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Wing Commander: Prophecy

by Proteus4994

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Original Thread: Stupes vs. Bugs - Let's play Wing Commander: Prophecy

 

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU SUCH MEDIOCRE LP THREADS AS SUPER MARIO LAND, SML2, JAMES POND 2, AND AXEIL, YOU FUCKING SUCK GUEST COMMENTARY IN SUPER METROID: REDESIGN........


Oh god, that's not it. Oh god, no. Let me try this again. This is off to a horrible start.


There we go. That's more like it.

2007 marks the tenth anniversary of the release of the last major Wing Commander game, Wing Commander: Prophecy. WC:P was the first (and, I believe, only until Arena comes out later this year) Wing Commander game released after the departure of Chris Roberts from Electronic Arts. It's debatably the worst game of the bunch, from a storyline perspective, although it's still not a horrible game. It's basically a "reset" of the Wing Commander storyline, where the war with the Kilrathi is over (WC1-WC3), the civil war between Confed and the Border Worlds has been resolved (WC4), and now a new enemy shows up.

I've been a huge Wing Commander fanboy for about fifteen years now. I had the original WC1 on bootlegged floppy disks that I got from a friend in high school, and played it to death. To date, I've played every WC game to completion except for Privateer 2 (never could get it to run right without crashing) and Super Wing Commander, most of them multiple times. Unfortunately, I can't get WC3 to run on Windows, even the Kilrathi Saga version, without crashing, as well as I can't get Camtasia to record the screen. So as much as I would have rather done WC3 and/or WC4, due to technical difficulties, I couldn't. So here we have WC:P instead. If I can figure something out, I might do WC3/WC4 down the road. I would absolutely love to.

This is going to be a hybrid LP of sorts. Cutscenes will be done in video, without exception. Missions (after the first one) will be done in both screenshot and video, so you can pick which one you'd rather enjoy. My idea is to do the screenshot version in a sort of "diary" style, where I do fairly serious commentary from the role of Lance Casey, whereas the videos will be done in my typical irrelevant and profanity-filled style, with lots of pointing out why and how I suck, as well as plenty of Wing Commander universe trivia.

For those of you unfamiliar with Wing Commander games, there are cutscenes between each movie that advance the storyline. However, there are often missions that are also very important to the plot (for anyone familiar with WC3, such as the Hobbes mission). Therefore, each video will have a * rating, from 1 to 5 stars, based on how important I feel like the in-mission dialogue/storyline is to watch. So basically, what that means, is that a * video means that you probably don't need to watch the movie unless you want to hear my commentary, whereas a ***** video would be one where I feel like it's not captured well in screenshot form at all.

Cutscenes will be done with typical snide commentary. However, because I cannot fucking stand when people talk over cutscenes (and most other people can't either), the movie volume will be loud. So if I'm talking and the game dialogue starts up, I'll be the one cut off by the game and not the other way around. I figure it'd be for the best that way. Additionally, I turned subtitles on to make absolutely sure nobody misses anything.

OK, enough introductory stuff, let's meet our cast! (and, for the record, none of this was copy/pasted. I wrote all of this myself. I'm a fucking loser)

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Lt. Lance Casey (Steven Petrarca)
This is you. Fresh out of the Academy, with the highest scores in his class, Lance has been assigned to the Diamondback squadron of the brand-new TCS Midway supercarrier. In a nifty little throwback to WC1, Lance's father was Michael Casey, better known to most Wing Commander fans as "Iceman". This comes into play often, with many of the characters on the Midway having flown with or under Iceman in their past. Much like one might expect, though, Casey has to prove himself worthy of his own recognition, or else he'll forever be under the shadow of his father.

Colonel Commodore Christopher "Maverick" Blair (Mark Hamill)
This was you. In every previous main Wing Commander game (1-4), you flew as Christopher Blair. His record is infamous, being the man who, among other things:

At this point, Blair has been promoted to Commodore and was the instrumental person in the development and construction of the Midway. As such, he has decided to travel aboard the ship on its maiden voyage.

