8 ms·

Wing Commander IV

80 points by doppp 4y ago

civilized 4y ago
I like the Wing Commander series better than Star Wars, and Blair in WC4 was Mark Hamill's greatest role as far as I'm concerned. Wing Commander is space without the opera. It's humanistic and free of woo. There are no supernaturally gifted gurus wielding magic. The good guys do not seem predestined to win. Everyone in this big cosmic drama is just an ordinary person (or other sentient being) muddling through familiar problems. Seems like this reviewer wanted the movie parts to be more wacky and fun. Given that the premise is essentially (spoilers) space Nazis attempting a coup, I'm not sure how this would have made sense. If you want wacky fun, there are plenty of other space movies that will oblige you.
- tomca32 4y ago
  I agree. I enjoyed WC4 even though it went a bit overboard with fmv but the story held up and both Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell were amazing. The senate scene at the end when Tolwyn breaks is just great. Gameplay and story wise I really think WC2 is by far the best in the series. The camaraderie between characters is just beautifully portrayed, and so many moments of betrayal, death, and tragedy were very emotional. I will wait for you in heaven…
- npsomaratna 4y ago
  Mark Hamill was fantastic in both WC3 and 4. Both games had other stellar actors as well—John Rhys-Jones, Malcolm Dowell, etc. At times, the acting rivaled that found in a mainstream move. On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game) also had acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars movies. In comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s) had blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time. What a bummer.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    My immediate impression of all Malcom McDowell characters is “they must be evil” until we learn more about them through the plot of a movie. All because he was evil in WC3. And that’s my touchstone for him.
  - taeric 4y ago
    It really made for a head scratcher for how bad the movie was.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Acting in JK was hit and miss IMO, or maybe it was writing or directing. Either way, I don't recall it being well received. Still, I'm glad they tried and yet also glad they went back to CG. BTW, OpenJKDF2 is a nice way to play today, with some modern enhancements.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Don't forget Tom Wilson!
    - dwringer 4y ago
      Too bad he couldn't have at least a Golden Globe for that role or something.
  - kreskin 4y ago
    Don't forget about Ginger Lynn. She was great in WC and all of her other films.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      "All her other films" wink wink
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game) Second game! It was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. The first one (Dark Forces) had charming 2d animated cutscenes. The second (Jedi Knight) had live-action video cutscenes. > also had acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars movies. I remembered really liking them, but on revisiting the game a couple years back... well, if you haven't seen them in a while, give them another look. > In comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s) had blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time. What a bummer. But much, MUCH better lightsaber fighting.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  I distinctly remember that Wing Commander had "good guys" not winning paths. My second most frustrating experience in that game was intentionally choosing that path and managing to succeed on the final mission after umpteen tries (you have a crappy ship and overwhelming odds), only to have the landing autopilot fly me into the side of the Tiger's Claw. RIP. The most frustrating part was getting halfway through the campaign, only to discover that disk 10 was corrupt. I had to send away for a new one, which was a bit of a process because companies at the time were loathe to give additional physical media to avoid piracy. It took about 3 months to finally get the new disk.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    Lol. I had the corrupt CD problem during my play through of "The Longest Journey". I appreciated the irony, as it added several months to the experience.
  - sillywalk 4y ago
    Also, I believe in the original Wing Commander, if you lost a mission, the next branch of the mission tree would be harder.
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      I played through original WC in the early 2000's, trying to win all missions. I got stuck on one that you really were meant to lose(escort, large numbers of attackers meant you had to execute with speedrun precision to have a chance) and stopped there. Later I looked more carefully at the walkthroughs and learned that the campaign progresses along the win path if you win most of the missions in the sector - you don't have to get 100% of them. I always admired the series for its world-building sensibilities. It's simple stuff - Star Raiders had the essence of the gameplay in 1979 - but injected with a lot of atmosphere.
      - genedan 4y ago
        Even if you "win" that mission, you get the losing cutscene and the commander chews you out for not meeting your objectives even when you did and are put on the losing path - at least that's what happened in my copy of the game, so it wouldn't have been worth the effort.
