Panther and Hawk's morale in WC4 : An attempt at a more detailed analysis

AD said:
That's all outlined in the original post of this thread. In context the BL ending is what he refers to as the "bad" ending and the flight instructor ending is the "good" ending. Which ending you get is tied to Hawk and Panther's morale.
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Thank you! I know what you wrote about the morale and how it is linked to the both endings. In my previous post I was not referring to the game mechanics themselves, but to the story, sorry if that was not clear. We have been following Blair since WC1 and we know he is an honorable person, yet in the BL ending he just out of the blue becomes an Admiral and casually orders putting down a rebellion. If there was a scene or two when Hawk's morale is high showing us Blair doubting his own actions or the BW cause (eg talking to Hawk and admitting that Tolwyn may have a point) or getting a message from Tolwyn telling Blair it is not too late to rejoin Confed, then the BL ending would make sense from a storytelling perspective. All I am saying is that this ending does not follow from the story and from Blair's actions as the only questionable decision, in my opinion at least, is destroying the Ella superbase --although I take the Circe path, I can understand why another Intrepid captain would chose to go to Speradon.
 
There's a Vonnegut quote that's showing up a lot these days that is exactly what they were going for: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

Tolwyn is a man with good intentions who has become a monster because he was willing to do horrible things and excuse them because he was sure of those good intentions. So if Blair makes the same kind of choices--even knowing he's a good person right now and is doing this only because it's necessary--he becomes exactly the same thing. I would go so far as to call it a losing endgame instead of a winning one; it's revealing something the player has done wrong.

One of the criticisms that Chris really took to heart from Wing Commander III was that the choices didn't feel like they impacted the bigger game. So they looked for opportunities to do more in Wing Commander IV, dropping much of the background morale stuff and instead focusing on choices that made bigger changes to the game right in front of you. (One of Hamill's go-to stories for the Prophecy press junket was about how he'd be confronted by people who insisted Blair would never have made so-and-so choice in the game... and he was like but I'm playing you, you made that decision!)
 
Very interesting story, I didn't know that.

Also I can see the connection to Tolwyn, especially now that I have read the novels. Still I would find it a bit more plausible, especially for someone who has not read the novels or their first game was WC4, if there were some hints
 
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