Lore Together is proud to be part of the Boss Rush Games Network. Feel free to find out more at bossrushgames.com slash network. Hi, I'm Safi. And I'm Mystic.
And this is Lore Together. This is a podcast where I have my team goal of all these storytelling, role-building, and characters of video games, because it's what we like to do together. We, Lore Together. Yep, and this is episode 125.
Yes, thank you for joining us for episode 125, where we're recording on the eve of Dragon Age of Elgarge release, and we are looking at each other because we don't want to buy two copies of the game, but we're trying to figure out who gets to play it first. We'll just play Rock, Paper, Scissors, or Short. Yeah. But before we get into the episode, if you're going to contact us, there's many ways you can do that.
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We have a place in our heart for all of you. And now, this is the part where I segue to Mystic presenting something. Yeah, I got nothing. Just kidding.
Oh my god! That would have been awful. Especially because for days you would have said, yeah, I got this script. It's almost ready.
It's almost ready. Jeez. So this is a massive franchise, but you probably don't think of it as one. Okay.
Because your only exposure to this has probably been a movie that you didn't see. Or maybe you did see. I don't know. I can tell you who's in it.
Who's in the movie? Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. They were in a few movies. I know.
We're not doing Scooby-Doo. I was going to say, the first one that comes to mind is Scooby-Doo. Oh, but I should know because I used to have the huge crush on Freddie Prinze Jr. Oh, man.
I'm just going to see Defeat right now. This is a sci-fi series? I should know this. I'm so mad at myself.
The movie was not very well received. Is it Event Horizon? No, it's not. No, but you're getting warmer with space.
I know what you're talking about. Because I would have been like, oh, Freddie Prinze Jr., even if I hadn't watched it. You know what? My mother's watched it.
I guarantee you she has. This is Wing Commander. Oh, yeah, it is. Oh, yes.
Oh, my gosh. I hadn't even thought about this. And honestly, when I say Massive, this is probably one of the, like, other than Elder Scrolls. Yeah.
This might be the largest reaching franchise. I mean, Final Fantasy, obviously, like, anything that has, like, non-connected sequels doesn't count in this sense. But in terms of, like, massive universe, this might be one of the largest, actually. Oh, I believe it.
Five main games. Okay. Five and a half spinoffs. And I say half because we'll actually get to this game, but Super Wing Commander was a remake of the first game with some new features and more missions.
Oh, okay. But that was for the 3DL console that nobody owned. Okay, okay. The franchise also includes seven novels based off the games.
I'm sorry, what? Seven? Three novels based off of the movie. Three?
On one movie? A collectible card game. I believe that. And a single season cartoon series.
I also believe that, yeah. Also, we're not going to get to them this time, but this franchise also includes some amazing actors. Yeah, because there's some mo-cap in there, right? No, the full motion video.
Full motion video, that's what I'm going to say. So, like, eventually when we get to them, they'll be Mark Hamill, Malcolm Stowell, John Rhys-Davies, like, so many big names, and they're in this video game from the 90s. That's what I remember, is that it was one of the video games. And the thing is, people don't talk about how much those motion captures had these actors.
Full motion video. Full motion. I say motion capture, but it's full motion video. Which is a totally different thing.
Motion capture is Hellblaze, I'm a sacrifice, right? We're talking about full motion video, where people are moving, like, the Tex Avery series. But it's funny, because there's a lot of video games that have these hidden, brilliant actors in them. Like, finding out that, in one of our bonus episodes, I cover Keith David's voice acting career in video games, he's in the original Fallout.
Guys, it makes no sense. It's crazy that this great talent is just hitting across everywhere. If we're talking about full motion video, and actors that are really good that you don't expect, Brad Dourif in Mr. 3.
Yes, yeah. I mean, it's just so funny that this era of video games, despite people thinking it was this niche hobby at the time, not a huge thing it is now, it attracted such amazing talent to it. Yeah. Now, for all we've talked about how big this franchise is, it also appears to be a dead franchise now.
Aw. It rose very quickly. Nine of those games, nine of those ten total games, came out within seven years, from 1990 to 1997. Oh, wow.
The sole game outside that timeline was also the last release in 2007, and there was a 2D game for Xbox Live Arcade. Oh, okay. So, there's a huge fan community. I'm indebted to numerous fan websites.
Okay, thank you fans for keeping up the traditions. Some of which have not been updated since 2004, but are still up. Somebody's paying for that. Oh, my gosh.
