Wing Commander 3 On GOG

Today is the final in this latest batch of EA releases on GOG. After a vague hint on the forums, I had the idea that it was going to be the Worlds Of Ultima games, but instead it’s yet another Origin game in the shape of Wing Commander 3. GOG (with more than a little help from the guys at wcnews I gather) has pulled out all the stops with this one and the extras are worth the money on their own and then some.

The biggest surprise is the inclusion of Fleet Action. The Wing Commander 3 novel would have seemed more appropriate but even so it’s a great extra, not to mention the various guides, deleted scenes and all the rest. I expect I might recognise a few of the guides but $6 is clearly a giveaway so if you don’t already own all of this stuff, I highly recommend going over to GOG and buying a copy or two.

I was wondering what I could post with a Wing Commander theme so I’m taking a leaf from the barrage of posts on wcnews and posting a few photos. They have a post with a picture of Wing Commander 3 Premiere Edition, which came in a film can with numerous extras over the regular version of the game. I don’t actually own this, and probably should have it on my shopping list now I think about it, but I do have a copy of the Deluxe Edition:-



One of my rules of game collecting has always been that if it’s not in an oversized cardboard box, it’s usually not worth having and they don’t come much more oversized than this one. I’ve put it next to the regular WC3 box for comparison. The regular box could never have been accused of being small itself.

Inside is a film can, sat on top of a WC3 T-shirt. The label on the can is slightly different to the premiere edition. The T-shirt is the same design however (I’m informed by Loaf that the photo on wcnews is actually the developer edition).




The T-Shirt looks like it would take some serious ironing after 17 years in a box, with a film can on top of it. I actually still get the smell of new T-shirt when opening the box up.

In terms of the rest of the content, this edition falls way short of the premiere. It does have the making-of CD and a couple of extra manuals but everything else is missing. In its favour, the giant box was only included with this version. Both versions pack the CD’s into jewel cases and don’t have the folding card sleeve that came with the regular WC3.

As far as I know, neither this or the premiere edition are especially rare, and I don’t think I paid very much for this when I bought it some years back. They are both decent collectables provided you have large enough shelves to fit them on.

Wing Commander 3 Review – CDROM Today

I’m probably not going to get started on the next WC novel until the weekend and will carry on with the magazine scans in the meanwhile. It’s been interesting reading some of this stuff for the first time in years, although I’ll have to go back and have a better look at some of the other content at some time. A few months back, I was tiring of doing this blog but I seem to have got my enthusiasm back again. It was probably the prospect of playing all those flight sims that was putting me off, and Super Wing Commander didn’t exactly live up to the name either. I’m even getting more hits on the site in recent weeks although believe me its still not that many. If I was doing this by public demand, I don’t think I’d have ever started.

The first article today is a review of Wing Commander 3 from January 1995’s CDROM Today.

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Day 158

Rollins is in the lift laughing about how we risk it all to rescue this one guy who can win the war for us and Vagabond decks him. He thinks he’ll never get out of the brig but I say I’ll have a word with the captain about it.

Maniacs in the bar and in his usual subtle manner, said he told me about trusting the cats and it was too bad Cobra had to die to get a  point across.

At the briefing, Eisen tells me that the reason we are in Freya is because we have discovered a jump point to Kilrah from here. The problem is that the Kilrathi own the system so I have to go and clear it out.

The game might not put me in one each time by default but I get the option of the Excalibur for every mission from here on out and its easily the best ship to be in even if I’m up against a load of cap ships like this mission.

Flint is clearing out her locker when I get back – she says it helps to clear her mind. She also thinks there might be something between us but it doesn’t go any further for now.

On the bridge, I attempt to talk Eisen into letting Vagabond out of the brig. I have the choice of hard or soft sell – the correct option is hard sell and he lets Vagabond out as long as I am personally responsible.

We’ve run into a snag with the jump point to Kilrah – its shielded. This means I have to go down to the planet below and take out the shield generating station.

The planet looks exactly the same as the last one – a dull grey. All the ships are the same also.

The shield generating station can actually be targeted unlike the turrets shooting at me. I head straight for it and it just takes a few shots.

When I land, Vagabond has been let out of the brig – he’s cheerful but unapolagetic and says he would do the same again.

Next mission is a simple protect the jump point one. The Kilrathi are jumping through it and we have to take them out. This is a simple gauntlet mission with wave after wave all at one point. As ever the Excalibur makes it easy.

