BREAKING NEWS: Arena Concept Art! (May 7, 2007)

[Bandit LOAF]

Gaia Industries, the developers of Wing Commander Arena, held an event this weekend to promote their other Xbox Live Arcade title, Street Trace NYC. The Street Trace community came out in force and, in the process, managed to snag some very interesting data on Arena. First up are these two pictures from the Gaia offices, which show a board of Arena concept art. They were taken by Wondermonkey2k, who has more from the event at his flckr page.

We can see high resolution renders of all six fighter types and one of the capital ships - hopefully we'll see these available as wallpapers from the official site! Even more interesting is the cockpit (upper right) and character (left) art. Is that a Firekkan? What are the Kilrathi symbols and knife images at the bottom? Keep in mind that this is all concept artwork - there's no guarantee that any of it will make it into the finished game... but it's pretty cool to see the process!

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Original update published on May 7, 2007

 

[NinjaLA]

I noticed a few interesting things while looking through these.


Firstly, in the drawn concept art, there are drawings of both a Centurion and a Gothri. But mostly, my eyes do not deceive me, that IS an Firekkan in the upper left corner!

 

[Dundradal]

Man, I'd love to get my hands on that poster.

And it sure does look like an updated Firekkan, looks like they survived the Nephilim war too maybe....

 

[LeHah]

The pictures bring up a 100 different questions. Who is the guy with the goggles? Are those "squadron patches" underneath him? How do the Firekkan fit in to all this?

I really hope that once the game is out, the team members will be able to talk about the development and some of the reasoning into making this game.

 

[Stone48420]

I like that super armored arrow under the Gaia sign. Very cool.

 

[Dundradal]

Well it looks like soon enough the Arena manual should be on all our hands and the debates can continue a new....

And what are those "medals" below the Broadsword on the right? Are they achievements or squadron/plane markers?

The first two appear to be swords of some kind. The next one is hard to make out, but looks to have some kind of kilrathi influence. Again, the same with the icon below that one. The next appears to be a human medal of some kind. Followed again by an icon that is similar to the two previous icons I mentioned in the same column.

The next column, the first icon is obviously a trophy. Followed what could be a missile or torpedo? The next one, it's really hard to make out, so no guess. The next one seems to resemble a free fall bomb. The last icon is hard to make out, it might be an explosion.

Last column, 4 fireworks? Followed by a boardsword with a skull over the main body. The next two icons are kilrathi icons of some kind.

I'm not very good with graphics so if someone can clean up that part of the image I would be interested in seeing.