What I miss

I miss being young and enjoying Wing Commander fully; having no notion of cliche and loving every second of the FMV. I miss actually being bad enough to maybe cause one or two storyline blips, or indeed even lose WC1, rather than losing on purpose by ramming into the Tiger's Claw. I miss not thinking, "He kind of looks like that guy who played the guy in American Beauty... you know the guy who was in the Bourne Identity.. Chris Cooper that's him.." when looking at Hawk. I miss not noticing the ostentatious meaningful nods or sighs at the end of an FMV piece. I miss thinking, "Damn this is the best acting I've ever seen, I feel like I'm almost connecting on a social level" while playing WC3, rather than, "Damn I wouldn't kiss Rachel, I could take a good guess where her lips have been this morning, no wonder Eisen's smiling."

I miss being so ignorant as to not read the Nav instructions on the final mission of WC3 and thus facing (bizarrely at the time) an endless influx of Strakhas while pounding the A key to catch the nanosecond of autopilot that would come up after the 6th wing or so, thus getting to Kilrah.

This list is endless, essentially:

I miss not being a pseudo intellectual dick.

Would anyone else agree that they got the most pleasure from the Wing Commander series when they were younger? I just can't seem to capture the immersion factor any more. Playing Prophecy today, I skipped FMV and didn't even care when Blair got abducted. I mean what!? In the past I really couldn't think of anything worse, I mean, if my parents were killed in some horrific accident, who cares, they didn't save the Federation, they couldn't even fly a turbo prop.

Dammit now I'm boring myself.
 
It's always better when we are young. The 80's sucked to eveveryon except people who were kids in the 80's.

But WC was something truly special to play when I was about 14. 386s with VGA were relatively rare in Brazil, and I had to play on a friend's house. I managed to play the entire thing on EGA, and man it was great.

Somehow all those games today are just so-so. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's the universe.
 
Oddly enough, I still don't think any of that (though I admit that even the very first time I winced at the "true master" comment in WC4, let alone in re-runs).

Yes, there are undoubtedly cliches in WC, but you know what? I'm still entertained by it. In the end, that's what really counts, IMO. I don't ask for "high cinema" or Shakespeare (ironic his works are now cited as great classics, considering the target audience at the time of the plays) from games or Hollywood in general, just that when all is said and done, I have the feeling that I've gotten my money's worth. WC does that, even with its flaws.

(Anyone chipping in with any variation on the theme of "simple minds, simple pleasures" - to anyone in this thread, especially me - will be given a month's vacation from the board.)
 
Somehow all those games today are just so-so. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's the universe.
No it's not you. It's not the universe. It's EA and senseless children who keep on swallowing their repditive crap on a daily basis.
 
Prettty soon you'll be telling anyone who'll listen.... "Back in my day it was better than this." You sound like my grandpa. EA has had quality games that I enjoy, being an out and out EA basher might be some kind of hip statement in some circles, but you really show a great deal of ignorance of what a company like EA makes possible for the industry. To the topic at hand, we all don't keep our first reactions to playing WC, but I have found that I like the universe more now than I did then. Thanks to this site and the people that keep it going I can remember those days fondly with people that know how I felt. Just because you don't feel the way you did the first time doesn't mean that you've lost the love for it, just that the excitment is not the same. If the games don't draw you in anymore, I'd reccomend the novels.

-Rance-
 
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for fan-games. Standoff is great in that. You are not a big hero but a soldier trying to do his job. Is a lot easier to connect with the maincharacter.
 
I'll admit that certain aspects of the game just arent as strong as when I was younger. Punching Paladin, Pretty much every Kat taunt, Almost all of Prophecy just seem a little cheezy. But on the whole Wing Commander has eged well and proving my point is the fact that there are still people picking up the game second hand and becoming addicted to it. My nieghbours kids used to come around and play WC2 almost every afternoon and they had barely started primary school.

And I didn't intend to start EA bashing but the rate kids and parents of said kids buy these "online only" games or anything with "The Sims" in the title then EA has no reason to pay people....Whatever they're called to do what they do to make games good. Wait I remember what they're called now, Scriptwriters.:p
 
Of course none of the magic of playing through the Wing Commander games the first time can be recaptured because once you know what's going to happen, you know what's going to happen. It's amazing however that the story and acting of all the games are good enough that you actually want to play it again and again even though all the plot twists will already be spoiled. I don't know about anyone else but to me that says something about just how good the Wing Commander games are. Sure it may just be nostalgia that brings us back again and again but I guess that's enough.

As for EA, I'd rather not comment but I'm not happy with EA recently or even over the past few years though I respect all they've done for the industry.
 
