Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger

Did You Know?

• Blair's own call sign remained customizable.
• The novelization by William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith includes a character named Kevin 'Lone Wolf' Tolwyn, who appears as a courier.
• In the novelization, Flash is killed in the fight after Thrakhath's declaration that Blair is the 'Heart of the Tiger'.

Plot

Colonel Christopher Blair is finally given a name after two games without one. The Kilrathi Crown Prince, Thrakhath nar Kiranka, oversees the disintegration of captured Terran prisoners, but spares one: Blair’s lover, Colonel Jeannette “Angel” Devereaux, because the Kilrathi respect her as a warrior. On Vespus, Blair and Brigadier General James “Paladin” Taggart examine the wreck of the TCS Concordia, which is completely destroyed. The year is 2669, and the war between the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi Empire has dragged on for more than three decades with no end in sight. Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn orders Blair to take command of the TCS Victory, a Ranger-class carrier twice his age. Her captain, William Eisen, has served on her for years and is deeply proud of his ship. Blair finds a few familiar faces: Colonel Ralgha nar “Hobbes” Hhallas and Major Todd “Maniac” Marshall, but the rest of the crew and pilots are strangers. He meets Lieutenant Robin “Flint” Peters and Chief Fighter Technician Rachel Coriolis. The Victory is sent to the Orsini System, far from the front lines. Not long after Blair arrives, test pilot Major Jace “Flash” Dillon shows up with a prototype, the F-103A Excalibur heavy fighter. When the Victory comes under attack and Flash sleeps through the emergency, Blair takes the Excalibur to defend the ship. Afterward, he calls Flash a coward and questions his flying ability. Flash challenges Blair to a simulator duel. If Blair wins, he forces Flash to request a transfer to the Victory’s flight wing. Right after that, the Victory is redirected to the Locanda System, where the Kilrathi are using two new weapons: the cloaked “Skipper” cruise missile and a genetically engineered bioweapon aimed at the Locanda colonies, Flint’s home. Blair and his wing scramble to stop several of these missiles. Even if Blair succeeds, Flint breaks formation to attack the Kilrathi out of revenge. The player can choose to follow her, but she returns safely either way.

Development

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was developed and released by Origin Systems. It was released in 1994 for DOS and Mac OS, in 1995 for 3DO, and in 1996 for PlayStation. A Sega Saturn version was also announced and advertised, but not released. 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 cutscenes. Wing Commander III featured an entirely new line of ships and fighters, abandoning the technology of Wing Commander and Wing Commander II. 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. Wing Commander III ultimately cost between $4 million and $6 million to develop. FMV was filmed entirely via chroma key, with actors against green screens and all sets created digitally in post-production. 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 CD-ROMs instead of floppy disks, another emerging technology at that point. A Pentium (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, Atari Corporation realized a deal with EA to bring select titles to the Atari Jaguar CD, with Wing Commander III among the selected games. This port was never released due to the commercial and critical failure of the Atari Jaguar platform. A novelization 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.

Version differences

Porting Wing Commander III to the 3DO brought several notable alterations. The difficulty selector was dropped, locking players into a single setting roughly equal to the PC's "Veteran" mode. All planetary surface stages were removed and replaced with Full Motion Video cutscenes, which used standard mission audio clips like "Attack my target" for dialogue. Manual takeoffs were also swapped for FMVs, so each mission begins with the player already in open space. The left VDU can no longer be hidden. Several enemy types were cut, including every land-based foe, but a new stationary enemy, the gun platform, was added. The ejection animation and the option to retry after ejecting were both removed. To communicate with another ship, the player must first select it as a target. The PC version's bug that blocked the Hobbes betrayal cutscene is absent here, though a new bug appears in the first Hyperion mission: unless every enemy is destroyed, the mission registers as a failure even if the bomb prototype was used successfully. Only two of the PC's three endings are reachable, because the removal of the planetary sequence makes it impossible to fail the Temblor Bomb planting mission. The scripted deaths of wingmen in that mission were cut, so all four can survive. The cloaking device now works on Hobbes and Thrakhath, allowing the Temblor Bomb mission to be completed without engaging either. The PlayStation version is far closer to the PC original, though it shares the fix for the Hobbes cutscene bug. However, it suffers from considerable load times when navigating the Victory, a problem absent from both the PC and 3DO releases.

Reception

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger proved to be another strong seller in the Wing Commander franchise, with total sales exceeding 700,000 copies. The PC versions alone accounted for over 500,000 of those sales. By October 1999, PC Data, which monitored computer game sales in the United States, reported that the computer version had generated $15.9 million in revenue and sold roughly 400,000 copies. A critic for Next Generation awarded the 3DO version a perfect five out of five stars, highlighting the use of well-known actors in the video cutscenes. He argued this approach made the game feel more realistic and suspenseful, and that the full-motion video enhanced gameplay rather than compensating for a lack of it. He did note that the 3DO version was not as graphically sharp as the PC version and offered less challenge, but concluded it was a suitable option for players who could not afford the high-end hardware needed to run the PC version at its best. The four reviewers at Electronic Gaming Monthly also praised the FMV quality, with Al Manuel and Sushi-X calling it the cleanest they had seen on either the 3DO or PC. However, Ed Semrad and Sushi-X criticized the control scheme as difficult to master. In White Wolf Inphobia #56 (June 1995), James V. Trunzo gave the game a five out of five, calling it the most stunning game around and stating it delivered what other CD-ROM products only promised, raising the bar for future releases and calling it a sure Hall of Famer and the ultimate gaming experience. A reviewer for Maximum, looking at the PlayStation version, praised the intricate plot but found the combat simplistic and dull, and noted that the FMV sequences offered little interaction beyond occasional multiple-choice responses. Entertainment Weekly gave the game an A. PC Gamer US nominated Wing Commander III for its 1994 Best Action Game award, though it lost to TIE Fighter. In 1995, it won the 3DO Interactive Movie of the Year award. Computer Gaming World ranked it the 54th best game of all time in 1996, citing its thrilling space action in the first successful interactive movie, and also named it the ninth most innovative computer game. In 2011, PC Gamer placed it 72nd on its list of the 100 best PC games of all time.