The Hobbes Explanation

[NuAngel]

I guess I'm late coming to the table, but can I ask... who made the decision to cut this scene frm the game? I mean, this seems almost crucial to the story line. I suppose playing through the game without knowing this you just feel like he is a traitor... but still... this explains soooo much. Even why Hobbes seems taken aback when Blair's title is uttered when they get the "Video virus... or should I say, worm?"

What editor would say "yeah, let's leave this scene out - it's not important." It's the crux of a series-long relationship between Blair and nar Hhallas.

As with most things I post, I'm assuming this has been hashed over a bazillion times and I'm dragging the coals across the fire pit again, but I guess I took this place for granted when I came here so long ago. I forgot how much of a fan of this series I really was.

Nu

 

[Dishwasher]

Yep I never understood why they cut it either... perhaps to leak it later on and see us aguing about it haha.

 

[Quarto]

The reason they cut it out was because it really was unimportant, in the sense that the game worked just fine without it. For you as a fan it makes a difference - but as far as the WC3 storyline is concerned, there is no need to tell the audience why Hobbes defected. The explanation for the defection just plain doesn't matter - and the rest of the game hammers in this point by totally ignoring the defection. You don't ever have any scenes afterwards where the reason for Hobbes' defection becomes at all relevant. So, the scene is definitely something that can be cut with very little damage to the game.

The other thing to consider is that from a scriptwriting point of view, it's probably one of the worst scenes of the game, quality-wise. It's a scene that has "plot explanation" written all over it - I mean, the scene is literally a guy standing and talking for five minutes without any real reason to do so, other than the audience's need for an explanation. It's precisely the kind of thing they tell you to avoid at all costs in scriptwriting class.

On a sidenote, just think how much more interesting the series would have been had they left out the explanation entirely. The personality overlay thing is just plain awful. It doesn't end the relationship between Blair and Hobbes - instead, it simply tells us that this relationship was never relevant because Hobbes as such was never real. The Wing Commander universe would be much better off without the Hobbes explanation - it would be far better if the fans were still debating to this very day what it was exactly that made Hobbes decide to go back to the Empire.

 

[Death]

Of course, if you play one of the console versions of WC3, you find that the explanation hologram was not cut, as the console CDs had more data storage space than PC CDs that all PC CD drives could read, at the time.

Besides that, if you go with the theory that the scene was cut because it wasn't important, what about the ground missions that were cut on the console versions (replaced with cutscenes)?

 

[Quarto]

Of course, if you play one of the console versions of WC3, you find that the explanation hologram was not cut, as the console CDs had more data storage space than PC CDs that all PC CD drives could read, at the time.

That's not the point - the lack of disk space merely explains why anything at all had to be cut. What I'm trying to explain is why of all possible scenes in the game, this scene in particular was chosen to be cut.

 

[Tigerhawk]

That's not the point - the lack of disk space merely explains why anything at all had to be cut. What I'm trying to explain is why of all possible scenes in the game, this scene in particular was chosen to be cut.

I can understand the rationale behind what you're trying to explain, Quarto, but in the end, it actually does matter, at least from my point of view.

In movies, doesn't it drive you nuts when traitors are involved but they don't ever give a reason for their motivations? For example, in Air Force One, Agent Gibbs, the Secret Service agent who is in with the Russian hijackers, is given as a traitor early in the movie when he shoots three other agents and opens the onboard arsenal to the Russians. But what's the reason? Was he sick of being an agent? Was he paid off? Did he just want really good vodka in Kazikstan? This is never explained, and personally, it drives me nuts. Maybe that makes me a little too anal, but it's a detail that needs to be addressed.

I also took a short story writing course back in the early '90s, and one of the things that was pounded into my head was that a writer NEVER NEVER NEVER leaves details hanging and unresolved. Motivations for a character to do what he or she does is essential to any plotline, and to leave these motivations out is akin to bad storytelling.

In the end, I think it's part of the human need to know. It is a valid question, though, seeing as Hobbes has become a major Confed character, and simply having him defect back to the Kilrathi without reason makes no sense, and this would infuriate me both as a fan AND a player...this is a movie as much as it is a game, and to leave out Hobbes' motivations for killing Cobra and stealing a Thunderbolt to get back to the Kilrathi who would have otherwise killed him on sight for betraying them in the first place needs explanation.

I'm very glad they kept it for the PS1 version of the game. It satisfies these requirements with only a few extra minutes of footage.


