Wing Commander
Apr. 18th, 2025 02:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheSo I'm going to start my Wing Commander adventure! I had Wing Commander III on PS1 back in the day, and I always was so intrigued by it, but I had no idea what was going on. It felt like it was dropping me into the middle of a story that I was already supposed to be familiar with. So I never ended up getting very far.
But I recently decided to buy the whole series on GOG since each game was on sale for like $2~3 (there's like 8 of them).
As always I have trouble following stuff, so typing out about it will help me :D So welcome to my play diary of Wing Commander, I guess? lmao
We're actually going to start with the manual. The manual has 36 pages of lore and story. While it's a PC game, it's still from 1990, so storage space was still an issue. Some people had very limited space to install games, and if you're running them from floppies, you were limited by the size of the disk. But printed manuals could store tons and tons of story with easy presentation!
The manual is presented as an "on-board magazine" for crew members of the TCS Tiger's Claw called Claw Marks.
The first article in "Claw Marks" is "Now Hear This," words from the editor, where we learn -- with a lot of flavor fluff -- that recently two skilled pilots here in the Vega Sector named Larry Dibbles and R.A. Skinner went out on a mission and didn't come back. And apparently this is a pretty common and hallowing experience out in space. So the rest of the magazine is going to review the basics to keep minds fresh to help this not happen more.
Also, I'll note that it says this is Vol 1 Issue 4 of the magazine. Meaning that the publication itself is at least relatively new.
The next article is "Comm Relay," a brief news report. The first news blurb is about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization (woo) is going to send an entertainment troupe to the Tiger's Claw. Don't know if the show is flavor or will be relevant to the game, but it also introduces Saranya Carr, who is an actress ("vidstar") making an appearance at the show, known for her role as space adventurer Luna Jones.
"Now Hear This" and the show article make reference to Kilrathi (the quote from Carr calling them "fuzzies") which I assume are the anthropomorphic tiger-like alien race that I vaguely remember from Wing Commander III, and that I briefly saw while glancing through Claw Marks. Seems like they're the obvious baddies in the Vega Sector, though we haven't learned why.
The next news blurb is news from Earth (Sol III). So it sounds like there are multiple solar systems, and what we know as Earth is part of the Sol III system...? So much to gather just from the headline.
The report details a little about a newly discovered alien species called the Double Helix. They're carbon-based arthropods with sentience. BUG ALIENS???? I love them so much. They so far are on friendly terms with humans. Wish we got a picture of them! I want to see the giant sentient buggies!!!And try intercourse with one!! Also they have double-helix shaped spacecraft, which seems... a strange design, but hey.
The discovery of the Double Helix happened on 2654.080, which seems to be a "stardate" of sorts. The magazine is issue four from 2654, which may represent a year perhaps?
The next article is Taggart's Tactics. It first details what happened to Dibbles and Skinner -- basically Dibbles broke from his wingleader Skinner to attack an "easy" target, which was just Kilrathi playing dead to lure them in. They were able to then ambush and destroy both Dibbles and Skinner.
Then it describes a bunch of flight maneuvers and stuff in detail. I really hope I'm not supposed to actually understand how to perform all this in the game.
Alongside this article are little note boxes that have some history. The "25 years ago" one talks about an event on 2629.105, which is March 15, 2629. So the four digits are indeed a year indicator. Apparently, 25 years ago, an explorer vessel met a new alien race, tried to hail them a nonverbal greeting, and was utterly destroyed by the alien ship in an attack.
20 years ago, full-scale war against the Kilrathi (Empire of Kilrah) is broken out, and Terrans (Earth humans) were able to put a dent in their spearhead.
15 years ago describes an incident in which the Kilrathi take the planet Enyo hostage, but it's recovered by the Terrans despite some casualties, leaving the Kilrathi in retreat and making them sacrifice a strategic position.
5 years ago, the TCS Tiger's Claw does a little rescue mission.
The next article in the magazine is "Joan's Fighting Spacecraft: Friend or Foe" which is just diagrams of the various ships from the game, I guess, with technical specs about them. There's a bunch of Terran ships (including the Tiger's Claw) and then a bunch of Kilrathi (I finally can spell that without referencing it!) ships. The Kilrathi ships are more round than the triangular Terran ships. If bad, why shaped like friend?
The final part of "Joan's Fighting Spacecraft" is weapon specs, with little pictures of missiles and stuff.
Our next article is "Pilot Profiles..." (yes, with the ellipses) which has little pictures of what I'm assuming are major characters along with a couple paragraphs' description of each. Yes, there's THAT much information on each character.
And there are a LOT of these. Everyone has a name and a callsign. James Taggart, who wrote one of the previous articles, is a handsome 45-year-old mustache man also known as Paladin. I love him already.
There's also a handful of Kilrathi character profiles. Geez.
And finally after 36 pages of story and lore and profiles and such, we get a "how to play" section! The game seems ... extremely complicated. And then there's a little history of the Claw near the end, some of which we already heard about earlier. I'm getting mentally fatigued so I'm not going to try to understand any more of the lore for now. Might come back to it if I need help understanding the game's story.
