Who Would You Be? (January 25, 2006)

[ChrisReid]

Our new poll asks what sort of role you'd choose if you appeared in the Wing Commander universe. The pilot option might seem to be an easy choice, but exciting things happened to many different types of Wing Commander people. Marines and Bartenders are currently in a fight for second place.

Our traditional New Years Poll stuck around longer than usual, which always skews the numbers towards the less enthusiastic options. Despite this, results continued to improve. Votes for the more optimistic choices have almost doubled in the last two years. 2006 will be the biggest year for the CIC since it was founded, so no matter which box you checked, we're glad you're here with us.

What kind of year will 2006 be for WC?

Great: 24.21%



Good: 16.11%




Average: 17.14%



Poor: 30.78%



Unsure: 11.76%




Total Votes: 1173

​

--
Original update published on January 25, 2006

 

[Unregistered]

A huge WC RPG 1st person mostly like Deus Ex, would be cool I think, including flight sim and marine tactical stuff.



Too bad eh... but one day they have to make a game that good.

 

[ChrisReid]

A first person game like Deus Ex isn't an RPG, and games that feature both tactical and flight sim elements in any serious fashion have bombed. It's hard to make one game that's good. It's much harder to combine several game types and have each of them pan out.

 

[meisdavidp]

Way to kill dreams Chris. Someday it'll happen and Mr. Unregister will come back just to say "I told you so."

 

[Tripmeister]

I was stuck between wing commander and Bartender... while it's great to fight the fights and bring home victory/whatever... i think it'd be equally as interesting to hear everyones side of the story. A bartender would probably have more knowledge of whats going on in the war than even some admirals... shotglass for example.

 

[PeteyG]

A first person game like Deus Ex isn't an RPG, and games that feature both tactical and flight sim elements in any serious fashion have bombed. It's hard to make one game that's good. It's much harder to combine several game types and have each of them pan out.

Deus Ex definitely doesn't fit well into any one box... but I think it's hard to argue that it isn't an RPG.

You gain levels. You pick skills. You buy weapons/equipment. You play a character in a story. You choose how your character deals with situations. You affect how the story unfolds. I'm really having a hard time seeing how somebody could think Deus Ex ISN'T an RPG. What's your reasoning here, Chris?

 

[Shipgate]

Does being a wing commander in Wing Commander mostly just mean you have a wing of fighters under your command? Like your own squad?

Can you be a wing commander despite what your rank is? Or do you need to at least be a lieutenant or captain? I"ve always been curious about that.

 

[CataclysmX]

Too bad

There isn't an option for just "Pilot".

I'd like to fly the planes, but not deal with all the deaths and having people "under your command" die. Sometimes its better to be just given work instead of giving it out. Writing home those letters to mom, "Sorry your son died because he was an idiot".

 

[TopGun]

Way to kill dreams Chris. Someday it'll happen and Mr. Unregister will come back just to say "I told you so."

All Chris said was that it hasn't worked in the past, get a grip

Can you be a wing commander despite what your rank is? Or do you need to at least be a lieutenant or captain? I"ve always been curious about that.

Remember that in Wing Commander you are a the Wing Commander of Alpha Wing, and you are a Second Lieutenant

 

[Lt.Death100]

Deus Ex definitely doesn't fit well into any one box... but I think it's hard to argue that it isn't an RPG.

You gain levels. You pick skills. You buy weapons/equipment. You play a character in a story. You choose how your character deals with situations. You affect how the story unfolds. I'm really having a hard time seeing how somebody could think Deus Ex ISN'T an RPG. What's your reasoning here, Chris?

You shoot people in a first person perspective.

 

[PeteyG]

You shoot people in a first person perspective.

I'm not arguing that it isn't an FPS, I'm arguing that it is an RPG (whatever that means).

 

[Lt.Death100]

I'm not arguing that it isn't an FPS, I'm arguing that it is an RPG (whatever that means).

RPG stands for roleplaying game.

 

[PeteyG]

RPG stands for roleplaying game.

I was making a comment on the nebulous nature of roleplaying games. What does the term roleplaying mean when applied to video and computer games? Is it really roleplaying if you play a fixed character on a fixed storyline? Is it really roleplaying if your character has no statistics like AC or dexterity associated with them? Where do roleplaying games end and adventure games begin? Is character skill and level advancement all that is required for a game to be considered an RPG? How much does the method of conflict resolution matter (in Deus Ex's case, it would be partially through first person combat)?

So yeah... I wasn't indicating any ingorance of what the acronym stands for. I'd love it if you could help me to answer my other questions though.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I don't think RPG can mean any game where you play a role... because, lets face it, that would be almost every single game. I suppose people throw it around more and more because 'G' isn't as sexy an acronym...

It's like classifying some movies as 'fantasy' -- I'm sure you can technically argue that just about any movie is *a fantasy* per the meaning of the word... but doing so makes labels alltogether pointless. Certain forms of Russian criticism aside, language isn't science.

I would argue that Role Playing Games are those that owe a significant amount to classic roleplaying -- Dungeons and Dragons and such... whether that means in terms of their fantasy elements or a particular method/freedom/complexity of character creation.

 

[AD]

I would say Deus Ex and Freelancer both have role-playing game elements, yet I don't think I would describe either as an actual RPG.

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, you certainly do things in Deus Ex that you might find in something I'd call an RPG, but I wouldn't think of Deus Ex as an RPG really. If you open up your definition too broadly, you end up with way too many games that can be defined as RPGs.

There isn't an option for just "Pilot".

We had exactly that option in the first draft of the poll. It seemed to have too much overlap with "Wing Commander" and we had too many poll choices as it was. In hindsight, we probably could have even taken off the Wing Commander option to make the poll more interesting.

[14:10] <ChrisReid> I think I like that
[14:10] <KrisV> Forgot marine?
[14:11] <ChrisReid> hmm
[14:11] <ChrisReid> starting to get too many choices
[14:11] <ChrisReid> maybe replace Pilot with Marine?
[14:11] <ChrisReid> I can see a lot of people voting Wing Commander instead of Pilot
[14:11] <KrisV> Yeah
[14:12] <ChrisReid> mmkay
[14:12] <Cpl_Hades> Yeah, that works
[14:12] <KrisV> Polling

 

[Unregistered]

Does being a wing commander in Wing Commander mostly just mean you have a wing of fighters under your command? Like your own squad?

Can you be a wing commander despite what your rank is? Or do you need to at least be a lieutenant or captain? I"ve always been curious about that.

It depends on how you define "wing". In the later games, the WC was basically the CAG (Commander Air Group), the person in command of the ship's fighters and pilots.

In the original WC, I think it was a little more fuzzy because Halcyon was the CAG and he'd assign a wingman on your "wing" and put you in charge of the mission. He could have meant that a "wing" is you + your wingman on the mission, or that he was just going to be flying in formation next to you (ie. just off the actual wing of your craft).

As for CAG, in the US military, you have to be at least an Lt. Colonel to be the CAG *under normal circumstances*.

If they're short on ranking officers or the CAG gets himself killed or incapacitated and the highest ranking person left is a LT.JG (lowest rank to be a military pilot) with 2 weeks more seniority than the rest of the newbies in the squad, then he's it until someone more qualified shows up. Military chain of command. Sometimes, just to make sure that there's no confusion about who's in charge, this person would get a temporary field promotion to a suitable rank. This would be a s... hits the fan scenario though.

 

[TopGun]

Even in Prophecy, you had different wings. Casey was Alpha Wing Leader and Stiletto was Omega Wing Leader