From Mass Drivers to Mass Effects

According to stories at Gamasutra and Gamespot, the folks at Bioware recently name-dropped Wing Commander in a recent speech at the AGDC 2008 conference in Austin, Texas (Wing Commander's birthplace). The subject was influences on Mass Effect and its style of cinematic storytelling.

Gamasutra:

Next was "The Renaissance," with titles in the early '90s such as Wing Commander and Rebel Assault making things a "fantastically exciting time", as Walters put it. Marino noted some of the key games later in the '90s, including the "watershed moment" of Half-Life, with 3D characters interacting and speaking to the player in real-time.

Another World and other games like it gave rise to the early-'90s Renaissance period, in which designers began to scale back the text and convey more through technology. Examples of games that took advantage of these techniques include such classics as Myst, Wing Commander, and Rebel Assault. As Walters noted, the industry was both imitating and innovating during this period--taking sensibilities from the film world and riffing their own creations for what works well in interactive properties. Valve's Half-Life was another "watershed moment" for cinematic design, noted Walters.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 58

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the back issues page:

CONCEPT: Another late addition - simply the result of thinking 'what else do magazines have...' in order to fill an empty page. Note that each of the previous issues corresponds to the date of a 'main' Wing Commander game!

REFERENCES-

• "Next Month" - I should be clear about this - there was never going to be a 'next month'; this is all to sell the illusion. I did start a second project that went out with the DLC - a 'full' Joan's Fighting Ships book. It would have had all the classic designs, all the ones mentioned in passing, others to fill out the gaps... and, especially, the new ships added to the game. I experimented with doing line drawings of ships, wrote some copy and... that was that.
• "Joan's Fighting Ships, Vega Sector Update" - A nod to the original Claw Marks, which featured a 2654 Vega Sector Update way back when. I like the idea that each Star*Soldier focuses on a different region of space.
• "Fury... Warrax" - I wanted to make canon the various Privateer 3 designs/names (note the 'II' added to the Hurricane, because of Action Stations).
• "Ghosts of the Vacuum" - From the movie 'Ghosts of the Abyss' (... which I actually didn't like at all). The real focus here is (finally) making the 'Jutland' name official.
• "Ghorah Khar to Vukar Tag" - We actually don't see a Jutland at Ghorah Khar, so that's a story for someone else. Vukar Tag references the TCS Gettysburg, which was the original Jutland-class ship. The name/design was created to explain why the Gettysburg was more like a carrier than a cruiser.
• "TCS Philippine Sea" - Simply another naval battle.
• "Looking Back, Part II" - I know, this is the part of the timeline you actually wanted to see.
• "Burning Battle" - I'm going to get in trouble for telling this one. When Gaia was first tasked with coming up with the backstory for Arena they came back with something... genuinely strange. It centered around the odd belief that the war with the Kilrathi had ended in the "burning battle", whatever that is. It had no mention of... anything else in the existing Wing Commander continuity. I was asked what I thought of it and I kind of gritted my teeth and said gosh, that's great for a first true, but...! Well, here's the second half: EA asked them to try again and within a day there was a new pitch which was so full of continuity that you couldn't believe it -- it had Vance Richards and Stiletto and all sorts of classic ships. It was clear that somebody immediately sat down and played the games and read the novels in a matter of hours (and you never got to see any of that!).
• "Interview With a Vampire" - Hah-hah. See, the F-109 is the Vampire, I consciously avoided mentioning that in the b... eh, you get it.
• "Lieutenant Colonel Jean Talvert" - That's Stiletto from Wing Commander Prophecy. I guess she hasn't quite made Wing Commander yet...
• "Laser Bolts vs. Ammunition" - Just another wink at a continuity issue - when are Marines supposed to use energy weapons and when are they supposed to use projectiles?
• "April 2654" - Wing Commander I!
• "Gilkarg" - Prince Thrakhath's father, as named in the Kilrathi Saga manual (and Action Stations).
• "failed push for Earth" - That's the Wing Commander movie! See, in two sentences I connected it to the events of Wing Commander I...
• "April 2665" - Wing Commander II!
• "Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma" - Because those systems are in the Enimga Sector! Get it? Get it? Aww.
• "plants" - Ooops, typo. Should be "plans".
• "Ghorah Khar, Fiddler's Green and beyond" - I always like looking at the greater campaign from a viewpoint other than the carrier you're serving at in the game. The stories made this less and less easy as time went on, with Blair ultimately becoming the center of the universe in Wing Commander IV. In this case, the rest of the galaxy is watching Thrakhath attack Ghorah Khar and other systems... and not all the intrigue aboard the Concordia (whereas to the player, the strike on Fiddler's Green was just a single mention).
• "October 2669" - Wing Commander III!
• "PEACE IN OUR TIME" - The end of the Terran-Kilrathi War! (And a famous Neville Chamberlain quote, to suggest that maybe we haven't seen the last of those space cats).
• "Also: stunning Steltek discovery" - The events of Privateer, which happen at the same time as Heart of the Tiger.
• "July 2673" - Wing Commander IV!
• "War is Good For Business" - This is a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition.
• "Landreich and other border worlds" - I'm playing with the longtime confusion over just how the Landreich and the systems we see in Wing Commander III are related. Remember, the UBW doesn't exist at this point - so there's no proper noun to use here.
• "February 2681" - Wing Commander Prophecy!
• "INSECT INVASION?!" - I think this is exactly how most players felt when they first heard the storyline to Wing Commander Prophecy.
• "TCS Eisen" - One last nod to the Midway's co-carrier... and Jason Bernard. (Again, perspective: humans at the time know that the Eisen is going into Kilrathi space to intercept the Nephilim... they don't know what happened to Midway!)