Did Blair really die at the end of Prophecy?

M

Muz1234

Rear Admiral
Did he really die? Is that why there is no more Wing Commander prequels, because the main protagonist has gone?
 
The official line was "we don't know if he's dead". I think I may have sent an e-mail about it as a fanboy 14 year old.

I'd have to dig out star soldier, but I think it was written in such a way that stated Blair hadn't returned even years later so it seems likely he was dead.
 
Yeah I recall in star soldier that there were a few mentions of people who claim to have seen him after, but he was almost an Elvis type figure at that point. I assume he's dead but its unconfirmed
 
Mark Hamill not dead, Luke Skywalker....Physically? Spiritually? Force Ghost? Who knows....Star Wars can change anything and have it believable. Blair? For the sake of saving pretty much all of humanity, AGAIN! hmm I'd say he's dead, I mean how would he have survived? the wormhole went Capooyow! He went out like a champ tho. :cool:
 
JasonRocZ said:
Mark Hamill not dead, Luke Skywalker....Physically? Spiritually? Force Ghost? Who knows....Star Wars can change anything and have it believable. Blair? For the sake of saving pretty much all of humanity, AGAIN! hmm I'd say he's dead, I mean how would he have survived? the wormhole went Capooyow! He went out like a champ tho. :cool:
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Well the obvious way out would have been that the pod got sucked into the wormhole before it imploded; the ending to Prophecy certainly left that option open. He'd then have been a captive of the bugs; for a brief period its plausible that he'd survive that intact, but the length of time star solider talks about? Chances are even if he physically survived it wouldn't be Blair anymore.
 
The closest 'official' information we have is a sequence in the movie novel Pilgrim Truth where we flash forward and learn that he was believed dead but survived. The caveat is the book was never officially published so it's questionable whether or not that's "canon".

As for the intent in 1997, different people have said different things. It seems pretty clear there was no clear plan for Blair and more just the option that he could be revived if there were the possibility to do so in the future. (We like to think that stories like this are planned in advance but the reality is they are largely determined by things like Mark Hamill's interest/availability in returning to the character... things like the pod falling into the wormhole sort of underline that belief that there was a long term plan but we've learned that that wasn't intentional at all, it was a choice that happened to be made by the artist rendering the scene.)
 
Given how EA has pretty much abandoned the IP, it is whatever we say it is until they revive it. :D (It'll be a horrible lootbox laden micro transaction live service mess though going by current EA releases)
 
Oceankhayne said:
Given how EA has pretty much abandoned the IP, it is whatever we say it is until they revive it. :D (It'll be a horrible lootbox laden micro transaction live service mess though going by current EA releases)
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If we're going by current standards like Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Battlefield V, there won't be loot boxes, micro transactions or subscriptions. It's not just EA: big upcoming games like Gears of War 4/Halo 5, for example, which were heavily based around randomized real money packs in the past, have shifted quite a bit for Gears of War 5/Halo Infinite, which have done away with most of that and have a far smaller subset of transparent purchasable items.

It probably shouldn't be a surprise that there's considerable micro transaction fatigue in the game industry, and developers are moving away from that model now and finding entirely different ways to make a profit (such as giving the games mentioned above away for free as a part of Xbox's Game Pass netflix-like subscription service). At the same time, games cost fully half of what they did in the '90s in real dollars as development costs have risen, so we should expect some reasonable ways for them to stay in business. If we just take the MSRP of Wing Commander 1 and draw an inflation line to today, new games would cost more than $150.

I know EA's just an easy target, but much like with airline baggage checking fees, if they weren't doing what they've been doing, they'd have to significantly increase their base prices or go out of business.
 
Muz1234 said:
Did he really die? Is that why there is no more Wing Commander prequels, because the main protagonist has gone?
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I don't think Blair being dead post-WCP would affect any pre-WCP stories about him. Unless you meant sequels, in which case WCP was the handing of the torch to Casey as the new main protagonist. A game starring Maniac was also planned but didn't make it.

A little more on the plans for the Nephilim and how it might relate to Blair.
 
ChrisReid said:
I know EA's just an easy target, but much like with airline baggage checking fees, if they weren't doing what they've been doing, they'd have to significantly increase their base prices or go out of business.
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Which wouldn't be an awful thing if not for the economic mess the world has been in the past decade. There is no large pool of people able to pay $150 so the only options are hunt the whales, decrease development costs or target mass audiences at far lower prices (which has unfortunately led to people significantly undervaluing games as a product).

