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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

Loved the Wing Commander universe and specifically Privateer of all things (not Privateer 2 sadly). I think my fav of most of the games was Wing Commander III - I suspect many people thought it was cheesy having video integrated like that - it was becoming more popular in a certain timeframe in 90s video games, but man they did a good job.

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I thought of Wing Commander III as the game demonstrating that video could be integrated into a game and it didn't have to be cheesy. The cast was top notch and for what it was, I really enjoyed the story (and even read the novelization). I can't think of many titles outside of pure RPG's that drew me into the characters and their interactions in quite the same way.

If anyone could point me to a spiritual successor to Privateer, I would be so extremely happy. Does such a thing exist?

The X series. Try X3 reunion, or X3 terran conflict.

tbh, there is a bit of a steep learning curve / bafflingly bad interface thing going on with them but theyre the best of those kind of games imo.

Theres also elite dangerous, but I could'nt rally get into that. Because the galaxy is real sized with billions of stars everything is necessarily samey and bland. Also its sorta like an MMO you need to be checking out forums and engaging with the community to actually find out what to do. I do not want that from my privateer-likes. I want to just be able to completely immmerse myself in the game and explore on my own and find cool things and possibilities and implement my own schemes.

There's a ton of them. The "official" one was Freelancer, though.

To expand on this, I feel like there's a lot of Privateer successors, but few-to-no WC successors.

There's privateer remake https://sourceforge.net/projects/privateer/files/ (supposed to have a homepage here: http://privateer.sourceforge.net/ )

Disclaimer: Ages ago I coded the GPL Vega Strike http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ engine on which the privateer remake operates -- you might need to run in xp compat mode unless you checkout the data dir

I think you could say that Star Citizen is the modern spiritual successor to the Wing Commander series (and is being created by the same person, Chris Roberts).

I wonder why SC has had such a prolonged development period. It seems a game that's bound to never fully launch; or have a Duke Nukem 3d-like end product. I bought into it early, but I've never been able to enjoy it once so far.

FYI, in this comment section there's a lengthy discussion regarding Start Citizen's development; lots of good answers to your question there.

Also, there is Avorion, Starpoint Gemini: Warlords, Evochron Legacy, Rebel Galaxy, and Endless Sky!

I was seriously bugged by the regression of Tolwyn in WC3. In Spec Ops, he was a fan of Bluehair, but they retconned him back into not liking Blair (nee Bluehair) in WC3 and he seemed gratuitously cruel towards; I was totally find with the characterization of him being a hard-ass and extremist, but it was out of character for him to not like Blair who was well established as a hero by this point.

But McDowell played it well as written and if you put John Rhys Davies in something, I will like it.

My problem with III was that the gameplay quality took a nosedive in comparison to II mostly due to the integrated video. It was clear that it was the focus of the title, not nailing the game dynamics.

It was still good though but, combined with some clunky characterization issues (continuity of that is hard moving to real actors), just turned me off the game.

For me the peak was WC2, and Privateer, but WC3 signaled where it lost... something important about the series.

Random detail: in an earlier Wing Commander, many subsystems, when they lost hitpoints, would start to randomly reject user input. Repeatedly mashing e.g. the afterburner button until you got the "good" audio signal was one of the most immersive features in the whole game. Your damaged ship could still fight effectively, but it would take increased attention and a bit of luck. Later iterations would just make the subsystem x% less effective, punishing you for taking damage without adding anything to the experience.

Right, just like it was mentioned in TFA, I recall limping back to the Tiger's Claw, not sure if I would be able to hail the ship to request a landing. It was touches like that that made it so immersive.

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