Chris Roberts derailed Wing Commander?

Dyret

Super Carrot!
So I was browsing tvtropes when I came across this, sorry about the formating, no idea how to mass hyper-unlink:
Chalk it up to the George Lucas Effect: as Chris Roberts gained more control over the series, he began to purge more and more of the nuance from the setting and replace it with blatantly transparent allegories for historical events. Wing Commander IV is the video game champion of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot—the hype promised the ability to choose between fighting for Confed or The Border Worlds, each side with their own merits and flaws to create an interesting story. In the end, it turned out that the Border Worlds were completely in the right and the whole war was due to an evil conspiracy within the Confederation, led by Admiral Tolwyn, who was newly divested of any of the redeeming qualities he had in the previous games. Then the Nephilim, who seemed intentionally designed to be utterly impossible to empathize with, were introduced. This trend culminated in The Movie, which was so utterly atrocious that it served as a Franchise Killer for the whole series, and featured such absurdities as Kilrathi fighters dive bombing the Confederation Navy's fleet headquarters in a scene ripped straight out of Pearl Harbor!

While some of it is obviously bullshit, like WC not always having been a WW2 analogy, I'm curious about the 'CR taking over' part. From what I've heard the opposite is the case. Was he ever involved with the writing and characterization at all? Anyone know what's up with this claim? Here's a direct link to the whole thing for anyone interested, it's the first entry under 'other': http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WallBangers/VideoGames
 
Total bullshit.

First of all, Chris had more creative control over Wing Commander in 1990 than he ever did again… as he OWNED the IP at the time (he had to sell it to Electronic Arts in 1993 as a condition of their buyout of Origin.) But the thesis itself is nonsense; if you look back at the original Squadron pitch, Chris’ idea was for the player to serve an amoral (at best) Terran Empire, and to suggest that maybe their war-of-conquest against the Kilrathi wasn’t justified. He was convinced to tone that down at the time.

I would also characterize it as a gross misunderstanding of Chris’ career; he wasn’t fighting for more control over the IP in the later days… he was trying to get Electronic Arts to fund the NON Wing Commander games they’d promised him he could do (Silverheart.) If Chris had wanted to keep turning out Wing Commanders every year, he’d have been more than welcome to do so… the conflict came when he wanted to do something else.

The complaint about Wing Commander IV is just a weird logical… uh, car wreck, I guess. Yes, the Border Worlds end up being the good guys… because of the somewhat surprise (at the time, anyway) revelation that the side you’d been rooting for for the previous three games wasn’t all good. That’s kind of the opposite of what this guy is trying to say. (Finally, he didn’t have anything to do with Wing Commander Prophecy… and so he had nothing to do with the Nephilim (not that any of this really fits into a coherent argument in the first place.))
 
...still... would have enjoyed playing a full fledged Confed campaign in WCIV.

It would have been an interesting juxtaposition to play it from the Confed POV, that the BW keep doing 'bad things' building up to the invasion fleet. Not an overt 'Confed invades' and you are a bad guy, but a true build up to a C/BW war.

I know the sheer cost of production would have been a killer, but its nice to dream.

Heh - always an option for a mod, WCIV from the point where you choose to stay with Confed.
 
Total bullshit.

Figured as much.

The complaint about Wing Commander IV is just a weird logical… uh, car wreck, I guess. Yes, the Border Worlds end up being the good guys… because of the somewhat surprise (at the time, anyway) revelation that the side you’d been rooting for for the previous three games wasn’t all good. That’s kind of the opposite of what this guy is trying to say. (Finally, he didn’t have anything to do with Wing Commander Prophecy… and so he had nothing to do with the Nephilim (not that any of this really fits into a coherent argument in the first place.))

I get the complaint about the bad guys (largely) being whittled down to genocidal maniacs, but that probably boils down to format. I'm not sure anyone would consider Kilrathi politics or more ambigious space nazis worth juggling 20 cds. How Chris Roberts or Prophecy is supposed to fit in is anyone's guess, though. :confused:
 
Sounds like someone was angry they couldn't stay with Confed in Wing Commander IV and decided to concoct their own reality to blame that on someone other than their own unrealistic expectations :)
 
...the hype promised the ability to choose between fighting for Confed or the Border Worlds

I don't remember it being marketed like this at all, was this ever how EA set out to sell the game? All I remember reading is that civil war had broken out and we'd be flying for Confed again.
 
Wing Commander IV is billed as, "saving humanity." However, it doesn't necessarily say how, which is how you want it. Neither the European or North American Box Art (which was most PC games' sole advertising medium at the time, save a mention in a magazine) specify or imply that you fly as one faction or another.

wc4blackback.jpg

wc4back.jpg


Nothing promised a dual campaign, but given the choices you make in game, there are multitudes of different ways to play.