The current circumstances are as unpleasant for developers as for gamers, it's why I have little time for people targeting developers who do epic exclusives.

My concern about the new netflix models is the stadia approach; don't even give gamers the original data just eat the input lag with the excuse that a lot of modern games have input lag anyway (it's half true, but it's a recognised problem that people are taking note of and addressing with technologies like G-sync and techniques like Overgrowths pose system). It's a particularly nasty one as gamers are having less fun; putting them off the media as a whole, but they don't know why. To be fair some gamers, I have no idea how; probably do put up with comparable input lag if they have a poor TV and can't figure out gaming mode.

The Plus and Live freebies are a great way for a bit of cash eventually; but can't support a project on their own so stadia is more likely to be the future.

I'm not sure what my point is; just that there aren't a whole lot of good options. As much as I hate micro-transactions I like some of the alternatives even less.
 
Pedro said:
My concern about the new netflix models is the stadia approach; don't even give gamers the original data just eat the input lag with the excuse that a lot of modern games have input lag anyway (it's half true, but it's a recognised problem that people are taking note of and addressing with technologies like G-sync and techniques like Overgrowths pose system).
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Oh yeah, there's two totally separating things happening with games here. I say "netflix" as the closest comparison people are familiar with, but Netflix does two things: stream content and make lots of different content available. These are both in separable parts of Netflix, but they're very much separate in the video game world.

Stadia and Microsoft's XCloud are streaming services, and I don't know whether those will be at all successful. It seems like it'll take some years of refinement before they're decent.

What I was mainly referring to above is Microsoft's Game Pass. So you pay a certain amount, and 100+ games are all available to members. These are identical to the regular purchase games (no real time streaming), and they're not crap - all first party major xbox games will be available included with Game Pass, so it's an extremely attractive option. In the end, I might pay more per year to be a Game Pass subscriber than I would have spent buying the few games I want each year, but I'll end up getting to try out a bunch more cool games along the way. A real win-win for once.
 
ChrisReid said:
What I was mainly referring to above is Microsoft's Game Pass. So you pay a certain amount, and 100+ games are all available to members. These are identical to the regular purchase games (no real time streaming), and they're not crap - all first party major xbox games will be available included with Game Pass, so it's an extremely attractive option. In the end, I might pay more per year to be a Game Pass subscriber than I would have spent buying the few games I want each year, but I'll end up getting to try out a bunch more cool games along the way. A real win-win for once.
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Yes I'm a lot more fond of that option. But I'll admit I had forgotten about the MS Game pass I tried getting game pass beta on PC but ran into weird issues.
 
ChrisReid said:
At the same time, games cost fully half of what they did in the '90s in real dollars as development costs have risen, so we should expect some reasonable ways for them to stay in business. If we just take the MSRP of Wing Commander 1 and draw an inflation line to today, new games would cost more than $150.
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Yes, but at the same time audiences have exploded into the millions. Wing Commander 1 cost $80 on release if I remember right, but there were relatively few customers. Halo can charge $60 easily because of the sales of the game. It will easily sell a couple million copies. The problem with companies like EA and 2K is their immoral and underhanded decision to put gambling mechanics in games rated for children. The ESRB and companies like EA have a lot to answer for. Real lives have been destroyed over these. I know one person who plays star trek online religiously, and routinely wastes almost all his money on the game because he just cannot help himself. I know another who plays FIFA with the same issue. I know one guy that committed suicide because he got so far in debt because of these gambling mechanics that he could see no way out.

These companies don't need to find more ways to make profit. There's already enough profit in launching a game for $60 to millions. What they have to do is cut out the dead weight, and reduce their budget. CDPR and Nintendo have no problems pushing out great games at both ends of the spectrum for $60, although Nintendo has a bit of a advantage because of licensing fees.

Gut upper management to what's needed, remove bonuses for executives, don't make the company public so you don't have to worry about investors crying because you're not making all the money. Corporations can bring out the worst in people.

Corporations exist to make money, if they didn't do these underhanded and borderline illegal things to psychologically manipulate people into part with their hard earned cash causing people with addictive personalities (more commonly found in gamers) issues then they would have to do something else to make more money. I can tell you what it is. Greed. And I hope the lot of them go to hell. The CEOs and management, the marketing department, the artists, the developers, the pr and community managers. They're all guilty.
 
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