[The E]

If you want to discuss FS2, we have plenty of other threads in which to do so, it doesn't have to be this one.

And please consider this, FrikgFeek: We are not the SC community. There is no problem with someone criticizing FS2; hell, a lot of the work we're doing wouldn't be possible if this community wasn't dedicated to the critical appreciation of FS2.

[Unknown Target]

It's not Mammoth's intention to talk about FS2 in this thread. I suggest we get back on topic, please.

I really want Star Citizen to come out, especially Squadron 42. I want to watch the terrible, terrible Let's-play videos. I really want to hear what Chris thinks good writing is.

[Phantom Hoover]

There was a leaked script a while back

[Spoon]

There was a leaked script a while back

I've seen only fragments of it, and as much as I love tearing into Starcitizen nowdays, the bits I did see didn't seem all that bad to me. Then again I am well aware I have no writer credentials so I am ill qualified to make any actual statements about the quality and merit of the writing itself.

[Det. Bullock]

I wasn’t a huge Freespace fan in general. I liked what they did with getting the scale of ships right, but I thought their story and immersion paled compared to Wing Commander... and to me they felt like the also-ran to Wing Commander Prophecy and Starlancer which had really unique worlds built around them.

Yeah, the immersion of FMVs and lack of in-mission dialogues*. 

YMMV on the story.

*which is a thing Tie Fighter was doing already, and was present in WCIV, no excuse for it to be essentially absent in Prophecy.

EDIT
forget it, it seems I'm misremembering the game even if I played it a few months ago, somehow I conflated it with the expansion.

[Spoon]

I remember several instances of in-mission dialogue in Prophecy. Like just from the top of my head the mission where you fight the space bugs with kilrathi help and Hawk can't let go of past grudges against the kilrathi and tries to egg you on to kill them. And a mission in which you fly with Blair, there was talking in there. I also remember prophecy against having a bit more mission variety to it than WC3 and 4 did. (Which is not a hard feat or anything, but just saying)
I never really understood why WC5 seems to be **** on so hard, even when I replayed it a few years back I felt it held up pretty well for itself.

(Am I misunderstanding your post?)

[Det. Bullock]

I remember several instances of in-mission dialogue in Prophecy. Like just from the top of my head the mission where you fight the space bugs with kilrathi help and Hawk can't let go of past grudges against the kilrathi and tries to egg you on to kill them. And a mission in which you fly with Blair, there was talking in there. I also remember prophecy against having a bit more mission variety to it than WC3 and 4 did. (Which is not a hard feat or anything, but just saying)
I never really understood why WC5 seems to be **** on so hard, even when I replayed it a few years back I felt it held up pretty well for itself.

(Am I misunderstanding your post?)

Sorry, I confused the thing with its expansion, I played it only recently but I'm already starting to forget it.

The problem with Profecy's gameplay is that is has a lot of padding in the missions, the dogfights are long and often excruciating particularly because enemy fighters are very tough and abuse their infinite afterburner.
Also, I remember very few missions which weren't search and destroy and the few that weren't were hampered by the lack of tactical target hotkeys, also the energy managment is even more **** than in Wing Commander 3 with one of the worst radial menus I've ever seen.

[Luis Dias]

There was a leaked script a while back

I've seen only fragments of it, and as much as I love tearing into Starcitizen nowdays, the bits I did see didn't seem all that bad to me. Then again I am well aware I have no writer credentials so I am ill qualified to make any actual statements about the quality and merit of the writing itself.

I'm still laughing at that "timeline". That **** screams "NO BRAINS ALLOAAWD HEARE" like nothing else. *


* "Hello this is the future and it's amazing! It's so ****ing snappy and so ****ing amazing technologically THAT EVERYTHING REMOTELY INTERESTING TAKES A THOUSAND YEARS TO UNFOLD.

