[kasperl]

now, i could easily google this, but the last time i looked at it, the community for this was less then, friendly, to anyone from here.

What is it? i only ever saw forum posts, some models, and about 20 minutes from a movie. Who started it? What are the basic physics (FTL excuse etc)? What is more important to the story, games, movies (are there books)?

[an0n]

There's a load of games and a movie.

It was made by Chris Roberts.

Uses hyper-drives in conjunction with jump-points to travel between systems and AFAIK intra-system FTL was never explained. Though I think it's a matter of there being no in-system FTL'ing.

The Confederation Navy (Confed Navy) is fighting a race of alien cat thingies called the Kilrathi from the Vega sector.

[Nico]

Yeah. Lots of games, the basic series is made from 5 games
Games 1 to 3 talk about the Kilrathi ( the cats ) war
Game 4 deals with some complicated political plot and biogenetics
Game 5 starts a war with another species ( nephilims, the grasshopers )
There's a "6th" installement which is free, based on Prophecy ( the 5th game ) and could be d/led from the game.

WC trademark is the plot, with lots of cutscenes and stuff. Mark Hamill ( Luke Skywalker ) played in WC3, 4 and Prophecy.

There's an handful of anecdotic side games ( armada, academy ), a couple addons ( for WC1 and 2 only, tho ), and, mostly, the Privateer series which takes place in the WC universe ( tho it's kind of hard to ell in Privateer2... ).
Disregarding any little WC/FS wa-war, I'd say I like WC as much as FS. And the WC universe is more developped and interesting imho.

The movie is ubber ****, and worth only being watched for the couple ( not so cool ) battles. Someone would make a clip out of them and delete the rest, would be better, acually
The movie keeps the names, and that's it, design is changed, characters are changed, plot is... forgotten.

[an0n]

The movie has Saffron Burrows in. Plot doesn't matter.

Hell, even Pearl Harbour would have been good if it'd had Saffron Burrows.

[kasperl]

ok, i heard about books, are there any?

also, are these games abandonware?

[Nico]

Originally posted by an0n
The movie has Saffron Burrows in. Plot doesn't matter.

Hell, even Pearl Harbour would have been good if it'd had Saffron Burrows.

I prefer Kate Beckinsale to your low-class midget

[Unknown Target]

I always thought the Kilrathi ship names sucked balls. They seem to take as many "th"s "r"s and "s"s, stick 'em together, and see what barely pronouncable (spelling?) name they could think of.

[Nico]

big deal.

[jdjtcagle]

Originally posted by Nico
Mark Hamill ( Luke Skywalker ) played in WC3, 4 and Prophecy.
 

I remember now, my Grandpa played this with a 3D0 and never got to played the last few missions because he sold it.
Wow, I've actually been looking for this game!!:D

[IceFire]

I like both

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
I always thought the Kilrathi ship names sucked balls. They seem to take as many "th"s "r"s and "s"s, stick 'em together, and see what barely pronouncable (spelling?) name they could think of.

Try voice acting for the WCP then

I actually had to send in a e-mail asking how to pronounce a couple of the names  

(which reminds me of something else on my to-do list)

[ZylonBane]

The Kilrathi are just shameless ripoffs of Larry Niven's Kzin.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
The Kilrathi are just shameless ripoffs of Larry Niven's Kzin.

 There are a lot of resemblences. Then again the idea of a humanoid cat has been around for thousends of years and have probably been gods in several civilisations so there are plenty of places they could have stolen the idea from apart from Niven.

[Stunaep]

Ah, I remember the fond days of playing WC2. Damn good story it had. And the Secret Ops missions were nearly as long as the first game!

Too bad no. 3 and 4 are nowhere to be found.

[Ace]

Pretty much on the WC games you need to play it is:
WC1-4 (1-3 can be found in the Win95 compatable "Kilrathi Saga" I hope they re-release that with the WC1/2 expansion sets included as opposed to a download in a DVD format)

Privateer (Freelancer was done right the first time.)

Armada (It's a quirky, fun little game with some strategy elements)

Probably out of all of them Privateer and WC3 are my favorites. WC4 was a little too much movie, too little game.

I also like Privateer 2, but I don't really consider it a WC game since its setting is definately different than WC. (supposidely it's set in the distant WC future... supposidely)

Other than the pretty graphics, for the time, Prophecy is a smoldering pile of crap.

[Nico]

I like prophecy a lot, you tasteless bum
As for the WC4 thing, I hear that a lot, but that statement is kind of stupid, it's not like there's less gameplay, there's just more FMV. But people are never happy, so...

[mikhael]

Prophecy was, in my opinion, the best of the Wing Commander games.  The dogfighting was excellent, Mark Hamill gets killed, the Vampire is introduced (still the sexiest canon fighter in any planes-in-space game) and the Nephilim show up. It was like FS1 but with 100% more plot.

[Kazan]

most of what makes WC was it is is the DEPTH of the universe

[Antares]

I'd advise playing the SNES port of the original Wing Commander, if you're interested in "entering" the fandom.  Although the older games have probably shifted to abandonware by now (wasn't there a big hoo-hah here about Origin shutting down or something?), there would probably be compatibility issues with today's operating systems.  Emulation would be an easier course to follow.  The first title in the series is the least complicated, and a lot of fun to play.

I recall reading somewhere that Chris Roberts had always envisioned cat-like aliens for the WC series (The "Starfire" series by David Weber and Steve White, on which FreeSpace itself is probably based, uses space-cats called Orions), but had trouble coming up with a name for them.  He eventually settled upon Kilrathi--"kill rats".

Watching the movie will give you a crash-course on the WC setting, and it was directed by Roberts, making it "official" for all purposes of fandom.  The various subplots are weird to varying degrees, however, and some details seem funky (like Paladin suddenly becoming French, as opposed to Scottish), so you may not find yourself liking the film.  If nothing else, however, it's a nice display of special effects--the Independence Day-style shield effects remind me of what Bobbau has recently put into place.

Pilgrims?

[J3Vr6]

Which Wing commander had Biff from Back to the Future?  Prophecy, right?  This is also the one that Mark Hammill is not the main pilot, right?

I honestly thought that Prophecy was a waste.  The graphics sucked.  I had played Freespace first and was disapointed by WC visually, since it's supposedly the daddy of all space fight sims.

The story also sounded awfully like Freespace:  Humans are fighting a long war against aliens when suddenly a new enemy shows up and they have to join forces to fight this new baddy.

I loved Wing commander 1... and I think that's all I loved about the entire series, and yes I played them all except the privateer ones.  The funniest were the outtakes from one of them at the end of the game, where Biff is making fun of Mark Hamil and doing his "hello, mcfly" routine...