DragonCon Trip: CIC in the Big City (August 31, 2007)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
On Tuesday we passed through New York City and had an amazing opportunity to visit Gaia Industries, the development studio that created Wing Commander Arena. They've also just released Street Trace NYC to Xbox Live Arcade, an equally elaborate (and fun) shooter-racing-hoverboard hybrid game!

We presented them with Ninja's original contest-winning Arena sketch on behalf of the Wing Commander community as thanks for taking such good care of our universe. Then we took to space where... they beat us at the game a lot. They're real pros!

So - a big thank you to the guys at Gaia for letting us stop by! We also saw some awesome concept art and talked about the ins and outs of the game for quite a while. We'll post a bit more about exactly what we learned in the near future, but for now enjoy a few pictures:






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Original update published on August 31, 2007
 
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Bandit LOAF said:
So - a big thank you to the guys at Gaia for letting us stop by! We also saw some awesome concept art and talked about the ins and outs of the game for quite a while. We'll post a bit more about exactly what we learned in the near future, but for now enjoy a few pictures:


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Whoa! Is that a concept sketch of a Firekkan!? :)
 
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floundericiousMI said:
Whoa! Is that a concept sketch of a Firekkan!? :)
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Yes. Actually there were glimpses of this art pre arena release. Some of the other interesting things are centurions and gothri. In fact heads of any of the races are interesting as they are never seen in the game. I also like the upper right WC2 cinematic style shot of a cockpit with the wingman in the background.
 
Do I see a WC1 manual like Rapier in the lower left corner?
Man how I would like to have something like. I remeber the day when I finaly found a copy of WC1 with them in a good condition.
It also seams as if there where plans for more different Arrow variants in the upper left part.

Beside that...the fighter shown on the screen...I read "Wing Commander Conflict". Is that an older concept for Arena or is there coming something else. Addon or even a new game?
 
Since I had the good fortune of going with the CIC staff to Gaia, I figured I should type down what I remembered about this epic field trip.

* Originally, the game was going to center more on the Privateer aspect of the WC universe. While Confed and Kilrathi (and Firekkan!) were major parts of the game, they had wanted to emphasized a more lawless, "wild west" nature for the game.

* One of the artists on the project, Gary, explained to me that he saw the game as having two color pallettes. The first was for the space station - which he described as very drab and colorless, because he saw it as a prison. He pointed out that the station was "almost lifeless" - you don't see windows or people. He said this contrasted "space" which is very colorful and open.

* A great deal of material was dropped due to time. A short list of things that come to mind - a single player campaign, Firekkan ships, another game mode (involving a "rolling capital ship" - think of how the battleships "drop" in the Capital Ship map) and even a new "faction".

* The new faction was named (I believe) UFD. The Gaia group didn't tell us much about them, except that the "Commando Tattoo" achievement was related to them.

* The achievements were made before the images were. You can see a big ol page of the achievement ideas here. Its the black page toward the botom-right. I took a close-up of the image with my (blurry) Razr phone, which you can see here here.

* Heres a neat picture on the board - a WC1 blueprint image for an Arena fighter!
08-28-07_1534.jpg
 
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gevatter Lars said:
Beside that...the fighter shown on the screen...I read "Wing Commander Conflict". Is that an older concept for Arena or is there coming something else. Addon or even a new game?
Click to expand...

Conflict is what Arena was originally called in earlier stages of development.
 
Hehe.. wow! Thats a great frame my picture ended up in!

That really puts it in perspective, GAIA has one of my drawings!!!
 
AD said:
Conflict is what Arena was originally called in earlier stages of development.
Click to expand...

Ohhh and I thought that we would see even more. Still the fighters design reminds me a lot of the Mirage(?) from Starlancer.

As for the blueprint image. It looks very detailed. It would be cool if they release this and some other artwork in high quality. Maybe in kind of an Artbook way.
When you think about it so much artwork that people do while developing a game isn't going into the game and will mostly never be seen by anyone exept the people working on the game.
I find that kind of sad since there has been so much work going into the creation of the concepts.
 
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