I've enjoyed WCS quite a bit, despite its shortcomings. I think it did what it set out to do perfectly, but Ralwood summed up the main problem people have with it :
On the plus side, WCS was a faithful adaptation of traditional Wing Commander gameplay. On the minus side, WCS was a faithful adaptation of traditional Wing Commander gameplay.
And as such, it doesn't really show off much of what FSO can do.
Personally, I blame the project lead for seemingly deliberatly killing off any interest in modding the game or porting it back to FSO. However, this is not the place to discuss this. If anyone wants to discuss this further, I'd be happy to do so in the WCS subforum.
To get back on topic, I though the podcast was nice enough, though as others have mentionned, it could use a bit more planning. Having only 30 minutes of gameplay footage makes it a bit hard to sell the mod, like "Hey, this mod is great, we've barely played it ourselves, but people say its good". Having
some footage of WiH would have been great, as its more visually impressive and technically complex than AoA.
Kudos to Battuta for name dropping Wings of Dawn, I think it's the TC that shows off FSO best:
- TBP is very old now, so I'm guessing it's not as impressive as it used to be.
- WCS is meant to be a Wing Commander game with more shine to it.
- Diaspora is a close second : it is meant to be Battlestar Galactica, and as such it's visually very impressive, and has been a technical boon for the engine. Gameplay-wise though, its faithfulness to the show doesn't allow much opportunity for crazyness. It's solid, it's got good replay value, but given the setting, it hasn't been that far off the classic FSO formula so far.
- WoD, being free from any kind of intellectual property, has free range to do whatever it wants to do, be it in terms of story, gameplay, character, etc. It's really pushed the enveloppe, and I feel it is worth playing even if don't care much for anime tropes, or Star Control, or visual novels, or whatever else is hidden in there.