeding Hairless cats are rather uncommon in both the wild and in homes. When some one mentions the word cat to you when you were young and before the wing commander movie, or you played the game was released I would bet you pictured something like a normal Tabby cat which has hair. Also how much did the WC Kilrathi really change from each incarnation.
WC1 = They look like lions and have hair
WC2 = They look like lions and have hair
WC3 = They look like lions and have hair
WC4 = They look like lions and have hair
The reason for any change is improvement of graphics.
LeHah said:
I knew I would be jumped of for using wikipedia as a source, that is why I also used wcnews as a source, I did not find any mention that the Kilrathi are hairless, but many references that they resemble Terran cats.
LeHah said:
In this case I would say most should apply to all. Hairless cats here in the real world are achieved through breeding. I am unaware of any mention that this type of practice occurs with in the Kilrathi Empire. In addition in all but the movie the Kilrati do have hair. Plus many new things were introduced in the movie that were not in the game including ship design. Are you prepared to say that the Rapier or Tiger Claw looks like it did in the movie and not the game, and that all previous ship designs in the game are not valid because of this?
Anyway I don’t see what this really has to do with Jazz and why he defected.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
It's one setence you cited. That is exceedingly vauge.
Look at Hobbes, Melek, the Crown Prince or the Emperor and how they change from game to game. People always cite how different (and ugly) Melek got between WC3 and 4.
Add to that - Chris Roberts approved of the "hairless" Kilrathi look for the WC movie. Why would it be there otherwise? Are you going to question the guy who made the series to start with?
In the end, the difference between Kilrathi with hair and without hair is about as important as Klingons with smooth foreheads and with bumpy foreheads. They're still the same damned thing.
That doesn't explain Meleks transformation between WC3 and 4.
The fact that they resemble cats does not make them feline, just like how everything that has hair is not nessessarily a dog.
You're really reaching with that one...
The movie is still part of the complete continuity, if you like it or not. Again, the "smooth headed Klingon" arguement can be applied to this.
LOAF has handled this statement so many times, I should probably just cut and paste it from an old thread. Instead, I'll simply say "Don't go any further with that" out of seeing the usual result of such silliness.
NinjaLA
Alex Von T.
I have no problem with wikipedia itself, but only as a starting point for further research. There are LOTS of innacuracies in wikipedia, especially in more obscure subjects that nobody ever cares enough to edit and fix.
I find it terrifying that people actually quote wikipedia as a resource on term papers.
But back on subject. I present to you a kilrathi that looks and doesn't look like every other kilrathi we have seen so far in the series.
This is no more right or wrong than any other kilrathi. Just look at how many different varieties of humans we have on earth. And considering the Kilrathi clan structure, its not unreasonable at all to assume that the differences in clan are more than just name.. Like any species the kilrathi have (or should) many different characteristics and features. Wing Commander is not Star Trek, not every kilrathi looks like every other kilrathi, has pointed ears and the same stupid haircut over and over again.
I find it terrifying that people actually quote wikipedia as a resource on term papers.
But back on subject. I present to you a kilrathi that looks and doesn't look like every other kilrathi we have seen so far in the series.
This is no more right or wrong than any other kilrathi. Just look at how many different varieties of humans we have on earth. And considering the Kilrathi clan structure, its not unreasonable at all to assume that the differences in clan are more than just name.. Like any species the kilrathi have (or should) many different characteristics and features. Wing Commander is not Star Trek, not every kilrathi looks like every other kilrathi, has pointed ears and the same stupid haircut over and over again.
When I blew up that Ralari (a Destroyer) with my Hornet (A Light Fighter) in the first mission of Wing Commander...It kinda put me off wanting to defect. No wonder the Kilrathi needed the False Peace, there was no way they could win in a fair fight.
hmm, I don't remember a Ralari in the first mission of Wing Commander; what am I missing?