And yes, that's going to be episode one of this play diary :P Just reviewing the game's manual booklet.
Maybe tomorrow I will actually play the game...!
But I recently decided to buy the whole series on GOG since each game was on sale for like $2~3 (there's like 8 of them).
As always I have trouble following stuff, so typing out about it will help me :D So welcome to my play diary of Wing Commander, I guess? lmao
We're actually going to start with the manual. The manual has 36 pages of lore and story. While it's a PC game, it's still from 1990, so storage space was still an issue. Some people had very limited space to install games, and if you're running them from floppies, you were limited by the size of the disk. But printed manuals could store tons and tons of story with easy presentation!
The manual is presented as an "on-board magazine" for crew members of the TCS Tiger's Claw called Claw Marks.
The first article in "Claw Marks" is "Now Hear This," words from the editor, where we learn -- with a lot of flavor fluff -- that recently two skilled pilots here in the Vega Sector named Larry Dibbles and R.A. Skinner went out on a mission and didn't come back. And apparently this is a pretty common and hallowing experience out in space. So the rest of the magazine is going to review the basics to keep minds fresh to help this not happen more.
Also, I'll note that it says this is Vol 1 Issue 4 of the magazine. Meaning that the publication itself is at least relatively new.
The next article is "Comm Relay," a brief news report. The first news blurb is about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization (woo) is going to send an entertainment troupe to the Tiger's Claw. Don't know if the show is flavor or will be relevant to the game, but it also introduces Saranya Carr, who is an actress ("vidstar") making an appearance at the show, known for her role as space adventurer Luna Jones.
"Now Hear This" and the show article make reference to Kilrathi (the quote from Carr calling them "fuzzies") which I assume are the anthropomorphic tiger-like alien race that I vaguely remember from Wing Commander III, and that I briefly saw while glancing through Claw Marks. Seems like they're the obvious baddies in the Vega Sector, though we haven't learned why.
The next news blurb is news from Earth (Sol III). So it sounds like there are multiple solar systems, and what we know as Earth is part of the Sol III system...? So much to gather just from the headline.
The report details a little about a newly discovered alien species called the Double Helix. They're carbon-based arthropods with sentience. BUG ALIENS???? I love them so much. They so far are on friendly terms with humans. Wish we got a picture of them! I want to see the giant sentient buggies!!!
The discovery of the Double Helix happened on 2654.080, which seems to be a "stardate" of sorts. The magazine is issue four from 2654, which may represent a year perhaps?
The next article is Taggart's Tactics. It first details what happened to Dibbles and Skinner -- basically Dibbles broke from his wingleader Skinner to attack an "easy" target, which was just Kilrathi playing dead to lure them in. They were able to then ambush and destroy both Dibbles and Skinner.
Then it describes a bunch of flight maneuvers and stuff in detail. I really hope I'm not supposed to actually understand how to perform all this in the game.
Alongside this article are little note boxes that have some history. The "25 years ago" one talks about an event on 2629.105, which is March 15, 2629. So the four digits are indeed a year indicator. Apparently, 25 years ago, an explorer vessel met a new alien race, tried to hail them a nonverbal greeting, and was utterly destroyed by the alien ship in an attack.
20 years ago, full-scale war against the Kilrathi (Empire of Kilrah) is broken out, and Terrans (Earth humans) were able to put a dent in their spearhead.
15 years ago describes an incident in which the Kilrathi take the planet Enyo hostage, but it's recovered by the Terrans despite some casualties, leaving the Kilrathi in retreat and making them sacrifice a strategic position.
5 years ago, the TCS Tiger's Claw does a little rescue mission.
The next article in the magazine is "Joan's Fighting Spacecraft: Friend or Foe" which is just diagrams of the various ships from the game, I guess, with technical specs about them. There's a bunch of Terran ships (including the Tiger's Claw) and then a bunch of Kilrathi (I finally can spell that without referencing it!) ships. The Kilrathi ships are more round than the triangular Terran ships. If bad, why shaped like friend?
The final part of "Joan's Fighting Spacecraft" is weapon specs, with little pictures of missiles and stuff.
Our next article is "Pilot Profiles..." (yes, with the ellipses) which has little pictures of what I'm assuming are major characters along with a couple paragraphs' description of each. Yes, there's THAT much information on each character.
And there are a LOT of these. Everyone has a name and a callsign. James Taggart, who wrote one of the previous articles, is a handsome 45-year-old mustache man also known as Paladin. I love him already.
There's also a handful of Kilrathi character profiles. Geez.
And finally after 36 pages of story and lore and profiles and such, we get a "how to play" section! The game seems ... extremely complicated. And then there's a little history of the Claw near the end, some of which we already heard about earlier. I'm getting mentally fatigued so I'm not going to try to understand any more of the lore for now. Might come back to it if I need help understanding the game's story.
And yes, that's going to be episode one of this play diary :P Just reviewing the game's manual booklet.
Maybe tomorrow I will actually play the game...!
