hobbes and his character arch

The tale is that they pressed the PC version onto 60 minute CDs (as they were more compatible at that time) rather then the 74 minute ones used on consoles. Therefore some stuff had to be cut. But only god knows why of all possible scenes that one was choosen as one of the most unimportant ones... (note that the scene cut had to be on the same disk, so there might be less options then we assume, but still ...)

This really, really doesn't make sense. I mean the stupid elevator sequence was there. And It didn't play on disc four, so It had to be on the CD (at least I think so). And there was at least one conversation on CD3 that had no impact whatsoever on anything (the rear turret pointing thing). Either someone was really stupid or this was a cover up for a last minute retcon that didn't happen afterall
Or so I think
 
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

CD-ROM drives HAVE to deal with 74-minute discs because that's the standard length. (Supposedly the wife of the Sony president wanted a particular classical music piece to fit on the entire disc without splitting). 60 minutes doesn't really buy you much at all - it just spaces the track a bit wider.

What may be more reasonable is the consoles often have special provision for FMVs to stream off the disc - special formats for the video that's more efficient to code as well as special codecs baked into the hardware to play back that video at the CD-ROM drive speed. These could also make the video more efficient to code (remember a CD sector is around 2552 bytes - for PC use, they use 2048 as data bytes and the rest is ECC) so FMVs could use less ECC and you could fit more video in less space. (After all, misreading a FMV sector just results in a glitch on playback, no big deal. Missing a byte in a data sector can be harmful though).

Whereas PCs had to store the video as regular data sectors and use whatever codec was chosen by the developer at the time. So the PC loses out in that it has to store the video as regular data AND has to use codecs the developer chose, which were probably picked less for efficiency, and more for licensing costs.

As well, consoles could be using lower res video to suit the video playback engine, while PCs may be stuck with using higher quality video. Remember, a console was lucky to be playing at 320x240 on a SDTV back then in regular mode. PC games were VGA or better (640x480) typically. Videos played back on consoles may be lower resolution (which you didn't mind so much because the TV was terrible and hid a lot of the details anyways).
 
Most of that sounds about right, except that the videos on console games at the time were generally higher quality than the videos on PC games. They tended to have motion JPEG decoders built in (we're using basically the same technology with a higher resolution and color gamut for theatrical movie projection today), which allowed for much higher quality video than the codecs that PCs were stuck using. They had higher quality, if less efficient, compression, and I'm pretty sure they could (but didn't have to, most games were 320P, like you said) use the full 640X480 resolution.

All this aside, there definitely was a standard CD-ROM size that was lower than the 74 minute (700 megabyte) size (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM#Capacity). There were actually a couple, but the relevant one here is the 63 minute (650 megabyte) standard. I do seem to remember early home CD burners having to use the smaller discs. Maybe commercial operations had similar problems in the early days, which left Origin short 50 megs per disc.
 
The one thing I don't understand about Hobbes' as sleeper agent concept is why it was removed from PC version. Let's be honest - more people played WCIII on PC than read the book and played 3DO and PSX versions together, many of whom (like me) only learned about the sleeper agent thing after coming to this site. In the meantime, they grew attached to their theories, and have hard time letting go. So, does anybody know why it was cut?

Most of the deleted scenes that don't make it into the PC edition but reappear in PSX/3DO are transcribed in the PC version's Origin's Official Guide to WC3. So while it still required some second hand knowledge, there was a companion product sold in stores alongside the PC game that had the details on what happened.

hobbes_oog.png

Also, I still crack up inside every time I read this thread's title and imagine an arch somewhere with Hobbes' name on it.
 
this from an article that was posted on the main page and one of my reasons for disliking the hobbes defect. once again it was not the fact that hobbes defected but the reason behind it that I thought was just lazy story telling

Morality
In the first game, morality is simple; the Kilrathi are the enemy. They are not just an enemy, they are the enemy: an implacable, non-negotiating race of super-warriors who have the darkest possible plans for Earth. There is zero reason to feel remorse for killing a Kilrathi, and many reasons to feel good about it. Like orcs in most fantasy, the Kilrathi is a remorseless aggressor who can only be stopped with violence, thus justifying a gameplay scheme based entirely around killing.

