Hobbes & Blair exchange

S

Shipgate

Rear Admiral
You know what scene I really like in WC3? Is the one where Blair and Hobbes are standing there in Locanda and Hobbes is all talking about raiding those planets years ago. It was such a nice and quite scene and seemed to reveal so much. Like the comfortable friendship between the two. It was really good directing.

There is something I never fully understood since I don't know WC history as well as many of you. When Hobbes defected, when was it decided that he would go back to the Kilrathi? Was it all part of some elaborate scheme? And if it wasn't, how was it arranged between he and Thrakhath that he would betray the humans for him. And if that was the case, how did Thrakhath know to trust him?
 
He was originally part of an 'identity overlay experiment'. Prince Thrakath had planned for him to defect to the Terran Confederation so he could get deep inside it's secrets. Once this was done, Thrakath removes the fake identity that (through use of a message he sends to the TCS Victory) Hobbes had been living. By speaking a small phrase, Hobbes mind ticks over to his true person and begins living as the Kilrathi he once was, at war with the humans.
 
It just seems sort of 'tacked on;' I mean, Blair was never referred to as the "Heart of the Tiger" before WC3, and Thrakhath refers to him as such when Hobbes isn't listening...
 
That was truly interesting. I've never seen that clip before. Are you saying then that it was only on that what was it...Sega CD version? Or was that game also on the Playstation. I don't remember. So did hearing Heart of the Tiger only work the if Thrakhath said it? Because surely Hobbes might have heard it before in the past. Since Blair knew that was what Thrakhath called him.

So is what you're saying is that after the Victory was infected by that worm and the prince appears on the screen, is that when Hobbes knows his true identity?
 
Yes, only when Thrakath says it. And yes, when the worm attacks the Victory's systems is when Hobbes finds out his true identity. If you go back and watch that scene again, as soon as Thrakath says "Heart of the Tiger", Hobbes looks like he just had a stroke. He freezes, and his eyes go wide. I noticed it the second time I played through the game, after I read through the novel which includes Hobbes's explanation.
 
During the False Truce kilrathi POWs were released but they did not know what to do. Being captured alive was as good as dying to the kilrathi. They were nothing to their clans. Kirha talks about this in FA when he meets up with Hunter, he also was the only other kilrathi to defect with Hobbes.

Hobbes is a different case because of the personality overlay, but if things had gone different and Thrakhath had not activated his true personality he would have most likely stayed with the confederation.
 
I do remember Hobbes' reaction to that. And always found it interesting. I just figured though he was recongizing some Kilrathi gesture that brought him back or something. How could then that locker scene not be in the game? I wondered for a long time why Hobbes defected back to the Kilrathi. I just pretended in my mind that he missed his homeworld so much and he managed to secretly contact Thrakhath for a chance to redeem himself. Then I figured he would let him and die honorably somehow. But that he would never let him live, er something. It's always interesting when you don't have the entire story and it leaves you wondering.

Ahh, such as in Dune: Chapterhouse. At the end I was like, yeah...so what next...? Back then I thought it was intended to be the last book. So I became content just wondering where things went from there.
 
There's been something sinister about Hobbes all along - go back and read the segment where he's introduced in Freedom Flight... he's being interrogated by an officer at Ghorah Khar who believes that he's a traitor - and then Thrakhath himself shows up sight unseen to free him.
 
I bought and read the WCIII Novel while I was in the middle of playing through the game for the first time and played through the rest of the game in denial about Hobbes. I admit I cried when he defected.

A few years later I started reading the other novels, and I read Freedom Flight and I wondered about Kirha in Freedom Flight. Because when they defect he comes with Hobbes. Knowing already that Hobbes defection was false I always wondered about Kirha too, he his defection and dedication to a human was false as well.

I like to think (based on the reading of Freedom Flight) that Kirha never had the same kind of personality overlay that Hobbes did and thus never betrayed Hunter (though I suppose Hunter dies in FA so that really doesn't matter) but you never really know for sure. Maybe LOAF has an explanation.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
I bought and read the WCIII Novel while I was in the middle of playing through the game for the first time and played through the rest of the game in denial about Hobbes. I admit I cried when he defected.