And someday we will cover its spiritual successor, Star Citizen, should it ever get out from its scope of view of development in hell. Yeah, that's... Side note, we don't talk about how toxic it is to make video games enough, because it's a really toxic process, guys. There's no reason that people need to, like, have 80-hour work weeks, so we get video games.
But that's just... That's just me, my little advice. It's not just that. I remember being really hyped for Star Citizen when the first video came out of Chris Roberts, like, in a CG fighter, and all this stuff.
And that, I think, was 2012? So, it's 12 years. Yeah, Skull Creep, I think, is an underestimation. Yeah, it's still not the long...
So, the longest in development game, if it comes out, is going to be Beyond Good and Evil 2. They've claimed it's still coming out. It has been in development since at least 2008. They had a teaser trailer, like, four or five years ago, right?
Yeah, so... But that has been in development since 2007 or 2008, so... Okay. All right, so it's still not the longest yet.
Okay. Yeah. I want to dive into some of the background here, and though the timeline does start around 2.5 billion years BCE, when the Stealth Tech colonized Mars, broadly speaking, even to the humans of the 27th century, when the game takes place, the 2.5 billion-year-old tech that they find there is advanced, but we know little of the Stealth Tech beyond the fact that they had a vast empire and then left the galaxy after that empire collapsed. Very few humans have ever met with any of them in the modern day, and then it was only to deal with this ancient drone of theirs that was wreaking havoc.
Oh, wow. And that's... So, to move to more immediate matters, the majority of the Wing Commander franchise deals with the conflict between the Terrans and the Kilrathi, so we're going to dive into those two factions. Oh, Kilrathi.
Interesting name choice. It sounds like they immediately want you to vilify them. Immediately. The Kilrathi are a feline-looking race.
That is your typical honor-based warrior culture. We love an honor-based warrior culture in our space epics, don't we? That's just the thing that we have to have. Even in tabletop RPGs we played, that's been a thing.
Like, it's just... It's become this trope. Yeah. I wonder who started it.
I'd have to look into that. Of humans, yeah. They have teeth and claws, as you would expect, and are fully capable of just killing a human outright. They could sit on a human and kill them outright.
I don't think they're quite that large, but yeah, they're... When you say three meters, my little thing is whenever it's short distances, I think of three yards, because a yard is only a little bit taller than a meter, not by much. But, like, a standard human is two meters, so we're talking... An extra three feet.
Yeah, but that's not like... Okay, fair. And that's... Like, the ones who are lifting...
The ones who are lifting, like, 700 kilograms, those are, like, the exemplars. We're not talking this is all of them. Yeah, okay, that's fair. But still, they're huge.
They could accidentally trip over a human and kill them. It's like moose. Like, a moose, you think, is this docile creature because it's a vegetarian that likes the graves in the forest. No, a moose is a deadly machine of gigantic proportion, and don't you dare underestimate it if you see it in the road.
You stop immediately, or you're going to die when it crashes through your window. Nobody wins if you crash into a moose. It's just, you know, it just makes me think of, like, or bison, like, the few megafauna we still have available. All right, I'm going to stop.
It's just... The size of these creatures is crazy. Okay, so that's the Kilrathi. Yeah, well, we're going to dive into them.
The history of the Kilrathi is full of myths of ancient warriors such as Karga the Hero or Vorgath the Hunter, and reports of the deeds of Pat Kilrathi, emperors, nobles, and warlords, who particularly distinguish themselves in battle. Their culture of honor only gets them so far without an external enemy, though. The Kilrathi would quickly fall into civil war, and this was very common before the Kilrathi gained interest over flight, which we'll get to. How they get interest over flight is not how I feel most societies do inside flight.
Oh, they didn't have scientists to discover? No, they didn't. The Kilrathi aren't just mindless combat addicts, though. Usually they tend to be pack hunters and will avoid enemy combatants when alone or in a small group.
Though they will use lone warriors as a lure, that lone warrior does this knowing that they have the full pack waiting. Right. So as you can imagine, their affinity for pack combat and reluctance for solar work means that there has not been a lot of spies or solar operatives in warfare amongst the Kilrathi. However, in modern times, they have been very willing to coerce operatives from other species, usually with threats of violence, into spying for them.
Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's like, well, that's dirty work. It's beneath us, but you're beneath us, too. There's a superiority aspect to them.
They're literally bigger than us, so I can see that happening. Well, no, even amongst other races. Like, there's another race they deal with that is, you know, originally they see them as beneath them, but they prove so well in combat that it's like, oh, you're actually equal. You're proving yourself.
All right, that makes sense. Capable and careful warriors they may be. They also have a bit of a blood rage to them. They can get tunnel vision, focusing on a newly defeated foe to their own detriment as they ignore the more robust threats.
