Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Aside from those moments of Legend of Zelda though...
Before EA bought them, scrapped them, and a decade later turned their name into their Origin direct delivery service.
Origin's Wing Commander series is the game series that has shaped the way I think of and desire games for the rest of my life. Sadly, we will likely never see space combat with live action ever again.
LOL I never noticed the major Star Wars ripoff at the end of that segment when I was a kid. I was too busy being blown away by it.
|
The Wing Commander series is one of my favorite series of video games (possibly soon to be supplanted by Mass Effect). But the amazing thing is that you can really see the progress of video game technology as you played the game, as each new game was vastly improved over the previous game
Wing Commander 1 was just a pure space combat game with really primitive interaction with your crew mates, but had some really cool concepts such as rank promotion, medal ceremonies, and you could use your wing mates and have to attend their funerals.
Wing Commander 2 was a giant step forward with far better graphics, the same strong interaction, but they used graphical based movies to push forward one of the best story lines that I've ever seen in a video game. The combat was tougher especially against Capital ships as they were invulnerable to normal weapons and you had to use a bomber and torpedo that forced you to sit pretty still for 30 seconds while it locked on.
The combat was not quite as good as Wing Commander 1 as the AI wasn't as good and the Kilrathi were more likely to ram you then dog fight you. One of the biggest innovations was the addition of the speech pack that you had to buy separately.
Wing Commander 3 was a massive step up over 2 as the graphics were even more improved, but more importantly the story line was pushed forward through the use of FMV and starred Luke Skywalker, Biff Tannen, Malcolm McDonald, Ginger Lynn Allen and other well known actors. There was a massive twist three quarters of the way through the game, and you felt that no matter what happened you were going to lose the war.
With the end of the war with the Kilrathi, it was the end of Wing Commander right? Not true, Wing Commander IV was highly anticipated and well rewarded, one of the best and most tragic story lines in video game history to that point, the major improvement was that the FMV scenes were filmed using actual sets and it had a very movie like quality. The script writing was better and the combat was a lot better, you could no longer just turn and burn. The game also features a surprising twist, and the most tragic end to a video character that you will ever see. It also had multiple endings based on your actions in the game.
The next game was the often maligned Wing Commander Prophesy. The idea was to bring in a all new cast and it was the first time that you didn't play as Christopher Blair, but you played as the Iceman's (A character in the first game that was killed off) son. Unfortunately while the story was incredibly strong, the combat was really good and incredibly tough, the FMV segment was never completed properly and a lot of the in fight graphics were never completed. After that EA stupidly decided not to continue the series and we never really got closure on Chris Blair and the Nephilum.
[/youtube]jfdoCp0FOuA[/youtube]
Make no mistake Wing Commander was a historic game series, it also spawned about 7 excellent novels, a whole other series of games in privateer Privateer, a animated series and one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Its the one rare game that you really miss after its gone.