Except... Did anyone else feel like Prophecy was really short? At least, after playing WC3 and WC4? I remember finishing it and thinking "that's it?”
It’s interesting that you say that! In terms of the sheer number of missions you must play (and the number total) Wing Commander Prophecy is one of the longest Wing Commander games… beaten only, slightly, by Secret Ops! But I certainly know what you mean: the game feels much quicker because there’s less video and what there is isn’t anywhere near as ‘important’ as Wing Commander 3 or 4.
Here’s some quick I’m-in-a-plane numbers for the different games, which is pretty fascinating. Note that this list doesn’t include simulator missions.
Wing Commander I - 18 missions / 40 total
The Secret Missions - 16 missions / 18 total
The Secret Missions 2: Crusade - 18 missions / 18 total
Wing Commander II - 31 missions / 47 total
Special Operations 1 - 16 missions / 20 total
Special Operations 2 - 16 missions / 20 total
Wing Commander III - 37 missions / 50 total
Wing Commander IV - 28 missions / 47 total
Prophecy - 34 missions / 52 total
Secret Ops - 36 missions / 56 total
What’s interesting is that in terms of building the games, they all pretty much take the same amount of mission design work: 40-50 missions. What happened is that after Wing Commander I, they looked at how people actually played and realized they were devoting over 50% of dev time on missions the average player will never experience. So you have the later games all being much longer for the basic play through, but having fewer ‘losing’ missions to go back and discover.