But that sounds like something that has been carried over from, like, how they've evolved, because obviously they're much more predatory than human evolution. So it's more like, this is the guaranteed meal, as the lower part of their brain is thinking. So I can see that. I mean, every species that evolves to higher intelligence has its weaknesses.
That makes sense. So knowing that these issues with the blood frenzy and such, they have codified some common etiquette, much of which is taught early in life using those fables of great deeds. Obey without question. Focus on the strongest.
Respond to the challenge. Now, obeying one superior without question is the most paramount social tenant of their culture. That's bad. That's so bad.
Imagination and creativity are only encouraged in senior commanders and nobles. So, but then you've never had any chance to practice it until you get up there. That's so horrible. Like, come on.
Yes. Sometimes paint the painting. It's too thin. Line troops and commoners are trained to simply follow orders specifically and without question or interpretation.
There's not much room for counter-subjection in this culture. It's so problematic on so many levels. The conceptual basis for this customer appears to come from a idea that a warrior given specific instructions can concentrate on fulfilling them to the exclusion of other distractions. That's so authoritarian.
Yeah. Oh, that's so gross. The counter is that a warrior given more general goals may become distracted by their instinctive hunting behaviors and end up failing the mission. You know what, though?
Spec off the line kind of proves that. I hate to say that. I hate to give them that bone. I don't think it's generally true.
But I do think, I do understand where they're coming on to a certain extent. But also, this is, this is, you're on your way to being a death cult real quick right now. This does have one crazy result, apparently, if an enemy makes the mission goals unachievable by, like, removing said objective. Oh, we can't capture this fleet because they self-imploaded or something?
Yeah. The Karathi force will sometimes be thrown into complete chaos, particularly when the group is lacking a sufficiently dominant commander. So it's like they went into a programming error. It's like, they can't fulfill the objective, so it just breaks down the system.
Huh. Interesting. Now, focusing on the strongest is obviously to counter their blood frenzy tunnel vision. Lest we get to respond to the challenge.
Any insult can be considered the grounds for a struggle to the death. Like, any insult, you can... So there's no joking around them whatsoever. It is, in fact, punishable by death for a warrior in the Karathi military to back down from single combat unless the one challenged, this was interesting to find out, is a superior to the challenger.
Oh, you can back out then. In which case, more appropriate punishments for the person challenging may be metered out. Getting to be in that superior rank, though, is usually the result of meeting previous challenges, so it can get a little messy. And let's not ignore the fact that challenging a superior is counter to obeying without question.
Yeah, and it's interesting because, you know, this thing about one of the other honor cultures in science fiction that we know very well, the Klingons, the Klingons do expect you to be creative, do expect you to be innovative. They don't respect it as much in the sense of, if you choose to be a Klingon scientist, you're kind of poo-pooed on. But they encourage, like, oh, you think that this guy said something wrong? You guys fight to the death and figure out who's the captain of the ship now.
Like, it's just respected that way, yeah. Now, as you expect, the history of the Karathi is one of a lot of bloodshed, literal centuries of warring between the clans. Yeah, and just, it's interesting that there's a suggestion that their nature kind of imposes this idea of violence. Yeah.
Though they eventually found a first dynasty of an empire, the founding warrior Xag, it's an X-A-G, X-A-G, Xag. Xag, okay, sure. Spouted a lot of Sun Tzu-style wisdom. In fact, quite literally, a Kilwathi baron named Jukaga Narvaka says that Sun Tzu is comparable to much of Xag's teachings.
Oh, interesting. And reading the quotes, like, yeah, it's somebody at origin just copy and pasted it, pretty much. You're like, oh, this is cool, I'm just going to tweak this word, okay, there we go. Jumping forward around the time of the Seventh Dynastic War, this, again, is just them all fighting each other, because apparently that's the only thing they know how to do.
And while the Eighth Dynastic War is brewing, like starting up in the background, either the Uttara or the Shatta made contact, landing on the Kilwathi's homeworld of Kilwath. I don't know which race it was. They are both credited with making peaceful contact and making a grand offering of technology in a gesture of goodwill. But we don't know which one did it first.
We do not know which one did it, because the Uttara are credited with the gifts of spacecraft and jump points, and the Shatta are credited with offering the knowledge of interstellar travel. Regardless of the race in the story, they are slaughtered by the Kilwathi, who then use the tech to expand off their planet, offering them more opportunities for combat. The reason for this confusion is that this is all from the novels. Oh, really?
