Written in the StarLancers

As the saying goes, great artists steal... and what we're looking at today is a case of great artists stealing from themselves! We thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at StarLancer's cutscenes to pick out assets and finished footage that it reuses from the Wing Commander movie. StarLancer's cinematics were developed by the same artists at Digital Anvil who worked on the Wing Commander movie with the two projects overlapping for a time. As a result, a number of 3D models made it from one to the other and (in the case of the game's various act breaking interstitial news reports) several completed sequences from the movie were used to sort of decorate the background of StarLancer! Let's take a closer look...

Intro

StarLancer's introduction shows the Coalition's dastardly Pearl Harbor-style attack on the Alliance and it includes several reused Wing Commander assets! The cinematic model for the Alliance command ship destroyed in the first wave is a modification of the Snakeir or Sivar model from the Wing Commander movie. It's especially clear when we see the drive section at the rear. The cinematic model for the ANS Reliant, which appears elsewhere, also 'feels' like it's derived from those designs though there's no clear evidence beyond the similar shapes.

... and then watch very carefully as the camera pans over a flight line of Alliance fighters at an airstrip scrambling to take off. One of them is being towed by the bulldozer that was used to push Rosie's Rapier off the Tiger Claw's flight deck (with the front removed)!

There's also a sequence that must be called an homage to Wing Commander IV in which a Coalition fighter decloaks behind an Alliance escort and destroys it while they both accelerate down the spine of a capital ship.

Finally, the asset for Jupiter (which is reused throughout the game) looks to be taken from Wing Commander's Planet 415 which is used as a background plate in CG shots throughout the second and third acts of the film. It sure is pretty!

Chapter 1

The Chapter 1 ACN sequence opens using a 'Kilrathi ships burning' shot from the end of the movie where the Concordia's fleet ambushes the Kilrathi as a background.

It also reuses something even more unusual: the 3D model of a construction ship seen in Wing Commander IV! The twin cabin towing spacecraft that carries a girder towards a carrier under construction does exactly the same thing behind Admiral Tolwyn in the WC4 intro!

Chapter 2

The first of the ACN stories for Chapter 2 is an easy one to spot: it's the TCS Vanguard leaving Pegasus Naval Base at the start of the movie!

The second news story is played over footage of the initial Kilrathi attack on the Tiger Claw that happens while the Black Lions are away intercepting a decoy convoy. They were a little trickier here and mirrored the footage... which is also a little too dark to easily make out the Tiger Claw in the background!

Admiral Foster Midgame

In the climax of StarLancer's first half, Admiral Foster rams your home carrier, the ANS Reliant, into Admiral Kulov's flagship, the CS Volga. The epic scene doesn't reuse any Wing Commander footage but it does reveal that the CS Volga is... a Ralari-class destroyer! The footage includes several new renders of the Ralari including a closeup of a missile being fired and a hologram version seen from the Reliant's command center. The bridge of the Volga is also seen in the intro but there are no exterior shots. The Volga is never encountered in combat so there is no in-game 3D model.

Chapter 4

The Chapter 4 ACN broadcast is a weird one: it reuses footage of Blair's Rapier positioned next to Angel's escape pod to represent the wreckage of the 'Dark Reign' space defense tower!

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is absolutely chock full of Wing Commander footage! The story covering Admiral Foster's escape is played over a reversed clip of the Diligent docking with the Kilrathi ConCom ship!

Then, the story on the destruction of the CS Varyag uses not one but THREE different Wing Commander scenes from the movie's third act in rapid succession mirrored and with a StarLancer ship composited on top of them through the transitions. The first is the Tiger Claw being hit with the Kilrathi broadside:

Then the Fralthi taking hits and exploding from above:

And finally footage of the Confederation fleet destroying a Ralari:

... but wait, there's more! The final news story reuses the same 'Kilrathi ships burning' footage that also appeared in Chapter 1.

Chapter 6

An option story in the Chapter 6 broadcast uses the same Kilrathi ambush footage as Chapter 2 under a rendering of Coalition ace Ivan Petrov.

Trailer

Finally, StarLancer's first trailer was cut primarily from the game's cinematics... and a shot from Wing Commander of the Skipper missile exploding (0:35)! The Skipper explosion scene does not seem to appear in the final game.

One final disclaimer: there's an old rumor that claims the Wing Commander footage appears in StarLancer as part of a scheme to defraud Microsoft which paid for the game's development; this is not at all the case. Chris Roberts (and not FOX) owned the Wing Commander movie's assets and as a result Digital Anvil was well within their right to use them to texture StarLancer. This is a fun case of reused special effects, something incredibly common throughout science fiction history. Look at the endless films that reused footage shot for the Battlestar Galactica pilot!

Have you noticed any other asset or footage reuse in StarLancer or other Digital Anvil games? Let us know on the forums! If you'd like to study the footage yourself you can download a complete set of extracted StarLancer clips in the original format here (836 mb).