But that's just my opinion. I am certainly, by no means, infallible here, and I'll be the first to admit that.

 

[Falcon988]

I don't know. All I know was that when I finally did get the explanation I was very disappointed. Personality overlay... ugh. I would have liked it so much better if they went with the obvious: Hobbes is a fugging KILRATHI and he's not about to help you Confed punks blow up his homeworld.

The fact that the defection is not mentioned at all afterwards (with the exception of a short scene with Eisen in the barracks) leads me to feel that this is a rather shoddy plot twist. It feels like something they added in at the last minute, even if it may not be.

After the important role Hobbes played in WC2 though, this is something that should never have been glossed over.

 

[ChrisReid]

Of course, if you play one of the console versions of WC3, you find that the explanation hologram was not cut, as the console CDs had more data storage space than PC CDs that all PC CD drives could read, at the time.

Besides that, if you go with the theory that the scene was cut because it wasn't important, what about the ground missions that were cut on the console versions (replaced with cutscenes)?

Those were mainly cut/replaced for technical and gameplay reasons, not because of any space/importance issues.

I also took a short story writing course back in the early '90s, and one of the things that was pounded into my head was that a writer NEVER NEVER NEVER leaves details hanging and unresolved. Motivations for a character to do what he or she does is essential to any plotline, and to leave these motivations out is akin to bad storytelling.

I'm very glad they kept it for the PS1 version of the game. It satisfies these requirements with only a few extra minutes of footage.

Well, for those that needed to know, the novelization, official guide and console ports all had this retained, and all of these projects were well under way when WC3 was edited down.

 

[RogueBanshee]

The other thing to consider is that from a scriptwriting point of view, it's probably one of the worst scenes of the game, quality-wise. It's a scene that has "plot explanation" written all over it - I mean, the scene is literally a guy standing and talking for five minutes without any real reason to do so, other than the audience's need for an explanation. It's precisely the kind of thing they tell you to avoid at all costs in scriptwriting class.

His reason to sit for 5 minutes and talk is his need to explain why he did what he did to Blair. They've been friends for years and Hobbes felt that Blair deserved an explaination.

 

[Lt.Death100]

His reason to sit for 5 minutes and talk is his need to explain why he did what he did to Blair. They've been friends for years and Hobbes felt that Blair deserved an explaination.

That so the explanation still felt pretty weak. I would have liked it more if he defected because Confed was planning to totally obliterate Kilrah.

 

[Dyret]

That so the explanation wtill felt pretty weak. I would have liked it more if he defected because Confed was planning to totally obliterate Kilrah.

Well, as I pointed out in another thread when this came up, Hobbes never cared as much for Kilrah as for his own homeworld. I don't think I can recall it's name... Hrallas? So I don't think hobbes would mind blowing up Kilrah as it would put an end to the corruption, which was his reason to defect in the first place IIRC.

As for the personality overlay thing, I must admit that I hated it. Hobbes had been a major character for almost two entire games and two expansion packs, and even a few of the novels, so if they *had* to get rid of him, he still deserved alot better. The whole thing just seemed so "cheap".

 

[Lt.Death100]

Well, as I pointed out in another thread when this came up, Hobbes never cared as much for Kilrah as for his own homeworld. I don't think I can recall it's name... Hrallas? So I don't think hobbes would mind blowing up Kilrah as it would put an end to the corruption, which was his reason to defect in the first place IIRC.

Well for blowing up Kilrah you have to take into account all the people there. Sure, there's corruption but there's also good kilrathi, along with slaves down there. I think Hobbes would have a problem with killing all of those people.

 

[Quarto]

His reason to sit for 5 minutes and talk is his need to explain why he did what he did to Blair. They've been friends for years and Hobbes felt that Blair deserved an explaination.

Well, see, that makes no sense whatsoever, once you consider the implications of the explanation . Hobbes doesn't exist - the guy talking in that scene has never actually been Blair's friend. In fact, from his point of view, explainng the personality overlay may well be the worst possible thing to do - for a spy, it's very, very unprofessional to explain how he managed to infiltrate your ranks, especially when there might be other Kilrathi spies in Confed who got there the same way (after all, four entire planets defected to the Confederation... but were all of their inhabitants on the level? Was Hobbes the only fake?).

