Ice Cream Man
Spaceman
Hello everyone out there.
Spoilers ahead.
Perhaps it's time I reveal how I found out about Wing Commander in the first place.
When I was in middle school, I found a WC book in the school library. It was the movie novel. Needless to say, I watched the movie soon after, and loved it. It wasn't until I googled the title though, that I found out about the games.
I actually was a little confused, as the ships in WC1 snes looked remarkably different from the movie ships. It wouldn't be for a while that I would discover that many people were dissapointed by the movie. I liked it.
I found out my uncle had several large-floppy WC games. I played almost the entire wc1-wc2 series, and enjoyed it.
Then, I played WC3. I dropped my controller after about an hour. I shut off the game, and only went back to it just to say I beat it. Why did I hate WC3 so much?
Well, it was just too different.
The idea of adding movie-like scenes was a brilliant idea, well-acted and much better than the movie in hindsight, however, the plot of the game itself and the art style got me.
First of all, to me, The WC game series was like playing an interactive comic book. The characters looked like comic book characters, and the art style was amazing.
Most importantly, every last ending event in the game was under my power! It was under my control wether each system in Vega fell or not. The first game and its expansions are the ones i liked the most.
Then comes WC2. Overall, pretty good. This one tends to be the fan favorite because of its new speech pack and stuff. It was pretty good, but we see one problem right away, a new problem I like to call:
The Blair Effect:
The last ship your character served on will be destroyed in the first 5 seconds of the new game.
The Tiger's Claw goes down in the intro. the intro.
In Wing commander 3, the concordia goes down.
and so on.
However, I liked WC2. It was new, and the losses you took just proved it was still a war.
But then there's WC 3. Why don't I like it?
Because the above problems in WC2 were magnified.
You might need to open up TV Tropes to understand, but the first thing they did was stuff Angel in the fridge. Seriously. They killed her off, and she was Blair's love intrest. In the end he ends up with some girl I didn't know from the first game. I thought maybe there was a way to rescue Angel, but there wasn't. There was less control over the game's events than the older games. You can't even save the Behemoth, and it's a ship.
The art change also got to me. Yeah, it's based on live-action film, so you can't have comic-book ships. But, why not simply take the older ones and plate them over with metal instead of green and brown plastics? It made no sense. Granted, the gameplay is great, but the art change got me. It seems that they were changed for realism, but threw out their staple art style.
Overall, WC3 is a great game. But I'd have to say the original game was the best in the series.
Still, I wondered why WC3's events were so messed up. What happened?
Mark Hamill happened.
Star Wars crept into WC3. Let's be honest, the final level is a redo of the death star attack, replacing SW terms with WC ones. although this is like comparing apples and oranges, you should understand this. Mark Hamill is a great actor, but should he really be in a Wing Commander game? Maybe, but only if he doesn't drag SW with him.
In the end, I think the idea was great, but the game put our favorite pilot Blair's life in a downward spiral, leading to his ultimate pointless death in Prophecy, litteraly done just to sweep him under the carpet, an act proving that they were trying to forget about their poor plot choices. Ironically, Maniac is the only survivor from WC1.
In the end, I consider WCStandoff to be my personal ending to the series. Why? Because things turn out well in the end. We don't lose as many characters. We keep the original artstyle, and the plot makes the most sense.
I know alot of people are thinking: "Deal with it", but the truth is, while the games are satisfying, the plot just falls to pieces, and too many changes are made. I'm not mad or upset, but I wish the series had gone differently.
I hope one day Roberts will start over and remake WC1 in 3D. Maybe when he gets back around to remaking WC3, the plot will change enough to satisfy my anger about the events. For now, I'll just deal with it and play WC1.
Thanks for listening.
Spoilers ahead.
Perhaps it's time I reveal how I found out about Wing Commander in the first place.
When I was in middle school, I found a WC book in the school library. It was the movie novel. Needless to say, I watched the movie soon after, and loved it. It wasn't until I googled the title though, that I found out about the games.
I actually was a little confused, as the ships in WC1 snes looked remarkably different from the movie ships. It wouldn't be for a while that I would discover that many people were dissapointed by the movie. I liked it.
I found out my uncle had several large-floppy WC games. I played almost the entire wc1-wc2 series, and enjoyed it.
Then, I played WC3. I dropped my controller after about an hour. I shut off the game, and only went back to it just to say I beat it. Why did I hate WC3 so much?
Well, it was just too different.
The idea of adding movie-like scenes was a brilliant idea, well-acted and much better than the movie in hindsight, however, the plot of the game itself and the art style got me.
First of all, to me, The WC game series was like playing an interactive comic book. The characters looked like comic book characters, and the art style was amazing.
Most importantly, every last ending event in the game was under my power! It was under my control wether each system in Vega fell or not. The first game and its expansions are the ones i liked the most.
Then comes WC2. Overall, pretty good. This one tends to be the fan favorite because of its new speech pack and stuff. It was pretty good, but we see one problem right away, a new problem I like to call:
The Blair Effect:
The last ship your character served on will be destroyed in the first 5 seconds of the new game.
The Tiger's Claw goes down in the intro. the intro.
In Wing commander 3, the concordia goes down.
and so on.
However, I liked WC2. It was new, and the losses you took just proved it was still a war.
But then there's WC 3. Why don't I like it?
Because the above problems in WC2 were magnified.
You might need to open up TV Tropes to understand, but the first thing they did was stuff Angel in the fridge. Seriously. They killed her off, and she was Blair's love intrest. In the end he ends up with some girl I didn't know from the first game. I thought maybe there was a way to rescue Angel, but there wasn't. There was less control over the game's events than the older games. You can't even save the Behemoth, and it's a ship.
The art change also got to me. Yeah, it's based on live-action film, so you can't have comic-book ships. But, why not simply take the older ones and plate them over with metal instead of green and brown plastics? It made no sense. Granted, the gameplay is great, but the art change got me. It seems that they were changed for realism, but threw out their staple art style.
Overall, WC3 is a great game. But I'd have to say the original game was the best in the series.
Still, I wondered why WC3's events were so messed up. What happened?
Mark Hamill happened.
Star Wars crept into WC3. Let's be honest, the final level is a redo of the death star attack, replacing SW terms with WC ones. although this is like comparing apples and oranges, you should understand this. Mark Hamill is a great actor, but should he really be in a Wing Commander game? Maybe, but only if he doesn't drag SW with him.
In the end, I think the idea was great, but the game put our favorite pilot Blair's life in a downward spiral, leading to his ultimate pointless death in Prophecy, litteraly done just to sweep him under the carpet, an act proving that they were trying to forget about their poor plot choices. Ironically, Maniac is the only survivor from WC1.
In the end, I consider WCStandoff to be my personal ending to the series. Why? Because things turn out well in the end. We don't lose as many characters. We keep the original artstyle, and the plot makes the most sense.
I know alot of people are thinking: "Deal with it", but the truth is, while the games are satisfying, the plot just falls to pieces, and too many changes are made. I'm not mad or upset, but I wish the series had gone differently.
I hope one day Roberts will start over and remake WC1 in 3D. Maybe when he gets back around to remaking WC3, the plot will change enough to satisfy my anger about the events. For now, I'll just deal with it and play WC1.
Thanks for listening.