Wing Commander 3

Wing Commander 3 - Heart of the Tiger
Studio	Origin Systems
Publisher	Electronic Arts
Senior Developer	Chris Roberts
Erstveröffent- lichung	December 22, 1994 (DOS / Mac) 1995 (3DO) March 1996 (PSone)
platform	DOS , Win , Mac OS , 3DO , PSone
Game engine	RealSpace
genre	Space flight simulation , interactive film
Game mode	Single player
control	Mouse & keyboard , joystick , game controller
system advantages preconditions	OS : MS-DOS 5.0+ CPU : 486 with 50 MHz 8 MB RAM Graphics: VGA with 256 colors Sound card (optional General MIDI ) 2x CD-ROM drive Free hard disk space : 20 MB
medium	CD-ROM , download
language	German
Age rating	USK

Wing Commander 3 - Heart of the Tiger , often stylized as Wing Commander III , is a space action simulation from 1994 and the third part of the series of the same name by Origin Systems . It is also the final title about the dispute between the human confederation and the empire of the feline Kilrathi. The player takes on the role of the pilot Christopher "Maverick" Blair, the main character who has now been named and who is identical to the protagonist of the two predecessors. The game consistently drove the further development of the series as a story-driven space saga and introduced film interludes with actors for the first time in the history of the series. Wing Commander 3 is also considered to be one of the titles that contributed significantly to the spread of the CD-ROM as a data carrier format. The game was released for DOS - and Windows - PC , Mac OS , 3DO and PlayStation , project was as in the previous titles Chris Roberts . The subtitle Heart of the Tiger is derived from Blair's honorary title, which was given to him by the Kilrathi and is an expression of their respect for his flying skills.

action

The action takes place in the year 2669. The "Concordia" is destroyed and Colonel Blair's girlfriend, Colonel Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux, is in the hands of the Kilrathi. Blair is emotionally devastated at the beginning of the game, knowing nothing about Angel's fate and only knowing that she has been sent on a secret mission from which she has not yet returned. Admiral Tolwyn transfers Colonel Blair as Wing Commander to the well-aged "TCS Victory", under the command of Captain William Eisen. Among the crew of the ship are two old comrades, the defected Kilrathi Lt. Col. Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas and Todd "Maniac" Marshall, with whom Maverick has a tense relationship because of his excessive ambition and selfishness.

The "TCS Victory" is part of a plan of attack by Admiral Tolwyn, which is finally supposed to bring about the turning point in the bitterly raging, extremely loss-making war that has been raging for decades. The hunters of the carrier ship are supposed to protect the "TCS Behemoth", a capital ship with a weapon of planetary destruction, from attacks on their advance to Kilrah, the central planet of the Kilrathi. Nevertheless, under the leadership of Prince Thrakhath, the Kilrathi succeed in destroying the "Behemoth", as the enemy is informed of all plans by an undiscovered spy on the "Victory". In addition, Maverick first learns of the death of his girlfriend Angel in a duel with Thrakhath.

After the battleship is destroyed, the Confederation activates a contingency plan. Paladin tells Maverick about the secret project of the Temblor bomb. Since Kilrah is a tectonically unstable planet, this weapon - placed in the right place - could also cause the destruction of the entire planet. Colonel Blair's task is to use the experimental fighter Excalibur and a cloaking device to penetrate the secret bases set up by Angel and her team deep into the home system of the Kilrathi and to drop the bomb on Kilrah. When the plans are revealed, Hobbes identifies himself as a Kilrathis spy and flees the "Victory" to warn the Kilrathi of the impending attack. It is up to the player whether to pursue Hobbes and bring him down, or whether to let him go. Regardless of this decision, Hobbes Maverick leaves a hologram message in his locker, which never appears in most versions of the game. He explains the reasons for his betrayal, which are that he was brainwashed by Prince Thrakhath before he defected. The word "The Heart of the Tiger", which Thrakath used for Blair for the first time shortly before Hobbes betrayal, was the trigger to awaken Hobbes' true identity.

Colonel Blair is proceeding with the operation as planned. In the Kilrah system he has to face Prince Thrakhath one last time in a final confrontation and can finally defeat him once and for all. He drops the bomb as planned and Kilrah is destroyed. Blair, who cannot escape the shock wave of the destroyed planet quickly enough with his flying machine, is picked up by a Kilrathi flagship along with his destroyed fighter. Commander Melek nar Kiranka, the highest-ranking survivor of the ruling family, admits the "Heart of the Tiger", Colonel Blair, the defeat of the empire and surrenders.