Nothing, I must have been thinking about the first mission of SM2. Guess I got it confused with the main game (probably McAuliffe 2)...Open Mouth Insert Foot. But my point stands: A couple of Light fighter (or in McAuliffe 2's case medium fighters) PWNED a Destoyer and its escorts, thats either better tech, or better pilots; or both. (Granted its hard to get it before it jumps, but still I've done it).
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, the Ralari admittedly is weaker than its Confed counterpart, but the difference ultimately isn't that great - if you fought an Exeter in its place, you'd have no trouble killing it either. It's just how WC1 worked, killing capships of any kind was dead easy (...though a bit time-consuming in some cases).
Take out the escorts, get behind it and just let your the guns take care of the rest. That tip came from one of the pilots on the Claw, Angel I think. Still that mechanic about fighters being able to destroy capships so easily was the only thing that bothered me about WC 1, it was just so counterintuitive. I guess thats why they made it nearly impossible in WC2.
Turns out it was Bossman. Eh, live and lear...uh...remember.
Sorry for the double post, but I guess there is a time limit on editing posts.
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
Heh, time consuming; like when I'd get frustrated on a mission that was tough to beat, so I would launch and take it out on the 'Claw. Thing is, the 'Claw would take a while to torch! So in the end, I would be frustrated that the mission was difficult AND that I was wasting time trying to blow up my carrier. Once you started though, you couldnt stop. You HAD to see the "endlessly into the void" quote...
That's the one thing I really disliked about WC2. The Concordia could absorb as many torpedos as you could put into it without going down.
That, and Prophecy's "Traitors never win" cutoff. Damn it, I was a traitor who WAS winning. Loved Stiletto's death scream.
Well the Concordia was a Dreadnought/Carrier (It was built FORD tough, ~~~ ).
Yeah, that quote kinda sucks (when you are winning) at least WC3 let you finish fighting, and they hauled you away after you landed or were picked up post-ejection (I assume they gave you one chance to explain your actions).
EDIT: Whats with the "~~~" in place of l-o-l? Has it suddenly acquired an inappropriate meaning? Am I that old and out of the loop?
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I wanted to deal with this thread, but then I went to Canada instead. Now I'm back. Talking points:
That's already the case, though no one makes as big a deal about it. The Darket shows up a Wing Commander IV reference about the Battle of Earth... and, of course, the Dralthi, Strakha and Bloodfang all appear earlier in the series. I think in matters like this, it's important to note what a big deal we see about *new* ships -- the Excalibur and the Sorthak both get special articles about them because they're new, and the K'ha'haf gets discussed in the game itself. I would find it *more* unbelievable that the Vaktoth and the Ekapshi and such are *all* new fighters, but no one ever makes any reference to them.
These are good thoughts. It's worth pointing out that the Kilrathi in WC3 are also hairless around their facial features (eyes, nose and mouth). If you need an in-continuity explanation for why the Kilrathi in the movie are hairless (and I would generally argue that we don't), then the idea that it's a particular style seems to make sense.
Regardless of the nature of the sources (already discussed), I think this is a very poor jump in logic. Both of your quotations say that the Kilrathi resemble cats, not that they are cats. I'm sure similar sources discussing the Kzinti would describe them the same way -- but that wouldn't be reason to argue that they don't really have pink tails. "That rock looks like gold!" isn't the same thing as "that rock is gold!".
Besides, even if we could somehow establish that Kilrathi are identical to Earth felines, there are still lots and lots of kinds of cats here -- from giant puffy ones to giant jungle cats to, as you noted, ones without any fur at all.
In the games alone, the Kilrathi aren't all lions -- in WC1 they look like shorthaired housecats... in Wing Commander II, the royals all take different 'big cat' appearances -- Hobbes is a tiger, Thrakhath is a lion Wing Commander III takes their basic Wing Commander II patterns and makes them look more alien... and then the less said about Melek in WC4, the better.
