Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 35

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the first powerups page:

CONCEPT: This is a directly gameplay related section. We planned it from early in the project but didn't have a concise list of powerups until very late in the game... and when it arrived it came with these absolutely beautiful high resolution renderings of each one! I ended up expanding the section to give everyone a better view of them. Maybe we can post the original images somewhere, they're quite spectacular - if not the most interesting technology in the world. Speaking of which, take a look at the amount of detail that transfers from the source renderings to the in-game models... you can even see tiny rivets and such. A lot of love went into the graphics in Arena.

The next three updates will be fairly short, as there isn't much continuity in these pages. I wanted to make it clear that the powerups 'existed' in the Wing Commander universe (hence the repair droid technobabble on page one) and then let them stand alone afterwards. One other interesting point to note - not only is Arena not the first Wing Commander game to feature powerups (Proving Grounds, Wing Commander IV demo, WC:CCG) but we now see that every cancelled Origin project (Shadow Force, Strike Team, Privateer Online, Privateer 3) would have also used them in some way.

• "Taryn Cross, E.S." - Taryn Cross was the Exploratory Services Captain from the original Privateer; Brownhair (and every player) had a cute crush on her.
• "repair droids" - Ties the powerup game mechanics to a concept from Privateer. Nuff said.
• "nearly invincible" - Note the toning down of the game's extremes. The same occurs throughout - are phase shields in Wing Commander 2 'really' impenetrable, or are they just treated that way in the game? Let the background material decide...