chances of future wing commander game(s)

Yeah, I wasn't complaining about them or even mentioning them in relation to WCM because I didn't have a problem with them - all I'm saying is that the epic, final cutscene with Blair falls on its face as everyone is urging Blair to just GTFO (his ship is 20-30 meters away, as can be seen in the cutscene), but instead he takes it painfully slow (in an attempt to create suspense) and instead of actually leaving, wastes enough time for a bug to find him...I guess that since they'd (or Roberts had) already decided Blair's fate (whatever that would have ultimately been, for us it's simply MIA/KIA now), tChris didn't want him to go down running.

Chris roberts was not involved in the development or scripting of WCP AFAIK.
 
So how many people here are agreement that a reworked version of WC1 should be released on the XBLA, PSN, etc, if not a brand new story in the franchise! EA should AT LEAST acknowledge that there is a "thriving" community of WC fans, and could bring out the 20th aniverssary edition or something...
 
I'm pretty sure that is what they did with Arena.


So now I'd much rather they do a full on production and bring some new players into the mix (about 6 million of them) instead of just pandering to an aging fanbase.
 
So how many people here are agreement that a reworked version of WC1 should be released on the XBLA, PSN, etc, if not a brand new story in the franchise! EA should AT LEAST acknowledge that there is a "thriving" community of WC fans, and could bring out the 20th aniverssary edition or something...

I'd like to see that. It wouldn't be too expensive for EA to produce and would draw attention to the franchise again. I don't think Arena really did that as it wasn't really nostalgic enough to get peoples retro juices flowing. Hell, Marathon 2 got an XBLA release and I don't think it was ever as popular as Wing Commander.
 
I'm sure we're all hoping that Arena was EA's way to test the waters...
Test the waters?

I'm not sure I'm hoping anything about Arena...

Oh, yes, I'm hoping whoever was responsible is getting treatment. Maybe with the proper medication he's already better. ;)


Seriously, WHAT IS THAT game? Certainly not Wing Commander! A friend of mine put it this way: Mario Paint is more of a Mario game than that is a Wing Commander game.
 
Then both you and your friend are idiots.

Yes, I'm being rude and insulting. I don't feel the need to be polite to swat flies buzzing around my room, either.
 
The problem is that unlike other classic rereleases, a new version of Wing Commander I would have to be built from the ground up--EA does not have the original assets anymore. It's not something that can be done on the cheap or quickly... they'd have to recreate the game entirely.
 
Death, you forget that you are talking to actual living people and all you did was make yourself look bad. There's no way in heck you'd say that to his / their face.

Especially with the fly analogy. What is up with that? You think those people are worth just as much as flies? And is this really YOUR room?

While I understand that the logic behind hating Arena is flawed (as in that it in some way reduces the chances of a proper Wing Commander game) we have to rise above them and not stoop to an even lower level of behaviour.

So let's just concentrate on the positive, eh?
 
Death, you forget that you are talking to actual living people and all you did was make yourself look bad. There's no way in heck you'd say that to his / their face.

I know I would, though I doubt anyone would make a statement as insurmountably retarded as that guy's comment without the 'benefit' of Internet anonymity.
 
And is this really YOUR room?

Not-so-close inspection will reveal that he has the word "administrator" under his username and image. So, yes, it is HIS room, among the other admins here.
 
Frankly I'm surprised myself for saying such (never done it before), but one thing I've never done is differentiate my sayings between administrators and non-administrators.

In any case, I meant that even though Death is an admin, the point was that an admin's job is to control rule-breaking and such, not decide which opinions are acceptable and what aren't.
Clearly he was acting not as an administrator, but as an independent person with his own opinion, in his post.

But anyway, I'll give it a rest. Like I said, I'm surprised at myself for "defending" such an opinion as Prometheus gave.
 
I know I would, though I doubt anyone would make a statement as insurmountably retarded as that guy's comment without the 'benefit' of Internet anonymity.
Oh yes I would have. Okay, in person I would've been less creative and not come up with that mental illness comment... But the tone wouldn't have changed.

I don't gather what's so "insurmountably retarded" about it either. Also, I had expected a more positive reaction to my comment. In fact I am wondering people here aren't calling it notWC:Arena or something like that. As a Wing Commander fan I feel insulted by that game.



But okay, to everyone his opinion. Take it as my way to test the waters in this forums. ;) Also, I don't take your reaction personally, as I can understand it and would propably have reacted in a similar way if our roles were reversed.
 
I had expected a more positive reaction to my comment. In fact I am wondering people here aren't calling it notWC:Arena or something like that. As a Wing Commander fan I feel insulted by that game.

Seriously though, I've never actually heard people who "hate" Arena or say they are "insulted" make any real valid claims about it's being or not being in the WC universe. Ok, so it has a different (somewhat) gameplay style. So did Armada and Academy. And you know what? People reacted just about the same way back then too.

