I’m slowly going through all my old magazines, having rescued them from the parents loft a few months back and found this in the October 1992 PC Review. As far as I know, none of this stuff is available on the internet so I’ll probably be doing a load of these scans on anything Origin related that I stumble across.
This is the fourth in the lengthy series of Wing Commander novels and was published in 1995 by Baen. It’s written by Forstchen once again but also co-authored by Andrew Keith. I was glad on the whole to see the novels return to the games, as that is after all primarily what I’m interested in. The story on Wing Commander 3 was well told but it could certainly stand a little padding which is what I was looking for in this novel.
This is the first novel to feature Blair. A character called Blair got a brief mention in Freedom Flight but this is the first definite mention of the person you play in the games. To answer a question I asked at the end of the last novel, the book does pick up immediately from where the last one left off. The Concordia was destroyed in the defence of Earth leading to Blair’s transfer to the Victory. Blair was apparently out of action for 6 months at the time of the defense which is why he survived. The game’s story flows fairly naturally from the end of the previous novel actually. Whether this is by accident or design I’m not sure, but the huge losses at the end of the last book would explain the downbeat and world-weary attitudes shown in WC3.
The novel follows the book extremely closely, right down to using word for word dialog a lot of the time so I won’t go into too much detail on the plot except to point out a few differences. Flash isn’t a test pilot in this but a home defence pilot transferred to the Victory. He doesn’t play much of a role here and is killed off fairly quickly.
Regarding Hobbes and his mutiny, right from the start of the book we know that there are orders for the Kilrathi not to attack him so it’s not much of a surprise. We do at least get the explanation in the book about the Kilrathi implanting him with a second personality which was removed once he heard the code phrase “Heart Of The Tiger”. In the book, Blair gets to go and kill him straight after he murders Cobra without any consequences. There was the famously cut scene in WC3 of Hobbes explanation and the game could have done with this sort of explanation.
There is no rescuing of Severin to build the Temblor bomb here and it is already complete when the Behemoth is destroyed. Vagabond, Flint and Maniac come along for the final mission and all die before the end (with the possible exception of Maniac who may have ejected). Maniac actually sacrifices himself weakening Thrakaths fighter enough for Blair to finish him off and drop the bomb. This fight takes place on the planet rather than in space. Vagabond being bumped off could be awkward in the next book, but it wouldn’t be too hard to simply replace his character with someone else.
Finally during the surrender, the Kilrathi mention that another greater race will take the opportunity to attack after their surrender making their only chance now to ally with Earth. This race was refered to in the last book also, as pulling out of a conflict with the Kilrathi when yet another lot of aliens attacked them. It’s interesting anyway and could maybe feed into the Prophecy plot. There are a few books left yet so I expect I will find out more.
This was possibly the strongest of the books so far, thanks to being able to base itself around the WC3 plot. The characters were stronger in this than the previous novel though and it was a definite improvement. It was the longest in the series but it still compressed the games story down which gives an idea just how much was packed into WC3. I wouldn’t say the writing felt rushed (apart from the ending), but it didn’t hang around either.
It certainly wasn’t an upbeat read, but then the game was positively gloomy also. This takes it further and basically everything goes wrong, near enough everyone dies and the Temblor bomb is a last desperate suicide run. I might not agree with the methods but you can see where Tolwyn was coming from in the next game/book when he said that the victory against the Kilrathi was a fluke.
My biggest problem with this book would be my familiarity with the game as I obviously knew where the story was going. I expected the book to fill in details and it did this to some extent but it missed as much out as it added. This may be the better novel but I enjoyed the first two in the series more thanks to their original storylines. This book possibly added a little to the game but if you gave me a choice between the two, the game is going to win every time.
I was leafing through a few more old magazines and found this one page review of Ultima 7 in the July 1992 edition of PC Review (click on the scan to see it full size). It’s harsh to say the least but does give an idea of the bugs people had to cope with at the time. You expected a game to work out of the box back in those days when getting a patch meant the manufacturer mailing it to you on a floppy. 4 out of 10 though? Omar Shariff’s Bridge got 6 out of 10 in this same issue…..
I’ve made a start on the next Wing Commander book which I should finish tomorrow, but in the meanwhile here is another Quest for Clues. This is number 3, it was published in 1990 by Origin and as ever it’s a collection of solutions for various games following the same format as the first two books.
