Wing Commander returns! But...

[GillianSeed]

...not as a traditional flight combat sim. Wing Commander Arena will be a multiplayer, arcade-style shooter for Xbox Live. There isn't even a Y-axis -- all the ships fly around on the same plane, so it actually plays more like Doom:

http://gamevideos.com/video/id/9496

Sad, everything that I liked about Wing Commander has been tossed aside -- the intense dogfights, the cinematic approach to storytelling, etc. But apparently I'm in the minority, the folks at the Wing Commander CIC seem very excited about it.

[GM80]

Reminds me of Armada (the Dreamcast title, not the Wing Commander installment of the same name).

[calthaer]

This should not come as a surprise, considering who owns the Wing Commander license. EA has a habit of bastardizing licenses - especially those once owned by Origin.

[roushimsx]

This should not come as a surprise, considering who owns the Wing Commander license. EA has a habit of bastardizing licenses - especially those once owned by Origin.

EA has owned Origin for a long time and they have published a lot of innovative, high quality games under the Origin banner (and others) over the years. Hell, a large bulk of the games that people remember Origin for were put out after they were acquired.

The game doesn't look like a titanic abortion on the scale of Medal of Honor Underground GBA or Wing Commander Prophecy GBA. Like GM80 says, it looks a bit like Armada/Subspace/Solar Winds/Star Trek Encounters/etc, so count me excited.

[Darth Sensei]

As a huuuge WC fan that looks like shit to me.

[jajaja]

This looks pretty cool

[Daltone]

So it's not really Wing Commander then...

[c0ldb33r]

If you ignore that its branded as a Wing Commander game, it looks pretty fun. Kind of a new update to Subspace (massively multiplayer shooter for PC from awhile ago - wiki link).

But as a WC game, that's horrible. They should just release it as a standalone with no ties no Wing Commander.

[calthaer]

EA has owned Origin for a long time and they have published a lot of innovative, high quality games under the Origin banner (and others) over the years. Hell, a large bulk of the games that people remember Origin for were put out after they were acquired.

You're absolutely right about that. People sure do remember those Origin games that came out after Origin was acquired. It's just that most of those memories aren't exactly positive.

[roushimsx]

You're absolutely right about that. People sure do remember those Origin games that came out after Origin was acquired. It's just that most of those memories aren't exactly positive.

Great, memorable games developed by Origin since being acquired by Electronic Arts in September 1992:

Crusader No Remorse (1995), No Regret (1996)
Ultima VII (1993)
Wing Commander III (1994), IV (1995), Prophecy (1998), Privateer (1993)

Not-so-bad games:
Bioforge (1995)
Cybermage (1995)
Privateer 2 (1996)

Plus there were the enhanced reissues, like the CD versions of Wing Commander II, Privateer, Strike Commander, Ultima Underworld, etc and the classic Kilrathi Saga box set.

...so I have no idea where you're getting the idea that people mostly have negative memories, especially when Ultima VII is widely hailed as one of the finest CRPGs ever made. Sounds like y'all are just blindly slamming on EA with the typical EA IS BIG CORPORATE BAD AND INDIE GAMING ROCKS argument.

[GillianSeed]

...so I have no idea where you're getting the idea that people mostly have negative memories, especially when Ultima VII is widely hailed as one of the finest CRPGs ever made.

Ultima VII was released a few months before EA took over -- a good thing, considering what happened to Ultimas VIII & IX. (rushed out the door before they were done, something that the old Origin was (in)famous for avoiding)

Ultima VII itself features some jabs against EA:

• The evil duo of Elizabeth and Abraham
• The Guardian's three evil generators were a cube, a sphere and a tetrahedron (EA's logo at the time)

Edit: Interesting article on the takeover here.

[roushimsx]

Ultima VII was released a few months before EA took over -- a good thing, considering what happened to Ultimas VIII & IX. (rushed out the door before they were done, something that the old Origin was (in)famous for avoiding)

Too bad the old Origin couldn't release games that'd run on consumer-level hardware or on a reasonable amount of disks. Thank god for CDs, but if the Origin of old were still around, they'd be pushing out games on 5 dual layered DVDs that required a quad core CPU and SLI video cards.

[calthaer]

Too bad the old Origin couldn't release games that'd run on consumer-level hardware or on a reasonable amount of disks. Thank god for CDs, but if the Origin of old were still around, they'd be pushing out games on 5 dual layered DVDs that required a quad core CPU and SLI video cards.

Yes, Origin is quite unlike modern companies in this regard. System requirements for PC games nowadays are entirely reasonable and run on a majority of PCs.