[Lorric]

I just want to touch on that figure of 117M for a moment. Holy ****. Last time I paid attention to their cash it was when it broke 100M. It just keeps rolling in. It never stops. Just what would it take to stop the millions and millions rolling in? How long can it possibly continue?

... Am I the only one in this thread who did not back this project?

I didn't back it.

[Luis Dias]

From 2013, Star Citizen forums

I have to say, in that regard, there is a grain of truth about the notion that FS2 had something to do with the decline. As you point out, The Freespace series was a very specific kind of game, with a very impersonal story. I never got around to playing FS2, but I did watch the endgame movies a couple of years back, and I couldn't help guffawing upon hearing some great big admiral eulogising the heroic sacrifice of... Alpha One. Jeepers, you'd think an admiral would know the names of the people serving under him...

Anyway, I am convinced that the lack of story in the Freespace series was one of the causes of the abysmal sales of the sequel. With any Wing Commander game, you'd have a hefty chunk of players who weren't really that into the gameplay - but they loved the story. Freespace offered nothing to them, they may have bought the first game because they thought it looked interesting, but the sequel? No point.

To be fair, most people there are daydreaming with nostalgia about Freespace, but I just find these pearls of wisdom hilarious. And it's as if they're trying to tell us point blank what exactly is going wrong with Star Citizen. Yes, mr. Wisdom, Star Citizen is trying to be a movie, just like Wing Commander. And yeah, who cares about gameplay, we're in this for the story and that's the only thing that drives sales, amirite? And to sell a story, you know what's the best thing evah?

Immersion.

[Spoon]

I'm still laughing at that "timeline". That **** screams "NO BRAINS ALLOAAWD HEARE" like nothing else. *


* "Hello this is the future and it's amazing! It's so ****ing snappy and so ****ing amazing technologically THAT EVERYTHING REMOTELY INTERESTING TAKES A THOUSAND YEARS TO UNFOLD.

Every time I am reminded how far ahead in the future this is suppose to take place I shake my head. ****ing nothing shown in the game looks like it'd fit like 900 years into the future.

Sorry, I confused the thing with its expansion, I played it only recently but I'm already starting to forget it.

The problem with Profecy's gameplay is that is has a lot of padding in the missions, the dogfights are long and often excruciating particularly because enemy fighters are very tough and abuse their infinite afterburner.
Also, I remember very few missions which weren't search and destroy and the few that weren't were hampered by the lack of tactical target hotkeys, also the energy managment is even more **** than in Wing Commander 3 with one of the worst radial menus I've ever seen.

Those expansion missions huh... I mean, yes I absolutely agree that they were like bland and uninteresting etc etc. But I do feel like I have to make a note in its defense. Back in the way when those expansion missions of prophecy were released, the internet was like 99% dail up modem connections, and they were releasing those expansion episodes for free on the internet (I didnt even have internet back then, but I got them on one of those cd-rom's stuffed with game demo's from the gamemagazine I was subscribed to). So naturally they had to keep the file size down by a lot. So that definitely shows in the quality of it all.

The problem you describe with prophecy's gameplay was basically the staple of the wingcommander series as a whole though, search and destroy missions that were long and drawn out, going from nav point to nav point. It seems unfair to me to single wc5's out on it when the previous titles did the same **** (I am not specifically accusing you of doing this btw, just saying it as a general remark).

And lol energy managment in wingcommander. I just never used it, because lol.

And while still on the subject of WC5, there is actually one specific thing I loved about it that I wish freespace would have done. When two fighters both have working shields and they collide, they bounce of each other's shields. Collisions in WC3 and 4 were excessively destructive.
I think there was sort of a plan by volition to do that since from the sounds.tbl there is this line:
$Name:   53   s_hit_1.ogg,      0, 0.70, 1, 100, 200   ; * shield ship-ship collide overlay sound (3d sound)
The actual sound file for it barely sounds any different though.

I just want to touch on that figure of 117M for a moment. Holy ****. Last time I paid attention to their cash it was when it broke 100M. It just keeps rolling in. It never stops. Just what would it take to stop the millions and millions rolling in? How long can it possibly continue?

