Wing Commander

About

Wing Commander is a space combat game where your performance in dogfights shapes your career and the story. You play a pilot on a military carrier, completing missions that test your shooting and flying skills. Your actions earn rewards like medals and rank promotions. How you handle key missions determines if you advance toward a final strike or face retreats as the plot shifts. What sets it apart is how your skill directly changes the story. Early failures push missions toward defense, altering the outcome. You name your pilot and pick a call sign before jumping into action. Though it came out in 1990, it used player choices to shape the narrative, a concept many modern games use. Available on over a dozen platforms, it stayed true to its demanding flight combat and shifting plot paths.

Storyline

The player takes the role of a nameless pilot aboard the TCS Tiger's Claw, a Bengal-class Strike Carrier. The player gets to name the pilot and choose his call sign. The pilot (known in-production to Origin personnel as "Bluehair", after his most notable feature) quickly rises through the ranks of the flight wing and (presuming the player performs ideally in the cockpit) eventually leads a strike on the Kilrathi High Command starbase in the Venice system. On the other hand, if the player does not perform optimally, missions become increasingly defensive in nature, and eventually the Claw is forced to retreat.