At the bar I’m faced with a choice….

I head for Rachel first but tell her it would never work between us….

Flint looks pleased about this..

I then choose Flint and Rachel storms off in the background. This choice will affect the end of the game cutscene very slightly.

Paladin has sent us a prototype of the temblar and I have to go and test fire it on a suitable planet. I’m told it will require the ultimate in aim and timing.

When I go to check my loadout after the briefing, Rachel is not pleased and storms off refusing to do my loadouts from now on.

The planet mission is the usual sort of thing. Shooting the correct part of the planet definitely does not required aiming or timing. I just park up above it, wait for the bomb to lock and fire.

I’m shown afterburning out while the planet ignites behind me.

Judging by the asteroid field thats appeared it looks like it worked.


On the Victory I get a bit of a farewell chat with some of the pilots who can all see us winning the war now the bomb works.

Its not won yet though and I have more missions to fly. I’m having to clear out a load of capships again.

I’m handling my own missile selection from this point out.

Its one capship after another on this mission. I still stick with the Excalibur and it can even take down a cruiser pretty quickly. The main problem is keeping my wingman alive which requires a replay.

We now own the jump point in this system and need to hang onto it.

Its another mission taking out loads of capships. I foolishly pick Maniac first time out and he gets killed off so I pick a more reliable wingman instead for my second attempt.

With this mission complete we are now ready for the final attack on Kilrah.

Eisen meets me outside the briefing room. He says that although the temblar bomb still seems like a long shot, he thinks I’m the one pilot who can pull it off…

The plan is as follows. Confed has equipped my Excalibur with its first attempt at cloaking technology.

I have to fly into Kilrah space, land at a hidden refueling depot where the T-bomb will be loaded.

I then have to fly to Kilrah, navigate down a trench to the target at the far end.

Our timing for this may be just right as much of the Kilrathi fleet is currently being outfitted in the shipyards around the planet.

Paladin also has a few words for me and says he has left briefing notes at the refueling depots.

I get to choose up to 3 wingmen for this mission, but I know from experience that they will die off 1 by 1 if I do. I choose therefore to fly solo.

I make it to the jump point with no great drama and jump out of the system.

On the other side, however its one cap ship after another with 4 corvettes + a destroyer for me to take on single handed as well as waves of fighters.

The hidden depot looks to have been built into an asteroid. I land and refuel.

I get a quick word from Paladin before I launch again. I have to fly to another depot nearer Kilrah before the final attack.

The next mission is an exact copy of the first except some of the fighters are replaced by better models but they even appear in all the same places. I make it through with no trouble, land and the temblar bomb is loaded.

A quick word from paladin and its onto the last mission. This time when I take off I cloak and the world fades into black and white. I could fight my way through several points (all of which have destroyers) but the easier option by far is to be cloaked and just fly out of range until I reach Kilrah.

When I get to the final point, Hobbes and Thrakhath are both waiting for me.

I get myself right behind Hobbes before I uncloak. He it dead before he knows whats hit him.

Thrakhath is a different matter and gets off missile after missle at me. He’s near enough impossible to hit as well – I have to wait for him to fly straight at me to get any shots off.

I get him in the end though and that triggers my landing on Kilrah.

Kilrah looks a little different to everywhere else with a lava filled trench to fly down.

The graphics are really basic though if I’m honest. Pacific Strikes islands looked a lot better than this.

I have to make sure I stay below the top of the trench and just follow it down. Its very easy as it moves so slowly – there isn’t the sort of speed you felt flying the trench at the end of X-Wing.

10 minutes of trench later I reach the target area.

I park up above it and fire starting the end cutscene.

I just about escape the planet exploding but my ship is damaged in the shock wave. I’m tractored in by Thrakhaths underling. He says the Kilrathi are a beaten race and must not die out as a species. He surrenders to me and we get to see him signing a peace treaty with Tolwyn finally ending the war. I fly off to Earth with Flint and we disappear into the sunset.

Its a great ending and a suitable conclusion to the trilogy. The final mission wasn’t all it should have been but at least it was something new and definitely a challenge. The trench was the easy part though and an opportunity was missed. I was told in my final briefing that it would required the ultimate in navigational skills… It has felt sometimes that the briefings were done before the missions were created for real and in the end they couldn’t quite achieve what they wanted with them. I’ve enjoyed today a lot more anyway, mainly because I had the Excalibur and the missions were easier because of it – this game definitely gets more fun when you spend less time flying missions.

