.: September 6, 1996Mode(s)Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is the third main game in ' video game series, developed and released by in December 1994. It was a departure from previous games in the series in that it uses extensive to add an -style presentation to the space combat gameplay, emphasized by its advertising slogan, 'Don't, play the movie!' The game's more than two hours of video featured a number of prominent movie stars including as Colonel Christopher 'Maverick' Blair, as Admiral Tolwyn, as James 'Paladin' Taggart and Thrakhath nar Kiranka, and as Todd 'Maniac' Marshall. Screenshot of typical first person gameplay while piloting a ship.Wing Commander is a intercut with live action.
Gameplay involves completing missions and destroying enemy craft, Wing commander III dispensed with the issuing of medals after such missions and relied more on cutscenes to drive the story along making much more use of CD technology. As the man giving the orders, often gets to choose what ship he will fly, what missiles it will carry, and what wingman (wingmen) he will take with him. As in, some wingmen can be killed permanently in combat. Blair's own remained customizable.Plot.
Wing Commander movie cast and actor biographies. Check out the latest photos and bios of the cast and filmmakers of Wing Commander. Starring David Warner. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (Video Game 1994) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
See also:The of the previous two games is officially assigned a name, Colonel., Crown Prince of the hostile Kilrathi Empire, presides over the execution by disintegration of a group of Terran Confederation prisoners of war. One, however, is left alive: Blair's lover Colonel, due to her status among the Kilrathi as a respected warrior. On the planet Vespus, Blair and Brigadier General inspect the downed wreckage of the TCS Concordia. The carrier is a total loss.It is the year 2669, and the Terran-Kilrathi War has been going for over thirty years, with no signs of stopping. Blair, by orders of Admiral, is transferred as Wing Commander to the TCS Victory, a Ranger-class carrier twice as old as Blair.
Her captain, has been with her for many years, and is proud of his ship. There are a few old faces—Colonel, and Major —but all the other pilots and staff are people Blair has never met. Among those on board, Blair meets Lieutenant and Chief Fighter Technician.The Victory is assigned to the Orsini System, away from the front. Shortly after Blair's arrival, test pilot Major Jace 'Flash' Dillon arrives on board the Victory with his prototype warcraft, the F-103A Excalibur heavy fighter. When Flash fails to respond to an attack on the Victory, willfully napping through the crisis, Blair commandeers the Excalibur in defense of the Victory and, in an ensuing argument with Flash, accuses him of being a coward and repeatedly insinuates that he has no flying skills.
This angers Flash who challenges Blair to a simulator duel. If Blair wins the duel, he forces Dillon to request reassignment to the Victory's flight wing. Immediately afterward the Victory is rerouted to the Locanda System, where the Kilrathi are deploying a potent pair of new weapons: the 'Skipper' cruise missile, equipped with a cloaking device, and a genetically-engineered bioweapon for use against the Locanda colonies, the home of Flint.
Blair and his wing are scrambled to defend Locanda against several of these missiles. Even if Blair destroys the missiles, Flint breaks formation and attacks the Kilrathi forces in an act of revenge. The player is given the option to follow her, though she returns safely in either case.Thrakhath appears with a squadron of Pakthan bombers and taunts the Victory over subspace radio, calling Blair 'the heart of the tiger;' the Confed pilots gather the Kilrathi have bestowed this name on him as a sign of respect.
Admiral Tolwyn rendezvouses with the Victory, escorted by several destroyers. Tolwyn is responsible for the escort and defense of the TCS Behemoth; an extremely large vessel (essentially a titanic particle accelerator with engines) capable of destroying a planet. Following a successful field test of the Behemoth in the Loki system, the Victory jumps to Kilrah and Tolwyn prepares to use the Behemoth on the Kilrathi home world. Thrakhath's forces attack the Behemoth.