And though they are both written by the same writer, it's... I don't know which one is real, or if they're both real, or if they're... That sounds like some really bad editing, too. Like, one of the things that you have to do in the editing process if you're writing a series is consistency.
It's very... This is the early days of game fiction. Yeah. You know, and to be fair, that was...
also something that a lot of traditional publishers did not care about as much because they figured as long as you get the book sale. But now that people can more easily go back and say, you messed this up and you need to release a new edition to make sense of this, people are taking more time in the editing process to check that stuff out. So I'm not surprised. Yeah.
So the Otara are mentioned in Wing Commander Fleet Action and the Shata are from Wing Commander Action Station. A lot of action. Do we meet either one of those races or are they completely slaughtered out by the... They're completely slaughtered out from what I understand.
Okay. Eventually, the Kurethi Empire came under the rule of the Kureanka clan with an advisor council made up of eight other clans. One of the emperors of this dynasty conquered the Aoka, a race we know literally nothing about other than the fact that they were conquered. Oh, wow.
His son, so that emperor's son, when they became emperor, conquered the Wu, another race we know little about, having only appeared in one novel, though they are sizable beings, big enough that Terran soldiers are able to use the body for effective cover. Oh, like if one of them falls in battle, they're like, oh man, hide under it. Yeah. No, like hide behind it.
Oh, yeah. Like more than one person can hide behind one of these things. That is huge. Oh, jeez.
And the next Kurethi Empire conquered the technologically superior Varney after the victorious Varney War, which only lasted 30 days and led to the near obliteration of that race. Oh, man. That's so sad. The clans continue to explain outwards without any real resistance until around 26, 29, when they made contact with the Terran Confederation.
So let's get to them. Oh, yeah. The Terran are basically all the humans. All the humans.
They make up the majority of the Terran Confederacy. They are a couple alien allies, but they are still the majority are Terran. Kind of like, we've got nowhere else to go and you guys got it together, so can we be friends? Yes, please.
The Terran Confederation is an alliance of systems and regional governments which provide unified protection and economic growth. Basically, Federation, systems alliance, it's the same in every single space. Yeah, exactly. The Confederation was formed on August 23, 24, 16, with the signing of the Articles of Confederation, the first unified Earth government since the grisly disintegration of the World Economic Consortium and the following pandemic, I don't know anything else about that beyond that, in the early 25th century.
Oh, my God. For much of the Confederation's history, one of its primary use has been to provide defense for those within its borders. The Confederation military is composed of the Army, the Navy, the Marines, and the Space Forces. The Joint Chiefs of Staff command those forces individually.
Okay. The first 50 years of the Confederation's existence were spent rebuilding the terrestrial industrial bases and establishing the Confederation's military tradition within the establishment of both the Space Naval Academy and the Terran Confederation Service Academy. So this sounds like we're trying to avoid the acknowledgement that people were fighting each other for a long time before this Confederation finally said, hey, peacetime's here now. We're going to, let's fix all the broken stuff that's left behind.
Well, so there is, the Terran Confederation is not all-encompassing, it's just the largest group of them. No, I understand. I understand. There's still, you know, there's still offshoots.
There's a Union of Border Worlds, there's a Republic of Land Reach, I think, and, you know, you still have pirates and other groups, so. Yeah. In 2464, a heavily armed Pilgrim slow ship entered orbit around the moon and forced the Confederation government to sign the Treaty of Luna, which established a Pilgrim title. So basically, Pilgrims are guys who went out and were out of Earth's gravity well for so long on ships that they eventually started becoming almost like a separate species.
Like, they evolved differently due to the changes in gravity and everything. Oh, interesting. So, they signed the Treaty of Luna, which establishes Pilgrim title to all habitable world within 50 years slow ship travel of Earth and forbid Confederation slow ship colonization. In return, the Pilgrims agreed to a policy of strict non-interference with Sol system affairs.
So basically, the Pilgrims are, if you can get there in 50 years without a jump drive, that's Pilgrim territory. So, this state of existence continued for about a century until the discovery of the Aquende drive in the Sol system in 2588, designed by Sherry Aquende at the Aeropastille-Afrique Laboratories. Oh, okay. That was my terrible French pronunciation.
Yeah, I could tell. It was awful. That was, don't be proud of that. Don't give me that a problem.
I'm proud of it was terrible. This would become known more informally as the jump drive. Jump drive travel allowed Earth ships to bypass Pilgrim territory completely. Oh, wow.
And while the losses on exploratory missions were high, 26th century Earth had a wealth and population to absorb those losses. There's just more people. Go. Right.
