I gave up going to an Anime/Halloween themed mini-convention tonight to try and get this thing polished. But more importantly SUPER THANKS TO HANGAR B PRODUCTIONS FOR THEIR MODEL WORK AND THEIR LETTING ME USE THEIR CONCORDIA MODEL. www.hangar-b.com/ Also special thanks to the Wing Commander CIC, who, in their diligence, catalogued a bunch of the Origin 3D models used in the games. Making it super easy for me to use stuff for this video. www.wcnews.com/ (But you knew that already, right?) And if your feeling super charitable... Twitter: twitter.com/MacsLore Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=98553222
Dang. Must have been fun in case that convention had people dressed up as Madoka Magica's Homura Akemi, Fleischer theatrical shorts'/Kingdom Come's Superman, and The Real Ghostbusters' Samhain.
Thank you so much for this video. I watched the False Armistice five times. This was at least as good, if not better. Thanks for keeping the Wing Commander lore alive for me. In a time where every IP I used to love has become stale or a soapbox.
I'll never forget the first time the Concordia fired the Phase Transit Canon, vaporizing a nearby Kilrathi destroyer. I think I was like ten, playing WC2 on a DOS 6.22 pc. It was really something.
I think a lot of us wish they would do a remake of the series, personally; I still find the Wing Commander series of games better than the stuff we have today. With, perhaps, the exception being games with Starlancer which was pretty good (too bad it can't be played on any level now)
Simple remasters for I-IV and Privateer would easily suffice. Sucks that the early games have shoddy performances on modern systems unless, le gasp, mods are a huge necessity.
too bad EA will never allow it, if Wing commander was where it belonged, to Chris Roberts, we would be getting a Wing Commander version of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 instead.
They're still around on Steam and especially on GOG. However, do note that I and II need some modding assistance so to make them run definitively. Space Cadet Rewind's Wing Commander review video may help on that.
If EA brought them back, they'll be a cash grab shell of their former glory. Best they remain in our memories unless a passionate team unaffiliated with the IP and it's current holder creates a mod.
Wing Commander 3 is one of the games that made me a PC gamer. My only experience of the Concordia is the scene at the beginning of the game, but damn, that scene has stayed with me. I guessed that she had to have been a badass of a ship from what being said between Maverick and Paladin, but it's nice to find out why she was a badass of a ship. And woot woot to new WC content.
@@Themaritimes99 aye, from this video I can see both of those must have been sucker punches. Chris Roberts really has a thing for killing off his WC1&2 characters. It seems Paladin was the only character to have survived to the end of WCP.
Just found your channel, and I'm just blown away. WC2 was my first game ever, watching my dad play it when I was just a few years old. I ultimately played them all, and to this day I still have my WC1/2 strategy/novel guide on my book shelf and it is low key one of my favorite possessions. That is to say, I didn't know anyone cared about this franchise anymore and when this showed up in my YT feed my jaw dropped. Thanks for creating such amazing works to let me relive my literal childhood.
While the Tiger's Claw will always be my Number One TCS Carrier, the Concordia just was in a league of it's own. A Carrier that has a metric f-ton of Fighters and Bombers as well as the Armor, Shields and Firepower to go toe-to-toe with almost anything the Kilrathi had in their arsenal at the time just checks the right boxes for me. Thanks for the run-down, Mac - and to Hangar B for allowing the use of their smexy models!
@@bigballzmcdrawz2921 Somewhat, yes. The Concordia could engage enemy Battleships directly if needed, but it's main role is basically a Carrier/Flagship - a very well armored and armed one. Since WC Games are all about you flying fighters, interceptors and other strike craft against your targets, most of the bigger capital ships have some sort of fighter complement. It helps if you view the Concordia as a very big, well protected Carrier with enough weapons to defend itself in a pinch rather than a full-blown Battleship. Hope that helps!
Well you must not forget the phase transit gun (not sure if I got the name right), a weapon capable of destroying a capital ship in one shot. That would make it sort of a battleship.
This is exceptional work!! I hope this becomes an ongoing series. Its almost like the History Channel covering one of the many different real life wars. Again excellent job! Love this!!!
ive never played wing commander, but i can see alot of these designs as they evolved into star citizen. concordia looks alot like a javelin destroyer, and alot of the fighters are very similar to the gladius.
The Tiger's Claw was the first ship in the series with the most distinct design of the Confed capital ships, but to me the Concordia was most beautiful one. I love her.