In movies, doesn't it drive you nuts when traitors are involved but they don't ever give a reason for their motivations? For example, in Air Force One, Agent Gibbs, the Secret Service agent who is in with the Russian hijackers, is given as a traitor early in the movie when he shoots three other agents and opens the onboard arsenal to the Russians. But what's the reason? Was he sick of being an agent? Was he paid off? Did he just want really good vodka in Kazikstan? This is never explained, and personally, it drives me nuts. Maybe that makes me a little too anal, but it's a detail that needs to be addressed.

I also took a short story writing course back in the early '90s, and one of the things that was pounded into my head was that a writer NEVER NEVER NEVER leaves details hanging and unresolved. Motivations for a character to do what he or she does is essential to any plotline, and to leave these motivations out is akin to bad storytelling.

Story writing and script writing are very different things - when writing a story, you can afford to waste a lot more time, because the process of reading is a lot more leisurely. With a movie script, though, it's different, because film is a visual medium. In a story, it makes no difference if you have a scene of one guy talking or fifty planes in a crazy dogfight - it's all just words on a page. In a movie, though, speech is a secondary issue - it's what's shown on the screen that's most important, and you can't afford to make it visually boring (which Hobbes standing there for five minutes definitely is). The key rule they keep hammering into you in scriptwriting courses is "show, don't tell".

Additionally, in a movie you have a limited amount of time (though arguably, this didn't really apply to games like WC3), so you are better off leaving details hanging than overexplaining stuff. The betrayal in Air Force One is a great example - I didn't even realise there was an unexplained detail there until you mentioned it, and 99% of the audience probably didn't either. People went into the cinema expecting an action movie, and they were too busy waiting to see Harrison Ford start fighting for his life to care for lengthy explanations as to why somebody did this or that. On the other hand, things I do always notice are explanatory scenes that are clearly in there for the audience's sake rather than the characters' sake. For example, one thing I utterly hated in the WC Movie was the scene where Blair asks Paladin about the Pilgrim War. Great, the audience got to find out about why everybody hates Blair... but did the scriptwriter honestly expect me to believe that Blair didn't know anything about an event that took place just a few years earlier, and involved both of his parents? It's much the same here - it just doesn't make sense for Hobbes to explain anything to Blair at this point.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Well, as I pointed out in another thread when this came up, Hobbes never cared as much for Kilrah as for his own homeworld. I don't think I can recall it's name... Hrallas? So I don't think hobbes would mind blowing up Kilrah as it would put an end to the corruption, which was his reason to defect in the first place IIRC.

Hobbes' home planet was Hhallas (like his name). Regardless, I think you're over-referencing the scene in Freedm Flight where he explains his home's forests to Kilrah's cities. I don't like Pittsburg, but that doesn't mean I think it's okay for someone to blow it up.

Additionally, in a movie you have a limited amount of time (though arguably, this didn't really apply to games like WC3), so you are better off leaving details hanging than overexplaining stuff.

While I understand your complaint about the Hobbes' scene, I think this is poor reasoning. Having a trusted main character suddenly change without any explanation *isn't* good storytelling. The problem in Wing Commander III is that the game has an arguably better explanation shown (that bombing Kilrah isn't right). If it were Flint who changed sides and the game didn't explain anything, we'd be pretty angry slash confused. (Remove the direct explanation from *any* other Origin game and you have a bad story -- Jazz needs to explain that he thinks the Tiger's Claw killed his brother,)

Great, the audience got to find out about why everybody hates Blair... but did the scriptwriter honestly expect me to believe that Blair didn't know anything about an event that took place just a few years earlier, and involved both of his parents?

Eh, you're fudging the numbers to justify your point -- the Pilgrim War was two decades earlier. (I do agree that this is an example of poor exposition in movies... but because of how the actual dialogue went, not because of the situation itself - I certainly ask my parents about things that happened before I was born.)

 

[Dyret]

I don't like Pittsburg, but that doesn't mean I think it's okay for someone to blow it up.

Even if it was the fortified heart of an evil and corrupted government that was bent on exterminating other races?

 

[t.c.cgi]

Even if it was the fortified heart of an evil and corrupted government that was bent on exterminating other races?

Hobbes defected, IIRC, because the empire was murdering civilians for no sensible reason. I'm sure that would have twanged again when he learned of the Behemoth and Temblor Bomb. Yes it was the heart of the evil Kilrathi, but it was also their population center.