Earthquake established colonies out toward the Hawking and Gemini sectors, leaving Vega to the Pilgrims. Okay. On 2631.244, so this is the thing that comes out. So, this dot code is just, denotes the day of the year.
So, it goes from 01 to 366 or 365, depending on if you believe it or not. Yeah. So, it's just the day in that year. Okay.
A Pilgrim fleet jumped into the Sol system planning to destroy the fleet yards at the Port of Titan Space Station and halt Confederation expansion. No. The Confederation, however, had grown quite strong because they had been able to go up further and get more resources. Yes.
And after three days of fighting, repelled the attack. After refusing to negotiate, the Pilgrims began a guerrilla campaign with raids on Confederation systems, which led to a Confederation declaration of war in 2632, not 17. This is so many dates. You don't have to worry about all that.
So many shows that. Just know they were going through in... So, the Pilgrims we were cool with, and now we're no longer cool with because they decided they want to work back inwards again, which we told them, please don't. This work continued for over three years, with the Pilgrims murdering and enslaving those they captured.
Wow. Yeah. That escalated quickly. The Confederation eventually launched a grand fleet with crew began capturing systems.
The turn point of the war was a siege on Paran, which lasted for seven months. After the fall of Paran, the Pilgrims soon ended the war with assigning the peace accords at Cygnus on 2634.049, which ended the Pilgrim Alliance entirely. In 2629.105, a Terran research vessel known as the TCS Iason, I-A-S-O-N, I think, was conducting research deep within the Terran-controlled Vega sector when it encountered an unidentified alien starship. Hoping to ensure a peaceful contact with the unknown vessel, the captain of the Iason, Jadora Andropoulos, transmitted a nonverbal greeting to the ship's crew, and he ordered that the defenses on the Iason be deactivated.
Oh, okay. 20 minutes after initial contact, the mysterious vessel opened fire on the Iason, destroying the defenseless vessel and killing its entire crew. All right. That's war.
That's just straight up going to be war now. Sometime later, the vessel was identified as the destroyer, K-I-S-Kirathkin, a warship serving with the feline-sentient species known as the Kilrathi. Okay. Upon receiving word of the disastrous engagement, the Terran Confederations sought to establish peace with the Kilrathi, because, you know, could just be a misunderstanding.
Yeah, you know, we have no idea. You know, it's, look, we'll give you one fumble. I understand that you might have killed some people. Oh, no, we're going to go for more than one fumble.
Spoilers. Oh, I'm sure. No, no, no. I'm just saying, in this moment, you might be willing to give them grace.
You know what this reminds me of? The movie Mars Attacks, where there's the one meeting and everybody dies at that meeting, and they try to do a second meeting, and there's a big sign that says no doves, because they think the release of the doves was a symbol of war to the Martians. No, it's just, they're just campy, campy Martian villains, yeah. The Kilrathi, however, rejected all calls for diplomacy and refused to send ambassadors to discuss relations with the Terran's.
Instead, they resorted to a campaign of piracy and murder along the Terran frontier. Hey, look, it's another place we can conquer, guys. Let's just get going. In response to these attacks, the Confederation Senate enacted a non-aggression policy aimed at discouraging Kilrathi activities on the frontier.
They responded with a please-don't-note? Pretty much. Oh, my, that's, that's so naive. However, as these raids continue, the Terran Confederation threatened military proposals against the Kilrathi Empire, if they please don't stop doing that.
Can you just stop murdering our citizens for once, for once? Which, of course, they didn't stop. I mean, yeah, I guess, I guess when you come from a culture that's trying so hard to work towards peace and, like, fight against the, this divisive instinct we have, because we know it doesn't serve us, and then you meet a race of people where that's the only way you prove that you're worth something, yeah, there's going to be some confusion. So, after five years of under-told piracy and murder...
I can't imagine, there were, like, riots in the streets about this, being like, how many people are going to, like, die before you finally admit that these people are not worth talking to? The Kilrathi attacked a civilian vessel in 2634. This vessel, a transport known as the TCS Anna Magdalena, was ferrying orphans to their new homes on the planet Dienno, deep within the Vegas sector. The vessel was destroyed, killing its entire crew and all passengers, and I'm sorry that I'm smiling while saying this, it's just such a trope of, the orphans are on that, you know?
You killed the loneliest of children, yeah. I mean, no, I, I, I think it's just absurd, which is why it's abusing, as much as... I don't know. That feels like a political ploy, being like, how do we get people to care?
I know. Do you think these orphans could find homes here? Great. Let's, uh, let's try that.
