Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Encyclopedia
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (commonly abbreviated WC3, WCIII, or HOTT) is the third main game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander
science fiction
space combat simulation video game series, developed and released by Origin Systems
. Released in 1994, Wing Commander III made the move from the sprite
-based graphics used in previous titles to software-driven texture-mapped
polygonal 3D
, and used FMV for cut scenes.
A novelization
of the game, by William R. Forstchen
and Andrew Keith, was published in 1995. A collectible card game
adaptation was published in the same year by Mag Force 7
Productions, under the helm of noted science-fiction authors Margaret Weis
and Don Perrin
. The sequel, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
, was released in 1996.
). The opening cutscene, the first FMV cutscene in the Wing Commander series, depicts a saddening scene: Thrakhath nar Kiranka (John Rhys-Davies
), Crown Prince of the hostile Kilrathi Empire, presiding over the execution by disintegration of a group of Terran Confederation prisoners of war. One, however, is left alive: Blair's lover Colonel Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux (Yolanda Jilot), due to her status among the Kilrathi as a respected warrior, who is executed by Prince Thrakhath using his claws to disembowel her (though her death scene is not shown until later in the game). The scene then cuts to the planet Vespus, where Blair and Brigadier General James "Paladin" Taggart 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 Geoffrey Tolwyn, is transferred as Wing Commander to the TCS Victory, a Ranger-class carrier twice as old as Blair. Her captain, William Eisen, has been with her for many years, and is proud of his ship. There are a few old faces—Colonel Ralgha nar "Hobbes" Hhallas (John Schuck
), and Major Todd "Maniac" Marshall (Tom Wilson
)—but all the other pilots and staff are people Blair has never met. Among the characters onboard, Blair notably meets fellow pilot Lieutenant Robin "Flint" Peters (Jennifer MacDonald) and Chief Fighter Technician Rachel Coriolis, with either of whom the player may eventually choose to start a romance.
The Victory is currently assigned to the Orsini System, away from the front. Shortly after Blair's arrival, and a few introductory mission, a test pilot, Major Jace "Flash" Dillon (Josh Lucas
), arrives onboard the Victory with his prototype warcraft, the F-103A Excalibur heavy fighter. Blair is given the chance to "borrow" it for a live combat mission. 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 flights of these missiles. Even if the player is able to destroy 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.
Admiral Tolwyn rendezvouses with the Victory, escorted by several destroyers. The Victory is the key to his latest plan, which involves the escort and defense of the TCS Behemoth; an extremely large vessel with a forward cannon capable of destroying a planet. Blair is to defend it while it is used against Kilrathi assets. Following the destruction of a Kilrathi planet in the Loki system, Thrakhath appears with a squadron of Pakthan bombers and taunts the Victory over subspace radio. He reveals that Blair is the game's titular "Heart of the Tiger;" the Kilrathi have bestowed this warrior's name on him as a sign of respect. Thrakhath's forces attack the Behemoth. A traitor aboard the Victory has transmitted comprehensive targeting data to the Kilrathi revealing the Behemoth's weakpoints, and the Behemoth is destroyed. Thrakhath then takes space in his personalized Bloodfang fighter to challenge Blair in single combat. He taunts Blair with an FMV recording showing how he personally disemboweled Angel after her colleagues had been disintegrated. Blair's instinct is to accept, but if he does, the Victory will leave without him being in an indefensible position. When he returns to the Victory, the player chooses between getting drunk or grieving in another way. If the player chooses getting drunk, he must then fly an emergency scramble drunk, with the game controls not responding reliably making combat virtually impossible and generally resulting in the player being forced to eject.
After a retreat to the Alcor System, Paladin arrives. He too has a scheme for bringing about the end of the war. He reveals that it has something to do with why Angel was captured; he also reveals that he's known about Angel's death for months. Paladin's scheme involves a weapon called the Temblor Bomb. The Kilrathi home planet, Kilrah, is seismically unstable, and if the Temblor Bomb is dropped in just the right place, the planet will shake itself to pieces. Angel was assigned to set up a number of hidden asteroid supply caches, which the delivering pilots (Blair and his wingmen) will use to resupply for the long journey into Kilrathi space. Matters are complicated when the traitor is revealed as Blair's friend Ralgha nar Hhallas. He kills one of the Victory's pilots, Lt. Laurel "Cobra" Buckley (B.J. Jefferson), steals her fighter and makes for Kilrathi space with news of the planned T-Bomb attacks. Blair has the choice of chasing him or letting him go. If he gives chase, the carrier is attacked and Lt. Mitchell "Vaquero" Lopez (Julian Reyes) is killed in the fight, for which Blair is held responsible. If he chooses not to follow Hobbes, the storyline proceeds as planned.
Blair tests a Temblor Bomb on a planet in the Hyperion System, featuring atmospheric combat for the first time in the series. Upon returning from the mission, 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 grumpy with him if he chooses neither. Finally, he launches against Kilrah, with up to three wingmen of the player's choice. 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 wipes out a great deal of the Kilrathi fleet and destroys Kilrah (and kills the emperor of the Kilrathi), but damages Blair's fighter as well; a surviving Kilrathi capital ship tractors him in. To his surprise, he has been retrieved not to be killed, but so that the Kilrathi, commanded now by Thrakhath's retainer Melek nar Kiranka (Tim Curry
), can surrender. The war is over. The surviving Kilrathi begin to colonize a new homeworld and now want to live in peace and harmony with the humans.
The credits are preceded by scenes of Melek and Tolwyn formalizing the peace treaty, and Blair returning home with the love interest of his choice or alone, if he chose none.
remained customizable.
. 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 polygon graphics, as WCIII was released a few years before the first true 3D video cards and all 3D effects had to be calculated by the CPU.
The game made the transition from animated cut-scenes to full motion video
, one of the first computer games to do so; it was frequently marketed as the world's first interactive movie
. It pioneered the use of CGI
backgrounds and greenscreen work; all sets were added digitally during post-production
, nearly a decade before George Lucas
would use the same tactic in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
. A large 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 your character, or even the morale of the entire crew. To act in these live action
sequences, director Chris Roberts hired a formidable amount of talent, most notably Mark Hamill
for the player character
. The game's budget was the then unheard-of sum of 4 million dollars, making it the most expensive game produced at the time. As such movie content consumes a large amount of data storage, the game was packaged on four CD-ROM
s instead of floppy disks, another emerging technology at that point.
ranked it 72nd on the list of the 100 best PC games of all time.
Wing Commander (franchise)
Wing Commander is a video game media franchise consisting of space combat simulation computer games from Origin Systems, Inc., an animated television series, a feature film, a collectible card game, a series of novels, and action figures...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
space combat simulation video game series, developed and released by Origin Systems
Origin Systems
Origin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...
. Released in 1994, Wing Commander III made the move from the sprite
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
-based graphics used in previous titles to software-driven texture-mapped
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
polygonal 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, and used FMV for cut scenes.
A novelization
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
of the game, by William R. Forstchen
William R. Forstchen
William R. Forstchen is an American author who began publishing in 1983 with the novel Ice Prophet. He is a Professor of History and Faculty Fellow at Montreat College, in Montreat, North Carolina...
and Andrew Keith, was published in 1995. A collectible card game
Collectible card game
thumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
adaptation was published in the same year by Mag Force 7
Mag Force 7
Mag Force 7 is a fictional team of mercenaries invented by author Margaret Weis for use in her Star of the Guardians novels. Based originally on The Magnificent Seven, the team developed a much more varied membership just in time to star in their own novels: The Knights of the Black Earth, Robot...
Productions, under the helm of noted science-fiction authors Margaret Weis
Margaret Weis
Margaret Edith Weis is a fantasy novelist who, along with Tracy Hickman, is one of the original creators of the Dragonlance game world and has written numerous novels and short stories set in fantastic worlds.-Early life:Margaret Weis was born in 1948 in Independence, Missouri, and later attended...
and Don Perrin
Don Perrin
Don Perrin is a Canadian writer and former military officer. Born in Iserlohn, Germany, Perrin grew up in Kingston, ON, Canada, McMasterville, QC, Canada, Bromley, Kent, England, and Ottawa, ON, Canada. Perrin served in the Canadian Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in the Canadian...
. The sequel, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom is the fourth main game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space combat simulator video game series, produced by Origin Systems and released by Electronic Arts for the PC in 1995 and the Sony PlayStation in 1997...
, was released in 1996.
Plot
The protagonist of the previous two games was officially assigned a name in WCIII, Colonel Christopher Blair (Mark HamillMark Hamill
Mark Richard Hamill is an American actor, voice artist, producer, director, and writer, best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy of Star Wars. More recently, he has received acclaim for his voice work, in such roles as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, Firelord...
). The opening cutscene, the first FMV cutscene in the Wing Commander series, depicts a saddening scene: Thrakhath nar Kiranka (John Rhys-Davies
John Rhys-Davies
John Rhys-Davies is a Welsh actor and voice actor. He is perhaps best known for playing the charismatic Arab excavator Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy...
), Crown Prince of the hostile Kilrathi Empire, presiding over the execution by disintegration of a group of Terran Confederation prisoners of war. One, however, is left alive: Blair's lover Colonel Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux (Yolanda Jilot), due to her status among the Kilrathi as a respected warrior, who is executed by Prince Thrakhath using his claws to disembowel her (though her death scene is not shown until later in the game). The scene then cuts to the planet Vespus, where Blair and Brigadier General James "Paladin" Taggart 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 Geoffrey Tolwyn, is transferred as Wing Commander to the TCS Victory, a Ranger-class carrier twice as old as Blair. Her captain, William Eisen, has been with her for many years, and is proud of his ship. There are a few old faces—Colonel Ralgha nar "Hobbes" Hhallas (John Schuck
John Schuck
Conrad John Schuck Jr. is an American actor, primarily in stage, movies and television. He is best-known for his roles as police commissioner Rock Hudson's mildly slow-witted assistant, Sgt. Charles Enright in the 1970s crime drama McMillan & Wife, and as Lee Meriwether's husband, Herman Munster...
), and Major Todd "Maniac" Marshall (Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson
Thomas Blanchard Wilson Jr. was an American record producer best known for his work in the 1960s with Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Simon and Garfunkel and The Velvet Underground.-Starting out:...
)—but all the other pilots and staff are people Blair has never met. Among the characters onboard, Blair notably meets fellow pilot Lieutenant Robin "Flint" Peters (Jennifer MacDonald) and Chief Fighter Technician Rachel Coriolis, with either of whom the player may eventually choose to start a romance.
The Victory is currently assigned to the Orsini System, away from the front. Shortly after Blair's arrival, and a few introductory mission, a test pilot, Major Jace "Flash" Dillon (Josh Lucas
Josh Lucas
Josh Lucas is an American actor. He has appeared in many films, including Glory Road, A Beautiful Mind, and Poseidon.-Early life:...
), arrives onboard the Victory with his prototype warcraft, the F-103A Excalibur heavy fighter. Blair is given the chance to "borrow" it for a live combat mission. This angers Flash who challenges Blair to a simulator duel. If Blair wins the duel, he forces Dillon to request reassignment to the Victory
Admiral Tolwyn rendezvouses with the Victory, escorted by several destroyers. The Victory is the key to his latest plan, which involves the escort and defense of the TCS Behemoth; an extremely large vessel with a forward cannon capable of destroying a planet. Blair is to defend it while it is used against Kilrathi assets. Following the destruction of a Kilrathi planet in the Loki system, Thrakhath appears with a squadron of Pakthan bombers and taunts the Victory over subspace radio. He reveals that Blair is the game's titular "Heart of the Tiger;" the Kilrathi have bestowed this warrior's name on him as a sign of respect. Thrakhath's forces attack the Behemoth. A traitor aboard the Victory has transmitted comprehensive targeting data to the Kilrathi revealing the Behemoth's weakpoints, and the Behemoth is destroyed. Thrakhath then takes space in his personalized Bloodfang fighter to challenge Blair in single combat. He taunts Blair with an FMV recording showing how he personally disemboweled Angel after her colleagues had been disintegrated. Blair's instinct is to accept, but if he does, the Victory will leave without him being in an indefensible position. When he returns to the Victory, the player chooses between getting drunk or grieving in another way. If the player chooses getting drunk, he must then fly an emergency scramble drunk, with the game controls not responding reliably making combat virtually impossible and generally resulting in the player being forced to eject.
After a retreat to the Alcor System, Paladin arrives. He too has a scheme for bringing about the end of the war. He reveals that it has something to do with why Angel was captured; he also reveals that he's known about Angel's death for months. Paladin's scheme involves a weapon called the Temblor Bomb. The Kilrathi home planet, Kilrah, is seismically unstable, and if the Temblor Bomb is dropped in just the right place, the planet will shake itself to pieces. Angel was assigned to set up a number of hidden asteroid supply caches, which the delivering pilots (Blair and his wingmen) will use to resupply for the long journey into Kilrathi space. Matters are complicated when the traitor is revealed as Blair's friend Ralgha nar Hhallas. He kills one of the Victory
Blair tests a Temblor Bomb on a planet in the Hyperion System, featuring atmospheric combat for the first time in the series. Upon returning from the mission, 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 grumpy with him if he chooses neither. Finally, he launches against Kilrah, with up to three wingmen of the player's choice. 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 wipes out a great deal of the Kilrathi fleet and destroys Kilrah (and kills the emperor of the Kilrathi), but damages Blair's fighter as well; a surviving Kilrathi capital ship tractors him in. To his surprise, he has been retrieved not to be killed, but so that the Kilrathi, commanded now by Thrakhath's retainer Melek nar Kiranka (Tim Curry
Tim Curry
Timothy James "Tim" Curry is a British actor, singer, composer and voice actor, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California....
), can surrender. The war is over. The surviving Kilrathi begin to colonize a new homeworld and now want to live in peace and harmony with the humans.
The credits are preceded by scenes of Melek and Tolwyn formalizing the peace treaty, and Blair returning home with the love interest of his choice or alone, if he chose none.
Gameplay
As the man giving the orders, Blair 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 WC, some wingmen can be killed permanently in combat. Blair's own call signCall sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...
remained customizable.
Development
Wing Commander III featured an entirely new line of ships and fighters, abandoning the technology of Wing Commander and Wing Commander IIWing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi is the first sequel in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space combat simulator franchise of computer games, produced by Origin Systems....
. 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 polygon graphics, as WCIII was released a few years before the first true 3D video cards and all 3D effects had to be calculated by the CPU.
The game made the transition from animated cut-scenes to full motion video
Full motion video
Full motion video based games are video games that rely upon pre-recorded TV-quality movie or animation rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models to display action in the game. In the early 1990s a diverse set of games utilized this format...
, one of the first computer games to do so; it was frequently marketed as the world's first interactive movie
Interactive movie
An interactive movie is a video game that features highly cinematic presentation and heavy use of scripting, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.-Philosophy:...
. It pioneered the use of CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
backgrounds and greenscreen work; all sets were added digitally during post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
, nearly a decade before George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
would use the same tactic in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a 2005 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the sixth and final film released in the Star Wars saga and the third in terms of the series' internal chronology....
. A large 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 your character, or even the morale of the entire crew. To act in these live action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
sequences, director Chris Roberts hired a formidable amount of talent, most notably Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill
Mark Richard Hamill is an American actor, voice artist, producer, director, and writer, best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy of Star Wars. More recently, he has received acclaim for his voice work, in such roles as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, Firelord...
for the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
. The game's budget was the then unheard-of sum of 4 million dollars, making it the most expensive game produced at the time. As such movie content consumes a large amount of data storage, the game was packaged on four CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s instead of floppy disks, another emerging technology at that point.
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 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, leaving Blair the unwelcome problem of having two extremely senior officers on his flight wing who are also complete hot-doggers.
- Blair fails to save Locanda.
- Forstchen-created character Kevin "Lone Wolf" Tolwyn 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 game's titular "Heart of the Tiger" occurs while the pilots are in their cockpits, scrambling to defend the ill-fated Behemoth (instead of standing around 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 to "stop that bastard at all costs", and is killed just as Maverick arrives to finish the job.
- The novel includes a scene inexplicably cut from the PC version of the game, though not the PlayStation version: Blair finding a message in Hobbes' locker, explaining his treachery. Ralgha nar Hhallas, a loyal Kilrathi, volunteered for a special operation, in which his original personality was overlaid with one that would be much more sympathetic to humans. This personality defected to the Confederation over ten years ago and has served them loyally. However, nar Hhallas's original personality could be reactivated via certain audio cues—namely, hearing Thrakhath saying Blair's Kilrathi warrior name, "Heart of the Tiger"—and this personality has served Kilrathi interests with characteristic loyalty. In the end, though, both personalities have come to respect Christopher Blair and value his friendship, and it is with regret that they betray him.
- Blair chooses Rachel.
- Flint, Winston "Vagabond" Chang 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, though Maverick is described as catching a glimpse of what might be an ejection seat (Marshall also returns in WC4).
Reception
Wing Commander III has often been praised for its updated visuals, the performances of its main cast, and its highly-immersive story, which stays true to the storytelling style of Wing Commander. Its combined use of FMV, blue-screen backdrops, and polygonal graphics is considered a turning point in the series, and is often praised as one of the first simulator games to successfully apply polygonal graphics. In 2011, PC GamerPC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
ranked it 72nd on the list of the 100 best PC games of all time.