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WC4 - The History of Wing Commander | |
| Phil Inch, GDMonline | ||
You begin your career as a Terran Confederation spacefighter pilot on board the TCS Tiger's Claw an interstellar aircraft carrier caught in the thick of a war against a cat-like alien menace called the Kilrathi.
The year is 2654 and day after day you lock-and-load protecting the fleet, defending the innocent and going on the offensive against your intractable opponents. It's a tough job, yet nothing beats the satisfaction of painting the incessant blackness of outer space with a multi-colored explosion of Durasteel and cat fur.
Fortunately, you get plenty of help from your fellow Confederation pilots. Among them are:
* Maniac, a perpetually out-of-control pilot who can nevertheless fly with the best of 'em.
* Angel, a feisty native of Belgium known for her marksmanship and her passion.
* Paladin, a seasoned veteran with a protective streak that's liable to save your behind more than once.
This campaign of the Galactic War culminates in a daring mission to destroy a secret starbase of the Kilrathi High Command. With your chosen wingman defending your flanks, you navigate a minefield, penetrate heavy opposition and launch a last, desperate attack on the Kilrathi starbase and obliterate it!
The relief is palpable as you return to a festive party on board the Tiger's Claw. Yet the celebration turns out to be short-lived...
During Secret Missions 1, the Tiger's Claw is ordered to a new sector, where a colony is under siege by Kilrathi forces. Before you can fully engage the enemy, however, the Kilrathi unveil a devastating secret weapon that destroys the colony and its 250,000 inhabitants.
Hell bent for justice, you and your fellow pilots play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with the Kilrathi until the secret weapon is finally destroyed.
Secret Missions 2 finds the enemy declaring a holy war, during which one of their leaders Colonel "Hobbes" Ralgha, a legendary Kilrathi warrior defects and joins the fight against his own kind.
In a pirated Kilrathi ship, you fly a series of undercover missions, discover the secret reason behind the holy war and once again save the day.
Then disaster strikes!
While you're flying a solo mission, the Tiger's Claw is suddenly set upon by Kilrathi fighters and destroyed...with all hands lost. After landing on a different carrier, your flight recorder mysteriously disappears. In the ensuing confusion you're blamed for the loss of the Tiger's Claw and have no way to prove your innocence.
Although a lack of hard evidence leads to the treason charges being reduced to mere negligence, you incur the wrath of the powerful Admiral Tolwyn and your career appears to be over...
After a decade of lonely exile on a Confederation space station, you're finally returned to action on the TCS Concordia. To your delight, the flight commander turns out to be your old friend, Angel.
Despite Admiral Tolwyn's misgivings, you continue to fly missions from the Concordia, frequently drawing the Kilrathi defector, Colonel Hobbes, as your wingman.
While the war takes you deep behind enemy lines, a growing body of evidence points to the existence of a spy among the ranks of Confederation pilots.
As you prepare for a final assault on the Kilrathi's Fleet Headquarters in the sector, Angel fingers one of the pilots a hothead named Jazz whom you've flown with plenty as the traitor. When Jazz escapes in a fighter, you give chase and face down one of your 'own' men in a terrifying dogfight to the death.
Afterwards, the flight disk from your ill-fated final mission on the Tiger's Claw is found in Jazz's locker. Your name and reputation are cleared at last. Sweetness!
In the end, disobeying orders to retreat, you fight through incredible obstacles and destroy the Kilrathi Fleet Headquarters.
The story begins with the revelation that your longtime friend and sweetheart, Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux, has been captured by the Kilrathi during a mysterious secret mission. Your efforts to obtain information about her plight or the progress of the Confederation's war effort, for that matter are met with stony silence from your superiors.
Then you find the charred remains of the once-glorious TCS Concordia, destroyed in action against your perennial opponents, and you hear rumors of Kilrathi victories in sector after sector. It's beginning to seem that your years of service in the defense of humanity have been all for naught.
With morale already low, your old nemesis, Admiral Tolwyn, assigns you to an aging carrier, the TCS Victory. But there's a bright side to the assignment. The crew includes some familiar faces, including the impetuous Maniac and the 'reformed' Kilrathi warrior, Colonel Hobbes.
And there are new faces as well...
* Vagabond, a laid-back veteran who's knocked about the star systems for years.
* Cobra, a fearless pilot with an unnerving intensity and a deep hatred of the Kilrathi.
* Vaquero, a solid flyer who likes to spend his off hours escaping to the sounds of his music.