Let's bait, let's bait these MFers and see what happens. Yeah, so news of this gets out and sparks outrage all across the Confederation. And on 2634.186, the Terran government officially declares war on the Kilrathi Empire. Oh, finally!
Thus beginning what is now known as the Terran-Kilrathi War. The first few months largely favor the Confederation, with many Kirrathi border outposts taken with minimal loss of life or equipment, because... Yeah. Their outposts?
Basically, their small little outposts they put out there as just listening posts or jumping off points for these little quick raids. However, per the limited engagement orders of the Declaration of War, most of the Confederation fleet remains inactive, with much of the fleet stationed at Alexandria Base above the planet McAuliffe, the second largest base in the Confederation after Earth. So they're just, like, hanging out on standby the whole time? This is not how you war!
I'm sorry, how did the Confederation come into power previously, is my question. Was it all just a bunch of political diplomatic... It was. Everything was chaos.
We're here. Like... So they're really good at cleaning stuff up, but they're not really good at breaking it. Okay.
So while intelligence reports and certain military leaders believe that the Kirrathi were preparing for a massive counteroffensive to quickly overrun Confederation, they are rebuffed by the President, who is facing an election in which an anti-military coalition is set to take power should the war escalate. What? Oh, really? Yeah.
This is how devoted to peace these people are? However, the commander of the Confed Navy, Admiral Spencer Bainbridge, personally orders the commanders at McAuliffe to cancel leave and prepare for a full Kirrathi attack on Confederation Day, basically when the Confederation was founded. Yeah. Due to complications, the orders never arrived to McAuliffe, leaving the fleet mostly inactive on Confederation Day when a massive Kirrathi fleet invades the system.
No! And the little fleet that they do have there that was kind of... Yeah. So there is a bit of a discrepancy here, because there was a transmitted Kirrathi...
that, like, not fully transmitted Kirrathi thing, that basically this is how this guy believes that there's going to be an attack. That is also a mistrans... It's not mistranslated, but it's not fully translated enough to know that the fleet that the Kirrathi are amassing is, like, quadruple the size that they think it is. Yeah.
So they're also armed with a new torpedo that effectively renders Terran Shields ineffective. Oh, no. The base and over 80 ships in the fleet, including four carriers, are lost in the opening wave of the attack, with only the TCS Concordia and a handful of other ships escaping. Oh, jeez.
Okay. Now, instead of ordering the remaining fleet back to Earth, the acting captain of the Kirrathi decides to counterattack. Okay. In hopes of relieving the entrenched Marines on the surface of the Kirrathi, as well as dealing with the Kirrathi, a psychological blow.
Right. And the flight works. Awesome. With concrete fighters destroying numerous troop landing crafts and the fleet destroying two carriers and a battleship.
Surprised by this counterattack, the Kirrathi just... Bye. Wait, what? However, despite the victory, the loss of much of the fleet leaves the Confederacy with only three active carriers, placing them at a massive disadvantage with the Kirrathi.
Yeah, that makes sense. The rest of the Confederations suffered significant defeats in the weeks following this battle. Within 30 days of the Battle of the Kirrathi, the Kirrathi had taken over 153 star systems, with over 30% of the Confederations' industrial capability, 40% of its strategic resources, and over 28 billion Confederation citizens captured by the enemy. Holy guacamole.
First of all, the idea that humanity gets to a point where there's 28 billion of us? Wow. More than 28 billion. Yeah.
No. Wow. That's... Yeah.
That's a good point, too. Like, how many of us are out... Are we a plague? I guess it feels like a plague.
Are we a plague? Not that the Kirrathi wouldn't be either, but that is a lot of people. Holy... Yeah.
In 2639, Enyo, a Confederate outpost, was invaded by the Kirrathi, leaving a quarter of a million colonists on the planet prisoner. Fortunately, at Enyo, Confederate forces in the area were able to launch a counter-strike against the Kirrathi. They destroyed a great deal of the Kirrathi forces and saved almost all of the people on the planet. This event became known as the Enyo engagement.
There's a lot of back and forth for about a decade. The Terrans take losses, claw them back, and make even a couple inroads into the Kirrathi territory, but they're not really doing enough. Right. So, in 2649, the Confederate sent most of the Vegas sector fleet for an all-or-nothing attack against Kilra, but they are routed by much stronger forces than they expected.
The TCS Tiger's Claw was sent to fight a desperate but heroic supporting action to cover the retreating Terran forces. Their fateful engagement was referred to as Custer's Carnival. The Kirrathi underprints... Oh, geez.