That finishes up 1994 and also completes a half century of Origin games. 1995 is looking a bit different with no Wing Commander (or even flight sim games) and no RPG’s whatsoever. 

Next: Abuse

Day 157

I thought I was in for a short night last night but it took me longer to get through CD#3 than any of the previous ones leaving no time to write it up in the end. I only just managed to get it finished.

I bump into Rollins in the lift. He has intercepted a load of coded transmissions which he thinks look suspicious. Tolwyn is onboard now and his transmissions are supposed to be coded but Rollins thinks that these look different and it looks like Tolwyn is up to something.

Tolwyn is on the bridge. He congratulates me on my flying so far and points out that I should now realise that my transfer to the Victory wasn’t just chance.

At the next briefing things are back to normal and Eisen is back in charge. He points out that things will never be normal while the Admiral is onboard and that it takes a certain sort to be an Admiral.

The mission is to mine 4 of the 5 jump points in this system so we can head out with the Behemoth through the systems final point.

The mines are located on my hardpoints just like a missile. Mining the point consists of no more than firing 2 of these off. Its a particularly uninspired mission with the same 4 enemies to fight at each of the 4 jumps points.

Theres no one to talk to back at the ship – the next mission involves going after some fuel for the behemoth. We are going to disable some Kilrathi transports travelling through an asteroid field. I get some new ships to fight in this mission that are actually made from the asteroids themselves.

These ships have thin shields but being made of rock are well armoured. Their shape makes them easy targets however so they are no problem unless they attack in large numbers. Disabling the transports just seems to involve firing on them like anything else which is something of a cheat. Maniac sorts this out for me while I’m dealing with all the fighters.

When I land there is a cutscene showing a traitor sending details of the Behemoth to the Kilrathi but we don’t see who the traitor is.

Rachel is on the flight deck and I can’t help notice that she’s working on an Excalibur. I’m hoping this means I get to pick one for the next mission but there is no such luck.

Rachel has been ordered to smarten up her act by the Admiral himself but makes no mention of the Excalibur.

Vacquero is trying to sell tickets to the opening night of his cantina and reckons that with the Behemoth on our side the war is almost over.

At my next briefing, Tolwyn has assumed command of the ship and Eisen is nowhere to be seen.

We are going to test fire the Behemoth on a Kilrathi planet orbiting a quasar. The quasar will block all communication so it cannot alert the Kilrathi to our presence. Before we fire the Behemoth we need to clear out the fighters in this system.

This mission turns out to be pretty difficult with waves of Vaktoths to cope with and I need several attempts. It would help if I wasn’t stuck flying either Hellcats or Arrows. This is going to continue for the next few missions making them the hardest ones in the game.

I manage to clear out the Behemoths route in the end and head for the bar. Maniac thinks Tolwyn is about to steamroll another career (Eisens) and doesn’t believe that his own lack of promotion is down to flying style but that I poisoned Tolwyn against him.

Cobra is still working on that knife in the barracks and is seriously worked up about the chance to wipe out Kilrah with the Behemoth. She finally explains her obsession with destroying Kilrathi explaining how she was in a Kilrathi slave camp from the age of 10 until she escaped at 20. She had to spend 2 years undergoing psychiatric treatment but even then she can’t forget it all.

Tolwyn is hanging around on the bridge. I point out that his assumption of command hasn’t exactly helped ships morale – he says he is the natural choice to act as guardian angel for the Behemoth having been with the project since its inception 10 years ago.

Eisen, with nothing else to do is moping about on the observation deck. He is not happy at losing his ship.

The next mission briefing is short and to the point. Cover the Behemoth while its fired.

The scale of the Behemoth is brought into play here – those fighters at the rear of it are practically directly above it. The size of this ship is truly monumental – you would think you could destroy a planet or at least make it inhabitable just by crashing something this big into it.

I only have to kill a few ships before the Behemoth fires. Everything works and the planet boils away into space.

There are more ships to kill off after this before I can land but all in all, this is the easiest mission I’ve faced tonight.

Everything worked so its off to Kilrah as quick as possible to end this war. Hobbes has mixed feelings about what we are about to do but is taking it a lot better than I would in his position.

At the next briefing, we are heading straight to Kilrah via the nearest jump point.

I’m told this will be the most important mission I’ll ever fly and if it goes well will win us the war.

