Yeah, that's the it's main strength these days. Sometimes, it's nice to go back to those times, to zeerusty, WWII-ish future, to old-timey fighter jocks and obviously evil, honor-obsessed aliens. Though TBH, I wouldn't want that for Star Citizen. While a nostalgic approach could work, I'd rather have something new this time. Considering the scale of Star Citizen, it should try to be much more than a nostalgia trip. I hope they will do so.
Obviously here to align with The_E and Batt's pov, to also point out that the "trench run" alluded here as the exception to the WW2's inspiration is actually and ironically the wrong example, since it's actually based on a WW2's movie.
Actually, it's a bit more complicated. "Dam Busters" isn't that well known, so the "trench run" is actually SW inspired. SW is, in turn, inspired by Dam Busters. It kind of goes like that, many motifs can be traced like that to antiquity.
Yes, and that is all it is. There are no aspirations beyond that. All it wants to be is a pastiche of romantic ideas of fighter combat in WW2.
You're still talking about WC3. Wing Commander =/= WC3, even if it's the most famous part. Take a look at WC4, or WC2 (the latter is rather dated, though). WC4 is completely unlike WC3 in that regard, being much darker and more ambiguous. Try it out, if you haven't yet.
There is one very important metric here that we can use to determine how the differing design philosophies of FS and WC have impacted the players, and that is the number of fan-made stories. Granted, FS had an easier entry point due to it shipping with the mission editor, but still, just going by the fan-made projects list on Wing Commander CIC and google, there is nothing that is comparable to the sheer number of new stories people were able to tell in FS.
I believe that there are two factors to take into consideration: times and engine accessibility. Wing Commander 4? 1996. FS2? 1999. Four years of difference, which is a really long time in internet evolution and computer technology. Wing Commander had books written about it, something which FS can't boast about. By the time of FS2, hardly anybody wrote books about video games anymore, but modding became much more popular. Times change. Another factor is that FRED gave people the ability to create missions for FS2, while none of the Wing Commanders were even moddable (WCP did have some capabilities, but that's it). FS2 campaigns are one step up from text fanfiction, and the latter does exist for WC universe. Another thing is that SCP
massively prolonged FS2's lifetime. I believe that if it still used the engine from '99, there'd be much less campaigns made and the community would be a lot smaller. FS2 literally has one of the most malleable, flexible and easiest to mod engines I've seen. Plaintext tables, intuitive utilities and simple, yet powerful mission editor all go a really long way.
WC not only didn't get such thing as an SCP, it got WC: Prophecy, which, IMO, did more harm than good to the series. Overall, I believe that those disparities have a lot more to do with technicalities than with the story and universe presented.