Thraketh Narkarankha? I'm sorry. Did you sneeze? Thraketh, T-H-R-A-K-H-A-T-H.
I'm not helping you with this one. I don't know. Thraketh Narkarankha proceeded to use some very different strategies against the Confederation. For example, they manipulated the primitive Dioscurens posing as deities in an effort to turn them into pilots, using some old surplus ships, to fight against the Confederation.
Basically, your gods demand this. Wow. Wow. Okay.
Interesting. They also began developing a stealth fighter, which is a counter to their way they usually do things, and also sold the fighter transport, TCS Morgan, using it to launch an attack with Confederation fighters against the Tiger's Claw. Huh. And now we have finally made it to the first game.
That is so much background in history we need to understand the first game. Yeah, the first game is essentially called, well, it's Wing Commander 1, but it's essentially the story of the Vega campaign, though when it takes place is kind of up for debate. The date of the start of the Vega campaign differs depending on the source. So in the original game and its manual, it's set at 2654.110.
According to the Pilgrim's Truth, it's at some point after .163, after the Paladin's court-martialing has returned to the Claw. So we're just going to go with the original date of 2564.110, because this is just .code stuff, and who cares? Yeah, exactly. As much as we love our lore, I don't want to get back into the video.
Sometimes the exactitude actually just makes the experience so much worse. So we don't encourage it at all times. Now, the stories of these games are great, but it's all a lot of interpersonal conflict, and it's a lot of dialogue stuff and cutscenes. And then the cutscenes are not, like, they're great.
I mean, especially when you get to the later games, we're talking, like, movie quality. Like, you know, we have, you know, Mark Hamill opposite, like, really well-done puppets that they didn't use for the actual big-budget movie. Yeah, people were really upset with how the character looked in the movie compared to how they look in the games. They do not look at all.
Really? They look both feline, but they don't look at all similar in terms of, yeah. So they didn't go with puppets, but did they do instead? I think they did puppets.
I think they just did a different style. And it's funny because the director of the movie is the creator of the game. But he just, I wonder if he had a bigger budget and decided he wanted to do something different. So what I've seen from a lot of fans is he's, when it comes to creation, he's his own worst enemy.
Ah. He is the scope creep. He is the, like, that's what I saw. on the Reddit and stuff when I was doing my research.
Okay. So, in the game, the player takes the role of a nameless pilot, though this is later kind of retconned to be Christopher Blair in the sequels. This is Mark Hamill's character. Right.
And I also believe Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character. Right. Aboard the TCS Tiger's Claw, which is, you know, we didn't cover this before. It is a Bengal-class strike character.
Okay. The story of this campaign is kind of crazy. Not that we're going to get into the weeds on it because we can summarize it in one paragraph, but basically, beginning at the NEO system, the Confederate forces attempt to stop the Karate advance in Dakota it's kind of like how you do stories in StarCraft where, not stories in StarCraft, I should say, you don't have deep story within the gameplay. You have a mission briefing, gameplay, mission debrief, and that's about it.
Yeah. So, the story here changes because if you do better or worse, the game gets harder or easier, or not easier, but like your objectives do change, and there's a branching path. So, each time you play a level, whether you win or lose, changes a track you're on. Interesting.
Okay. Yeah. And it's just basically a Christmas tree. That's a really cool idea, though.
Yeah. There is a canon ending, the one where the player does well, which finds the crew of the Tiger's Claw dealing with a gravity-enhancing weapon that the Kilrathi have designed and used to destroy the colony of Goddard. Ah. The gravity-enhancing weapon is mounted to a brand new class of Kilrathi ship called the Sivar-class Dreadnought.
That is never heard from again after this, except for in that 3DO remake Oh, okay. where there's another mission where the Tiger's Claw crew is set on a mission to destroy the Sivar-Dreadnought shipyard. So, at least there's a reason we never hear from it again. Right, exactly.
Moving on to the second expansion, which is called Wing Commander, The Secret Missions 2. This time with another subtitle tacked on it. So, it's Wing Commander subtitled The Secret Missions 2 subtitle Crusade. Oh, interesting.
The Tiger's Claw is in the Fireca system, I think. It's F-I-R-E-K-K-A. Fireca? Fireca?
I don't know. Frankincense? What? Whose native intelligent lifeforms, the bird-like Firecans, are negotiating to join the Terran Confederation.
Tensions are high and will only get higher. There's an unusual Kilrathi presence in the area. Wait, a bird-like race? Where's Samus?
