wing commander saga early review/thoughts

Jdawg

Commodore
this is about wing commander saga a fan made game and my thoughts on it.

I have completed 17 or 18 out of the 55 mission I think, which puts me at about a quarter of the way through the game. this includes the prologue and the main campaign of the game. this review will obviously contain spoilers so you all have been warned. for full disclosure I have just beaten wc4 from gog on hard the day before starting this game, so my skills are pretty sharp. I will break down this review from negatives, to positives, to general thoughts and curiosities. oh and I have played all missions on normal unless specified as otherwise. so lets get the bad out the way first with....

NEGATIVES

1. broken missions- we all knew this was coming mission 5 of the darkest dawn campaign. yes the dreaded protect the bombers mission DUM DUM DUM lol. I have read several threads related to this mission and after playing it ten times, with 5 of those times just trying to observe where the break downs happen, I have concluded this mission is broken. Now this is not an impossible mission to beat, just bc its broken does nt mean its un beatable and I want to make that clear from the start. First off this had the makings of a good mission. it was different than the destroy or protect missions. it had greywolf (one of my fav characters) and the ISS pilots were well voiced and acted with good dialogue that made me chuckle a little. the breakdowns happen only at the nav pt where the enemy cap ships are. now I was not an idiot I knew my goal was to protect the bombers from the fighters and I did (this is not where the mission breaks down) 3 outta 5 real attempts at this mission I managed to keep both bombers alive from the enemy fighters. where the break down happens is the wingmen AI, they are in an agile ship and fly in a straight line right at the carriers ( yes I know you are suppose to draw the cap ships fire) and I try but they both got shot down. what makes this infuriating is that usually I found the wingmens AI too not be bad like a 6 or 7 outta 10. but on this mission its like it was intentionally dropped. bc in previous missions my wingmen would defend ships and shoot cap missiles well. Its like these pilots didnt put any power towards their shields even though they are on a bombing run, (which I find funny bc in the run the blockade mission your wing commander tells you to put power to your shields.) now do you want to know how I know this mission is broken, well on attempt 10 I dropped it down to very easy, got to that way pt took out the cat fighters with ease and the first bomber took out the first cap ship no problem without me even helping. after that I flew over to the second cap ship and started blasting away, I took out all its turrets one by one and guess what no bomber ever dropped the torpedo to finish it. ( I had both sabres still alive) I then proceeded to fly around the cap ship for 15 mins just to see if the sabre ever would fire the torpedo, it did not so I finally finished it off. So like I said broken mission.

2. broken mission pt 2- this is not a broken mission as what I think is poor mission design. I am talking about the mission to destroy the cap missiles an drop ship on I believe vega(sp). From the start of the prologue it is hammered into your head to follow the orders of your superiors and the Col. of the elite strike group tells you to save your missiles, so I did. well after playing the mission and I could be wrong I think its impossible to destroy all cap missiles without using your own missiles and still having enough afterburn left to complete the other mission objective. Remember the hellcat has no glide mode. Also it seems that the devs epected you to fail this part and cover for it with the dialogue that follows after about the planet defenses will destroy them In fact the elite squad acts like its no big deal, and even your CO barely mentions it (well until the funny as hell de-brefing). I could be wrong here but I would love to see somebody on at least normal shoot down all the missiles while using no missiles and still have enough afterburn to complete the nedt two way pts.

3. dialogue and voice acting- some things on my list are positives and negatives, this is one. some of the VO and script writing is brilliant some is god awful, but one part is so bad that I had to dedicate a negative for it. Its the mission where your escorting the refugees out the system and the cats are throwing everything at you. eventually its reveled that you have the president of the vega colony on one of the transport ships.the resulting dialogue and voice work might be some of the worst/funny dialogue I ever heard. after the transport ship revels that the president kins on one of the ships, one of the ISS pilots go on one of the worst acted and horribly scripted rants ever. the final cherry on the top is the ISS pilot calling the girl transport pilot a TURD yes a TURD LOL. I laughed so hard then the major demands to know what ship he is on and the transport pilot explains to him like he is a child that the cats are prob listening and she wont revel what ship he is on. its so damn bad that its makes it hilarious like the movie the room lol.

4. Communication?- where I think the devs missed something important is communication, while I understand you are not the wing commander 9/10 times. you should still be allowed to ask for assistance (hell your wingmen ask for it all the time), it might have helped the two broken missions too if it was in there to ask for help. actually the two times I was the wing commander this game truly shined the brightest, it was awesome directing my wingman to attack my target or defend the base. I think the devs missed out on a golden ticket right there in my opinion.
now onto the..