Thanks for the video.!! I build the main carrier ships out 8f lego right now and those videos help pretty much!! Beside that the videos are great on their own. It is time that this almost forgotten IP gets some love again. And now i wait for the midway-video ;)
For the fans who don't know. An independent release was made built on the freespace 2 engine. Called Wing Commander saga: The darkest Dawn. It's totally free unlike other freespace 2 mods that you need the basic game for.
I highly recommend it. To those reading this, just be sure to get the standalone version from the website wcsaga.com, as the one on Knossos was ported to the newer SCP and still had a number of bugs that could mess with the game. Although that was a few years ago now, it might have changed.
I know that this Wing Commander video took a lot of time and you're eager to talk about other things, but when you get the urge to return I would love to see your treatment of the TCS Hermes and its heroics from Wing Commander Saga. The Jutland-class carriers are also super interesting since they're a carrier that packs the firepower of a light cruiser!
Nice! Also offhand I always wonder just how the Kilrathi were able to get such staggering industrial production and training over the Confeds. We see them able to throw up multiple dozen heavy cruisers, dreadnaughts, dozens of heavy and light carriers by the end of the Terran-Kilrathi War.. And also countless thousands of pilots and fighters in contrast to the point where Confed has more fighters than they do pilots. Kilrathi industry and shipbuilding seemed to immensely outclass Confed - in End Run we see a half dozen Kilrathi carriers scuttled in shipyards. Their production and training capacities had to be multiple times larger than Confed's at bare minimum (Yes I know that's a way for a video game to keep things challenging where you as a singer player have to face dozens, if not hundreds of fighters in a mission...)
There may at least be lore excuses in the story manuals by way of mass conscripted pilots and ship crews. Besides, if that's the case, at least it could beat the unexplainability of hundreds of TIEs and Assault Gunboats launching from Imperial Star Destroyers (which, at best, can only have 72 TIEs and 4 to 12 GUNs) in Star Wars: X-Wing.
As far as I know there's no specific length of time laid out that I've been able to find, but we can guesstimate that the Kilrathi have been a space faring race for at least several centuries longer than humanity. We do know that they were discovered by a space faring race, known as the Shata, who gifted the knowledge of space flight and jump travel to the Kilrathi. The Kilrathi would develop this technology extremely quickly, and then turned around and slaughtered the Shata. The Kilrathi would also come to fight a race called the Mantu, who were basically what the Kilrathi were to mankind. The most dangerous foe ever. We don't know much of the details when it comes to how long the Kilrathi and the Mantu fought each other, but it's known through a couple of the novels that, for one reason or another, the Mantu withdrew deeper into the galaxy, and when the Kilrathi encountered humanity in 2634, it had been I think something like 100 years since the Mantu disappeared from the Kilrathi borders. The Hakaga class of carrier had a dual purpose when it was conceived. As the final weapon to crush humanity, and the vanguard of a new fleet with which the Kilrathi would finally be able to vanquish the Mantu. Obviously this never came to pass of course. The Kilrathi also breed like rabbits for the most part, which is helpful because in their space force training, they use live ammunition. So that means a lot of casualties, this also serves to weed out the more mentally unstable members of their society, literally ensuring that the cream of the crop rises to the top and breeds an even better generation after them. That's why their only real advantage was numbers over humanity. Humanity had the advantage in creating generally higher quality fighter craft. It's literally the quality vs quantity argument personified.
I wish I could remember the source on this (I'm not even fully sure how true this is), but from what I remember off-hand, Confed had the skill of it's servicepeople and greater technological edge. Whereas the Kilrathi had numbers and a much larger industrial/manufcaturing base.
While it's kind of hard to parse from a video game series, we pretty consistently see the Cats having massive supremacy in fighters, pilots, and definitely in capital ships. In 'End Run' we see Confed going to an all out effort for a fight to try and slow the Cats down which has.. Maybe three Cat carriers go down (I can't remember exactly how many). Then we see them having.. Four? Five? Under construction on Kilrath that the marines scuttle, along with possible damage to the shipyards and infrastructure. In the Battle for Earth we see every single Confed asset being thrown into the fight - also with large contingents of civilians/reservists flying whatever fighters are available and get (I think 6-800 fighters to show up). The battle is them putting every single thing which can fly and every single pilot into the furball with attrition losses considered pyrrhic. Even with the Cat dreadnaughts down and however many pilot losses they took, the Cats still showcase immense numerical superiority from then on an seem able to resume offensive operations indefinitely. So that puts the Cats as having a military-industrial capability multiple times larger than Confed if they can consistently take two or three to one losses and maintain offensive momentum (the cats pretty consistently throw around multiple battlegroups into primary combat zones with several carriers where Confed can maybe put up one or two). So that puts the comparison more like WW2 in the Pacific, but Confed is the IJN and the Cats are the US..
The best chance we have of seeing a full remake of the series I think lies in the Freespace 2 engine where they made a spinoff based on the Wing Commander 3 timeline called Darkest Dawn. There is also some references to Wing Commander 2 as well since you can fly a Sabre in one of the missions, and there is just so much potential that they put together with that campaign. All that remains now is just to get a team of Indie devs together to make the games in FS2.
nice video ... right now Iam playing all WC series games again all over. right now Iam on WC5 Prophecy again, then will go to Privateer and Privateer 2, not to mention will play comunity mod The Darkest Dawn. nice to see video like this. would be happy to remaster, remake all the WC games, expecially first two, maybe first three parts, which were the best. of course some new games in this universe would be great
Wing commander is literally my favorite memories in single player gaming, privateer has still never been matched. Played every one and built new pcs for each generation... wait, why wasn't the hornet on that list? Also, weren't the two dralthis in that flight group
Gotta hand it to Chris Roberts, he sure ended some plotlines by one way or another taking the "hero carrier" of the previous game out of the story. At the beginning of Wing Commander 2 the Tigers Claw was destroyed. At the beginning of Wing Commander 3 the Concordia´s wreck was found, deemed a total loss. At the beginning of Wing Commander 4 we see the TCS Victory, decomissioned, fortunately as a museum ship. The only ship we kinda never heard from again - as far as I know - is the BWS Intrepid, your home away from home during most of Wing Commander 4. And due to the fact there never was a Wing Commander 6 we don´t know how the Story of the TCS Midway might have played out.
We all know about the huge mistake in the WC lore, right? The 73000T for a nearly a 1km long ship is laughable. For comparison a huge oil tanker with only half of that lenght would have a deadweight of over 300000T. And it's a civilian ship built to be basically a hull able to contain oil without breaking apart. Those ships in the game are supposed to be armoured warships. So either they invented some featherweight alloys that defy wildest imagination or...
Does that include it’s load bearing weight? Because a warship needs to have bulkheads, layers of armor, and to carry flesh bags and safely carry ammo. Liquid is quite heavy.
Please release \ help me find the awesome music you used. It sounds like remastered \ redone music from the OG Games! :) This video is absolutely amazing. Please make short stories about the Tigers Claw \ Concordia during the Kilrathi war. I would watch it like I would any sci fi series!
reading here and in other comments there is room for a original new sci fi universe to rise and take it's place amongst the two tired titans!(trek and wars)
I was soooo bumbed that concordia was sunk between WC2 and WC3 we got stuck on th victory... *goes on to to bitich about three's traitor story subplot*
Dilrathi? Must have been desperate on the side of the cats to bring those pancakes out. And based on the lasers, I'd say Mk 1s too! (4:55) (9:06) Okay...... I'm starting to think your library of Kilrathi fighters is a little light. (9:38) "Super Wing Commander version"? I prefer the classic _Claw_ .
According to WC2 and Freedom Flight storylines, Hobbes isn't an Imperial spy. WC3 changed a lot of the design of the world, and in a sense it could be considered a reboot of the IP, or a parallel world, where a spy called Hobbes could actually be considered a different character.
Concordia was well towards the end of my career.... back in the day of the old tigers claw.. no phase shields.. flying scimitar (ugh) until those sweet sweets rapier came along.... Good memories..
Say what I will about Wing Commander, at least its carrier ships have more personable heart compared to Star Wars: X-Wing's, TIE Fighter's, and X-Wing Alliance's.
Wing Commander franchise needs to be reborn. But - as a FAN PROJECT ONLY!!! Because we all know, what big corporations do to epic sagas. Vudeo is amazing!
Thank you very much Mac for your videos. You're content has grown quite a bit since I started watching and your team of artists are able to visualize space battles in ways I didn't know I wanted. Absolutely thrilled to be on this ride with ya, can't wait to see what videos and genre's you'll be working on next!
I wish I had a team, it's very much just me back here (and whatever assets I'm able to buy/use). Well except for the models in this case which were made by Hangar B Productions.
I thought Christopher Blair's callsign should have been "Starkiller". If I knew Mark Hamill would eventually play him in 3, I would have used the callsign "Slipstream" from the start of the series.
I had one of the very first 486/dx2 home computers made for me by an IBM tech. I bought three game before I had my computer. Falcon3 Civ2 and Wing Commander!!! This was in 1989.
i remember the mission to kill Ktithrak Mang, in the sabre, and the underling running to tell the prince Thrakhath that "my lord a single human fighter has penetrated our outer defenses" and Thrakhath saying "your callsign, i'll deal with him myself" !