This presence develops into a massive battle group and though the Firecans signed the Artificial Confederation, the Outnumbered Terran have no choice but to retreat, leaving them there. Oh, jeez. No. So, adding to the mess, a Karathi lord, Ralga-Narhalas, defects, bringing his Fralthy-class cruiser, the Ras-Nikra, and word of rebellion against the empire on the Karathi colony of...
There's too many names in this one sentence. And also brings word of rebellion against the Karathi empire on the Karathi colony of Gorakar. Okay. So, the Karathi presence in the Fireca sector is eventually explained by an all-channel transmission from the Crown Prince, who, I'm not going to say that name again that we did before.
It's the same one. Well, okay, that's a lot happening in just one small part of the universe right there. So, everything is just going haywire now. Bloodshed is bound to happen one way or another.
Seeing the chance to strike a heady blow to Karathi morale, the Confederation assigns its Fireca sector resources the task of disrupting the ceremony, which includes the player and their crew. The fighters from the Ras-Nikra, which is that defected carrier, are put to work on reconnaissance missions and Terran troops begin landing in secret. Between both of these forces, the Firecans, who are great warriors and stuff, not on the same level, I think, as the Karathi, but like... Yeah, they do their stuff.
And some of the Confederation's best paths and tacticians, the Sybar-Sarani is utterly wrecked. Oh, wow. And the Karathi are forced to retreat, though they do take a number of important for reckons with them as hostages. End of game.
Oh, interesting. Leading into Wing Commander 2, which we'll cover at some point in the future. So, I know originally I said that this was going to be a genre you don't like, and I don't know how much you like flight sims. I'm not great at them.
I never got intrigued by them. So, it's so funny you mention that, too, because I remember we had family friends who had a computer before we did and they had a flight simulator because I feel like for certain nerdy people, like, there's something really relaxing about a flight simulator. And my brother tried it and really liked it. I never wanted to fly.
There's something about being on the ground that feels really great. So, as much as I'll take commercial airline flights, I never wanted to fly my own plane. I never wanted to be in a submarine either, which is now another discussion for another day. But, wow.
I feel bad that we lost over the game so quickly. But, again, I... There's so much you had to cover. Yeah.
And, again, this is the early game. We're talking bitmap characters and some text. I think there's voice acting. I have not played this since I originally had a computer.
I've not touched Wing Commander since the 90s. So, it's been a long time and there's been so many games since then that I don't remember. But, yeah, I do own them all. So, we'll have to play them eventually.
Okay, I'll give it a try. I'm sorry, I don't own the 2007 game. So, also, anything that involves a joystick, I'm awful at. I'm just awful at joysticks.
I've tried joysticks before. They're just not... I mean, even, like, the only thing that I feel responds well to the way that I... Is a Switch controller.
Is a Switch controller. I think because it's shorter. Because I always assume things are more sensitive than they are. But then, once it's not sensitive enough, if I overcompensate and for it being as little stuffy as it is, it makes up for my really bad coordination with the controller.
But we don't have a joystick so we're going to be playing with keyboard and mouse. So, the funny thing is even though I played this back in the day I never knew there were expansions. Like, I knew there were sequel games. There's Wing Commander 2.
There's the Privateer series. So, there's, like, other games that I knew about but I never knew there were expansions. Huh, interesting. So, that's kind of why I gave...
Especially the Thorettians. Like, it's like, I never played the sequels. I don't play Wing Commander 1. I still think Samus is on that planet somewhere.
I just... After this release is to the public because patrons do get this a couple days early. This will be doing a first hour live stream of Wing... I'm assuming the original Wing Commander.
So, we'll see how well I do with that flight sim. There's no way I'm going to get the 3DO... Is there even a 3DO emulator out there? Yeah, there's no way.
Probably, but... Yeah. Well, you know what? Yeah, you're right.
Stranger things have happened. But, keep in mind to that in alternate Thursdays we'll still be in space with Mass Effect 2 Let's Play. We have... Where are we on again?
We are on Horizon right now. We're on Horizon. Yeah. So...
Is it Horizon? It's the midpoint of the game. Yes. Not quite the midpoint, but it's...
All right. So, with that... Oh, yeah. I can't do the midpoint.
We have all the loyalty missions. Oh, we have so many loyalty missions. Yeah, the midpoint of the main plot. But you have to do loyalty missions or else doom and destruction at the end of the game.
So, with that being said, please join us on those Thursdays. We love having you guys there. We love chatting it up with the audience about the game, how to go. And I do appreciate it when people tell me to pew-pew at certain points because that's been necessary.
And otherwise, thanks for joining us for this episode. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. Bye.