When I get to the Behemoth its already under attack from a wing of bombers. I afterburn in to get to them asap.

I’m too late though and it explodes into nothing.

When I’m back in the cockpit again, after the cutscene, all the ships have gone and Thrakhath has appeared. He taunts me about how I have failed my race and Angel….

He transmits Angels fate to me. This appears to be some sort of honourable ritual death among Kilrathi but I’d have preferred disintegration.

Thrakhath challenges me to a duel but the Victory is retreating to the jump point. I ignore the taunts and head back to the Victory.

We retreat back to the Alcor system the moment I land.

Tolwyn leaves the ship. He is not happy and insinuates that the Kilrathi knew exactly where and when to strike and that Eisen has a leaky ship. Eisen stands his ground and points out that at the time the Victory was Tolwyns ship.

Tolwyn clearly sees the war as lost and his final words are “Fight well, the struggle will only get harder”.

All in all its not been a good day. I head for the bar and hit the bottle hard. Rachel attempts to talk me round and I have the option of listening to her or getting drunk. Straight after I make this decision the Victory comes under attack and we have to scramble all fighters. Getting drunk is a very bad idea as this mission is tough enough as it is. If I’m drunk my controls go nuts making it near enough impossible to hit anything.

In fact I take a good few attempts at this mission as it is. I’m stuck in an arrow – the smallest ship in the game and yet have to take out loads of capships and wave after wave of Kilrathi. I get there in the end but there is no way I’m taking on these Sorthak at the end of the mission and I leave it to the Victory to look after itself.

Flint has a few consoling words when I land about how well I’m holding up but I’m still not in the mood to listen.

In the bar Rollins has picked up more coded transmissions and is going over them with Cobra. She is suggesting that he rigs ships internal sensors to pick up movements on the ship. She clearly doesn’t want him to tell me what its about when I approach the table but he trusts me enough to tell me whats going on. Whatever it is, Tolwyn is gone now so it was nothing to do with him. I order him to keep working on it.

I head for the observation deck and see a shuttle coming in carrying Paladin. He joins me and I’ve guessed somehow that he already knew about Angel. In fact he confesses he knew right back at the start of the game when we were looking at the Concordia. I’ve got the option of hitting him at this point but I don’t think it makes much difference to the plot. He says he was under orders but was also protecting me from myself. Before he goes he says that Angel may yet help us win this thing…

Paladin is as the next briefing which is a long one. He tells me how over the last decade work has preceded on a tectonic frequency weapon. The idea behind this is that if a bomb can generate the right resonant frequency it could trigger an explosion that would shake a planet apart.

This plan became more of a reality once Angel reached Kilrah. She planted several transmitting probes some at ground level and some in space which analyse the planet. These probes are all cloaked and send a signal back to us via a distance com sat.

It turns out that Kilrah is a pretty fragile place with the layers of the planet constantly shifting over each other. He speculates that it was this seismic activity that made the Kilrathi such an aggressive space-faring race. Since the entire Kilrathi hierarchy is centrally based here on Kilrah, destroying it would win us the war despite the large numbers of Kilrathi deployed elsewhere.

The weapon itself is called the Temblor bomb. The reason we aren’t using it now is that it doesn’t exist yet. We have the pieces but the chief scientist on the project is in a Kilrathi prison and we can’t put the pieces together without him. We are therefore going to attempt a rescue. Before that we have to clear our path so I have another routine patrol type mission.

After the mission, Vagabond is in the bar and it turns out his classified past is related to the guy we are rescuing. He used to work for Dr. Severin when he was performing munitions tests – there was some sort of accident where millions died. He thinks it was no accident and that Severin knew exactly what he was doing but Confed covered it up as it only happened on a remote backwater world.

I’m called to the flight deck where Cobra is not looking too good.

She caught Hobbes trying to send this communication so he was the traitor all along.

Hobbes has taken a ship and left – she wants me to go after him but Eisen says that would jeopardise the whole operation. I get the choice here but listen to Eisen in the end. If I fly the mission Vacquero will be dead by the time I get back.

Eisen is clearing out Cobras locker. Usually he would have to write to family at this point but we were the only family Cobra had. He has no idea was happened with Hobbes. There is a scene that was cut out of the game at this point for some reason. It was something along the lines of a holo-message from Hobbes about how he had been programmed and the phrase “Heart of the Tiger” had reverted him back to his true character. This scene offers a bit of explanation so it seems strange it was removed.