 

[Tigerhawk]

Well, see, that makes no sense whatsoever, once you consider the implications of the explanation . Hobbes doesn't exist - the guy talking in that scene has never actually been Blair's friend. In fact, from his point of view, explainng the personality overlay may well be the worst possible thing to do - for a spy, it's very, very unprofessional to explain how he managed to infiltrate your ranks, especially when there might be other Kilrathi spies in Confed who got there the same way (after all, four entire planets defected to the Confederation... but were all of their inhabitants on the level? Was Hobbes the only fake?).

Story writing and script writing are very different things - when writing a story, you can afford to waste a lot more time, because the process of reading is a lot more leisurely. With a movie script, though, it's different, because film is a visual medium. In a story, it makes no difference if you have a scene of one guy talking or fifty planes in a crazy dogfight - it's all just words on a page. In a movie, though, speech is a secondary issue - it's what's shown on the screen that's most important, and you can't afford to make it visually boring (which Hobbes standing there for five minutes definitely is). The key rule they keep hammering into you in scriptwriting courses is "show, don't tell".

Additionally, in a movie you have a limited amount of time (though arguably, this didn't really apply to games like WC3), so you are better off leaving details hanging than overexplaining stuff. The betrayal in Air Force One is a great example - I didn't even realise there was an unexplained detail there until you mentioned it, and 99% of the audience probably didn't either. People went into the cinema expecting an action movie, and they were too busy waiting to see Harrison Ford start fighting for his life to care for lengthy explanations as to why somebody did this or that. On the other hand, things I do always notice are explanatory scenes that are clearly in there for the audience's sake rather than the characters' sake. For example, one thing I utterly hated in the WC Movie was the scene where Blair asks Paladin about the Pilgrim War. Great, the audience got to find out about why everybody hates Blair... but did the scriptwriter honestly expect me to believe that Blair didn't know anything about an event that took place just a few years earlier, and involved both of his parents? It's much the same here - it just doesn't make sense for Hobbes to explain anything to Blair at this point.

I can understand the overstatement of a reason...five minutes to explain that "I had a personality overlay, but I truly did enjoy our friendship. I'm sorry" does seem a bit much, so I agree with you in the time principle there. I guess my point is that, even if it only takes ten seconds (and who doesn't have ten seconds to spare, be it film or book?), so at that point, you're closing all the gaps in your story...which was the idea in the course I took...no matter what type of medium you're going after.

In the case of Air Force One, I would have hated a five minute speech from Gibbs on why he turned...a simple "You flat out suck, Mr. President" would have sufficed, and at least we'd know a motivation...hatred. That would be more than good enough. I agree with you that it doesn't take a lengthy process...but it doesn't have to be completely cut, either.

 

[Quarto]

In the case of Air Force One, I would have hated a five minute speech from Gibbs on why he turned...a simple "You flat out suck, Mr. President" would have sufficed, and at least we'd know a motivation...hatred. That would be more than good enough. I agree with you that it doesn't take a lengthy process...but it doesn't have to be completely cut, either.

Right - and I'm not saying Hobbes' motives shouldn't be explained at all. I'm saying that this explanatory scene in particular was terrible, and the game was better off without it. They could definitely have found a better way to explain it.

What you wrote above illustrates this point perfectly - there are times when having somebody say a single sentence is a less clear, but ultimately a thousand times better way of explaining something than a five minute scene. WC3 did actually try to lay in clues along the way about Hobbes' change (mainly by showing his reaction to Thrakhath's message)... had they gone on to give subtle hints, like Blair noticing some change in Hobbes attitude and such, they could have ultimately explained even something as God-awful as the personality overlay without resorting to a hologram in a locker.

While I understand your complaint about the Hobbes' scene, I think this is poor reasoning. Having a trusted main character suddenly change without any explanation *isn't* good storytelling. The problem in Wing Commander III is that the game has an arguably better explanation shown (that bombing Kilrah isn't right).

Well, it is true that having a trusted main character change without explanation is bad storytelling - but as you say, WC3 doesn't leave us entirely without an explanation. I don't want to generalise too much - there are definitely situations where an explanatory scene must be given (Jazz is a good example)... I do think, however, that in most cases, having no explanation really is better than explaining too much in a too... err... explanatory manner. In other words, every time a script writer feels the need to explain something, he should kick himself in the ass until he finds a subtler way to get the knowledge across than a simple talking scene.

Eh, you're fudging the numbers to justify your point -- the Pilgrim War was two decades earlier. (I do agree that this is an example of poor exposition in movies... but because of how the actual dialogue went, not because of the situation itself - I certainly ask my parents about things that happened before I was born.)

