From: jengagne@wam.umd.edu (Jenny Lynne Gagne)
Subject: Re: Wing Commander III wishlist
Summary: WC3 ideas and gripes 
Keywords: wc3, iii 
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:39:54 GMT

Okay, time for my 2% of a dollar on the subject of WC3.

I, for one, would like a better plot.  Really, WC2 had no plot... every
mission was...

1.  Wonder who the traitor is.
2.  Try to tell someone about the stealth fighters.
3.  Go blow something up in the name of humanity.

...And repeat steps 1-3 until done.  The characterization was very nice, 
how the perceptions were built up or altered, but you need more than that
for plot.  I'm writing a WCish game * (It's sort of Wing Commander on a 
very tight budget and no scaling routines) and the main suggestion I get 
from playtesters is to intertwine the plot with the missions.

What this means is that if you blow up something or save something, it
should have alter or advance plot.  This was seen in WC2 when you rescued
the data packet that said Spirit wasn't a traitor, for example.
Wreck things, shoot things, and blow things up is fun, but wreck things,
shoot things, and blow things up to find out information is terrific.

I would also like the see the Trainer return.  That was really fun.

Plus, I wouldn't mind tactical nuclear weapons.  I hear these are in
Op2.  I hope they keep them, half the fun of Wing Commander is making
things go splat.

Plus, what ever happened to the one-paragraph blurb about the Double
Helix aliens in Wing Commander 1?  Are they gonna make a return 
appearance?

Lastly, don't release it on CD-ROM only!!!!  Origin seems to be on a
power play lately, making such incredibly stunning games that they
suck HD space and memory like there's no tommorow, even on a 386 33
which is sort of the standard.  Tone things down.  You don't need
incredible 5000 frame 24 bit images to create a quality game.
The 23 Meg Monster (known also as Ultima 7), while being very good,
was really too big.

(I don't have any logical ideas on HOW to lower the size.  My
 suggestion is : no speech except for a speech pack, and decrease the
 frame rate on slow motions which don't need the constant updates.
 The ending animation on U7 was nice, but you didn't need it
 to be that smooth to have something spetacular.)

Lastly Lastly, increase the volume of your music.  Wc2 was really
quiet except for the speech, so I couldn't turn it up or you'd
hear normal music and booming top volume speech.  I really
liked the Royal Kilrathi Theme usually played in the speech bits -
keep it up!  I was humming it for days afterwards.

Lastly Lastly Lastly, lower the price a little.  I seriously
doubt this is possible for them to do, but you never know... :-)

Well, that's all for my ranting and raving right now.  If anybody
from Origin wants to flame me, go ahead, but take my ideas
seriously first.

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* Look for INER2VGA or EGA.ZIP.  Wrote it last year, INER3.ZIP should be
  out soon for VGA only systems and includes SoundBlaster support as well
  as the Adlib support in 2.