A traitor aboard the Victory has transmitted targeting data to the Kilrathi revealing the Behemoth's weakpoints, and the Behemoth is destroyed. Thrakhath then challenges Blair in single combat. He taunts Blair with a recording showing how he personally disemboweled Angel after her colleagues were disintegrated. Blair's instinct is to accept, but Lt. Ted 'Radio' Rollins warns him that the Victory is leaving the system. When he returns to the Victory, the player chooses between getting drunk or talking to Rachel about his loss. If Blair gets drunk, he must then fly an emergency scramble drunk, with the game controls not responding reliably, making combat virtually impossible.After a retreat to the Alcor System, Paladin arrives.
He reveals that before Angel was captured, she transmitted data indicating that the Kilrathi home world is seismically unstable. Paladin suggests a weapon called the Temblor Bomb which, if dropped in the right place, will cause the planet to shake itself to pieces. Before they can complete the bomb, Hobbes kills one of the Victory's pilots, Lt. Laurel 'Cobra' Buckley, steals her fighter and makes for Kilrathi space with news of the planned T-Bomb attack.
Blair has the choice of chasing him or letting him go. If he gives chase, he kills Hobbes, the carrier is attacked, and Lt. Mitchell 'Vaquero' Lopez is killed in the fight.
Either way, afterwards Blair finds Hobbes left a message locker, explaining that he was brainwashed long before he met Blair, and this brainwashing led him to defect to the Confederation. His original personality was reactivated by the code phrase 'heart of the tiger,' the Kilrathi name for Blair.Blair has the option to choose to initiate a romance with Flint or Rachel. Flint refuses to fly with him if he chooses Rachel, Rachel refuses to help him with his missile loadouts if he chooses Flint, and both are bitter with him if he chooses neither. Blair launches against Kilrah, with up to three wingmen of the player's choice. This attack comes just as the Kilrathi prepare for a massive and devastating strike against Earth, intending to finally force humanity into submission with the loss of their home planet. After successfully downing Prince Thrakhath above Kilrah (and Hobbes, if he was not killed earlier), Blair descends to the surface and delivers the bomb.
The resulting explosion destroys Kilrah and wipes out nearly the entire Kilrathi armada assembled in orbit, but damages Blair's fighter as well; a surviving Kilrathi capital ship tractors him in. Morally devastated by the destruction of their home planet, the Kilrathi, commanded now by Thrakhath's retainer, surrender to Tolwyn. The surviving Kilrathi begin to colonize a new homeworld and now want to live in peace and harmony with humans while Blair and his romantic interest make plans to start their new lives together.Cast. as Col. Christopher 'Maverick' Blair. as Admiral Tolwyn.
as Thrakhath nar Kiranka (voice) and James 'Paladin' Taggart. as Capt.
William Eisen. as Maj. Todd 'Maniac' Marshall. as Rachel Coriolis. Jennifer MacDonald as Lt. Robin 'Flint' Peters. as Lt.
Ted 'Radio' Rollins. as Lt. Winston 'Vagabond' Chang.
B.J. Jefferson as Lt. Laurel 'Cobra' Buckley. as Major Jace 'Flash' Dillon.
Julian Reyes as Lt. Mitchell 'Vaquero' Lopez. Yolanda Jilot as Col.
Jeannette 'Angel' Devereaux. as Barbara Miles. as Melek nar Kiranka (voice). as Emperor (voice). as Ralgha nar 'Hobbes' Hhallas (voice)Development Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was developed and released. Released in 1994 for and, in 1995 for and in 1996 for (a version was also announced and advertised, but it was never released), Wing Commander III made the move from the -based graphics used in previous titles to software-driven, and used for.
Wing Commander III featured an entirely new line of ships and fighters, abandoning the technology of. Terran Confederation craft were redesigned from 'airplanes in space', while Kilrathi craft were totally redesigned into asymmetrical ships with prongs, barbs and fang-like surfaces.
The new, blockier forms were made necessary by the then-primitive state of, as WCIII was released a few years before the first video cards and all 3D effects had to be calculated by the.Wing Commander III ultimately cost $4 million to produce.A number of branching ('interactive') conversations allow the player to choose what response his character will give; the choice may affect the other person's attitude towards the character, or even the morale of the entire crew. As such movie content consumes a large amount of data storage, the game was packaged on four instead of, another emerging technology at that point.A (then a very high-end processor) was required to get optimum performance out of Wing Commander III. Roberts said, 'We're not afraid to lead hardware sales a little, and we believe that Pentium will soon be the standard.' In June 1995, realized a deal with EA to bring select titles to the, with Wing Commander III among the selected games, but this port was never released due to the commercial and critical failure of the platform.A novelization by and was published in 1995. A adaptation was published in the same year by Productions, under the helm of noted science-fiction authors.