Gameplay

See also : The game principle of Wing Commander

The basic gameplay of the series was also retained in the third part. Between the missions, the player can move between several rooms of the game such as the pilot's bar, the sleeping barracks, the command post or the flight deck. Similar to its predecessors, it can hold conversations there, which are played back in the form of filmed sequences. In some places the player is offered different reaction and response options. While these do not change the basic course of the game, they do lead to small variations and can change the attitude of certain characters towards Blair. For example, he can choose a new girlfriend in the course of the story, there is a choice between two female crew members of the "Victory".

During the flight missions, the player controls a space fighter from a cockpit or first person perspective . Due to his position as squadron commander of the "TCS Victory", the player can now decide himself in the third part who accompanies him as a wing pilot in the flight missions, which fighter is used for the mission and how the armament should be composed. There are a total of five different types of hunters who, in addition to energy beam weapons, carry various types of rockets, space mines or torpedoes.

The new functions include the ability to adjust the speed of your own hunter to that of the targeted enemy at the touch of a button. Similar to Star Wars: X-Wing , the distribution of spaceship energy between the drive, weapon, protective shield and repair system can be adjusted according to your own ideas. With the automatic gliding, the flight direction of the fighter will be maintained, while the orientation of the ship can be changed as desired. This allows the hunter to fly roughly parallel and at the same speed to a capital ship, while the player aligns the bow to fire on the flanks of the spaceship. In addition to the usual patrol, escort and attack missions, there are special missions such as the mining of jump points, the shooting of camouflaged space torpedoes or, for the first time in series history, atmospheric missions on planets. There are around 50 different missions in total, but not all of them have to be played depending on the decisions made by the player and the success of the mission. Similar to its predecessors, there are several alternative end options for the game, which, however, differ significantly from the stated aim of the game.

development

production

Wing Commander 3 was developed on a budget of approximately four to five million US dollars. It was one of the most expensive game productions at the time. The plot elements of the game were no longer told using computer animation, but using digitized FMV sequences . This became possible because the takeover of Origin Systems by Electronic Arts in 1993 made modern Silicon Graphics workstations available for development. The recordings were made with the help of green and blue screen technology and backgrounds were then inserted into game graphics. The RealSpace engine originally developed by Roberts for Strike Commander and upgraded to SVGA was used as the graphics engine.

The third part is also the first game in the main series in which Roberts no longer took an active part in the programming. Although the foundations of the RealSpace engine came from him, he had no part in the development of the game logic and the program code. After Roberts was originally only supposed to sit in the director's chair for a test shoot, he then took over this role completely.

The roles of the characters in the intermediate films were partly taken over by well-known actors. Sun played Mark Hamill the hero Christopher "Maverick" Blair, Malcolm McDowell his superior Admiral Tolwyn. John Rhys-Davies took on the role of Paladin, Maverick's old friend. In addition, the mime Tom Wilson, known from Back to the Future and Blood in, Blood out, plays the role of the maniac. For the role of the ship technician Rachel Coriolis, the porn actress Ginger Lynn was hired. Origin promoted the game as an interactive film.

Blair's callsign "Maverick" was not yet known during filming (it wasn't clearly confirmed until 1996 on the Wing Commander Academy TV series ), so it is never mentioned in the game. While all pilots are usually addressed by their callsigns (Maniac, Flint, Vagabond, Vaquero, Hobbes, Flash, Cobra), Blair is always mentioned in dialogues by his normal name. When the player clicks on the main terminal for the first time, he will be asked to enter a "Name for security control" (English: "Enter Callsign for Security"). If he enters "Maverick" now, this callsign will appear next to the other pilots on the killboard. However, the player is free to choose which callsign he gives Blair.

Versions

Wing Commander 3 appeared on four CD-ROMs due to the numerous video sequences and was delivered in several languages. It was originally released for PC and Apple Macintosh and was also ported to PlayStation and 3DO in the following years . The more recent versions contain additional film sequences compared to the first version. Below is a scene in which Hobbes, after his escape from the "Victory", explains the motives for his betrayal to Colonel Blair in a holo message. Due to the lack of this explanation in the original version, the actions of Kilrathi seemed incomprehensible and was therefore submitted later. Hobbes states that he was a sleeper agent who voluntarily consented to a personality overlay. His identity, loyal to the Kilrathi empire, was replaced by a philanthropic personality (cf. the SciFi short story memories en gros by Philip K. Dick ). In this way the smuggling into the Confederation finally succeeded (cf. the plot of Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 ). The original identity was only restored when the code word “Heart of the Tiger”, Blair's Kilrathic honorary name, was mentioned.

The price range under which the game was offered in stores when it was released was unusually wide. While a PC chain offered the game permanently for 99 DM, the markets of a large electronics chain initially charged 169 DM - a price that had never been charged for a computer game until then. However, it was not the normal retail version of the game, but the so-called Premiere Edition.

