Bandit LOAF said:Groan.
Ignoring the games freaking name, there's plenty of "correlating factors" -- mentions of the Confederation, the reference to an encounter with the Kilrathi on the news broadcast, the mission where you discover a Talon... and of course the simple fact that Origin says so (explicitly).
Now, let me ask the opposite question -- how could Privateer 2 possibly *not* be in the Wing Commander universe? The entire game dynamic is the same... they could *never* get away with releasing it as a non Wing Commander game. So why the passion in yelping about it? Just admit that you don't like the game and leave it at that -- your personal feelings about it *shouldn't* affect where it stands in the WCU.
I don't want to flame up the trivia topic.
I personally really enjoyed the game. I don't hate a space shooter just because it's not Wing Commander. I mean, even if it's not a Wing Commander, it's definately a Privateer.
I played the game through twice. I don't recall any mentions of the Confederation. I didn't see the news report mentioning the Kilrathi (weren't the Kilrathi also in UO too? Does that make UO part of the WC universe?). And the talon.... What if the Star Trek people used a Battlestar Galactica viper in a ship graveyard scene? Would that make BG part of the ST universe?
I read about Privateer 2 in PCGamer years ago, and I was pretty psyched when they said that P2 would be set in the WC universe, just on the other side of Confed space or something. And that there would still be all kinds of references to the war and stuff. Well there weren't. There were a few references to Wing Commander stuff... but there was no serious effort to actually make Privateer 2 part of the Wing Commander universe on the game side. Yes, on the marketing side, there was an effort... but put a guy who hasn't read anything about Priv 2 beforehand... and he would NOT come to the conclusion that Priv 2 was part of the Wing Commander universe.
How is it NOT Wing Commander?
-Radically different form of commonplace interstellar travel.
-Totally different ship combat dynamic!
-It has nothing to do with anything Wing Commander-ish that came before it. No "oh yeah, I heard about that in Wing Commander I" type stuff.
I wouldn't describe myself as passionate about this. But I need SOMETHING concrete, some line of reasoning beyond Origin saying so before I can accept Priv 2 as part of the Wing Commander universe.
and I actually don't object to having trivia about it, since its so close to Wing Commander anyways.