Wing Commander IV : The Price of Freedom
Unfinished Game #7
Type of Game
The best alternative to Star Wars video games—and movies, too. No Jedi, but there are still Wookies! Sort of.
Release date on our machines
February 1996, one year before the release of Star Wars: Special Edition in theaters. That should keep us going for a while!
Developer
ORIGIN Systems, Inc., which is responsible for creating not only the Wing Commander series but also the Ultima series.
Publisher
Electronic Arts, Inc., which has, to say the least, killed off so many great video game projects—but not this one, at least.
I’ve hardly ever used a joystick in my life—just enough to get my butt kicked in Wipeout and crash on my own in EF-2000. But when the Wing Commander IV icon appeared on my stepdad’s Windows desktop, the amount of time I spent fiddling with that stick with buttons and suction cups more than doubled. I hadn’t asked for any of this; I was already spending more than enough hours playing Worms and Command & Conquer as it was. But my stepdad must have been secretly getting shopping tips from his nephew Walter Valise to track down such cool games. He never played them, which suited me just about as much as anything else in my life ever did. And there I was, glued to his office chair, hooked on five different games at once, while he was trying every trick in the book to get me out of there. Well, stop buying games, you idiot! And I’ll inevitably stop throwing myself at them, you moron! Well, uh, I was talking about the joystick to begin with. It was with Wing Commander IV that I managed to use it without ruining my chances of winning after five minutes. And I loved it, flying around in space and blasting dozens of enemy ships! I even managed to make it all the way through, damn it! Well, almost—technically yes, but not really. Having Mark Hamill plastered all over the box definitely helped, since I was totally obsessed with Star Wars back then.
Good games come in three joysticks
In any case, it could have heralded the start of a long career for that clunky little gadget called a joystick. But no, I never touched it again once I finished Wing Commander IV. Nor did I ever play another Space Opera game. I guess I’d come full circle, only to return to my usual obsessions, like RTS games and weird cereal mixes in my breakfast bowl.
Superluminal bifurcations
From the story, I remember that we’re serving in the Earth military, and that we’ve just won a war against fierce enemies called the Kilrathis. They’re big, hairy humanoids—half cute, half ridiculous. If someone had told me that people had bought Chewbacca costumes at Party City, I would have believed them. The narrow victory left some serious scars, and it seems to me that tensions between the two civilizations remain very much alive. To continue the adventure, we play as Mark Hamill, the military hero from Wing Commander III, who has become a farmer to leave the horrors of armed conflict behind him. Why do war heroes always switch to a manual labor job when they haven’t died in battle? I don’t look down on farmers—quite the opposite—but the thing is, their status is kind of equated with that of a “war veteran.” Not cool, huh? Never mind, because obviously, you’re called back into service following an attack on a civilian convoy by a mysterious armed force. You then alternate between space dogfight sequences and FMV cutscenes depicting daily life and dialogue.
It took six CD-ROMs to store all those little video files; those games were pretty crazy, to say the least. I’ve played SWAT, which was similar in that regard, but not the same style. Phantasmagoria, too—even less so in terms of style. In short, we’re often given the choice to steer conversations, which influences the other characters’ reactions and the course of the story. I remember that at one point, you have to decide whether to remain loyal to our admiral—who’s lost his mind and wants to wipe out everything that moves in the galaxy—or break away and join the Kilrathis. I naturally chose the second option, being the sloppy armchair animal rights activist that I am. If you manage to unlock the good ending—by completing enough missions and making the right choices—that crazy bastard Geoffrey Tolwyn (brilliantly portrayed by Malcolm McDowell) ends up in jail for his atrocities.
And he hangs himself in his cell—whoa. Otherwise, it’s our character who ends up executed for treason. Well, I’ll skip over the thousand and one plot twists that I can barely remember, but which add a lot of nuance to a storyline that seems simplistic. An easy-to-follow premise, with plenty of little plot twists woven in—I loved that. And the villainous admiral plays the crazy antagonist who wants to conquer the entire universe using genetically modified humans very well. This actor definitely loves portraying psychos. I imagine you can replay the game from the beginning and follow him on his descent into hell. Personally, I didn’t have the nerve to do it, but I tip my hat to the devs for their hard work, which gave me the chance to do so. If you want to watch the whole interactive movie, you’ve got to go through the fight! You pilot a small fighter ship and blast enemies, choosing your escort wingman before each trip into the void of space.
Personally, I always went for Catscratch, played by Mark Dacascos. I loved that guy—I think I’d seen him in Crying Freeman. And that’s it. I loved him even more after Wing Commander IV. I think I had a crush on him. Without realizing I could have crushes on guys, but looking back, yeah, it definitely was a crush. Needless to say, I was absolutely gutted when he died during a mission. Can you save him depending on how you handle that critical moment? If so, I’m buying the game right away (I did some digging through a few videos, and yes, you can save him. Well, off to GOG.com I go)! In any case, while I really liked the ship controls and the classic pew-pew gameplay into energy shields followed by missiles to the face, I liked even more that you can customize your fighter—and that you can switch fighters between-missions!