As long as they can keep the whales invested with dreams and ship concept .jpeg's...

[Spoon]

Immersion.

Running ruins immersion.

[FrikgFeek]

Probably why WoW died. Everyone was running around until the collective immersion was shattered and the game failed. That's why Star Citizen is already implementing anti-anti-immersion measures to keep everyone's immersion intact and realism at maximum.

[Det. Bullock]

I just want to touch on that figure of 117M for a moment. Holy ****. Last time I paid attention to their cash it was when it broke 100M. It just keeps rolling in. It never stops. Just what would it take to stop the millions and millions rolling in? How long can it possibly continue?

... Am I the only one in this thread who did not back this project?

I didn't back it.

Neither did I.

I'm still laughing at that "timeline". That **** screams "NO BRAINS ALLOAAWD HEARE" like nothing else. *


* "Hello this is the future and it's amazing! It's so ****ing snappy and so ****ing amazing technologically THAT EVERYTHING REMOTELY INTERESTING TAKES A THOUSAND YEARS TO UNFOLD.

Every time I am reminded how far ahead in the future this is suppose to take place I shake my head. ****ing nothing shown in the game looks like it'd fit like 900 years into the future.

Sorry, I confused the thing with its expansion, I played it only recently but I'm already starting to forget it.

The problem with Profecy's gameplay is that is has a lot of padding in the missions, the dogfights are long and often excruciating particularly because enemy fighters are very tough and abuse their infinite afterburner.
Also, I remember very few missions which weren't search and destroy and the few that weren't were hampered by the lack of tactical target hotkeys, also the energy managment is even more **** than in Wing Commander 3 with one of the worst radial menus I've ever seen.

Those expansion missions huh... I mean, yes I absolutely agree that they were like bland and uninteresting etc etc. But I do feel like I have to make a note in its defense. Back in the way when those expansion missions of prophecy were released, the internet was like 99% dail up modem connections, and they were releasing those expansion episodes for free on the internet (I didnt even have internet back then, but I got them on one of those cd-rom's stuffed with game demo's from the gamemagazine I was subscribed to). So naturally they had to keep the file size down by a lot. So that definitely shows in the quality of it all.

The problem you describe with prophecy's gameplay was basically the staple of the wingcommander series as a whole though, search and destroy missions that were long and drawn out, going from nav point to nav point. It seems unfair to me to single wc5's out on it when the previous titles did the same **** (I am not specifically accusing you of doing this btw, just saying it as a general remark).

And lol energy managment in wingcommander. I just never used it, because lol.

The enemy fighters in the other Wing Commander games didn't abuse the afterburner as much and were more fragile. The expansion had plenty of dialogues in CGI cutscenes, I wouldn't even have mentioned it if they put those same dialogues during an empty navpoint or at mission start, with all that expository bull**** they could have scattered it through missions and mantain the same file size.

Also the mission design is one of the weak points of the wing commander games, I played them all and apart from a few variations in WC2 and WC4 there is little to no variation, having grown up with X-wing and Freespace I'm used to much better, it's excusable for the first game but WC3 came out the same year as Tie Fighter for crying out loud! Of course it has pretty graphics (TM)  and Mark Hamill, but the game design is still primitive.

[Unknown Target]

I think the biggest problem with Chris's writing is the lack of solid characterization. Everyone is either "good" or "an asshole". I watched through the first half of the Prophecy "movie" on Youtube, and it was the same bull**** "new kid vs. schoolyard bully". Everyone talks to each other like they hate them/the player but are just so close to being endeared by them.

No spoiler in this, but you can see this pattern in the leaked SQ42 script:

[E1C08S14]
[Cara Web Webster]: "And everything showed green?"
[Graham Yury]: "Yes. All points above the passline. Almost like I know what I'm doing. What are you doing here, Web? Do you not trust me or something?"
[Cara Web Webster]: "I trust you, but this is an important mission."
[Graham Yury]: "They're all important missions. I can handle this."
[Cara Web Webster]: "Of course you can, but I figured I could help. You check the stabilizers yet?"
[Graham Yury]: "Yes. I recalibrated them."
[Cara Web Webster]: "I'll just give them a quick look."

Chris only knows how to write "sarcasm" and "new-kid cum hero", and I feel like most of his scripts are tough-guy Mary-sues.

[Luis Dias]

I actually think that interaction is funny.

[Unknown Target]

To each their own - but go take a look at Prophecy or the Wing Commander movie for Chris' abilities at writing characters. Remember the movie version of "Maniac"?

To me all of his stuff strikes me as someone who's trying to write somewhat realistic military fiction without having actually interacted with anyone in the military and only learned how they talk from watching other movies.

[Luis Dias]

You don't really need to convince me of anything of that sort, you're preaching to the choir here. My expectations are below zero. And just to prove my point...

There's this.

[Spoon]

The enemy fighters in the other Wing Commander games didn't abuse the afterburner as much and were more fragile.

The afterburner usage actually changed a whole lot between difficulty settings. For example in WC3, the Darket and Dralthi used an ai setting that was a step lower than the ai that the Vaktoth standard came with. Despite being the slowest of the three, the Vaktoth was a lot harder to take down because it did a lot more maneuvering on the default difficulty setting. If you upped the difficulty, the Darket and Dralthi started using the same ai setting and it suddenly became a lot harder to keep up with them.

The expansion had plenty of dialogues in CGI cutscenes, I wouldn't even have mentioned it if they put those same dialogues during an empty navpoint or at mission start, with all that expository bull**** they could have scattered it through missions and mantain the same file size.

Ah I didn't remember that too well. In that case I definitely agree there, should have just moved that into in mission sound bits, would have kept the size down a lot.
Then again, I guess they felt like they had to live up to what fans expected of the WC series and you can't have like 'no onboad dialogue'.

Also the mission design is one of the weak points of the wing commander games, I played them all and apart from a few variations in WC2 and WC4 there is little to no variation, having grown up with X-wing and Freespace I'm used to much better, it's excusable for the first game but WC3 came out the same year as Tie Fighter for crying out loud! Of course it has pretty graphics (TM)  and Mark Hamill, but the game design is still primitive.

Yes, that is what I was saying. I am glad you agree.
And then I mentioned that I remember WC5 having a bit more (not a lot) creativity with its mission design compared to the other titles.

I think the biggest problem with Chris's writing is the lack of solid characterization. Everyone is either "good" or "an asshole". I watched through the first half of the Prophecy "movie" on Youtube, and it was the same bull**** "new kid vs. schoolyard bully". Everyone talks to each other like they hate them/the player but are just so close to being endeared by them.

No spoiler in this, but you can see this pattern in the leaked SQ42 script:

[E1C08S14]
[Cara Web Webster]: "And everything showed green?"
[Graham Yury]: "Yes. All points above the passline. Almost like I know what I'm doing. What are you doing here, Web? Do you not trust me or something?"
[Cara Web Webster]: "I trust you, but this is an important mission."
[Graham Yury]: "They're all important missions. I can handle this."
[Cara Web Webster]: "Of course you can, but I figured I could help. You check the stabilizers yet?"
[Graham Yury]: "Yes. I recalibrated them."
[Cara Web Webster]: "I'll just give them a quick look."

Chris only knows how to write "sarcasm" and "new-kid cum hero", and I feel like most of his scripts are tough-guy Mary-sues.

Honest opinion: I like this bit of dialogue. Its clear you dislike it, but objectively, do you think this is bad writing?

[General Battuta]

It effectively communicates that the new guy protagonist has to prove himself to the competent woman who will eventually subordinate herself to him narratively, which is a beat that has been written 386,988,045 times before (such as the intros to WCP and the Wing Commander Cinematic Mistake)