New Poll Focuses on Iconic Briefings (April 16, 2011)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
There's a new poll today that asks which 'wing commander' delivered the best mission briefings. Colonel Halcyon had the original games on lock, but there was more diversity in Wing Commander 2 and even Paladin got in on the action in Special Operations. Eisen, Blair and Wilford are sprinkled here and there in the later games. Commander Drake is the last one we see, but Clippy delivers some of the best lines in Secret Ops. Who was your favorite?
















The old poll asked what setting would be the best for the next Wing Commander, and a pre-WC1 timeframe won out! The decade spanning WC1-2 and a post-Secret Ops game were also quite popular.




What setting would you prefer for the next WC game?


2629-2653 (Early War)
30.47%
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2654-2667 (WC1-2)
20.62%
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2668-2670 (WC3/P1)
12.72%
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2671-2680 (WC4)
6.70%
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2681-2700 (WCP/SO)
19.56%
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2701-2789 (Arena)
3.91%
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2790-2800 (P2)
6.02%
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Ended on April 16, 2011 | 1329 votes




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Original update published on April 16, 2011
 
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There was just something about Halcyon's briefings that really made you feel like you were part of the team. One of dozens of well-trained pilots who all had their parts to play in mission after mission. You weren't that sole person at the center of the Confed war effort. You were just Iceblade or Maverick or whatever your callsign was.

Although a few of Clippy's lines were just awesome especially the one about the carriers near the end or that 'conversation' with those transport captains.

Black Wasp: 500 million credits
ELRIR missiles: 10 million credits
Listening in as some lowly transport captain gets rimmed out by your CO: Priceless
For some things, money can't buy; for everything else, there's Clippy.




*I know I know, the Mastercard thing has been done to death, but it just seemed so fitting.*
 
As tough as these polls can be sometimes, this time it was easy for me: Peter Halcyon was the best. It felt the most appropriate somehow, serious enough with some sprinkles of situational comic relief, it felt natural to me. And the red lighting (or red walls) added suspense.
 
I'm shocked Eisen is winning! I thought Halycon would be a shoe in. Must be those people who didn't start with WC1! :D
 
I think the results will even out between these two, but I don't see any of the others getting anywhere close.

Eisen was pretty good and Benard's permission was suburb and enjoyable. Also those briefings (esp. the ones in WC3) did feel immersive and realistic. You are the wing commander, so getting a one-on-one briefing with the captain and then going off to the briefing room to brief the individual flights fits in pretty well. Still, the briefing consisted of you and usually one wingman doing a mission and not much else. Jeez, were there only 8 pilots on board. :p

All of the others (excluding Prophecy/SO) felt more like

CAG/WC/Captain: Okay Blair, go out and take care of all of those capships. Everybody else, go do some patrol work or something, we don't really need you guys cause the Kilrathi will focus on Blair anyway.

Dang, no wonder people hated him in Wing Commander 2. He got all of the missions. Heck, even the game pointed this out at one point. :p
 
The WC1 briefing is more "real" as it comes to briefings, but Eisen did it longer and made it more personal.

The WC2 briefings were a bit weird, only a few times do you enter a "real" briefing, the rest of the time it was as if they approached you in person and send you on some errand mission.
 
The WC1 briefing is more "real" as it comes to briefings, but Eisen did it longer and made it more personal.

The WC2 briefings were a bit weird, only a few times do you enter a "real" briefing, the rest of the time it was as if they approached you in person and send you on some errand mission.

Angel does have her own briefing room and podium that comes up fairly frequently, but for the time, WC2's knack for finding casual & unique ways to kick off a mission was pretty great.
 
The WC1 briefing is more "real" as it comes to briefings, but Eisen did it longer and made it more personal.

The WC2 briefings were a bit weird, only a few times do you enter a "real" briefing, the rest of the time it was as if they approached you in person and send you on some errand mission.

I always figured there was still the regular briefing, just that we don't see it. For whatever reasons, there was probably issues that needed kept secret or discussed in private before the proper briefing.

WC1 also glossed over parts of the briefing when other pilots got their assignments. But we don't assume that they didn't happen because we didn't see it.
 
Joining the series of games late shouldn't really have anything to do with which briefing style you prefer. I started on Wing Commander 1 when it came out but I prefer the WC3/4 Eisen briefings purely because they're well acted and interesting. WC1 briefings were good for it's time but if you put them in Wing Commander 3 it's look very wrong, Prophecy briefings were a bit of a throwback to the original game's style and IMO they were the worst of the lot, didn't help that it had a very amateur cast.
 
Joining the series of games late shouldn't really have anything to do with which briefing style you prefer.

I think people who started with the series before WC3 remember when the WC1 or WC2 briefings really were cutting edge. If someone started with briefings at WC3, I could see how they don't have quite the attachment to Colonel Halcyon the others do.
 
I always liked those briefings in X-Wing where the static bitmap of Admiral Ackbar would float there and you'd have to read a big block of text... *ducks*
 
They were all good, but the eye-straining blue Halcyon on red walls just holds a special place in my heart.
 
Guy Siner who played Gruber also voiced "imperial officers" in several Star Wars games (he made briefings in TIE Fighter). And this is something you can't unhear.

I always enjoyed that show. You don't happen to have a sound bite of one of those briefings - you've stirred my curiousity now.
 
I also struggled a bit and decided in favor of Captain Eisen. But it was a tough one because I really like Halcyon, too.

The briefings in WC1 were so good, I still remember how I felt hearing the music playing and the animated Colonel looking at me telling me what to do. It was a quite moody experience, you felt like on a warship.
Eisen was different. But his strength was telling me WHY it was important what I was doing. I could feel that i was responsible for what happened.

Fun fact 1: Since I am German and couldn't read any English (I just had been to school for one year or so) Wing Commander forced me to learn English in order to understand what the Colonel was saying.
From that point on I had a lot of fun learning different languages. I blame Wing Commander for my early interest in foreign languages, and especially English, which gave me a huge advantage compared to the other kids when I finally had to learn English in school a few years later.

Fun fact 2: Falcon 3.0, Wing Commander and a few other English games added a lot of military words into my vocabulary, which caused quite a few frowns from my teachers.
 
I always figured there was still the regular briefing, just that we don't see it. For whatever reasons, there was probably issues that needed kept secret or discussed in private before the proper briefing.

We see regular briefings in WC3... it's where Blair choose his wingman from. I imagine Halcyon had holodesk talks with his captain too, when the Claw had one, anyway. :p

I always liked those briefings in X-Wing where the static bitmap of Admiral Ackbar would float there and you'd have to read a big block of text... *ducks*

Heh, me too. I was for some reason a bit sad when they didn't do the same in Tie Fighter, even though the game was all sorts of better. Looking back, it was most likely for the best. ;) I was sure Ackbar actually moved around and pointed at stuff with his... pointer-thingy, though... was that added in a later version or am I confusing it with something else?

As for the poll, WC1, no doubt about it. It was something about the way the game worked. In WC2 and onwards you pretty much watched a film about Blair doing stuff, while WC1 made you feel like *you* were the main character, sitting in the briefing room, feeling the suspense and anticipation. It was all very fluid and immersive, and the music was just perfect. Also, Halcyon was incredibly awesome.
 
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