The Making of Wing Commander 3
To celebrate the release of Wing Commander 3 on Good Old Games today, it seems fitting to take a look at just how the game was made. Technically, it was a quite sophisticated piece of entertainment for its day, especially for its heavy use of CGI backdrops in many of its cutscenes. This also had the effect of making it one of the most expensive games of its day, of course. The first three videos are from a CD released with PC Player magazine in 1995.
The Making of Wing Commander 3, part 1 of 3
The Making of Wing Commander 3, part 2 of 3
The Making of Wing Commander 3, part 3 of 3
And here is an interview with actress Jennifer MacDonald, who played Lt. Robin “Flint” Peters, the love interest of Mark Hamill’s Col. Christopher Blair:
She once worked as a voice interceptor for the US Army.
And what production would be complete without a blooper reel?
Yes, that is porn star Ginger Lynn Allen.
And remember: to properly celebrate the release of another ground-breaking* Origin game on GOG, I can only direct you to the Wing Commander CIC, which I am sure will be going insane with new content. Be sure to also hit up the #WingNut IRC channel, which will likely be bustling with activity all day long, and especially during the evening hours.
I’m assuming physical backdrops would have been even more expensive. They did use those in WC4 and it looked better.
There’s no doubt the digital backgrop bit was done to cut on cost. When they got more budget for WC4, they went straight to real sets as well as shooting on film instead of video.
I do feel however WC3 looked pretty good for its time I’ve seen TV series with worst green/blue screen stuff and it certain was way ahead other “live action” videogames.
It’s just rather instereting because it did prefigure some stuff in a way, I remember some of the actors feeling (notably McDowell) that the WC3 approach could be the way to do Sci-Fi movies in the future – they weren’t far of in that digital backdrop has really became a way to do movies now.