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...