It doesn't help that places like Gamestop decided to hate the game before ever trying it, which was evident in their review in which - when you read it - it becomes clear that they never really played the game. People were reviewing the game based on what it wasn't rather than what it was (a quick paced Arcade shooter set in the WC universe), and what it wasn't was a multimillion dollar FMV Wing Commander 7 starring Mark Hamill. There's no big conspiracy going on to bilk you out of a hard earned five dollars and no one certainly made efforts to decide to make a game specifically so that "fans" would hate it. It's the exact opposite in fact. The devs went out of their way to incorporate WC elements even coming here often before the game was released to chat with fans about elements in the game, and even changing things because of their feedback.

The problems with arena are few but they are significant though - the main one being the lack of tutorial to explain basics such as why using your afterburners eats up your maneuvering fuel making controls feel sluggish because your ship isn't maneuvering when you want it to. Honestly though, where the combat does feel a lot like button-mashing to start with, the game really does reward people that stick with it to figure out the nuances of each ship. Once you do the combat is surprisingly alike to the WC you know. Once you figure out maneuvering and chaff pods and missiles you can literally fly circles around other player and seldom die. It's a good feeling.

Second, Arena was designed for the old 50MB size limit for Live Arcade titles. The graphics just don't feel as flashy as you would expect though they do look miles better in HD than on an SD TV where they just look muddy. Also a lot of the look of a lot of the Art is explained in the downloadable manual - which EA and Microsoft really never did much to promote beyond here at the CIC.

Problem number three was Microsoft's then-insistence on not having multiplayer in the demo. The heart of Arena is multiplayer and if you haven't played it with your buddies as wingmen then you really haven't played Arena. Sadly, since it's been so long since release it's nearly impossible to find random matches online now unless you set something up in advance. The "asteroids" level is a bonus, and not at all what the game is actually about.

@LeHah: No matter how long you've been here, you really aren't helping anything here.
@ everyone: Try keeping the hyperbole to a minimum please and maybe people will respect your opinions more, and stop all the stupid juvenile insults or I'll start handing out vacations.
 
You'll make loaf out of them?


Err, in any case, while I never did see anything wrong with Arena's release, I must admit that the movie inspired similar reactions - though obviously I didn't think that the movie would somehow "ruin" any upcoming games. And this thread has been constructive: if there is indeed a Wing Commander game in the cards sometime in the future, I've been able to accept that it might very well be based on the movie. As long as the Kilrathi become the furballs I know them as, it's fine.
 
You'll make loaf out of them?


Err, in any case, while I never did see anything wrong with Arena's release, I must admit that the movie inspired similar reactions - though obviously I didn't think that the movie would somehow "ruin" any upcoming games. And this thread has been constructive: if there is indeed a Wing Commander game in the cards sometime in the future, I've been able to accept that it might very well be based on the movie. As long as the Kilrathi become the furballs I know them as, it's fine.

I'm not so certain it would be based on the film so much as it would take from the style and way other things were handled. The used ship/WW2 feel, the "going back to the begining", the effects style are all things you could see influence how similar story and design elements might be handled in future WC games.

Just as an example, one of the first things done for the WC movie beyond basic story and scripting was to commision artwork and do effects tests to determine the style. They hired folks like Ron Cobb(!) to do functional, more detailed versions of the game ships. I don't know if it's based on his work but we do have a detailed test rended of a game version Rapier done for the film tests. Possibly it was cheaper to modify existing cockpits than to build Rapiers from scratch, but there's probably other more stylistic choices as why they didn't go with the known designs. That's the kind of thing I think we should expect with any new WC game.
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So EA doesn't have the original assets, even so, it could prove lucrative for them if done right...bring in Chris Roberts he could have "Hideo Kojima" type of a role to oversee the project stick to its roots but at the same time bring appeal to a "new" audience, (ie those who weren't born in 1990....~~~)
 
And that was a concept commissioned for a movie made more than 10 years ago. I can tell you from personal experience that the level of detail a modern-day game engine (space sim, in particular) would be capable of is about a hundred times greater than that image. Removing the need to render and load massive amounts of highly detailed terrain opens up a huge amount of processing power and memory for crazy detailed ships, effects, and general visual awesomeness.
And I agree with some of the other guys here - the likelihood of there being some sort of joystick peripheral shipped with the game is...low. I've seen how hard it is to get that sort of thing going first-hand (Tony Hawk: RIDE) and it's really risky for these companies. Especially when you consider that they'll likely need different hardware for each console system...that can get very pricey, very fast. RIDE had three completely different hardware boards - to the best of my knowledge the only things that were shared were the battery pack compartments and sensors.
Anyway, I'd really love to see anything EA could come up with - I highly doubt they'd give a new AAA WC game anything less than their full efforts.
 
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