| Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | 1996 | |
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This is a mix of interactive movie and space sim. The game has a dynamic mission tree, which means the player's behaviour will determine the next mission. The videos feature real actors, like Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson, John Rhys-Davies and Malcolm McDowell. Before the start of each mission, the space craft can be equipped with different weapons. Sometimes the mission objectives change during flight, and the player has to make decisions what he wants to do next: e.g. help out his friend or destroy an enemy fighter. The first game set after the end of the Terran-Kilrathi War, WC4 depicted a galaxy in the midst of a chaotic transition, with human civilians, Kilrathi survivors and former soldiers on both sides attempting to restabilize their lives. The game includes a large number of branching conversations in which the player must choose what response his character, Christopher Blair, will give; the choice may affect the other person's attitude toward your character, the morale of the entire crew, the player's next assignment and even the game's ending. As the man giving the orders, Blair often gets to choose what ship he will fly, what missiles it will carry, and what wingman (or wingmen) he will take with him. WC4 was also the first Wing Commander game to have "redshirt" wingmen, who had minimal character development and were not important to the plot (as opposed to the flight groups of the previous three games, which contained at most ten pilots with distinct personalities). These redshirts can be killed permanently in combat, while main-character pilots always eject unless their death is mandated by the game's plot. WC4 when released held the record for most expensive video game ever made. Dissatisfied with the blue-screened video of #3, Chris Roberts decided he wanted to build full-sized sets for the game. The end result was around $10 million dollars spent. By comparison, that's roughly what the original Star Wars cost. Creative Labs included a special double-sided DVD version of this game with their original DVD drives that included higher quality recompressed video. See also: #Chartbusters 16 |
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