bitwize 4y ago
"Break formation and open fire!" "Won't even know what hit 'em!"
kriro 4y ago
Me and my friend, both poor HS kids at the time pooled money to buy this game, played it over the weekend and returned it :P It was a great game and we felt so clever for "beating the system" but we didn't even leave the store with the money as we immediately spent it on Warcraft 2 which we kept and played forever.
- AustinDev 4y ago
  Remember when you could 'rent' games? I remember renting games all the time and then copying the discs so I could play them after I returned them when I couldn't afford a certain game.
  - nu11ptr 4y ago
    While it is true I couldn't afford the games I played as a teen, I'm confident I would have pirated them anyway. It had less to do with the game, and more about the conquest. When you discovered that a certain game had a keygen or was cracked, and you could get it for free, there was a certain rush of endorphins that would occur. Many of these games went mostly unplayed in my collection while I moved on to see what else I could get (if I recall, I did most of my searching on IRC and the games were downloaded via DCC, but my memory is getting fuzzy on the details). What nostalgia... that was back when piracy went mostly unpoliced as only the uber nerds were doing it or knew how (just remembering we called pirated software "warez" back then).
  - ilyt 4y ago
    MS gamepass is essentially that now
    - sitzkrieg 4y ago
      ehh having to use it on a machine that has ms store enabled and run their fat client to download 50s of gb games is quite different in many ways. while months at a time for a game is nice it feels more as a data collection spigot and loss leader for onboarding users, vs a fun weekend rental
    - 4y ago
rythmshifter 4y ago
Hug of death?
- gabereiser 4y ago
  looks that way
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/tz7YY https://archive.ph/tz7YY
jmull 4y ago
Hm... a review of Wing Commander IV that is 26 years late and bafflingly off-base! (and hugged to death). HN totally delivers on a slow Friday for me.
- rideontime 4y ago
  What's bafflingly off-base about it? I haven't played it so I'm not disagreeing, that's just a very harsh criticism without any elaboration.
  - civilized 4y ago
    For my part, I just don't get the point of writing this. Within the part of the article that's actually about the game, the author does basically nothing but scoff at things like the "workmanlike", "not ... subtle", "primary colors" nature of the story, or the "cheap, sparse, painfully plastic-looking sets", or how the characters use the callsign rather than the full real name of a fallen soldier during a funeral. There is almost nothing there about the story itself or its characters. I played this game a lot as a teen, and I thought the story had a lot of deeply sympathetic characters and emotionally resonant themes. It felt great to be the protagonist who uncovers fascist treachery at the top and averts a war. It felt great to do that with a team of comrades who shared your values and vigorously debated tactics. None of that gets a single word in this review. Of course not everyone is going to agree about what's a good movie, but I thought it deserved better than a collection of nitpicks that doesn't engage with the story at all. It seems like the critic just wanted the game/movie to be in a different genre, something more sophisticated or "subtle" with more "shades of gray"? But what's the point of that? It seems like criticizing Saving Private Ryan for not being Apocalypse Now or Starship Troopers. Okay, it's not the type of movie you wanted to see, I guess? But isn't it a little cliche, in itself, to reflexively disdain everything that is straightforward rather than meta, ironic, deconstructive, and self-referential?
    - StrictDabbler 4y ago
      You probably haven't been reading The Digital Antiquarian over the past five years. The site is an enormous dissertation on the art of interactivity. You could call it an attempt to put every major development in narrative gaming into context for their era. Jimmy Maher went all the way back to the early Plato-era mainframe games. He's covering everything from Adventure to Zork. [I'm joking, those two games happened almost at the same time.] But for "the point of writing this", that's why. It's a history of all the major games and being included in it is a pretty serious endorsement of Wing Commander IV's cultural value. In the context of the history of interactivity Wing Commander IV doesn't do that well. They spent a ton of money to make a game that's arguably less interactive than the earlier games in the series. That was how the 90s went. More and more money spent on bad full-motion video, fewer and fewer actual game choices. It's hard not to snark on the production values when they spent $12 million to make it. Again, it's a historical account... videogame budgets for absolute classics six years earlier were like $100k if you were lucky. It doesn't matter if it's a fun and enjoyable game. It's part of the fall of adventure gaming. That's the story.
MBCook 4y ago
The main thing I remember about Wing Commander 4 was it came on quite a few CDs. Something like 6? All due to the video. I remember thinking it would make much more sense on a DVD, but I’m guessing nowhere near enough people had DVD drives at the time and it would have destroyed sales.