Hehe, no, I'm not fudging the numbers, I actually couldn't remember how many years it had been between WC1 and the Pilgrim War . And yeah, we do ask our parents about things that happened before we were born... but you usually won't find an officer asking his parents about one of his country's most recent military actions, because that's precisely the kind of stuff they would cover in great detail at the Academy. I can't imagine Blair needing to ask about even any detail of the Pilgrim War, let alone about the general reasons it began - it would have been covered at a dozen points during his education, and on top of it all, Blair would probably have done a bit of his own research about the war which killed his parents (in fact, wasn't the part of the Confed Handbook that deals with the Pilgrim War structured in such a way as to imply that it's Blair looking the war up on the 27th century internet? I don't remember for sure, and I don't have the Handbook here to check).

 

[RogueBanshee]

Hehe, no, I'm not fudging the numbers, I actually couldn't remember how many years it had been between WC1 and the Pilgrim War . And yeah, we do ask our parents about things that happened before we were born... but you usually won't find an officer asking his parents about one of his country's most recent military actions, because that's precisely the kind of stuff they would cover in great detail at the Academy. I can't imagine Blair needing to ask about even any detail of the Pilgrim War, let alone about the general reasons it began - it would have been covered at a dozen points during his education, and on top of it all, Blair would probably have done a bit of his own research about the war which killed his parents (in fact, wasn't the part of the Confed Handbook that deals with the Pilgrim War structured in such a way as to imply that it's Blair looking the war up on the 27th century internet? I don't remember for sure, and I don't have the Handbook here to check).

Blair's Academy courses would have been foccused on the Kilrathi War not the Pilgrim War especially since I believe there was a major shift in the strategy, tactics and fleet designs used between the wars. Also reading about something on the net is different then talking with someone who was there and anything Blair could find on the net would likely be slanted toward Confed's POV.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Well, it is true that having a trusted main character change without explanation is bad storytelling - but as you say, WC3 doesn't leave us entirely without an explanation. I don't want to generalise too much - there are definitely situations where an explanatory scene must be given (Jazz is a good example)... I do think, however, that in most cases, having no explanation really is better than explaining too much in a too... err... explanatory manner. In other words, every time a script writer feels the need to explain something, he should kick himself in the ass until he finds a subtler way to get the knowledge across than a simple talking scene.

Having the explanation put across some other way is no great secret, subtle thing - you just have Paladin explain what happened, or you cut to Thrakhath and Melek talking about it (which is an even worse storytelling cheat that they use over and over). Rather, this is a case of merging necessary exposition with a desire to 'save' the Hobbes character in some sense. That's the second half to all this - we're supposed to be impressed that he was honorable enough to contact Blair, that it wasn't the Hobbes we knew in WC2 who was betraying him, etc.

If you want something as confused and unexpected as the personality overlay story to be the case - and they did - then you have to explain it after the fact... Hobbes' eyes changing when he sees Thrakhath aren't enough, we would never have deciphered that (surely no one I've spoken to has ever claimed that they knew Hobbes was the traitor at this poinT during their first encounter with the game).

And yeah, we do ask our parents about things that happened before we were born... but you usually won't find an officer asking his parents about one of his country's most recent military actions, because that's precisely the kind of stuff they would cover in great detail at the Academy. I can't imagine Blair needing to ask about even any detail of the Pilgrim War, let alone about the general reasons it began - it would have been covered at a dozen points during his education, and on top of it all, Blair would probably have done a bit of his own research about the war which killed his parents (in fact, wasn't the part of the Confed Handbook that deals with the Pilgrim War structured in such a way as to imply that it's Blair looking the war up on the 27th century internet? I don't remember for sure, and I don't have the Handbook here to check).

I would argue that the fact that Blair *was* doing very basic research a few days earlier supports the idea that he's curious about the subject.

I agree that it was poorly scripted, but the scenario makes a lot of sense -- he's found out that Paladin knew his parents (whom he doesn't remember) and Admiral Tolwyn (whom he idolizes at this point) through his involvement in the Pilgrim War... it seems appropriate that he'd go and talk to Paladin about the subject.

Blair's Academy courses would have been foccused on the Kilrathi War not the Pilgrim War especially since I believe there was a major shift in the strategy, tactics and fleet designs used between the wars.

I don't know about that -- the Army War College today still spends lots of time studying historical battles of the distant past.