Wing commander 3/4,Night trap,Sewer shark,Madden,BLACK vs most games...

[Ivanhoe]

I fell in love with wing commander on the sega cd and moved from their to the PS1 games.

What i loved about the PS1 games were the real actors/video footage (FMV)used between flying missions to drive the story. My questions are..

1. Is it cheaper to hire actors and use real video footage for games instead of animation and using real actors for voice acting?
2. Why arnt more games like this?
( Madden 97 for PS1 used pat summerall and madden real video footage for pre game and jim brown in the studio,Sewer shawk and night trap? for sega cd were also great and BLACK for ps2 used short clips of real actors+video in between missions.

3. Wouldnt a game like MASS effect be 100x better if it used real actors for all the cinematics?


And last and most important.

Are the PC games for Wing Commander any better.different then the PS1 games? I plan on buying these games again for PS1 but noticed their are some newer ones for PC. like Prophecy looks different and theirfore not something i would buy/play if its different then the originals.

Discuss!

 

[richdmoore]

I remember that Wing Commander 3 (PC) was a real pain to get working under dos, I had to mess with extended vs expanded memory, and since it was one of the only dos games to play videos from the cd, it had issues with configuring the cd drive too. I think wing commander 4 was easier to configure to work with dos, but maybe that was because #3 was so hard to get working. At least windows 95 had a mode where it would "boot" into the older dos with a specific config.sys and autoexec.bat file each time. I think they got rid of it after Windows 98 however.

Some of my problem was trying to load PCMCIA drivers (the laptop I had did not come with a gameport, so I had to get them loaded to use a joystick), so you may have an easier time.

You may need to find an old gameport style controller, I don't think USB works on the old dos.

If you want to play the pc versions, I would read up on either using a boot disc into dos, or some programs that allow dos inside of a windows (DOSBOX?)

I have never played the console versions of the games, so I can't compare the versions.

 

[peteloaf]

FYI Dosbox emulates the gameport through usb.

As far as using real actors it depends on the game. Mass Effect, the example the OP used, would be ruined by real actors. Immersion is key for a game like Mass Effect, Bio Shock, Half-Life 2, etc. and any deviation from the asthetics of the game can ruin the immersion and therefore the game. Creating more than one representation of the character or characters you play creates a separation between the story telling and the gameplay. However in a game like Madden or Command and Conquer could benefit from the use of real actors because you never play an on screen character, instead you play a virtual team or unseen overloard. The other benefit of using 3d models instead of actors is never having to deal with sceduling problems, likness rights, contract negatiations, actor's egos, etc. As long as you have a decent animation staff you are far better off than dealing with actors.

 

[DaveD]

FMV was a fad that was huge back in the 90s, but not as much now. I know that C&C still uses it, because it's their thing. In the overall workflow, it's easier to not use video, since it takes up more space on the disk when you can just use a character mesh and skeleton system with predefined animations. Saves space, and doesn't look niche. Plus almost every game you encounter now has customizable characters, and that'd be impossible to replicate in video for every person.