- tgorgolione 4y ago
  Interestingly enough, they actually did release a version on DVD with full MPEG-2 video (more info here: https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/13753 https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/13753), but it was an extremely special edition that I think only worked with hardware MPEG-2 decoders. Nowadays, you can play this version with software decoding using some community hacks, but the GOG.com version has the high quality video and has done all the work for you. EDIT: I was partially wrong. After reading the article, there was a version that was essentially all of the CDs' data on one DVD, but that was replaced with the version I mentioned.
  - smackeyacky 4y ago
    I had that 2nd DVD (have? will have to dig around in the shed). I played the daylights out of the earlier Wing Commander games but IV was...underwhelming despite all the hullabaloo about it being some kind of major breakthrough in interactive fiction. It probably came bundled with a creative DVD set that included an MPEG decoding card and required some kind of video passthrough. https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/creative-ct7240-what-it-is-and-what-its-for-demystified.22984/ https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/creative-ct7240-wh...
meitros 4y ago
I remember the early previews of sc2 had the same type of interactive movie interaction as wc4 - being able to select a conversation option from either the top or bottom of the screen. They eventually scaled back a bit, but the wings of liberty campaign structure was definitely influenced by wc4
hijinks 4y ago
i hated how the final mission was a trench run and they had Mark Hamill as the main actor. It just felt like the designers just gave up.
bloodyplonker22 4y ago
The only thing I remember from this game is how I heard "Eat shit and die gato" 1000x.
smrtinsert 4y ago
I remember feeling betrayed that Luke Skywalker had joined another sci fi franchise. Enjoyed the first WC until X-Wing came and blew it out of the water.
bigmattystyles 4y ago
WC in the general series were all great, but the first game (edit, first space sim I played I mean) where you had to grind that I ever played was Privateer and that was the greatest for a 12 year old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer Later on, I really enjoyed Freelancer but by then I was older and it didn't have the same effect on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)
- lobmo78 4y ago
  I remember playing the hell out of 3 when it came out, but for some reason we were disappointed with 4. If I remember right, when this came out, we had built a huge IPX network in a three story office building, and after business hours would smoke weed and play Descent, Dark Forces, and Hexen all night. Good times for sure!
- bhaak 4y ago
  Freelancer was pretty cool but the (pretty short IIRC) single player story felt like a prelude and when it finished there was nothing meaningful left to do. I always suspected that the game was developed with a multiplayer first approach and the single player mode seemed like an addon. Which was a pity I would have liked to explored this universe more.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Freelancer shared a lot of the same hype cycle as Star Citizen has had (and used a lot of very similar rhetoric from Chris Roberts). I know I didn't buy into Star Citizen's hype because I certainly remembered Freelancer. Ambitions versus practical reality versus available budgets.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  Privateer was just utterly amazing to 12-year-old me. After years of playing Wing Commander games on rails, it felt incredible to finally be free to see the open universe and the perspective of the ordinary citizens. My only disappointment with it was that it only had some of the military and Kilrathi ships from the main games. Such a good experience, hard to imagine replicating it these days - both because modern games are different, and because you only get to be 12 once.
Tepix 4y ago
Decades after Wing Commander, Chris Roberts went on to launch a crowdfunded space simulation game called Star Citizen in 2010. It is still in early buggy unpolished alpha state after all these years, despite (or because?!) raising more then half a billion dollars. Too bad.
- jdlshore 4y ago
  That’s uncharitable. It has raised that half billion dollars continuously over the years since it launched, and spends it on development. They’re up to something like 500 developers, mostly artists, level designers, and the like. (They have <100 programmers, last I heard.) The game is incredibly ambitious in terms of both content and technology. The game is playable, if very buggy, and release an updated alpha version every quarter (except recently, due problems with introducing global persistence). Funding has steadily increased as those alphas have become steadily more capable. It’s an open question whether the game will ever meet its lofty goals. But it’s disingenuous to imply that the game isn’t making progress.
  - Tepix 4y ago
    It's not making any progress towards completion or even the end of alpha status. Proof in point: Their roadmap doesn't even have these goals.
  - Espressosaurus 4y ago
    The original timeline had a release date of 2014 or something. I don't think it's being uncharitable to call out that they're still years away from release 10 years after their nominal release date.