* Captain Eisen, an old hand whose only love is his aging tub of a ship and his dedicated crew.
You quickly discover that Colonel Hobbes has been grounded primarily because none of the crew wants to fly with a Kilrathi. But you've been through hell and back with Hobbes and insist on his immediate reinstatement to the flight roster, where he becomes your frequent wingman.
The action heats up and the missions become increasingly dangerous. During what free time you can spare, you get to know a pair of intriguing crewmembers. Rachel is a brassy, punked-out mechanic who serves as the Victory's chief tech, while Flint is a tough, beautiful pilot who plays by the rules and prefers to keep her defenses up. Both women express interest in you, although they have very different ways of showing it.
In quiet moments in your barracks, you play prerecorded holo-tapes of romantic walks on the beach and long-ago messages sent by Angel. Yet something tells you that you may never see her again.
Meanwhile the Kilrathi led by the bloodthirsty Prince Thrakhath and his menacing sidekick, Melek make plans to press their advantage over the Terran Confederation and destroy the peaceful Locanda System.
Through a series of fierce missions, you forestall the Kilrathi's planned genocide, earning the admiration of your fellow crewmembers and the wrath of your sworn enemies.
Shortly thereafter, Prince Thrakhath jams the comm-screens of the Victory and broadcasts a dire message. He vows to rid the universe of the human race and singles you out as deserving an especially gruesome demise. It emerges that the Kilrathi even have a special name for you: Heart of the Tiger. Just when things are looking plenty bleak, who should show up to make them even worse but Admiral Tolwyn? Despite his usual hostile attitude, however, he turns out to be a welcome sight, chiefly because he's escorting a new doomsday weapon the Behemoth.
The secretly designed and constructed Behemoth is as massive as it is lethal. And it may just be the last hope of the Terran Confederation to gain a lasting advantage over their tenacious feline adversaries. After some preliminary testing, the Behemoth begins to move into position to test its colossal weaponry on a remote Kilrathi base. But somebody on board the Victory has other ideas...
...and they furtively transmit the blueprints of the doomsday weapon to Prince Thrakhath and his Kilrathi goons.
During a subsequent ambush, Kilrathi fighters manage to hit the Behemoth in her one weak spot, reducing the ship to a million chunks of interstellar debris. In one fell swoop, a decade of research and development is wiped out and the chances of the Terran Confederation to speed up the end of the war are crippled.
To make matters worse, Prince Thrakhath appears on the vid-screen of your fighter. He taunts you with his victory and brags about having personally killed your 'lair-mate', Angel.
With the Behemoth destroyed and Angel dead, you're left with little to fight for and even less chance of winning.
Even though Rachel and Flint do their best to help you through this low point, it's only with the arrival of your old buddy Paladin that you begin to cheer up. Paladin bears news of yet another plan up the Confederation's sleeve. It's a long shot even riskier than the doomed Behemoth but it beats waiting around for the Kilrathi to conquer the universe.
The weapon in question is a Temblor Bomb. The good news: if detonated with precision, it will trigger a tectonic reaction that'll literally shake a planet say, the Kilrah homeworld to pieces. The bad news: somebody's going to have to risk life and limb to deliver the bomb to its intended target.
Of course you volunteer for the assignment.
Yet much work needs to be done, and many battles must be fought, before you can maneuver close enough to the Kilrathi's own planet to deliver the weapon.
First, there's the business of rescuing the chief scientist behind the T-Bomb Project from a Kilrathi prison planet. and putting him to work perfecting his horrific creation. Then there's the brutal murder of Cobra and the shocking realization that the traitor is none other than...Colonel Hobbes!
Hobbes was once an enemy, then a friend for many years, and now he's become your enemy yet again. It's with a heavy heart that you realize Hobbes must be stopped for good if your assignment is to be completed and the Kilrathi finally defeated.
You've got your work cut out for you.
The price of failure is steep. Not only will your own life be lost, but the safety of planet Earth and the very future of the human race hang in the balance.
Yet the rewards are many not the least of which are the two dazzling crewmembers, Rachel and Flint, who eagerly await your return back on the Victory. Of course, you'll have to choose one or the other...you can't have both. But hey, life's tough when you're 10 parsecs from home, fighting for the security of the universe and just trying to get home in one piece. Good luck you'll probably need it!
ORIGIN Systems develops andpublishes state-of-the-art entertainment software. To date, the company has released more than 50 titles, including the award-winning Ultima and Commander series of games. ORIGIN is based in Austin, Texas and is a whooly owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS).