Our friends at the Wing Commander CIC are reporting that the long-awaited Wing Commander fan mod, Wing Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn (or simply Wing Commander Saga) has officially been released!

For those of you who were unaware of this mod, it’s actually a very ambitious undertaking. The mod is set in the same time frame as Wing Commander 3, but instead puts the player in the role of a rookie pilot on a different ship, the TCS Hermes. Saga is built with an updated version of the Descent 2: Freespace engine, and features many new — and rather beautifully detailed — ship models, a few of which can be seen in these screenshots:

I gather that Saga’s development cycle ran close to the ten-year mark, which is…damned impressive, and speaks to the determination of the project team and their love for the Wing Commander universe. At present, only the Windows version is available — the Linux and Mac versions are coming soon — and the Saga website is temporarily running in “low key” mode after being crippled by the initial onslaught of traffic. The Wing Commander CIC has a list of download mirrors, so if you’d like to pick up the 3.4 GB mod, hit them up.