Wing Commander IV and the FMV future that never quite was
Wing Commander IV and the FMV future that never quite was
《银河飞将4》与那场从未真正实现的“全动态影像”未来
If I had to pick a chunk of the 1990s that feels the most 90s-ish to me, it’d be the two-year stretch between 1996 and 1997. 1996 saw me graduating from high school and starting college; 1997 saw me meeting my future wife and falling in love. While I tried to figure out how to navigate the University of Houston’s still mostly pre-digital first-semester registration process (we had to sign up for classes over the phone, with touch-tone buttons, like cavemen!), the larger world kept turning in ways that felt inevitable and good and right. The Cold War was in the rearview mirror—how could we ever have been so worried about nuclear annihilation just a few years before? Russia was a friendly bear presided over by everyone’s favorite drunk uncle, and things would obviously keep getting better, right?
如果非要我选出一段最具有“90年代感”的时光，那一定是1996年到1997年这两年。1996年，我高中毕业并进入大学；1997年，我遇见了未来的妻子并坠入爱河。当时我还在摸索如何应对休斯顿大学那套基本处于前数字化时代的入学注册流程（我们得像原始人一样，通过电话按键来选课！），而外面的世界正以一种必然、美好且正确的方式向前发展。冷战已成往事——我们怎么会仅仅在几年前还那么担心核毁灭呢？俄罗斯当时像是一头友好的熊，由大家最喜欢的“醉酒大叔”掌舵，一切显然只会越来越好，对吧？
Equally obvious, at least according to gaming tastemakers like Ken and Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts, was the idea that computer games from here on would blend together the best of what Hollywood and Silicon Valley had to offer, and the resulting “Silliwood revolution” would blast us forever into the world of fully interactive entertainment. Movies and games would blend together, and neither would be the same ever again! No longer would people sit in theaters just watching movies—audiences would get to choose how the film ended! And on the computer side of things, gone would be the days of lame graphics and clunky hand-drawn art—games would have big-name actors, big-budget sets, and huge special effects!
同样显而易见的是——至少在肯·威廉姆斯（Ken Williams）、罗伯塔·威廉姆斯（Roberta Williams）和克里斯·罗伯茨（Chris Roberts）这些游戏界风向标看来——未来的电脑游戏将融合好莱坞与硅谷的精华。由此产生的“硅莱坞（Silliwood）革命”将把我们永远带入全交互式娱乐的世界。电影与游戏将融为一体，两者都将彻底改头换面！人们不再只是坐在电影院里看电影，观众将能决定电影的结局！而在电脑游戏方面，那些蹩脚的图形和笨拙的手绘艺术将一去不复返——游戏将拥有大牌明星、高预算布景和宏大的特效！
And if 1996–1997 was the high water-mark of the 90s for me, then the game that most matched that high water-mark was Wing Commander IV: The Price of Chris Roberts Having Full Creative Control—erm, I mean, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.
如果说1996到1997年是我个人90年代的巅峰，那么最能匹配这一巅峰的游戏就是《银河飞将4：克里斯·罗伯茨拥有完全创作控制权的代价》——呃，我是说，《银河飞将4：自由的代价》。
Full motion everything
全动态影像的一切
Released in February 1996 after a delay that caused the game to miss its originally targeted Christmas 1995 release date, Wing Commander IV took everything that made Wing Commander III successful and dialed it all up to 11—including upping the number of CDs the game came on from WC3’s four to a truly crazy six (almost four entire gigabytes of space!). The previous game’s all-star cast returned, but now Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson, Malcolm McDowell, and the rest were performing not on videotape in front of digital backgrounds but on 35mm film stock and enormous real sets—lots of enormous real sets. Developer Origin Systems, under the now-unrestrained hand of Roberts, ended up spending $12 million on the game’s production—a number that Daily Variety characterized as “The most expensive CD-ROM production ever.”
《银河飞将4》于1996年2月发布，此前因延期错过了原定的1995年圣诞档期。它继承了《银河飞将3》的所有成功要素，并将一切推向了极致——包括将游戏光盘数量从前作的4张增加到了疯狂的6张（总容量近4GB！）。前作的全明星阵容悉数回归，但这一次，马克·哈米尔（Mark Hamill）、汤姆·威尔逊（Tom Wilson）、马尔科姆·麦克道威尔（Malcolm McDowell）等人不再是在数字背景前对着录像带表演，而是使用35毫米胶片和巨大的实景布景进行拍摄——大量的实景布景。在罗伯茨不受约束的指挥下，开发商Origin Systems最终为该游戏的制作投入了1200万美元——《每日综艺》将其形容为“有史以来最昂贵的CD-ROM制作”。
Ambition, or indulgence?
是雄心，还是放纵？
Wing Commander 4’s narrative is best described as “sprawling.” The short version is that after defeating the Kilrathi at the climax of Wing Commander 3, Mark Hamill’s Christopher Blair retires to a backwater world to live out a life in peace and obscurity. This is interrupted—because of course it is—by a surge of pirate activity near the “border worlds,” a splinter group of independent colonies at the edge of the Terran Confederation. Blair is called back up to active duty to help quell the pirate attacks—but, of course, there’s more going on than simple pirates. The midpoint of the game sees the player having to make a huge choice with huge repercussions, and the game comes to a thundering narrative conclusion not in the cockpit with a planetary trench run, but in a rhetorical slap-fight on the floor of the Terran Confederation’s Grand Assembly chamber.
《银河飞将4》的叙事可以用“庞杂”来形容。简单来说，在《银河飞将3》高潮部分击败基拉西人（Kilrathi）后，马克·哈米尔饰演的克里斯托弗·布莱尔（Christopher Blair）退隐到一个偏远星球，过着平静而默默无闻的生活。然而，这种生活被打破了——当然会被打破——因为在“边境世界”（泰伦联邦边缘的一群独立殖民地）附近，海盗活动激增。布莱尔被召回现役以平定海盗袭击——但显然，事情远不止海盗那么简单。在游戏的中段，玩家必须做出一个影响深远的重大抉择，而游戏的叙事高潮并非发生在驾驶舱内的行星战壕突袭中，而是在泰伦联邦大议会厅里的一场唇枪舌剑中。