The sequel, was released in 1996.After the end of the official support by Origin the fan community began to provide support for the game themselves. For instance, the community developed several to enhance the compatibility with newer versions of and newer PC hardware.In September 2011, the of Wing Commander III was handed to the fan community by a former developer for the purpose of.On September 13, 2011 WC III was re-released on via. Version differences A number of major changes were made in porting the game to the 3DO. These include:.
Difficulty select was removed; the game can only be played at one difficulty, which roughly corresponds to 'Veteran' in the PC version. All stages set on planetary surfaces are cut, and replaced with Full Motion Video cutscenes. Staple mission audio clips (e.g.
'Attack my target') are used for the dialogue in these scenes. Manual takeoffs are similarly replaced by FMVs. The player starts each mission in open space. The left VDU cannot be made invisible. Several enemy types were removed, including all land-based enemies.
A new enemy was added, the gun platform. This enemy is stationary. The ejection animation was cut, as was the option to retry the mission after ejecting. The player must select a ship as a target in order to communicate with it.
The bug which prevents the player from accessing the cutscene explaining Hobbes' betrayal in the PC version is absent. There is a new bug in the first Hyperion mission. Unless all enemies in the mission are destroyed, this mission will register as failed, regardless of whether or not the player successfully used the bomb prototype. Only two of the three possible endings of the PC version are accessible. This is because the removal of the planetary sequence makes it impossible to fail the mission in which the Temblor Bomb is planted. The scripted deaths of the pilots in the Temblor Bomb mission were cut.
Thus, it is possible to complete the mission with all four wingmen remaining. The cloaking device works on Hobbes and Thrakhath, and thus the Temblor Bomb mission may be completed without fighting either of them.The PlayStation version is much more similar to the PC version, though like the 3DO version it does not carry the bug which blocks off the Hobbes cutscene. Also, unlike either the PC or 3DO versions, it includes considerable load times when navigating the Victory.Novelization While mostly following the plot outlined above, authors Keith and Forstchen made a number of decisions and changes to increase the tension of the novel.
In chronological order:. Blair's Gold Squadron flies Thunderbolts exclusively before transferring over to the new Excaliburs.
Green Squadron runs the Longbows, Red Squadron has Hellcats (misprinted as Arrow Interceptors in the book) and Blue Squadron flies Arrows. Flash arrives, not as a test pilot for the Excalibur, but from the Locanda system as a replacement contributed from a Home Defense squadron.
He retains his 'hotshot' mindset and rank of major, however. Blair fails to save Locanda. Forstchen-created character makes an appearance as a courier, preparing the Victory for the admiral's arrival. Lone Wolf, now a major, declines to join Blair's wing only because it would pain his uncle. Thrakhath's declaration that Blair is the 'Heart of the Tiger' occurs while the pilots are in their cockpits, scrambling to defend the Behemoth, instead of standing on the Victory's bridge. Flash, flying on Hobbes' wing, is killed in the ensuing fight.
Since Hobbes knows about the Temblor bomb project, there is no question of allowing him to escape. Hobbes uses voice recordings to impersonate Buckley, but when Vaquero (Cobra's wingman) hears what has happened, he engages Hobbes, as per Blair's orders, and is killed just as Maverick arrives. Blair chooses Rachel. Flint, and Maniac, the only living Gold Squadron pilots at this point in the novel, fly with him to Kilrah. Vagabond is shot down on the second leg of the journey (though he survives through unspecified means to return in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom), Flint is killed in space above Kilrah, and Maniac is shot down in the planet's atmosphere.