It's not a case of improving graphics (quite obviously... Melek in WC4). Basically, the story goes that the 'FMV' Kilrathi were never quite right. It's apparently very hard to do fur well -- it almost always comes across as looking like a puppet (or muppet). Even when it's done absolutely right (and we can count the times on one hand), it ends up looking cute rather than fearsome. The Kilrathi were redone for WC3 and again for WC4, and neither way really worked. Wing Commander III's cats look like the puppets they are... and it becomes even more apparent when you watch the cutscenes on tape instead of on 1994-compressed videos.
In WC4 they did the Kilrathi even furrier -- theoretically to cover up the puppet effect... but that just ended up making them look cute and, I would argue, even more like puppets (the fact that they had to interact with actors on the pre-existing sets rather than have special Kilrathi-lighted temples for themselves hurt a lot, too).
For the movie, they needed a Kilrathi that could interact with people in a "realistic" way, and that absolutely couldn't end up looking cute. They went with the fully armored, green-lights-and-gas-hidden versions seen in the film, basically to avoid the hair problem entirely. It didn't work either, and Chris Roberts recognized that. After the movie came out (literally right after -- at the after-party following the film's premiere) he was talking about trying them with CGI the next time around.
The finished version of the movie cuts out a *lot* of material involving the Kilrathi -- in the movie-as-shot, they interact throughout with the human traitor. His removal let them drop a lot of cat parts... and they only end up in a minute or so of the finished movie. I'm kind of curious as to what it would have been like if they'd removed them alltogether, save for the occasional flash of a armored body during the two hand to hand sequences.
Well, I am WCNews, and I can tell you that there are, at the very least, Kilrathi without hair on their faces. Do you want me to cite my source?
When you close your eyes, the world doesn't vanish. Not seeing something doesn't mean it hasn't happened (and, in this case that isn't even valid... because you can freaking see the Kilrathi in the movie).
I'm not prepared to make this call *anywhere*, as the WC1 ships change appearance half a dozen times. The Tiger's Claw has three distinct versions in WC1 alone (line art, in-flight and cutscene all have different numbers of engines)...it changes completely in SWC, in the Academy TV show and in the movie. Style is not substance.
How many models of Dralthi that look different have we seen?
(Well, I can call the Rapier -- since it's a different fighter...)
The Wikipedia is the lazy man's playground. All the common criticisms are true to some extent -- editing wars, improper focus balancing, undeservedly elitist caste systems, etc... but they all pale in comparison to the folly of the site's fundamental assumption: that anyone can do real research. No! No, no, no, no. Academic writing is an elaborate, trained process which takes years and years to master. Having looked in a book and seen how a professional historian cites his sources is *not* a conferred ability, any more so than seeing stitches on a chest means could mean that you can go on to perform heart surgery.
The Wikipedia is the opposite of research, a perfect example of our awful generation of internet users demanding instant gratification. If I publish an academic paper, I am an externally acknowledged expert (or aspiring expert) on a subject... and it goes to a peer review before anyone can see it. The Wikipedia is the opposite: self declared experts make their writing true *until and unless* someone else bothers to take the time to contradict it.
A last thought: there are Kilrathi that look like lions on Wing Commander Academy...
... and there are also pink and green ones.
That's already the case, though no one makes as big a deal about it. The Darket shows up a Wing Commander IV reference about the Battle of Earth... and, of course, the Dralthi, Strakha and Bloodfang all appear earlier in the series. I think in matters like this, it's important to note what a big deal we see about *new* ships -- the Excalibur and the Sorthak both get special articles about them because they're new, and the K'ha'haf gets discussed in the game itself. I would find it *more* unbelievable that the Vaktoth and the Ekapshi and such are *all* new fighters, but no one ever makes any reference to them.
These are good thoughts. It's worth pointing out that the Kilrathi in WC3 are also hairless around their facial features (eyes, nose and mouth). If you need an in-continuity explanation for why the Kilrathi in the movie are hairless (and I would generally argue that we don't), then the idea that it's a particular style seems to make sense.
Regardless of the nature of the sources (already discussed), I think this is a very poor jump in logic. Both of your quotations say that the Kilrathi resemble cats, not that they are cats. I'm sure similar sources discussing the Kzinti would describe them the same way -- but that wouldn't be reason to argue that they don't really have pink tails. "That rock looks like gold!" isn't the same thing as "that rock is gold!".
Besides, even if we could somehow establish that Kilrathi are identical to Earth felines, there are still lots and lots of kinds of cats here -- from giant puffy ones to giant jungle cats to, as you noted, ones without any fur at all.
In the games alone, the Kilrathi aren't all lions -- in WC1 they look like shorthaired housecats... in Wing Commander II, the royals all take different 'big cat' appearances -- Hobbes is a tiger, Thrakhath is a lion Wing Commander III takes their basic Wing Commander II patterns and makes them look more alien... and then the less said about Melek in WC4, the better.
It's not a case of improving graphics (quite obviously... Melek in WC4). Basically, the story goes that the 'FMV' Kilrathi were never quite right. It's apparently very hard to do fur well -- it almost always comes across as looking like a puppet (or muppet). Even when it's done absolutely right (and we can count the times on one hand), it ends up looking cute rather than fearsome. The Kilrathi were redone for WC3 and again for WC4, and neither way really worked. Wing Commander III's cats look like the puppets they are... and it becomes even more apparent when you watch the cutscenes on tape instead of on 1994-compressed videos.
In WC4 they did the Kilrathi even furrier -- theoretically to cover up the puppet effect... but that just ended up making them look cute and, I would argue, even more like puppets (the fact that they had to interact with actors on the pre-existing sets rather than have special Kilrathi-lighted temples for themselves hurt a lot, too).
For the movie, they needed a Kilrathi that could interact with people in a "realistic" way, and that absolutely couldn't end up looking cute. They went with the fully armored, green-lights-and-gas-hidden versions seen in the film, basically to avoid the hair problem entirely. It didn't work either, and Chris Roberts recognized that. After the movie came out (literally right after -- at the after-party following the film's premiere) he was talking about trying them with CGI the next time around.
The finished version of the movie cuts out a *lot* of material involving the Kilrathi -- in the movie-as-shot, they interact throughout with the human traitor. His removal let them drop a lot of cat parts... and they only end up in a minute or so of the finished movie. I'm kind of curious as to what it would have been like if they'd removed them alltogether, save for the occasional flash of a armored body during the two hand to hand sequences.
Well, I am WCNews, and I can tell you that there are, at the very least, Kilrathi without hair on their faces. Do you want me to cite my source
?When you close your eyes, the world doesn't vanish. Not seeing something doesn't mean it hasn't happened (and, in this case that isn't even valid... because you can freaking see the Kilrathi in the movie).
I'm not prepared to make this call *anywhere*, as the WC1 ships change appearance half a dozen times. The Tiger's Claw has three distinct versions in WC1 alone (line art, in-flight and cutscene all have different numbers of engines)...it changes completely in SWC, in the Academy TV show and in the movie. Style is not substance.
How many models of Dralthi that look different have we seen?
(Well, I can call the Rapier -- since it's a different fighter...)
The Wikipedia is the lazy man's playground. All the common criticisms are true to some extent -- editing wars, improper focus balancing, undeservedly elitist caste systems, etc... but they all pale in comparison to the folly of the site's fundamental assumption: that anyone can do real research. No! No, no, no, no. Academic writing is an elaborate, trained process which takes years and years to master. Having looked in a book and seen how a professional historian cites his sources is *not* a conferred ability, any more so than seeing stitches on a chest means could mean that you can go on to perform heart surgery.
The Wikipedia is the opposite of research, a perfect example of our awful generation of internet users demanding instant gratification. If I publish an academic paper, I am an externally acknowledged expert (or aspiring expert) on a subject... and it goes to a peer review before anyone can see it. The Wikipedia is the opposite: self declared experts make their writing true *until and unless* someone else bothers to take the time to contradict it.
A last thought: there are Kilrathi that look like lions on Wing Commander Academy...
... and there are also pink and green ones.