There are quite a few Origin titles included here which didn’t get their own clue books such as Space Rogue and Windwalker, along with a selection of many of the better games of the period. I used this book to help me out with Knights Of Legend although it didn’t get me through the game half as quickly as I would have liked from what I remember.
My copy is signed on the inside page by Shay Addams which is a nice extra. I can’t imagine it makes much difference to the value but it makes it worth more to me at least. Other than that, there isn’t much to say as it’s more of the same. I notice that each solution is tending to take up a few more pages than in earlier books as the games get larger and more complex. There is a brief introduction which talks about the changes in gaming in the early 90’s but it isn’t hugely interesting so I’ve refrained from scanning it in.
The fact is I’m not going to have a lot to write about any of these QFC books and should probably have done all 6 in one post. I’ve started now so I’ll stick with it though. As with any of these, if you are interested in any particular solution drop me a line and I’ll scan it in.
This is the third in the series of Wing Commander novels and was published in 1994 by Baen. It was written entirely by William Forstchen this time and picks up the story shortly after the end of the previous book. Once again we get to follow the adventures of ‘Bear’, but this novel also features at one time or another near enough all the major characters from Freedom Flight. It flits between characters with Hunter taking a leading role for large sections (before being killed off 2/3 of the way through the book), and Admiral Tolwyn + his pilot nephew Kevin also taking major roles.
Briefly the plot is as follows. Following on from the successful raid in End Run, Confed has used to same tactics to devastating effect on the Kilrathi. Their supply ships are seriously depleted and Confed are on the verge of winning the war thanks to the Kilrathi being unable to build new carriers. The Kilrathi come up with a tactic of offering peace with Earth, while secretly using the extra time to build a devastating new fleet in a distant system. Earth’s politicians buy into this ruse and start dismantling Confeds fleet, in anticipation of peace. The military aren’t buying it though and Tolwyn deliberately gets himself stripped of his rank so that he can organise a covert mission to find out what the Kilrathi are up to. Paladin and Hunter go into Kilrathi space and get pictures of the new fleet while Bear’s light carrier is carrying out surveillance. At the cost of Hunter’s life they get the proof they want and Earth is left is a desperate race to try to get its fleet online again. The book ends in a climactic battle on Earth, with Earth barely repelling the fleet thanks to the Marines boarding the Kilrathi super-carriers and blowing them up from the inside. This comes at the cost of most of the fleet, including using civilian ships as cannon fodder.
Large parts of the novel deal with the conflict between politicians and the military and I can’t say this part of the story appeals to me much. It seems to portray a very biased viewpoint of stupid and/or traitorous politicians against a military who knows what needs to be done but is constantly held back. It’s the equivalent of an 80’s maverick cop movie where the straight laced boss doesn’t allow him to do his job. This middle section of the book plods on fairly predicatably with characters that aren’t detailed enough for me to care about. The characterisation was very simplistic throughout to the extent of being childish and I did get the feeling that this book was aimed at a much younger audience than myself. Things pick up again for the final battle although I expected a more original solution that attempting to board the carriers which would surely be an obvious thing to do. I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t occur to the Kilrathi when they see a load of marine ships coming straight at them.
I was hoping before I started the novel, that it would tie in with the start of Wing Commander 3, with the Concordia being destroyed at the end. The Concordia was badly damaged and could possibly have crashed later but it wasn’t explicitly mentioned so I’ll be curious to see if the next novel starts immediately from this point. Even without this, for a book that felt quite lightweight in the most part, it’s a less than cheerful conclusion despite the victory, with many human occupied planets being made radioactive and their populations wiped out by the Kilrathi.
This wasn’t a bad book but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous ones. I’d probably have enjoyed it more if I’d just sat down and read the whole thing in one go. There wasn’t enough to hold my interest over a few days, when I was reading a little at a time. For all that, if they had used it as the basis for the Wing Commander movie, the end result would have been 10 times better than what we actually got. In fact, I think this would have made a better movie than it did a novel, as the plot more or less requires you to switch your brain off for the duration. Don’t let me put you off too much though. It was never boring and looking at the reviews on Amazon it seems that most people enjoyed it more than I did.