POSITIVES

1. the prologue- I might be in the minority here but I love the prologue I think it set up the story great I loved the pace it went. from basic training to taking on pirates instead of the cats instantly, all of it was great to me. plus the final mission was just epic. thinking all is lost then seeing two confed ships enter and blast the cats to hell. to me its was just a perfect hit the right notes and know when to move on.

2. Voice acting. script- yes this was a negative but it can also be a positive. I really like greywolf as a character and the actor who portrayed him did awesome. I personally like the VA who does sandman, even though he talks he has a gordon freeman thing about him (gordon freeman is from half life) even though sandman talks he doesnt say a lot and I think that helps the player slip into his helmet so to speak. Now my biggest props to the devs and the actors go to the WOMEN. In most games the actors that portray women and children are down right horrible, (shenmue anyone lol). So far three of my fav Voice actors and characters have all been women. The first being sandman's girlfriend/fuckbuddy from the prologue lol. She didnt have much to do but I liked the actress and when the cats were closing in on her to make the kill you could hear the fear in her voice. In my opinion the writers and devs should have kept her alive a little longer it would have made her death have more impact. Second the girl com officer on your carrier the hermes is awesome I really like her too. finally the COl. from the the elite squad that helps you destroy the drop ship on vega. I loved the banter/flirting between her and the major aka your wing leader lol. I dont know if the devs used their Gfs/wives to voice act or what but sofar they all ben great.

3. graphics- Like I said I just came off of wc4 which still holds up well, but to m the ship designs and back ground blows that game out of the water. one of the things I love is watching cap ships go boom and having the blast radius. one of the things that bothered me about wc4 is the mission where you have to drop the bomb inside the cap ship vesuvius,and you take no damage. I love that this game has a blast radius. I also love that this game has a hull damage display so you actually know how close to death you are.

4. control- once again coming from wc4 where I had to fight tooth and nail to get my 360 controller to work, this game was great. easy to bind controls and set up deadzone and sensitivity. for a pt of reference I beat wc4 with a 100 kills with less than 15 percent coming from lasers. now in saga I have 63 kills so far and about 60 percent have been from lasers. just saying.

5. atmosphere- the atmosphere of this game is great so bleak and depression, even at wc3 darkest it was never this dark a publisher would never greenlight this depressing of a game. I love the atmosphere so much

6. devs knew thier strength- what I mean by this is they knew how logistically to tell a great story, they knew they didnt need to have you wondering around the ship talking to poorly animated pilots. I mean the briefings are bad enough having to look at the major give the mission, who im 95 percent sure is the great great great great great grandson of ken and barbie lol. they knew to keep that to a minimum and let the story fold out in battle.

7. SCOPE- this is my fav aspect of the game. this game captured the feeling of a war. in wc3 it never felt big it always felt small. In this game you as sandman feel just like a small peon in the great war effort of confed vs the cats. You dont have just one wingman you have wingmen. you dont just have one capship you have capships. I just love it most triple A games cant give you that feeling. in fact the last time I felt like just a peon was in medal of honor, when you are storming the beaches of Normandy.

GENERAL THOUGHTS AND CURIOSITIES

1. those fuckers came out of no where- (by the way that was a quote from 40 yr old virgin)lol. On the mission where your escorting the pres out of the vega system at one nav pt random cap missiles have already been fired at you, even though you see no bombers or cap ships. how did the cats know you were going to be right there do they have technology that knows where your going to be and if so why does confed not have these capabilities. do yo know how easy and great it would be if your cap ships could fire torpedos from two nav pts away at a target. I really wanna know about this.

2. kilrathi- this has nothing to do with the game itself just something im curious about. what type of race are these things. I mean from a character stand pt. On one hand they all about honor loyalty and never betraying their race and clan, basically the ultimate warrior, in fact they hate spies. on the other hand they use spies and often sneak and cowardly attack, its like they talk out both sides of the mouth. can any wing commander experts explain these things to me.


closing comment.

So far im 25 percent in and I freaking adore this game. you can tell its was made out of pure love. is there some problems sure, but it continues a beloved saga that we havent heard from in yrs and its FREE FREE FREE. I love this game and cant wait to give my full review but so far 9/10
 
Well, as a Saga team member my thoughts about it aren't exactly what you want I guess. Anyway, here's some random stuff:
It is hard to talk about the game, its design and its philosophy as a whole without having lots of spoilers in it, so I suggest you play a bit more if you like the game, because I think you haven't seen some of the stuff yet that causes the more extreme reactions people show when they talk about the game.

Some people like the game, some don't. I often get the impression that most of the die-hard old WC fans you'll find here don't like it, for several different reasons (in fact it might well be that lots of people here haven't even played it, or perhaps have only played a few missions. There wasn't too much reaction by the people here). So don't be sad if nobody wants to talk about it on these forums.

As for your question about the Kilrathi:
They are not as big of a sterotype as you may think. I suggest reading the Wing Commander books, they tell a lot of backstory about them.
And if you want to discuss more, we already have several threads discussing Kilrathi culture here, and I'd love to continue discussing my favourite space cats. :)
 
Well, as a Saga team member my thoughts about it aren't exactly what you want I guess. Anyway, here's some random stuff:
It is hard to talk about the game, its design and its philosophy as a whole without having lots of spoilers in it, so I suggest you play a bit more if you like the game, because I think you haven't seen some of the stuff yet that causes the more extreme reactions people show when they talk about the game.

Some people like the game, some don't. I often get the impression that most of the die-hard old WC fans you'll find here don't like it, for several different reasons (in fact it might well be that lots of people here haven't even played it, or perhaps have only played a few missions. There wasn't too much reaction by the people here). So don't be sad if nobody wants to talk about it on these forums.

As for your question about the Kilrathi:
They are not as big of a sterotype as you may think. I suggest reading the Wing Commander books, they tell a lot of backstory about them.
And if you want to discuss more, we already have several threads discussing Kilrathi culture here, and I'd love to continue discussing my favourite space cats. :)


as a saga team member your thoughts are exactly what I want to hear. and I cant believe wing commander fans wouldnt love this game even if they hate the difficulty of it. its obvious a lot of love and care went into this game.

1. I am a huge wing commander fan but I dont pretend to be the best aficionado on the series. here is my brief history. I beat wing commander 2 once. beat wc3 at least 5 times, and beat wc4 1o plus times (its my fav in the franchise). Also I have seen the terrible movie twice, and all episodes of the academy series when I was younger. Never read any of the books but I am playing thru saga and have tried the mod standoff as well.

2. If you have time and care to tell me more about the Kilrathi im all ears. I love the fact that they are not nameless bad guys without real motivation. It just seems that the cats are hypocritical in the fact that they say they are warriors and honorable and like a straight up fight. they also dont understand or care for spies at all yet thru the entire series they constantly use spies. I remember in the pilot of the animated show the cats use a traitor to gain access to the academy and at the end of the show the prince interrogates the spy and asks him why he defected and its obvious he does not understand how you can betray your own species, at the end the spy gets airlocked into sapce (battlestar galactica style lol),

3. as far as saga goes im on misison 3 of the loki system so im 19/55 missions done so im getting closer to 50 percent complete. and here is a brief review of the last mission I flew. Go on the offensive- this mission had us take the fight directly to the fur balls. our goal was to sweep the nav pts and make sure not one ship escaped alive. wow so many cats and so many enemy cap ships and so little time. the thing that made this mission so great is the variety at each nav pt. at the first nav put you had to quickly take out the cap ship sub systems so it couldnt destroy the confed jamming ship. the next nav pt you had to destroy the engines of two escaping transport ships before they could jump out and notify for back up. at the last nav pt. you had two additional enemy cap ships come thru the jump at you fleeing from another battle. they were already extremely damaged and ripe for the destroying. what made this mission even better is I completed all objectives and for the last two nav pts I had only 8 percent hull left. can you say sweaty palms. I was so careful landing on the hermes it was crazy. 11/10 yep this mission was that good to me.

4. could you also explain the random cap ship missiles at nav pts with no cap ships around. dlo the cats have some special technology to fire torpedoes from many nav pts away.


I look forward to talking to you more about this great game
 
Just to clarify: While I am a mission designer in that engine I did not design the missions for Saga, although I saw the evolution of some of them, which was quite impressive. I worked on some 2D stuff (like menus) and a little bit of proof reading and translating. So only a small role in the team. I don't know about every design decision Tolwyn and the other guys did over the years, so some things I won't be able to explain. I'll try though. :)

Having said that, let's see...

Concerning the Kilrathi: There are multiple aspects of this. One is that most Kilrathi would prefer tactics they see as honorable. But that only applies to honorable foes, and that's where personal opinions come into play: Some Kilrathi say the Terrans are just a prey species, so killing Terrans is hunting. And since hunting is not the same as fighting an honorable foe, everything is allowed to achieve their goals. Other Kilrathi disagree.

About the "random" capship missiles:
That's an interesting point. The idea behind those is that they are long range missiles, like the bio weapon missiles the Kilrathi use in WC3. So we know there are missiles with quite a lot of range, and the FS2 engine Saga uses is able to have them.
Some people really dislike those, but I personally think hunting missiles can be fun once in a while. Just not too often (I'll let you decide yourself whether Saga over-uses them or not).
In my Kilrathi mod for Saga (which I will hopefully release one day. I'm stuck since all people who offered me a bit of help never wrote me back) I have used them as well, but a bit differently.
 
Just to clarify: While I am a mission designer in that engine I did not design the missions for Saga, although I saw the evolution of some of them, which was quite impressive. I worked on some 2D stuff (like menus) and a little bit of proof reading and translating. So only a small role in the team. I don't know about every design decision Tolwyn and the other guys did over the years, so some things I won't be able to explain. I'll try though. :)

Having said that, let's see...

Concerning the Kilrathi: There are multiple aspects of this. One is that most Kilrathi would prefer tactics they see as honorable. But that only applies to honorable foes, and that's where personal opinions come into play: Some Kilrathi say the Terrans are just a prey species, so killing Terrans is hunting. And since hunting is not the same as fighting an honorable foe, everything is allowed to achieve their goals. Other Kilrathi disagree.

About the "random" capship missiles:
That's an interesting point. The idea behind those is that they are long range missiles, like the bio weapon missiles the Kilrathi use in WC3. So we know there are missiles with quite a lot of range, and the FS2 engine Saga uses is able to have them.
Some people really dislike those, but I personally think hunting missiles can be fun once in a while. Just not too often (I'll let you decide yourself whether Saga over-uses them or not).
In my Kilrathi mod for Saga (which I will hopefully release one day. I'm stuck since all people who offered me a bit of help never wrote me back) I have used them as well, but a bit differently.


thanks for talking with me about the game.

1. back to the cap missiles. I agree with you they can be fun to hunt down, but yes on some missions its overkill. for example the mission where you are getting the president and refugees out of vega, they have at least 2 maybe 3 way pts of nothing but missiles. as far as the mythology of long range missiles it does make sense, it just seems strange confed also doesnt have or employ these same weapons and tactics. it would be a lot easier destroying cap ships from a nav pt away lol. also correct me if im wrong but in the big picture I always thought confed was suppose to be more technology advance than the cats, the Kalrathi had the advantage in the numbers game. yet they beat us to cloaking, skipper missiles, and long range bio weapons. it always seemed to me they were more advanced than us. back to the mission design and cap missiles, firing long rage missile at a orbiting planet is one thing but how do the cats know exactly where the refugee ship was going to be and at what time to fire these long range weapons. maybe another spy perhaps?

2. Thanks for going into more detail about the Kalrathi with me, but it still dont add up if some just see us as a prey species, why would they need to feel they have to trick us. to put it in real world terms, that would be like a lion in africa, going up to a herd of gazelles and saying to their leader, "ok we are going to attack we will let yall get away if you allow some small tender stragglers to be left behind"
no the lion sees these animals as prey and wouldnt feel the need to trick them or make deals they would just attack and eat them lol.

now just a random thought the more I think about it Tolwyn was right in wc4, it was by pure luck we beat the Kalrathi. the admiral might have went about things the wrong way by using bio weapons on his own spices but, he was right it was more luck than skill that we won the war. plus when you factor in ten yrs after his death even more deadly foes come to attack and take over the galaxy in wc5, Just further shows how right the man was
 
as a saga team member your thoughts are exactly what I want to hear. and I cant believe wing commander fans wouldnt love this game even if they hate the difficulty of it. its obvious a lot of love and care went into this game.

Dislike amongst some here has nothing to do with the difficulty. Saga suffers in a lot of different ways. I played through this entire mod when it came out. While there are some moments, the majority of my experience wasn't the greatest.

A thread that goes into some of that can be found here https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/qs-anger-management-thread-chock-full-of-spoilers.26077/
 
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Dislike amongst some here has nothing to do with the difficulty. Saga suffers in a lot of different ways. I played through this entire mod when it came out. While there are some moments, the majority of my experience wasn't the greatest.