80 points by doppp 4y ago

I like the Wing Commander series better than Star Wars, and Blair in WC4 was Mark Hamill's greatest role as far as I'm concerned. Wing Commander is space without the opera. It's humanistic and free of woo. There are no supernaturally gifted gurus wielding magic. The good guys do not seem predestined to win. Everyone in this big cosmic drama is just an ordinary person (or other sentient being) muddling through familiar problems. Seems like this reviewer wanted the movie parts to be more wacky and fun. Given that the premise is essentially (spoilers) space Nazis attempting a coup, I'm not sure how this would have made sense. If you want wacky fun, there are plenty of other space movies that will oblige you.

tomca32 4y ago
I agree. I enjoyed WC4 even though it went a bit overboard with fmv but the story held up and both Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell were amazing. The senate scene at the end when Tolwyn breaks is just great. Gameplay and story wise I really think WC2 is by far the best in the series. The camaraderie between characters is just beautifully portrayed, and so many moments of betrayal, death, and tragedy were very emotional. I will wait for you in heaven…
npsomaratna 4y ago
Mark Hamill was fantastic in both WC3 and 4. Both games had other stellar actors as well—John Rhys-Jones, Malcolm Dowell, etc. At times, the acting rivaled that found in a mainstream move. On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game) also had acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars movies. In comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s) had blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time. What a bummer.
- MBCook 4y ago
  My immediate impression of all Malcom McDowell characters is “they must be evil” until we learn more about them through the plot of a movie. All because he was evil in WC3. And that’s my touchstone for him.
- taeric 4y ago
  It really made for a head scratcher for how bad the movie was.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Acting in JK was hit and miss IMO, or maybe it was writing or directing. Either way, I don't recall it being well received. Still, I'm glad they tried and yet also glad they went back to CG. BTW, OpenJKDF2 is a nice way to play today, with some modern enhancements.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Don't forget Tom Wilson!
  - dwringer 4y ago
    Too bad he couldn't have at least a Golden Globe for that role or something.
- kreskin 4y ago
  Don't forget about Ginger Lynn. She was great in WC and all of her other films.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    "All her other films" wink wink
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game) Second game! It was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. The first one (Dark Forces) had charming 2d animated cutscenes. The second (Jedi Knight) had live-action video cutscenes. > also had acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars movies. I remembered really liking them, but on revisiting the game a couple years back... well, if you haven't seen them in a while, give them another look. > In comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s) had blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time. What a bummer. But much, MUCH better lightsaber fighting.
fatnoah 4y ago
I distinctly remember that Wing Commander had "good guys" not winning paths. My second most frustrating experience in that game was intentionally choosing that path and managing to succeed on the final mission after umpteen tries (you have a crappy ship and overwhelming odds), only to have the landing autopilot fly me into the side of the Tiger's Claw. RIP. The most frustrating part was getting halfway through the campaign, only to discover that disk 10 was corrupt. I had to send away for a new one, which was a bit of a process because companies at the time were loathe to give additional physical media to avoid piracy. It took about 3 months to finally get the new disk.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  Lol. I had the corrupt CD problem during my play through of "The Longest Journey". I appreciated the irony, as it added several months to the experience.
- sillywalk 4y ago
  Also, I believe in the original Wing Commander, if you lost a mission, the next branch of the mission tree would be harder.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    I played through original WC in the early 2000's, trying to win all missions. I got stuck on one that you really were meant to lose(escort, large numbers of attackers meant you had to execute with speedrun precision to have a chance) and stopped there. Later I looked more carefully at the walkthroughs and learned that the campaign progresses along the win path if you win most of the missions in the sector - you don't have to get 100% of them. I always admired the series for its world-building sensibilities. It's simple stuff - Star Raiders had the essence of the gameplay in 1979 - but injected with a lot of atmosphere.
    - genedan 4y ago
      Even if you "win" that mission, you get the losing cutscene and the commander chews you out for not meeting your objectives even when you did and are put on the losing path - at least that's what happened in my copy of the game, so it wouldn't have been worth the effort.

bitwize 4y ago

"Break formation and open fire!" "Won't even know what hit 'em!"

kriro 4y ago

Me and my friend, both poor HS kids at the time pooled money to buy this game, played it over the weekend and returned it :P It was a great game and we felt so clever for "beating the system" but we didn't even leave the store with the money as we immediately spent it on Warcraft 2 which we kept and played forever.

