The Digital Antiquarian has completed their history of the original Wing Commander's development. Their second article is titled From Wingleader to Wing Commander and aims to cover naturally the development from the original announcement of 'Wingleader' to its release as Wing Commander. The piece starts strong with a discussion of the behind-the-screens difficulties producing such a massive project:
At the beginning of August, Snell unceremoniously booted Chris Roberts, the project's founder, from his role as co-producer, leaving him with only the title of director. Manifesting a tendency anyone familiar with his more recent projects will immediately recognize, Roberts had been causing chaos on the team by approving seemingly every suggested addition or enhancement that crossed his desk. Snell, the brutal pragmatist in this company full of dreamers, appointed himself as Warren Spector's new co-producer. His first action was to place a freeze on new features in favor of getting the game that currently existed finished and out the door.
... and then it segues into a somewhat directionless critique of the game itself. There's a great warts-and-all history to be written about the making of Wing Commander... despite a promising first half, this isn't it (though, in fairness, the purpose of the site is discussing narrative.) The first half of the article is available here.
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