However, Maniac would also return in Wing Commander IV.Reception ReceptionAggregate scoreAggregatorScore3DO: 81.25%Review scoresPublicationScorePC:3DO: 7.5/10PlayStation: 8.5/103DO:PC: 96%MaximumPlayStation:AwardsPublicationAwardPC Gamer USNominee, 1994 Best Action GameComputer Gaming World#54, 150 Best Games of All Time#72, 100 Best PC Games of All TimeWing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was another major hit for the Wing Commander series, the PC versions alone selling over 500,000 copies. It sold over 700,000 copies in total., which tracked computer game sales in the United States, reported that Wing Commander III 's computer version earned $15.9 million and sold roughly 400,000 copies by October 1999.A critic for gave the 3DO version five out of five stars, chiefly praising the usage of big-name actors in the video cutscenes, which he argued makes the game more realistic and suspenseful and gives a sense that the FMV is enhancing gameplay rather than substituting for a lack thereof. While he noted that the 3DO version lacks the graphical sharpness of the PC version and is less challenging, he concluded that it 'makes a more than acceptable alternative' for players who cannot afford the expensive hardware required to run the PC version at optimal settings. The four reviewers of focused their praise on the high quality of the FMV, which both Al Manuel and Sushi-X said was the cleanest FMV yet seen on either the 3DO or the PC. Ed Semrad and Sushi-X criticized that the control scheme is difficult to master.Reviewing the PlayStation version, a reviewer for Maximum praised the 'intricate' plot but criticized that the combat is simplistic and dull and that the FMV sequences lack any interaction beyond the occasional multiple choice response.The editors of nominated Wing Commander III for their 1994 'Best Action Game' award, although it lost to.
In 1996, ranked it as the 54th best game of all time for its 'thrilling space action in the first successful interactive movie', and the ninth most innovative computer game. In 2011, ranked it 72nd on the list of the 100 best PC games of all time.gave the game an A. References.
The Wing Commander series takes a turn for the dramatic, bringing itself closer and closer to interactive movie status. Nowhere is this more evident than in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom with its many CDs and overabundance of full motion video (FMV). The game gives you choices of selecting dialogue options that, in theory, could alter the course of events. At one point, you're given a monumentally important decision that could alter the fate of human history. But, you'll quickly find out that all these responses and choices are empty. No matter which dialogue option you choose, you'll still be railroaded down one path. That's quite disappointing, as it makes you feel like a mere bystander in the course of events instead of an active participant.Origin spent wads of cash in making the game's FMV sequences and it shows.
Technically they're of movie quality and gorgeous. The veteran actors, including Mark Hamill, vividly bring their own characters to life in both the ability to deliver dialogue with feeling and overall acting prowess. They also bring the rest of the cast closer to their level in terms of acting ability, making the FMV sequences seem like clips right out of big budget movies. That's not surprising, as the clips did receive a big budget.In-game visuals are fairly good quality, although the engine is basically an updated version of the Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger engine. Enemy ships scale nicely as they close in from a distance and, conversely, weapon fire scales out nicely, too.
When you approach other ships, you can see an incredible amount of detail. If your machine can meet the game's hefty system requirement (c. 1997), the combat engine runs at a beautifully smooth rate with very fluid movement and panning. In-game sounds are quite good with convincingly powerful explosions and varied effects for shooting different types of guns. Voice clips from the lesser cast members are passable but, again, the main casts' voice talents shine through.Gameplay is fun and challenging and a worthy step forward for the Wing Commander series. Unfortunately, gameplay is also no different than in previous games except in one aspect: you fly through the 3D emptiness of space using your missiles and guns to complete a variety of objectives, most of which invariably end with destroying all enemies.
The game controls well with a joystick but is also quite playable using the keyboard. The ability to customize your ship's load out is a great innovation, as you can now enter missions with a ship suited to your battle tactics. At all but the easiest level, the game is quite difficult and gives you the chance to get into intense extended dogfights. And dogfighting in space is what this game is all about.Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom is a worthy addition to the Wing Commander family.
It's eminently playable as a space flight simulation and continues the series' tradition of excellence. However, despite its enormous budget, the FMV sequences do not add as much to the game as they should. After you realize your choices have no consequences, the plot becomes just a little less interesting.