TCSTigersClaw
Greek Special Forces B' Company "Naoussa" 2007-200
mmmmmm......Let me think about that
WingCommander-Simulator ? ?
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Orbiter.
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html
There aren't any truly "realistic" space combat simulations, just because no one knows how space combat will actually be fought. However, there are some games that try to stay within the confines of known physical laws as much as possible, and which try to maintain consistent use of fictional technology. The I-War games are good examples of this design style, although they tend to be rather linear and are filled with puzzle missions.
I've never played WC4, but neither WC3, Prophecy, or Privateer could possibly be considered "realistic", except in comparison to something like Space Invaders or Xevious.
It doesn't matter. The Wing Commander games were intended to be interactive sci-fi movie / adventure games, not training materials for NASA. And they succeeded brilliantly at what they set out to do. OK, Prophecy was more of a near miss, but it was fun too.
Mekt-Hakkikt
Mpanty's bane
Wow, I have that one. You could spend hours watching the Shuttle being transportated to the start platform! That was realism. And very boring! 
(Of course, you could accelerate time)
(Of course, you could accelerate time)As a movie, I found Prophecy lacking. The story, characterizations, acting, direction, script, all felt substandard. Had I paid eight bucks to watch the movie in a theater, I would have felt ripped off. I didn't believe in any of the characters, so what happened to them in the story didn't make any difference to me.
I seem to remember reading that the WC/P team wanted to "return to the roots" of the WC series and make something that was more of a pure sim and less of an interactive movie. I think that was a mistake. It was the feeling of being part of an interesting story that separated Wing Commander from its imitators. The combat sequences alone were not interesting or varied enough to carry an entire game.
It was fun, but a near miss. In my opinion.
Yes, Ender, you are quite correct. I wasn't trying to provide an exhaustive list of Newtonian combat sims, just a single example. Of course, neither Terminus nor IWar can truly be called "realistic" because they don't simulate a real world activity. However, they do at least try to be more realistic than just another arcade experience, and they succeed pretty well at that.
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
You think it was a mistake. Many people (and not just the tiny number who visit this CZ) felt this was a good thing, that III and IV, especially IV, had far too much FMV in them. That the Prophecy FMV didn't result in the highest quality is not the fault of the design team.
As for me, I don't really care, I liked both the FMV and the gameplay (in all the main games), although I will admit that it is difficult to achieve a balance, impossible to find a balance which pleases everyone.
Frosty
a full fledged GF
Then I would think it most fortunate that Prophecy was not a movie, but a game.
If I lived in some horrible place where movie tickets cost me eight dollars, I'd feel ripped off every time I went to the movies.
It was a lot more than just having a story that made WC different. In any case, you shouldn't need gigs of FMV to make the story interesting.
OK, if you say so.
I never said that, nor did I mean to imply it. Obviously there are plenty of books and text-based computer games that have fascinating stories with no FMV at all.
However, if a game developer decides to include a story, and if they choose to tell that story with FMV cutscenes, then they are responsible for the quality of those cutscenes. And, in my opinion, the story and cutscenes in Prophecy were unsatisfying.
Now, I could spend a lot of time picking apart individual performances, pointing out directorial gaffes, and identifying story and script problems. But I don't expect that it would convince you that my opinion is somehow valid and that yours isn't. And I don't even want to convince you of that because it isn't true. I'm only telling you all this because you asked for an explanation.
The bottom line is that you enjoyed it and I didn't.
And here in Irvine, movie tickets are $8.50.
Well, of the WC games, I've only played WC3, the original Privateer, and Prophecy. And I haven't finished any of them (nothing against WC, with my schedule I rarely have time to play more than about five or six missions of any game I buy).
So keeping my comments to just WC3, I would say that the story and characters were more interesting than in Prophecy. The characters seemed to care about their situation, and took interesting steps to deal with it. That in turn made me care more about them. I also thought the performances were somewhat better in WC3. The actor playing Casey turned in a serviceable performance as the "everyman" point-of-view character. But in general I prefered Eisen, Vagabond, Vaquero, and Flint to their counterparts in Prophecy.
I realize that the WC3 characters are just as much cardboard cutouts as in any other sci-fi yarn, and from a critical standpoint they are no worse than those in Prophecy. Yet they worked for me. As a rather limited analogy, I had the same kind of reaction to the characters in Star War IV vs Star Wars I. Or the original Star Trek series vs any of the more recent shows. Perhaps I just prefer the kind of stories that I grew up on.
Gosh, this is an awful lot of ink spilled over something as trivial as my opinion of Prophecy! Wasn't this thread supposed to be about the simulation aspects of Wing Commander?
1. Just to clarify, I said that paying 8 dollars to watch the Prophecy movie cutscenes in a theater would have been a ripoff. Someone reading your above statement might misconstrue it to mean that I thought Chris Roberts' WC movie was a ripoff.
2. I never made any statement as to whether Prophecy the computer game was a ripoff or not. I didn't particularly enjoy the overall presentation, but I didn't feel ripped off by it as a game. It was comparable to other games that I have spent 40 to 50 dollars on.
3. You probably don't know enough about my personal life to be able to understand my economic value system.
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