AustinDev 4y ago
Remember when you could 'rent' games? I remember renting games all the time and then copying the discs so I could play them after I returned them when I couldn't afford a certain game.
- nu11ptr 4y ago
  While it is true I couldn't afford the games I played as a teen, I'm confident I would have pirated them anyway. It had less to do with the game, and more about the conquest. When you discovered that a certain game had a keygen or was cracked, and you could get it for free, there was a certain rush of endorphins that would occur. Many of these games went mostly unplayed in my collection while I moved on to see what else I could get (if I recall, I did most of my searching on IRC and the games were downloaded via DCC, but my memory is getting fuzzy on the details). What nostalgia... that was back when piracy went mostly unpoliced as only the uber nerds were doing it or knew how (just remembering we called pirated software "warez" back then).
- ilyt 4y ago
  MS gamepass is essentially that now
  - sitzkrieg 4y ago
    ehh having to use it on a machine that has ms store enabled and run their fat client to download 50s of gb games is quite different in many ways. while months at a time for a game is nice it feels more as a data collection spigot and loss leader for onboarding users, vs a fun weekend rental
  - 4y ago

rythmshifter 4y ago

Hug of death?

gabereiser 4y ago
looks that way

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/tz7YY https://archive.ph/tz7YY

jmull 4y ago

Hm... a review of Wing Commander IV that is 26 years late and bafflingly off-base! (and hugged to death). HN totally delivers on a slow Friday for me.

rideontime 4y ago
What's bafflingly off-base about it? I haven't played it so I'm not disagreeing, that's just a very harsh criticism without any elaboration.
- civilized 4y ago
  For my part, I just don't get the point of writing this. Within the part of the article that's actually about the game, the author does basically nothing but scoff at things like the "workmanlike", "not ... subtle", "primary colors" nature of the story, or the "cheap, sparse, painfully plastic-looking sets", or how the characters use the callsign rather than the full real name of a fallen soldier during a funeral. There is almost nothing there about the story itself or its characters. I played this game a lot as a teen, and I thought the story had a lot of deeply sympathetic characters and emotionally resonant themes. It felt great to be the protagonist who uncovers fascist treachery at the top and averts a war. It felt great to do that with a team of comrades who shared your values and vigorously debated tactics. None of that gets a single word in this review. Of course not everyone is going to agree about what's a good movie, but I thought it deserved better than a collection of nitpicks that doesn't engage with the story at all. It seems like the critic just wanted the game/movie to be in a different genre, something more sophisticated or "subtle" with more "shades of gray"? But what's the point of that? It seems like criticizing Saving Private Ryan for not being Apocalypse Now or Starship Troopers. Okay, it's not the type of movie you wanted to see, I guess? But isn't it a little cliche, in itself, to reflexively disdain everything that is straightforward rather than meta, ironic, deconstructive, and self-referential?
  - StrictDabbler 4y ago
    You probably haven't been reading The Digital Antiquarian over the past five years. The site is an enormous dissertation on the art of interactivity. You could call it an attempt to put every major development in narrative gaming into context for their era. Jimmy Maher went all the way back to the early Plato-era mainframe games. He's covering everything from Adventure to Zork. [I'm joking, those two games happened almost at the same time.] But for "the point of writing this", that's why. It's a history of all the major games and being included in it is a pretty serious endorsement of Wing Commander IV's cultural value. In the context of the history of interactivity Wing Commander IV doesn't do that well. They spent a ton of money to make a game that's arguably less interactive than the earlier games in the series. That was how the 90s went. More and more money spent on bad full-motion video, fewer and fewer actual game choices. It's hard not to snark on the production values when they spent $12 million to make it. Again, it's a historical account... videogame budgets for absolute classics six years earlier were like $100k if you were lucky. It doesn't matter if it's a fun and enjoyable game. It's part of the fall of adventure gaming. That's the story.