I remember struggling like crazy against enemies who suddenly got super strong, then discovering I could hop into some beast armed with tachyon cannons or whatever, and TAKE EVERYONE OUT in a flash. Hahahahahahah!! You bunch of frozen turds in the infinite cosmos! You not so cocky now, are you? Yeah, I almost became a serial killer after that. So what? Good thing spaceships don’t exist yet. At the same time, for a good chunk of the game, you’re fighting these big fascists who do nothing but call you an inferior race (they’re dissing humans just like them, not the Kilrathis, mind you). Naturally, you take them out with a maniacal little smile and eyes that are pretty bloodshot. I talk a lot about the ships, but as for the atmosphere, um… space in a 1996 video game isn’t exactly the stuff of dreams.
We already had the Windows 3.1 screensaver to lose ourselves for hours in a torrent of stars. Sometimes you’d spot a nebula in the distance, or a planet much closer by. It looked like the real universe, though—very empty most of the time. The 3D models of the ships consisted of just ten polygons, but that was more than enough for me. Our eyes, perfectly adapted to three-dimensional horrors, picked up on the nuances without a hitch. Then there are the cutscenes, mostly set aboard the big cruisers, where the cobbled-together backgrounds are a bit too obvious, but it’s fun. Apparently, the whole thing cost over ten million dollars—a record budget for a video game at the time. Not so cobbled together after all. You wander through a spotless, sanitized tub, and you wander with less and less peace of mind as the story progresses. I don’t have a ton of specific memories of the conversations that brave Mark had with the other passengers, but you can really feel that the crew is struggling after a while.
People aren't sleeping anymore; they're sulking… and losing their minds (referring to the raving mad admiral). Things only get better once the Earth Confederation's interstellar cruiser is taken out of action during the final climax. By us, of course. Honestly, I tried to destroy it fair and square. Didn’t work—the thing has I don’t know how many dozen laser batteries, so forget it. I had to enter a code to make myself invincible. And even then, it took me quite a while. That’s why I said I’d finished the game, but with a few rule-bends. I really liked that palpable tension building up in the convoy, though. Just like the moment when you complete a mission and the stress just melts away. But hey, that’s common to a lot of games. A slightly more unique atmosphere—maybe that’s what Wing Commander IV was missing for me to love it even more.
We’ve lost Gorgeous George
I apologize to composer George Oldziey, whose music I absolutely loved during my space adventure. Twenty years later, I was thrilled to add his tracks to my nostalgic video game playlist, but I soon found myself skipping them while grumbling, “Oh non, pas lui,” just like in La Classe Américaine. I still do it almost every time I come across them today. No idea why! And only for this game, of all things! Oh wait, James Pond 2 and Theme Park get the same treatment too, but that’s normal. Yet I really do love epic orchestral music. I never skip the tracks from Total Annihilation, for example. So sorry, George. It’s not you, it’s me. I still prefer to listen to something else instead of your symphonic bangers—weird, really. Plus, the tracks manage to fit right into the space scenes without veering into Star Wars plagiarism. That should work in their favor, but it doesn’t. I want to love them like I used to, but these tracks just bore me. Is it because they give off a sanitized vibe, too? Maybe. I don’t know—I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually.
Memory Black Hole
I can’t quite pinpoint a specific moment in my life associated with this game. Yet I spent a ton of time playing it. I clearly remember spending hours glued to the computer back when it was set up in the worst possible spot in the apartment: my mom and stepdad’s bedroom. But the urge to play was stronger than the disgust I felt for that room, whose full filth I hadn’t yet grasped. Still, I can’t give any more details than that. This kind of emotional blackout affects other titles I loved, all of which I played to some extent during that period, let’s say between ’96 and ’98.
Maybe some gaming behemoths have swallowed up every ounce of nostalgia the human mind can muster. These monstrosities have shattered the boundaries of awesomeness—games like Warcraft II, Diablo, Civilization II, Age of Empires, Duke Nukem 3D, Z, C&C Red Alert, and so many more! How are you supposed to feel even a shred of nostalgia for other games that are just a tiny bit less polished, when you’re faced with such juggernauts? Not even the two Marks from Wing Commander IV could do anything to fix that. It’ll remain a game I take a certain pride in having seen through to the end (even by cheating), but one I forgot way too quickly. They don’t make games like this anymore… I heard that fans are working on a remaster, with a complete graphical overhaul of the 3D assets and video files. Well, that almost makes me want to play it again, actually.
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