Quarto said:
Bah... am I the only one who's getting tired of all these new space sims following in Privateer/Freelancer's footsteps? Sure, games like that are cool, but with all these space sims coming out of the woodwork, why doesn't somebody try to make a new Wing Commander-style game?
Now there is some feedback I personally did not expect.
Granted the sense of having an open-ended game that is non-liniar is the fashion of things today, long term Wing Commander fans have always been fascinated by the concept of story telling to coincide with gaming.
Wing Commander prooved that this grand scale undertaking was certainly something that went on over the years.
Hello everyone, after that short introduction let me quickly introduce myself, I am Mirko Worsley, International Community Manager from Ascaron Entertainment GmbH situated here in Germany. I am 25 years of age and I have been a quite follower of WCNEWS over the years due to my passion for the Sci-Fi genre and the Wing Commander series itself. Believe it or not, my first ever game, on the now extinct Amiga 500 was Wing Commander. It blew me away and I have since followed not only the development of its successors (Owning an original copy from Wing 1 all the way to Wing 5) but also fan projects ranging from Privateer to for me personally eagerly anticipated WC Saga mod for the Freespace engine.
Anyways long story short, in my professional career I also look at the opinion of others concerning our titles. Either the ones that have been released or the ones going to be released. DarkStar One being one of them. I can imagine I am not one of the first people from developing firms to come in and say hi but I am an open kind of guy and since I am very fond of WC NEWS and here at Ascaron not the only one, I might as well give you one or two bits of information that are well, inaccurate in the news made in August:
First the Darkstar ship itself is and will be the only ship the player can fly. With 3 main upgrade modules (engines, hull and wings) the ship can be personalized in a number of different ways (especially since each of the 3 main sections can be upgraded up to 10 levels).
Secondly to the story itself. Yes it is similiar to Independence War 2 (well spotted btw.) but also different. There are elements in the game that differentiate it from IWAR2 especially concerning certain, shall we say plot twists.
There are over 400 systems in the game, each sector (containing several systems) boasts new challenges. Not only that the mission system in the game will make it easy to create storylines which run independantly from the main story, providing a nice change of pace, some hints at well, previous titles in the genre as well as indirect omages to the genre itself in some form or another.
Darkstar One is being created by Daniel Dumont the creative brain behind titles such as Patrician I through III as well as the Port Royale series. Any of you that have played them or even heard of them will find that Daniels keen attention to detail always prevails. Even though a rough outline of a game might not sound like much right now, it is a far fetch from what the end product will ultimatly look like
Anyway having said all of that I might even stick around and join in on the discussions of Wing Commander, its rumoured future and other tidbits floating about the web and Mr Roberts, if you ever read this, please go ahead and make another movie