Major Todd "Maniac" Marshall (Tom Wilson)
Maniac is still the same character he was in the Academy. Time, age, wisdom, experience......none of these things have changed who he is. He is a brilliant flyer, possibly even better than Christopher Blair himself. However, his natural talent for flying is tempered by his brash arrogance, willingness to defy orders from his co-pilots to further his own glory, his self-aggrandizing, and his cockiness. While most pilots find him at best obnoxious and at worst despicable, nobody has ever denied his ability to fly a spaceship. While most people of Maniac's talent would be close to their captain status by now, Maniac has been a major for years because of his inability to lead. And if you listen to him (and most of the time, he won't give you a choice), he'd tell you that he'd have it no other way. The relationship between Blair and Maniac is a strange one. Superficially, both of them have disliked each other ever since they transferred to the Tiger's Claw together out of the Academy, but Maniac has been at Blair's side throughout his entire career, and they have turned out to be quite an excellent team who both grudgingly admit respect for each other's skills.

(on a side note, if you don't recognize the name, Tom Wilson was Biff from Back to the Future, and is the single best acted character in the entire series, bar none.)

Colonel Jacob "Hawk" Manley (Chris Mulkey)
Hawk is a pilot who rose to fame during his performance in the war of the Border Worlds. An excellent pilot and cold ruthless killer, Hawk pushes people to the edge and doesn't allow any excuses to be made for failure. He is rarely seen without his trademark knife at his side, which he uses to both defend himself as well as put a scare into new pilots. He was briefly an instructor at a Confed flight academy, but after losing that position, took a position on the TCS Midway as the squadron leader of the Black Widows. Hawk and Iceman flew together, although Hawk is not particularly talkative about the details (or very much else in general).

Chief Petty Officer Rachel Coriolis (Ginger Lynn Allen)
Growing up on a Naval base and being the only female in her family, Rachel was exposed to space flight early and often as a child. Instead of learning to fly as her father and brothers did, she took to the mechanical aspect of spaceships, preferring to learn the mechanics of how they operate, and more importantly, how to fix them. After getting her degree in Mechanical Engineering, Rachel joined Confed as a technician, and quickly rose to the ranks of chief technician. Her ability to fix a spaceship with the barest number of parts proved invaluable during both the final stages of the Kilrathi war as well as the Border Worlds war. She now joins the crew of the TCS Midway as a Chief Technician, and is considered to be one of the, if not the, top engineers in Confed.

(on a side note, during the course of WC3, you could choose whether to begin a romantic relationship with either Flint or Rachel. While the choice remained yours, official Wing Commander canon (god, I feel like a douchebag writing that) says that Blair ended up with Rachel. They broke up before Wing Commander 4, but remain friends.)

Lt. Max "Maestro" Garrett (Neill Barry)
Max and Lance became best friends at the Academy, and both managed to get a station bill on the TCS Midway. While Lance was dedicated to becoming a great flyer, Max was more interested in meeting women and playing pranks on people. However, the fact that he got stationed on the Midway is a testament to how good of a flier he is.

Lt. Jean "Stiletto" Talvert (Heather Stephens)
Stiletto is a relatively young pilot to lead a squadron, but her performance in an inpromptu skirmish against a band of Kilrathi pirates, where two of her wingmen were killed, yet she managed to drive the raiders away, resulted in a quick promotion to the squadron leader of the Diamondbacks. A promising start for a pilot most people figured would fail after she threw up into her flight helmet after her first kill.

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There are other characters that probably deserve mention, but Christ, this is long, so let's get to the actual fucking content.



Intro movie 1 (Filefront)
Intro movie 2/Non-combat tour (Filefront)
Cutscene 1/H'rekkah Sector 1/Cutscene 2 (the sound effects are pretty loud during the first mission, but you don't miss me saying anything important)
(Filefront)

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