MBCook 4y ago

The main thing I remember about Wing Commander 4 was it came on quite a few CDs. Something like 6? All due to the video. I remember thinking it would make much more sense on a DVD, but I’m guessing nowhere near enough people had DVD drives at the time and it would have destroyed sales.

tgorgolione 4y ago
Interestingly enough, they actually did release a version on DVD with full MPEG-2 video (more info here: https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/13753 https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/13753), but it was an extremely special edition that I think only worked with hardware MPEG-2 decoders. Nowadays, you can play this version with software decoding using some community hacks, but the GOG.com version has the high quality video and has done all the work for you. EDIT: I was partially wrong. After reading the article, there was a version that was essentially all of the CDs' data on one DVD, but that was replaced with the version I mentioned.
- smackeyacky 4y ago
  I had that 2nd DVD (have? will have to dig around in the shed). I played the daylights out of the earlier Wing Commander games but IV was...underwhelming despite all the hullabaloo about it being some kind of major breakthrough in interactive fiction. It probably came bundled with a creative DVD set that included an MPEG decoding card and required some kind of video passthrough. https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/creative-ct7240-what-it-is-and-what-its-for-demystified.22984/ https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/creative-ct7240-wh...

meitros 4y ago

I remember the early previews of sc2 had the same type of interactive movie interaction as wc4 - being able to select a conversation option from either the top or bottom of the screen. They eventually scaled back a bit, but the wings of liberty campaign structure was definitely influenced by wc4

hijinks 4y ago

i hated how the final mission was a trench run and they had Mark Hamill as the main actor. It just felt like the designers just gave up.

bloodyplonker22 4y ago

The only thing I remember from this game is how I heard "Eat shit and die gato" 1000x.

smrtinsert 4y ago

I remember feeling betrayed that Luke Skywalker had joined another sci fi franchise. Enjoyed the first WC until X-Wing came and blew it out of the water.

bigmattystyles 4y ago

WC in the general series were all great, but the first game (edit, first space sim I played I mean) where you had to grind that I ever played was Privateer and that was the greatest for a 12 year old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer Later on, I really enjoyed Freelancer but by then I was older and it didn't have the same effect on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)

lobmo78 4y ago
I remember playing the hell out of 3 when it came out, but for some reason we were disappointed with 4. If I remember right, when this came out, we had built a huge IPX network in a three story office building, and after business hours would smoke weed and play Descent, Dark Forces, and Hexen all night. Good times for sure!
bhaak 4y ago
Freelancer was pretty cool but the (pretty short IIRC) single player story felt like a prelude and when it finished there was nothing meaningful left to do. I always suspected that the game was developed with a multiplayer first approach and the single player mode seemed like an addon. Which was a pity I would have liked to explored this universe more.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Freelancer shared a lot of the same hype cycle as Star Citizen has had (and used a lot of very similar rhetoric from Chris Roberts). I know I didn't buy into Star Citizen's hype because I certainly remembered Freelancer. Ambitions versus practical reality versus available budgets.
D13Fd 4y ago
Privateer was just utterly amazing to 12-year-old me. After years of playing Wing Commander games on rails, it felt incredible to finally be free to see the open universe and the perspective of the ordinary citizens. My only disappointment with it was that it only had some of the military and Kilrathi ships from the main games. Such a good experience, hard to imagine replicating it these days - both because modern games are different, and because you only get to be 12 once.

Tepix 4y ago

Decades after Wing Commander, Chris Roberts went on to launch a crowdfunded space simulation game called Star Citizen in 2010. It is still in early buggy unpolished alpha state after all these years, despite (or because?!) raising more then half a billion dollars. Too bad.

jdlshore 4y ago
That’s uncharitable. It has raised that half billion dollars continuously over the years since it launched, and spends it on development. They’re up to something like 500 developers, mostly artists, level designers, and the like. (They have <100 programmers, last I heard.) The game is incredibly ambitious in terms of both content and technology. The game is playable, if very buggy, and release an updated alpha version every quarter (except recently, due problems with introducing global persistence). Funding has steadily increased as those alphas have become steadily more capable. It’s an open question whether the game will ever meet its lofty goals. But it’s disingenuous to imply that the game isn’t making progress.
- Tepix 4y ago
  It's not making any progress towards completion or even the end of alpha status. Proof in point: Their roadmap doesn't even have these goals.
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  The original timeline had a release date of 2014 or something. I don't think it's being uncharitable to call out that they're still years away from release 10 years after their nominal release date.