A thread that goes into some of that can be found here https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/qs-anger-management-thread-chock-full-of-spoilers.26077/


ok I dont want to read that yet bc like I said im only about at the half way mark. Im sorry you didnt like it. im having a blast so far myself. but there is still a ways to go
 
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Personally, I'd recommend the other WC mod, Standoff http://standoff.solsector.net/

To each their own.
tried it didnt like it that much if the acting and writing is bad sometimes in saga its downright atrocious in standoff. no doubt there have been some bad lines in saga but nothing compares to the opening lines of standoff, where the main character horribly Voice acted says something like of all the stars and all the systems she had to be here LOL. I was like what is this a cheesy daytime soap opera. now in the games defense Im only on mission 6 of standoff (I just destroyed the pirates base so I think thats mission 5 or 6) but the story has not captured me like sagas has. once im done with saga I will continue playing standoff.

but reading the forums and just from what I see, it seems if you like wc1 and wc2 better you will like standoff more, however if your fav games in the series is w3 or wc4 you will like saga better. and the thing that keeps me invested in saga is the story. has the story been cheesy at times yes, but im still really invested in it. My earliest gaming experiences besides mario and such were oldschool adventure games like monkey island, full throttle, the dig, and the blade runner game, plus games like wing commander 3 and 4 and metal gear solid, and as a movie junkie the story comes first to me even in videogames, which I know is backwards to most but it is what it is to me.
 
where the main character horribly Voice acted says something like of all the stars and all the systems she had to be here LOL.

'Bad acting' doesn't mean 'stuff I don't like'. Bradshaw's VA is quite reasonable, and as for the writing it is purposely Noir. If that's not your thing it's not your thing, but it's certainly not 'bad'. I'd say the objectively 'worst' thing about Standoff is its occasionally obnoxious difficulty, but that's kind of disregarding its intended audience.
 
'Bad acting' doesn't mean 'stuff I don't like'. Bradshaw's VA is quite reasonable, and as for the writing it is purposely Noir. If that's not your thing it's not your thing, but it's certainly not 'bad'. I'd say the objectively 'worst' thing about Standoff is its occasionally obnoxious difficulty, but that's kind of disregarding its intended audience.


its my opinion that the VA is bad and that line has been used in one way or another for many yrs its so cliched even many centuries in the future, it just drew me immediately out of the game sorry
 
fyi bad acting means bad acting I dont really like tom crusie but I wouldnt say he is a bad actor. I know the difference you can disagree with me but the only VA that "I liked so far" was your com station officer on your cap ship
 
im not trying to be a dick but I just watched the standoff trailer on youtube and these are the top two comments


is this game as bad as this trailer? the voiceover makes my toe-nail fall off!


For a fan project this is brilliant. Voiceovers are horrible though
 
fyi bad acting means bad acting I dont really like tom crusie but I wouldnt say he is a bad actor. I know the difference you can disagree with me but the only VA that "I liked so far" was your com station officer on your cap ship

That's fine, but there's unfortunate tendency to blame actors for shortcomings of writers or directors, or just dislike for the genre, especially when it comes to voice acting. It sounded like you blamed the VA when you really just dislike the genre. Just a pet peeve of mine.

im not trying to be a dick but I just watched the standoff trailer on youtube and these are the top two comments


is this game as bad as this trailer? the voiceover makes my toe-nail fall off!


For a fan project this is brilliant. Voiceovers are horrible though

Hehe, that's the youtubes for you.
 
That's fine, but there's unfortunate tendency to blame actors for shortcomings of writers or directors, or just dislike for the genre, especially when it comes to voice acting. It sounded like you blamed the VA when you really just dislike the genre. Just a pet peeve of mine.



Hehe, that's the youtubes for you.


its two fold the line is indeed bad but a good actor can save horrible dialogue and he did not it came across even more cheesy, by the way I like noir when its done well for instance one of my fav movies is LA Confidential and I liked the voice work in la noir which just so happens had the actor courtney gaines in it from wing commander 3 and the movie the burbs. I also like cheesy noir if its done with a wink and nod like the tex murphy games. this came across like the line was suppose to be taken serious. either way it was a horrible first impression to me.
 
Could we please not turn this into a Standoff vs. Saga thread?

So just shortly in defense of Standoff (and its predecessor, Unknown Enemy):
Voice acting: The people doing VA for Saga were mostly professionals, the people doing VA for Standoff weren't, I think.
Graphics: Well, another engine, and another artistic focus, also another time.
Writing: A matter of taste I guess. Usually the people complaining about "bad" writing in Saga like Standoff and the other way round.
Also I think you should check out the later episodes of Standoff, IMO things get a lot better.
I admit I never finished Standoff, I just was too badly out of shape when I played it, and so it was way too hard for me (have to try both Standoff and Unknown Enemy again when I got some more time...).
And certainly it has its weak points, I guess the Standoff guys themselves could name a dozen things they would do differently/better if they had the chance and the time now.
But I'm pretty sure the same goes for every mod project ever done.
 
im just saying the first missions in standoff did not grab me like the first missions in saga aka the prologue
 
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