If it was still 486… or slower, then woe betide you.
(A single-disc DVD re-release of the game with better-looking video eventually followed, but not for several years—in 1995, DVD was still a long way off.)
Ambition or enthusiasm?
Wing Commander 4 the narrative is best described as “sprawling”. The short version is that after defeating the Kilrathi at the summit Wing commander 3Mark Hamill’s Christopher Blair retires to a thirsty world to live a life of peace and darkness. This is of course interrupted by an increase in piracy activity near the “border worlds”, a splinter of independent colonies on the fringes of the Terran Confederacy. Blair is called into active duty to help quell pirate attacks – but of course there’s more going on than just pirates. The mid-point of the game sees the player making a big choice with huge repercussions, and the game culminates in a narrative that rages not in a cockpit with a planetary trench run, but in a rhetorical slap fight on the floor of the Terran Confederacy’s Grand Assembly. (It’s been ages since I last sat down to play it, but at least those are the memories I have.)
In short, there is a lot Watch movies related to this game – hours and hours. The shooting scenario is long a truly ridiculous 652 pages when you count all the different plot paths (a movie script even about a third of that length can get you out of any Hollywood production office unless your name is “James Cameron” or “Francis Ford Coppola,” and even Coppola would still survive).
In terms of overall quality, the film the player has assembled from that 652-page frame isn’t bad! This is… so good! Well, even! It’s clear that everyone is doing their best – John Rhys-Davies is the ultimate stentorian and Malcolm McDowell is more of a scenery chewer. Bagger 288 bucket excavator-but despite being made up of mostly polished parts, the whole thing, even given the substantial budget, never manages to overcome the amateur cheapness feel. The awe one must feel watching a “real” movie on one’s computer had to do a lot of heavy lifting – that worked great in 1996, but not so much in 2026.