I don't know... I have grown quite a bit since those days (I've got a career, a wife, and a son now). And yet, I am still able to connect with the things of my childhood. I think I am able to do that more now that I am a father than I could before then. Something about having a kid helps you see things again they way you used to as a child yourself. That became clear to me one summer day when I took my son swimming and I found myself thinking, "hey, summer feels like summer again!"

So yes, I am more of a film critic now, and the graphics do look old and dated. But, I played WC3 again last year for the first time in many, many years, and it felt the same. Maybe I'm just all nostalgic or whatnot. Maybe it's the fact that part of my job includes working with kids. It had meaning to me, it was a way of releving some of the stress and ambiguity of real life as a hero who could do a lot about the state of the universe (good old Blair, always at the hot spots). It was just a fantasy, a work of fiction, but it did something for me. When I play now (although it is a rare occasion with the business of life), I am able to recapture that, at least to a certain extent.
 
Death said:
I don't ask for "high cinema" or Shakespeare (ironic his works are now cited as great classics, considering the target audience at the time of the plays)
Yeah... and let's be fair - "Oh, I am slain" is about as bad as the "true master" line. And there's plenty of other bad lines in Shakespeare - but people pretend that they're all great because, you know, it's Shakespeare. I find it really funny when people get all huffy about Shakespeare being high art and all that - hell no, it's 16th century Star Wars, pop-culture at its best.


As for WC... I find that I appreciate it even more now than I did then, but it is a different kind of appreciation. I now tend to appreciate the games more for the way they were made than for themselves. Take WC4, for example. Sure, the acting is terrible... but how could I not appreciate WC4 when I wrote about its narrative structure in my master's thesis? The older WC games (...meaning everything up to and including WC4) are great because each of them really is ground-breaking in some ways. Each of them is a failure in some ways, too - but it's great to watch how things change from one game to another, where you see how Origin tries to fix the mistakes made in the last game. And then there's WCP - how can you not appreciate a game that, after eight years, still remains in many ways superior to every other space sim? Sure, the graphics may have aged... but underneath that, you have incredibly polished gameplay, and the world's best scripting system.

(and there's also dozens of tiny little things that you wouldn't have even noticed the first time round, but which make the game more enjoyable... for example, anyone that's studied film or script-writing will laugh upon reading that Specialist McGuffin's been killed)
 
Quarto said:
(and there's also dozens of tiny little things that you wouldn't have even noticed the first time round, but which make the game more enjoyable... for example, anyone that's studied film or script-writing will laugh upon reading that Specialist McGuffin's been killed)
I didn't study film or script-writing, so obviously I don't get the reference; care to explain ? I'm interested.
 
Quarto said:
Yeah... and let's be fair - "Oh, I am slain" is about as bad as the "true master" line. And there's plenty of other bad lines in Shakespeare - but people pretend that they're all great because, you know, it's Shakespeare.

While I get what you're trying to say - thats really an awful way to go about saying it.

(And a "McGuffin" is a term Hitchcock applied to a plot device)
 
What needs my Shakespear for his honored bones...

A "McGuffin" is something that shows up out of nowhere to keep the story going.
 
Quarto,
You wrote your master's thesis about WC4 narrative structure?! That would be interesting reading indeed (much more enjoyable than reading my thesis, I'd say). Perhaps it should go in the archives here! :)
 
It's very interesting indeed - it used to be up at Q's "hire me, I'm a professional gamer" homepage, but I don't have the URL anymore.. and Q's profile here still lists UE as his homepage. :p
 
Eder said:
It's very interesting indeed - it used to be up at Q's "hire me, I'm a professional gamer" homepage, but I don't have the URL anymore.. and Q's profile here still lists UE as his homepage. :p
Hehe, I could swear I updated my profile at some point... but I guess I didn't, until now :p.

Sphynx: Strictly speaking, I wrote my thesis about computer game narrative structure in general. WC4 (and other WC games) are featured prominently in the sub-chapter about the branching narrative model, but the overwhelming portion of my thesis deals with a much wider range of games (and also with aspects of narrative other than structure). Anyway, the thesis was mentioned in CIC news at one point. If you'd like to read it, you can check it out on my website (the link has now appeared in my profile :) ).
 
Thanks, Quarto! :) Narrative and storytelling are both a big part of what I do and study, as well, so I have a lot of interest in both topics. I'll have to check it out. It sounds facinating!
 
Bandit LOAF said:
What needs my Shakespear for his honored bones...

A "McGuffin" is something that shows up out of nowhere to keep the story going.

No problem, don't mention it. Glad to help.
 
Aplha 1-1 said:
No it's not you. It's not the universe. It's EA and senseless children who keep on swallowing their repditive crap on a daily basis.

EA is the company that paid for Origin to make fifteen Wing Commander games in five years.
 
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