A few years later I started reading the other novels, and I read Freedom Flight and I wondered about Kirha in Freedom Flight. Because when they defect he comes with Hobbes. Knowing already that Hobbes defection was false I always wondered about Kirha too, he his defection and dedication to a human was false as well.

I like to think (based on the reading of Freedom Flight) that Kirha never had the same kind of personality overlay that Hobbes did and thus never betrayed Hunter (though I suppose Hunter dies in FA so that really doesn't matter) but
you never really know for sure. Maybe LOAF has an explanation.
Click to expand...

Kirha never wanted to defect, but he was loyal once given over to Hunter. Loyal enough to commit suicide once he heard his lord was dead. :D
 
Kirha wasn't "brainwashed" so his dedication to Hunter was real... The honor code was specially important to him. I've only read Freedom Flight a couple of months ago, and the Hobbes torture scene putted things is perspective for me. Especially the part when Thrakhath sends him free.
 
Shipgate said:
That was truly interesting. I've never seen that clip before. Are you saying then that it was only on that what was it...Sega CD version? Or was that game also on the Playstation. I don't remember.
Click to expand...

There was no SCD version. WC3 was released for the PC, Macintosh, Playstation, and 3DO.

As for why it wasn't included, CDs for use in PCs, at the time, had a smaller capacity than console system CDs, so some parts had to be trimmed to fit the game onto the available disc capacities when WC3 was released. The locker clip was one of them.
 
Yup, back in the day people still used first generation 1X CD drives... which could only read 60-minute discs. Video had to be cut from WC3, which included the Hobbes scene and all of the newsbriefs (and a few other snippets).

Console systems, which used standardized drives, didn't face that limitation.
 
One can never understand the Kilrathi enough.
Click to expand...

I never understand the coming of the relationship of Kirha and Hunter (I'm not asking about the story given reason).
The Kilrathi are some of xenophobes and their codex only counts by them and by no lower race (exceptions exist, but only by species who own the respect of the Kilrathi), as they saw the humans as a lower race.
I think, the author wanted to make a sympathic insight about the Kilrathi for the main reader audience.

I don't think, a novella would sell well, if it's only written in the sight of the Kilrathi, inclusive their special behavior - and the Kilrathi haven't a grandious future in WC - they are only canonfodder and the evil enemy.
 
Spien said:
The explaination was missing from the PC version of the game for some reason or another.
Click to expand...

Someone thought the elevator scene was more important... :(

Seriously now, I can understand the CD capacity limitation but that scene was a key one, they shouldn´t have scrapped it from the game, specially when they kept the scenes with Blair going in and out of the elevator, the elevator going up and down, and Vaquero´s boring speeches about his cantina...
 
It's little wonder that Hobbes defecting is such a source of contraversy in the WC fan base. He's a character that they really lured you in to trust and respect and befriend him only to smash all of that to pieces. I remember being just as angry as Blair when Hobbes was revealed to be the traitor and even though at the time I assumed not chasing after him was the right choice I couldn't help but hunt him down out of rage anyway. Every time I replay Wing Commander 2 or 3 I can't help but want to believe that he's not going to betray the Confederation, even though I know what happens.

I remember at the moment hating that it happened but in retrospect it's probably one of my favorite moments in gaming history. Few games can pluck your strings like that.
 
I never understand the coming of the relationship of Kirha and Hunter (I'm not asking about the story given reason).
The Kilrathi are some of xenophobes and their codex only counts by them and by no lower race (exceptions exist, but only by species who own the respect of the Kilrathi), as they saw the humans as a lower race.
I think, the author wanted to make a sympathic insight about the Kilrathi for the main reader audience.
Click to expand...

Eh, it's hard to take any sort of issue with Freedom Flight - the Kilrathi didn't really exist as anything but 2D black-and-green VDU screens before Ellen Guon did anything with them.

Someone thought the elevator scene was more important...

Seriously now, I can understand the CD capacity limitation but that scene was a key one, they shouldn´t have scrapped it from the game, specially when they kept the scenes with Blair going in and out of the elevator, the elevator going up and down, and Vaquero´s boring speeches about his cantina...
Click to expand...

Eh, it's not a valid comparison. For one, the elevator scene is really, really tiny. It has almost no movement or color. For two, it's something that's on every CD...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top