In WC2 the idea is introduced that not all Kilrathi are like that; a defector Kilrathi, nicknamed "Hobbes", joins your crew and flies alongside you. In addition, there is a revolt in one of the Kilrathi colonies, suggesting that not all the Kilrathi support their totalitarian government. These simple additions transformed the Kilrathi from "100% merciless killers" to "99% merciless killers", a change that warranted some introspection. The game certainly addresses the issue, as Blair begins to question his own attitude towards the Kilrathi and the potential that peace could be reached.

[SPOILER ALERT]

One of the more troubling twists in the game is the fact that Hobbes turns out to be a traitor. While this is not by itself a bad plot twist, in context Hobbes is the only friendly Kilrathi that exists. Obviously a few other ones exist, but Hobbes is the only one that the player ever sees or talks to. As such, the ratio shifts from the Kilrathi being "99% merciless killers" back to "100% merciless killers, and also 1% duplicitous backstabbers".

Conclusion
Wing Commander is a game where you never actually command any wings and that legitimately bothers me. It bothers me because if you strip away the "space ace" stuff you have a pretty solid premise: a roster of well-characterized pilots fighting a serious war against an aggressor. The setting is compromised by the need to make the player feel better than everyone else, and if you took that element away and turned it into something more like X-COM, you'd have a better product overall.

Okay, done? Great. I just explained everything I feel about video games in one accessibly-written article.
 
That was a super preten
this from an article that was posted on the main page and one of my reasons for disliking the hobbes defect. once again it was not the fact that hobbes defected but the reason behind it that I thought was just lazy story telling

Quoting the ultra pretentious blog post mentioned on the front page is kind of lazy forum posting. :)
 
That was a super preten


Quoting the ultra pretentious blog post mentioned on the front page is kind of lazy forum posting. :)
just because an opinion differs from yours does not make it pretentious and I was merely pointing out that other gamers took the same issue I had with how hobbes was handled in the fiction, it was a lazy plot device pure and simple, much like batman taking the blame for harvey dent in the dark knight was a lazy plot device to make the third batman easier to write, but christopher nolan and his vastly overrated movies are another discussion for another day.

sidenote already saw interstellar and its was meh, but nightcrawler and birdman were great.
 
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just because an opinion differs from yours does not make it pretentious

No, his entire shtick being incredibly pretentious makes it pretentious. I don't necessarily disagree with the opinion.

Jdawg said:
and I was merely pointing out that other gamers took the same issue I had with how hobbes was handled in the fiction, it was a lazy plot device pure and simple

And I was merely pointing out that using that guy's blog to bolster your opinion was kind of silly. Forum complaining about professional product lazy storytelling is just one of those classic tedious internet tropes. Everybody knows that the traitor plot is lazy, not the least of which because it's used over and over and over and over in Wing Commanders 2-4, Fleet Action, etc.
 
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Was something like the personality overlay used in fiction in general before Wing Commander III?
If it wasn't, then that plot device was a rather original one. If not, then it was simply a plot device. ;)
 
Was something like the personality overlay used in fiction in general before Wing Commander III?
If it wasn't, then that plot device was a rather original one. If not, then it was simply a plot device. ;)
yes its been used many time the movie manchurian candidate immediately springs to mind
 
by the way wing commander 0ver all story is prob the best in the history of gaming to me, I think there has been better single story games, but as a series nobody is touching wing commander in my opinion. so the hobbes subplot was the only huge misstep in the entire 4 game arc. Im not really counting prophecy bc it was suppose to start a new trilogy I think. its like two writers had two entire different view pts on the kilrathi or the writer of wc3 hated what they did with hobbes in wc2. rather you think the blog is pretentious or not his pt has been my pt. as far as just the games, the kilrathi were just nameless faceless enemies to mow down. the writers of wc2 seemed to want to expand on the characters and give the player something to relate to, and show not all kilrathi are the same. then wc3 basically undoes all of that. its one of the reasons im enjoying the novels so much, it is bc the author spends just as much time on the kilrathi as he does the humans, and in fact I found their story to be more interesting in fleet action.
 
There's an expression in German: Zu viele Köche verderben den Brei. (Too many cooks spoil the mash)
I think that's often the case in many tv, movie, novel, comic and game series, resulting in many continuity errors and plot holes.
 
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