Wing Commander Saga Arrives Next Week

Wing Commander Saga, the hot-looking Wing Commander fan project that’s been in the works for ten years, is finally ready for launch.

If you’re lucky enough [and old enough] to have played the original Wing Commander, you’ll know that even today, more than 20 years after the release of the original game, it remains – with the possible exception of the Freespace series – unsurpassed as an epic videogame space opera. So the imminent launch of Wing Commander Saga, the new fan-made addition to the franchise, is bound to be a little exciting.

Speaking of Freespace, Wing Commander Saga is built on the Freespace 2 engine, which still looks gorgeous and should flow like water on just about any semi-current PC. The game will include 55 missions spread across two campaigns, plus 60 voice actors delivering 11,000 lines of dialog, 70 cutscenes, dozens of ship types, large-scale fleet battles and more, all wrapped up in a “complex and compelling storyline” that leads directly into the events of Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger.

Wing Commander Saga has been in the works for ten years, in large part because, as often happens, the creators discovered that making videogames is a lot harder than it looks. “The project kept growing because we wanted gamers to experience a wide variety of missions while staying true to the feeling of Wing Commander,” project founder Anton “Tolwyn” Romanyuk told Gnome’s Lair. “There was an intense desire to keep adding new elements, assets & features, which was very seductive.”

The game will tie in tightly to the Wing Commander canon, with references to the original games, novels and “other stuff about the Wing Commander series,” and although the Wing Commander games are obviously the primary influence on Wing Commander Saga, Romanyuk said the team looked at other titles, like Freespace and X-Wing, for ideas as well. “We, as designers, wanted to ensure that the entire experience is exciting,” Romanyuk said. “The game makes you feel that you are not just watching the action but actually stepping into the role and experiencing what it is like to be Sandman.

Wing Commander Saga comes out on March 22. More information can be found at wcsaga.com.