Instead of a normal cardboard box, the Premiere Edition was packed in a metal box shaped like a film roll and also contained a T-shirt, a video cassette with the making of and two CDs with the soundtrack, background information, interviews and unsuccessful scenes. The American version also included the Wing Commander novel Fleet Action by William Forstchen, which deals with the Kilrathi attack on earth that preceded the plot (see below).

occupation

role	actor	Voice actor
Christopher "Maverick" Blair	Mark Hamill	Frank Röth
Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn	Malcolm McDowell	Jürgen Jung
James "Paladin" Taggart	John Rhys-Davies	Manfred Erdmann
Todd "Maniac" Marshall	Thomas F. Wilson	Jan Odle
Captain William Eisen	Jason Bernard	Herbert Weicker
Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas	John Schuck	Thomas Rauscher
Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka	John Rhys-Davies	Alwin Joachim Meyer
Rachel Coriolis	Ginger Lynn	Michele Sterr
Robin "Flint" Peters	Jennifer MacDonald
Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux	Yolanda Jilot	Daniela Arden
Jace "Flash" Dillon	Josh Lucas	Crock W. Krumbiegel
Laurel "Cobra" Buckley	BJ Jefferson	Maria Boehme
Mitchell "Vaquero" Lopez	Julian Reyes	Oliver Mink
Winston "Vagabond" Chang	François Chau	Claus Brockmeyer
Ted "Radio" Rollins	Courtney Gains	Niko Macoulis
Melek nar Kiranka	Tim Curry

Community support

After Origin's official support ended, the fan community continued to take care of the game itself. For example, the community has developed several unofficial patches to improve compatibility with newer Windows versions and newer PC hardware.

Re-release

On September 13, 2011, WC III was re-released as a downloadable version on gOG.com .

Source code

The source code of Wing Commander 3 , believed to have been lost due to the dissolution of Origin Systems, was made available to the fan community in September 2011 by a former developer in order to prevent permanent loss through long-term archiving .

reception

The American gaming magazine Computer Gaming World awarded Wing Commander 3 1995 Action Game of the Year and Tom Wilson for best male acting performance. With 96% fun, Wing Commander held the record in PC games for 3 years until it was discontinued by Half-Life 2 in 2004.

Wing Commander , along with Myst and Star Wars: Rebel Assault, is one of the key titles for the success of the CD-ROM as a data carrier format for computer games. Although there were initially great concerns about a title published exclusively on CD-ROM, the title sold over a million times. It was EA's first CD-ROM-exclusive million seller.

The high-quality cutscenes of the game offered a dedicated fan and film enthusiast enough material to cut it into a two-hour feature film.

Evaluation table PC

• PC Games 2/95: 96%
• PC Joker 2/95: 87%
• PC Player 2/95: 89%
• Power Play 2/95: 82%
• Computer Gaming World 2/95: 5 out of 5
• CD-ROM Today 02/95: 4.5 of 5

PlayStation rating table

• Fun Generation 5/96: 10 out of 10
• Mega Fun 4/96: 90%
• NeXt Level 5/96: 80%
• Video Games 4/96: 79%

Scoring table 3DO

• Mega Fun 8/95: 89%
• Video Games 8/95: 82%

Merchandising

Novels

→ Main article : Wing Commander novels

Several novels on the Wing Commander universe were published by the US publishers Baen Books and Harper Entertainment , some of which were published in German translation by the German publisher Bastei Lübbe . Explicit thematic reference to the first part of the series has:

• William R. Forstchen: The Secret Fleet , Bastei Lübbe, 1995, ISBN 3-404-23160-0
  This novel covers events shortly before the events of Wing Commander 3 and was also included in the English-language Premiere Edition of the game. The Kilrathi have been severely weakened by the Confederacy's attacks, and it will take at least a year to complete their secret carrier ships. So they try to lure the Confederation into a trap by faking peace intentions. But a few members of the Confederation try to prove the existence of the secret Kilrathi fleet - which in the end culminates in a gigantic battle for Earth.
• Andrew Keith & William R. Forstchen: The heart of the tiger Bastei Lübbe, 1995. ISBN 3-404-23189-9
  It is the novel for the game, which appeared after the PC version was published. Despite the fact that a large number of the more trivial missions were left out of the game in the novel, the novel goes a long way towards portraying the crew of the TCS Victory more vividly. It also contains the additional scene in which Hobbes explains the reasons for his betrayal. The lack of this scene in the PC game made the traitor's behavior seem rather incomprehensible. The scene was therefore included in the later published versions of the game for the 3DO and the PlayStation. However, the book also deviates from the game in some details, for example with regard to the deaths of certain supporting characters, and focuses on certain variants. According to this, Blair cannot prevent the threatened destruction of the planet Locanda, Flint's home planet, in a mission. He begins a romance with Rachel while Flint is shot down and killed over Kilrah.

