Least favorite WC?

[Ghost]

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
I’m not really sure why people attack the ‘plot’: Prophecy has a great plot.

The people mistakes lack of FMV with lack of plot
WCP was very good, excelllent graphics, ships, and a good story

 

[Lynx]

Ghost's right

WCP needed more cutscenes on different places of the ship, you only saw the bar and the CIC in the game. I would have loved seeing the bridge of the Midway.

And the game lacked confed capships.

 

[HeartoftheTiger]

I don't think that WCP had a bad plot (while I have to admit that I liked the plot of 2, 3 and 4 more), but it just did too less to draw me in. The keyword is CUTSCENES! I never really could identify with Casey. I missed the interaction between the characters, like esp. in WC 3 and WC 4. There was not a single mission after which you didn't meet someone and talked with him about the current situation. I mean, who would've cared about Vaquero's death if you would have never talked with him about his dreams, etc.?

The one thing which made ALL WC's so special for me, was what happened BETWEEN the missions. You really cared for all the people you met, you definitely didn't want to fail, didn't want any of them to die (not even maniac! *g*). Unfortunately, that's exactly where WCP lacked in my opinion, and that's why I never enjoyed playing it as much as the ones before...

 

[Lynx]

They should have taken over at least some of the ships from WC 3/4. It would have been cool to fight the bugs in a Thunderbolt instead of the Panther, though i liked it.

And i missed neutron guns...I like them very much.

 

[Supdon3]

They made up for the lack of Confed ships in SO, and they did it wonderfully. In what other WC game do you see Confed flying fighters that werent on the ship you flew off of?

 

[Skyfire]

I though Prophecy was a great game in both plot and gameplay, SO could also kinda be counted in there as it has what everyone around here always says they want, a small group of fighters taking on a nearly unbeatable force. (Even if you get assistance.)

I loved Prophecy as well as all the other people saying so, although (as before mentioned) I disliked the characters. After a while, I'm sure I'd get used to them.

 

[Mav23]

some people have said that they haven't been able to relate or "get into" the Prophecy main cast, well, part of this may be that they only have ONE game. Well, some did return for SO, but it was just their voices (which makes it harder to relate). With time, I'm sure I would of appreciated Casey and co. just as much as Blair and Friends

 

[Bob McDob]

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
I love Prophecy, too.

I’m not really sure why people attack the ‘plot’: Prophecy has a great plot.

Aliens attack – mysterious aliens who we don’t understand. They slaughter en-masse, with no interest in communicating with us. That’s a great setup.

The first half of the game is very much about how regular people *react* to the situation. Dallas can’t take it. Hawk is suddenly haunted by the horrors of the last war. Maniac re-adopts his defense weapon, his ‘Maniac’ persona. Zero blames his father. Maestro drinks. Blair can’t stand the Tolwyn role – the idea of sending his people out to die without going with them. For the first time since, say SM2, we see people *really* reacting to the confusion of war – it’s not “Oh, aliens, lets go kill them!”… the characters are troubled, and I like this a lot.

The second half is the coming of age tale – very simple, effective and necessary. The grizzled veterans of the Wing Commander universe pass the torch to the new guys – and they do it well. Hawk, for all his turmoil, is the first and only character who really finds peace with the Kilrathi war (an essential idea of WCIV) – and it’s thanks to a member new generation. How symbolic is that? It’s about *closure* -- we serve with Cult of Sivar pilots… the Kilrathi who refused to accept the surrender. Maniac accepts that putting on his charm cannot make him a good leader. Blair realizes he cannot be Tolwyn and goes out in a blaze of glory, saving our new characters. Consider: Prophecy *started* with a clear conflict among the unsure new and haunted old characters… and through the actual conflict of the game, the new people were accepted and the old’s demons extracted. Prophecy ends with a now confident Maestro, Casey and Stiletto ready to take on the enemy.

Yeah...except it's been used roughly EIGHT HUNDRED TIMES before...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Originally posted by Bob McDob


Yeah...except it's been used roughly EIGHT HUNDRED TIMES before...

Oh, yeah, that's right, it's *way* less original than all the games set during the war.

It's just an essential fact: when you reduce everything to its most basic elements, there are only so many storylines. This is never an excuse to complain about anything. If anyone actually cared, no one would watch anything show, play any game or read any book.

 

[Bob McDob]

Yeah...that's right, no? Homeworld stole everything from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, and yet it r0x0r3d, because the execution was WACK...erm, I mean top-notch. I just felt WCP's plot execution was lacking...badly...but that's just me. At the least, I guess we should stop knocking things like Freespace because the plot's "not original"...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I think we knock Freespace because it rips off the gameplay of WC *without* the characters and storylines that make our series great.

 

[Eder]

The part of WCP that throws me off isn't the plot itself, but things such as that as soon as you encounter the fearsome aliens, you trash 10 of their ships, your sensors can read their armor and shield data, which apparently work just like the humans' stuff. Then, a couple of missions later, there are the fearsome aliens again, taking the time to throw inconsequential sentences (in english...) at you, using 100% compatible communications technology. Then you meet an alien capship, and guess what? Yeah, only torpedoes and plasma guns can damage it - just like human ships - and it has a bridge and an engine (or at least equivalents) which (like the launchers on alien carriers) can be identified instantly by your sensors, locked on, and damaged by your torpedoes, in the same way you'd damage any human ship, except that the alien ships have shield emmiters - which, despite nowhere to be found in human technology, seem just as identifiable by human sensors.

Honestly, the aliens in Freespace were more fearsome, IMO. Too bad it had no atmosphere between the missions... On the other hand, WCP had a lot of atmosphere... but it all boiled down to differently colored ships and bugs instead of cats.