Some glowing examples: Did you save the civvies in Circe or go for loot in Speradon, Did you go with Eisen, your decision at Ella, the Senate?!. That doesn't include wingmen and crew convos. I can say two names right now and anyone who's played the game will laugh a bit: Maniac and Dekker.

You want choices then Price of Freedom as your choices!
 
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The game was never sold as having two campaigns (or even that you'd have a choice of factions)... although one of the most common questions in the community back then was "how do I stay with Confed?"
 
I remember when rumors started to flow into #wing-commander on DALnet and one of the hottest ones was that we'd be able to choose one of two carriers to serve on...which is correct, but I'm pretty sure most of us were not thinking in the way the game actually played out. ;)
 
The game was never sold as having two campaigns (or even that you'd have a choice of factions)... although one of the most common questions in the community back then was "how do I stay with Confed?"
Yeah.... Back then, I had to rely on gaming mags for game news. The internet was in its infancy so to speak and I remember being genuinely surprised when playing the game for the first time that we had to defect. Neither the box nor the advertising ( I guess I wasn't looking that hard) really led my teenage self to that conclusion ahead of time, though Tolwyn as the true enemy/traitor seemed rather telegraphed from the beginning.
 
People are stupid and make wild claims on the internet.

This is nothing new.

TVTropes is the horrible culmination / nexus of the modern internet. "Oh I found this slight logical error, its obvious they're trying to destroy these things I love" and "Oh look a minor cliche, everything about this is a ripoff" is just the wagging of very stupid people. Everyone wants to jump on the Red Letter Media bandwagon (Please don't, I knew that guy in real life and he's horrible) and tear things down instead of building things up.

Sibelius said it best: "No statue was ever raised for a critic".
 
I find it interesting how people continue to superimpose today's gaming trends and logic onto the games of yesteryear. I always saw wing commander as a game that was all about telling a story. Choice never really played into it all that often. Yes there were a few side branches the player could explore, to make replays more interesting and to satisfy a more diverse set of personalities, but at it's core the journey was mostly the same for everyone (well, everyone that was halfway decent at the game, anyway). Personally, I like a game that has a set story to tell, and does its best to use gameplay to reinforce that story. Sandbox games have their place, (I'm a big fan of KSP, Minecraft, and Elite) but forcing sandbox, choice, and plot together just isn't my thing. Probably one of the reasons I didn't like those old choose your own adventure books back in the day. I've always found a well crafted and defined story to be much better than any choice-ridden quagmire that I've played. As a side note, it would've been interesting to see a more realistic version of the story. There is rarely a good or evil side to a story, that's mostly fiction as we all know, it's always differences in perspective. Both Japan and Germany had good reason to start the war, going back to the WWII analogy. It would've just been nice to see something besides "scientific" racism as a vector for Tolwyn's actions.
 
Sounds like someone was angry they couldn't stay with Confed in Wing Commander IV and decided to concoct their own reality to blame that on someone other than their own unrealistic expectations :)
Not sure if that was targeted at me or the OP's quote Bandit LOAF? :confused:
I just recall being disappointed the second time exploring the Confed choice (which seemed pretty significant for the game) only to run against a brick wall a couple of missions later.
 
Not sure if that was targeted at me or the OP's quote Bandit LOAF? :confused:
I just recall being disappointed the second time exploring the Confed choice (which seemed pretty significant for the game) only to run against a brick wall a couple of missions later.

Personally, I really enjoy the fact that the game punished players for making the wrong moral choice by siding with a conspiracy by Outer Space Nazis.

In an age where anti-heroes aren't dark enough and Superman breaks people's necks, the idea that "No, there IS a moral certainty" is pretty damn radical.
 
People are stupid and make wild claims on the internet.
TVTropes is the horrible culmination / nexus of the modern internet. "Oh I found this slight logical error, its obvious they're trying to destroy these things I love" and "Oh look a minor cliche, everything about this is a ripoff" is just the wagging of very stupid people.
Sibelius said it best: "No statue was ever raised for a critic".

Not really the case, at least not on modern TVTropes. They go out of their way to keep negativity and controversy off the main page and push the 'tropes are tools not cliches' angle. The wallbangers subpage is more of a place where people go to whine about the things they supposedly like, though.

Not sure if that was targeted at me or the OP's quote Bandit LOAF? :confused:
I just recall being disappointed the second time exploring the Confed choice (which seemed pretty significant for the game) only to run against a brick wall a couple of missions later.

Almost certainly the original quote.
 
Not really the case, at least not on modern TVTropes. They go out of their way to keep negativity and controversy off the main page and push the 'tropes are tools not cliches' angle. The wallbangers subpage is more of a place where people go to whine about the things they supposedly like, though.

What something is sold as and what something actually is are often not one and the same.
 
True, still they're doing a reasonable job of not being a vitriolic cesspool most of the time.
 
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