I get to conduct Cobra’s funeral. There are a whole load of these for each pilot on the Victory, most of whom become liable to die around this point in the game. They are pretty much the same scene with a different speech from Blair each time.

It’s time to extract Severin from the Kilrathi prison. Paladin stresses that this will be the most important mission I’ll ever fly. We are actually going to fly down to the planet, remove the defenses and then a shuttle will land to rescue the doctor.

I’m getting an Excalibur for this mission, and not before time.

I’ve no wingman for this mission but the darkets I run into are so easy to wipe out in this ship I don’t need one. After killing these off, I fly down to the planet.

This is something new to Wing Commander, a ground mission. The flight dynamics are exactly the same as in space – gravity has no effect at all. In terms of graphics, its actually simpler than Strike Commander with no textures on the ground. Despite this you still needed a monster of a PC to run these missions in SVGA.

The Kilrathi use different ships to defend on planets and I’m faced with a squad of about 8 of these to take on by myself. The Excalibur on full guns can take one out in a couple of hits – I just need to make sure I get on its tail first so I still have enough gun energy to do this and all my shots hit.

I autopilot to the next nav point and its surrounded by tanks. These don’t move but do fire back. I can’t target them so I’m stuck with aiming manually. They only take a few hits but it hurts so I have to retreat and recharge my shields at one point.

With the defenses gone, the marines move in and rescue Severin. Vagabond turns up uninvited, runs straight up to Severin, decks him and says “Long time no see”. He’s grabbed by the marines but tells them to take it easy as hes done what he came to do.

Rollins tells me that Vagabond has landed himself in the brig thanks to this little stunt, which is hardly surprising. Paladin heads straight off with Severin to work on the bomb and we jump to Freya in the meanwhile.

There is another cutscene on Kilrah. The emperor wants to know why the humans risked rescuing the 1 prisoner and what his specialist area of knowledge was. He is told that this was not fully explored as his breadth of experience was vast but that it is irrelevant as the Kilrathi have amassed a huge armada greater than any in their history and are getting ready to attack Earth. The emperor reminds the Prince that “it is when an enemy is near vanquished that he is most dangerous”.

That ends CD #3. In hindsight, attempting to finish this game in 4 nights was a bad idea as I must have spent nearly 4 hours on this CD alone not including writing it up here. There isn’t that long left now + I’ve got the Excalibur so I should be able to finish up tonight/tomorrow and move onto the next game this weekend.

I complained yesterday that not much happened in the story. That definitely hasn’t been the case today where we’ve had murder, betrayal and planets exploding. The cutscenes have been excellent and really driven things along nicely – its taken this long for things to get going but it was worth the wait. These cutscenes are a lot better than the Wing Commander movie ever was, even with the static cameras.

In terms of gameplay, the missions have been difficult but I’m not seeing much new. We are having to take on insane numbers of enemy each time and sometimes even having to face off destroyers in Arrows. The planet mission offered something different but this in effect played exactly the same as being in space. The only real novelty was shooting a few ground targets but I’ve seen all this before (and done better) in the Strike games.

WC3 is really relying on the graphics, plot and cinematics. I could level the same criticism to some extent at the rest of the series but I think the dogfighting was somehow more fun in the earlier games and there was nothing to compete with it at the time. Where WC3 comes into its own is where cap-ships are concerned. The individual turrets + the fact you can damage cap-ships with lasers this time around offer strategic possibilities that were simply not in WC2. The ships also have a sense of scale rather than simply being another sprite floating in space. It would have been nice to be involved in some large battles with loads of capships at once but I expect this would have stretched a 1994 PC beyond breaking point.

Overall, the gameplay is quite basic and the novelty has worn off by this point. If I didn’t have the cutscenes to urge me on I’d be getting bored in all truth. It doesn’t help that this is the umpteenth time I’ve played this game of course, but I think the basic problem is that there isn’t enough variety. Its also not helping that this game has exactly the same formula as the 6 games in the main Wing Commander series + the 4 games in the Strike series before it.

I can still play this now and enjoy it but it’s had its day. It relied far too much on being the latest thing and has dated because of it. System Shock pushed the technology but combined it with original gameplay and is as much fun as ever because of it. WC3 hasn’t quite pulled this off and is merely an update/variant of what I’ve already seen 10 times before. WC3 is still well worth a go but playing through it now I’d be tempted to advise dropping the difficulty level right down, zipping through the missions, and just enjoying the movies.