--Eder

 

[Bob McDob]

Maybe it's just me, but I hated the superthick shields...it took too long to chew through a Manta, and you can ram one with full afterburners without taking much damage... It's like bumper ships or something!

 

[Eder]

Originally posted by Bob McDob
Maybe it's just me, but I hated the superthick shields... It's like bumper ships or something!

Takes all the fun away from ramming stuff, huh?

--Eder

 

[Mav23]

yeah, I mean... geeze, now we have to actually *shoot* at our enemies in a space *shooter*! Man!

 

[Bob McDob]

It's just I'd rather face hundreds of Remora than several Devil Rays, ya know what I mean?

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

I'll agree with Eder on WCP's problem: In-game, there was absolutely no sense of threat or unknown when battling the bugs, yet the cutscenes and in SOPS the fiction tries to tell us that the bugs are very dangerous and we're battling for our lives. It didn't fit.

And Bob: Super thick shields? The bugs have very very weak shields compared to the Confed fighters (excluding the Ray). IIRC the Manta has just as much shield as the Piranha.

 

[junior]

Originally posted by Eder
The part of WCP that throws me off isn't the plot itself, but things such as that as soon as you encounter the fearsome aliens, you trash 10 of their ships, your sensors can read their armor and shield data, which apparently work just like the humans' stuff. Then, a couple of missions later, there are the fearsome aliens again, taking the time to throw inconsequential sentences (in english...) at you, using 100% compatible communications technology. Then you meet an alien capship, and guess what? Yeah, only torpedoes and plasma guns can damage it - just like human ships - and it has a bridge and an engine (or at least equivalents) which (like the launchers on alien carriers) can be identified instantly by your sensors, locked on, and damaged by your torpedoes, in the same way you'd damage any human ship, except that the alien ships have shield emmiters - which, despite nowhere to be found in human technology, seem just as identifiable by human sensors.

Honestly, the aliens in Freespace were more fearsome, IMO. Too bad it had no atmosphere between the missions... On the other hand, WCP had a lot of atmosphere... but it all boiled down to differently colored ships and bugs instead of cats.

Much as I love Freespace (and I have been involved ever so briefly in an argument about it on these boards), its probably a good idea to keep the comments about it to a bare minimum. I agree that the Shivans come across as more ominous, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the Shivans are actually winning right up until the end, whereas the Nephilim spend most of WCP losing.
Comments about similarities in human and alien ship design can be answered this way. A rose by any other name is still a rose. I don't care if you call it a shield generator, a force field projector, or even the big black thingamabob. To Confed in WCP, its a shield emitter, and its the thing that powers the shields on the ship. Its kind of difficult to hide where the energy to power the shield is coming from, and even if you haven't seen the blue prints of the ship, the basic sensors on your fighter could probably pin point it.
And with regard to the comms... Since the Nephilim are the ones who take the time to translate their taunts into English, and since the Nephilim have had plenty of opportunity to study Confed and Kilrathi transmission technology (they've boarded and captured a number of individuals and facilities prior to the Midway's first encounter with them), I don't see a problem here.

 

[Eder]

Originally posted by Mekt-Hakkikt
I'll agree with Eder on WCP's problem: In-game, there was absolutely no sense of threat or unknown when battling the bugs, yet the cutscenes and in SOPS the fiction tries to tell us that the bugs are very dangerous and we're battling for our lives. It didn't fit.

Thank you, that was exactly what I was trying to say! All the fiction and the cutscenes are made to make you think that the bugs are death incarnate, but as soon as you jump into the cockpit, you see that they simply aren't. How am I going to believe in what the cutscenes say and think of them as a dangerous opponent when in-flight (which is still what's important in a space sim, if you ask me ) they act like target drones? It doesn't fit.

Originally posted by junior
And with regard to the comms... Since the Nephilim are the ones who take the time to translate their taunts into English, and since the Nephilim have had plenty of opportunity to study Confed and Kilrathi transmission technology (they've boarded and captured a number of individuals and facilities prior to the Midway's first encounter with them), I don't see a problem here.

Er, the problem here is not so much with the language of the taunts, or the way they are transmitted: the fact that they take the time to taunt their enemies strikes me, as a long time WC fan, as predictable, not as alien. It's what the cats did. There's nothing "alien" to that, and IMHO it detracts from the sense of being fighting an unknown and dangerous foe... Even though most of their taunts are quite threatening, they're supressed 2 and a half laser shots later by the sound of their ships exploding.

--Eder

 

[junior]

Originally posted by Eder

Er, the problem here is not so much with the language of the taunts, or the way they are transmitted: the fact that they take the time to taunt their enemies strikes me, as a long time WC fan, as predictable, not as alien. It's what the cats did. There's nothing "alien" to that, and IMHO it detracts from the sense of being fighting an unknown and dangerous foe... Even though most of their taunts are quite threatening, they're supressed 2 and a half laser shots later by the sound of their ships exploding.

I, on the other hand, got a completely different sense from them. Since there were no bug cutscenes, conversations, or anything else of that nature, we know next to nothing about them. A similarity to Kilrathi culture is to be expected (since the Nephilim apparently set the Kilrathi on their course), and taunts are pretty much part and parcel of WC features. So the taunts don't really surprise me. What I like about them is that they give an ever so slight view into their culture. While I can't remember any of their taunts off the top of my head (the only thing I can remember at the moment is the 'This death means nothing...' thing they say sometimes when they die), their taunts gave me the impression of a culture that was involved in testing Confed for some greater purpose - as if everything they did was to find out if Confed were 'worthy', and if Confed wasn't, humanity would be destroyed. While we may not know the whys or hows, it provides the only bit of personality that you really get with the bugs, and for that reason, I'm glad they left the taunts in.