Other companion products

In 1995 the company Mag Force 7 by US author Margaret Weis published a trading card game for Wing Commander 3 . Fantasy and science fiction authors Jeff Grubb and Don Perrin were responsible for the design.

Web links

• Archived Origin website for the Wing Commander series' ( Memento from March 30, 1997 in the Internet Archive ) (March 30, 1997)
• Wing Commander 3 at MobyGames (English)
• Wing Commander News . Extensive archive for the Wing Commander series.
• wingcenter.net German-speaking forum with current news reports and an extensive database for Wing Commander

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See intro video of the game
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Jörg Langer : Wing Commander 3 . (Article scan) In: PC Player . No. 02/1995, February 1995, pp. 32-37.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Michael Hengst: Stars and starlets: Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger . (Article scan) In: Power Play . No. 02/1995, February 1995.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Dennis Scimeca: The History of Wing Commander: Part Two ( English ) In: G4TV . NBCUniversal . August 11, 2011. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
5. ↑ Dennis Scimeca: The History of Wing Commander: Part One ( English ) In: G4TV . NBCUniversal . August 10, 2011. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
6. ↑ Dennis Scimeca: Back On The Flight Deck: An Interview With Wing Commander's Chris Roberts ( English ) In: G4TV . NBCUniversal . August 12, 2011. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
7. ↑ Origin Systems : ORIGIN ships Wing Commander III for Christmas; Interactive movie puts Mark Hamill on the small screen. ( English ) In: Press release . The Free Library. December 12, 1994. Retrieved May 6, 2012.
8. ↑ Martin Deppe: Special: Hall of Fame: Wing Commander 3 - porn star on deck . In: GameStar . IDG . October 6, 2012. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
9. ↑ Movie Crashing Patch Patched Up to 1.2 ( English ) wcnews.com. June 20, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2013: “ Mash has updated his Kilrathi Saga WC3 movie crashing patch to be even more compatible with modern systems. The program works to prevent a bug that disrupts KS WC3 during movie playback, and it also incorporates various speed fixes. "
10. ↑ Jari Komppa: The DirectDraw Hack ( English ) sol.gfxile.net. January 24, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
11. ↑ Wing Commander III finally available at gog.com! ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on wingcenter.net (September 13, 2011)
12. ↑ John Walker: Meow! GOG Release Wing Commander III . Rock, paper, shotgun . September 13, 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2013.
13. ↑ Wing Commander III - The Source Code ( English ) wcnews.com. September 13, 2011. Retrieved on January 14, 2013: “ As we celebrate Wing Commander III's first widespread retail availability since the late 1990s, we would like to mention for anyone that we have the game's source code in our offline archive. We know it's frustrating for fans, who could do amazing things with this, to read these updates ... but it's also in everyone's best interests to remind EA that we have the raw material from which they could port Wing Commander III to a modern computer or console. Just let us know! "
14. ^ The Computer Gaming World 1995 Premier Awards . (Article scan) In: Computer Gaming World . No. 130, May 1995, pp. 35-44.
15. ↑ Heart of the Tiger Movie (final cut). wcnews.com, February 18, 2007, accessed July 12, 2017 . 
16. ↑ ^{a b} PC Games Database: Wing Commander 3 - Press Review . Retrieved April 2, 2012
17. ↑ Martin Cirulis: A New Star Is Born . (Article scan) In: Computer Gaming World . No. 127, February 1995, pp. 106-110.
18. ↑ Jon Smith: Wing Commander 3 . (Article scan) In: CD-ROM Today . February 1995, pp. 28-29.
19. ↑ Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger . (Article scan) In: Fun Generation . No. 05/1996, May 1996, pp. 70-71.
20. ^ Björn Harhausen: Wing Commander III . (Article scan) In: Mega Fun . No. 04/1996, April 1996, p. 81.
21. ^ Michael Anton: Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger . (Article scan ) In: NeXt Level . No. 05/1996, April 1996, p. 60.
22. ↑ Jan von Schweinitz: Litter box: Wing Commander 3 . (Article scan) In: Video Games . No. 04/1996, April 1996, pp. 104-105.
23. ↑ Holger Gößmann: Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger . (Article scan) In: Mega Fun . No. 08/1995, August 1995, pp. 84-85.
24. ↑ Tetsuhiko Hara: Prince Tigerheart: Wing Commander III . (Article scan) In: Video Games . No. 08/1995, August 1995, pp. 56-57.
25. ↑ Mag Force 7, Inc .: Wing Commander Customizable Card Game Press Release ( English ) In: Press release . Wing Commander News. March 22, 1995. Retrieved April 20, 2012.
26. ^ Wing Commander . www.origin.ea.com. March 30, 1997. Archived from the original on March 30, 1997. Retrieved July 30, 2011.