The team behind Wing Commander IV – The Price of Freedom: Remastered has announced that a free demo download is now available. Omega Systems has been working on the remaster for roughly three years now using assets imported from the DVD version of the game. Omega Systems are using a new engine along with new audio files, hi-resolution models, and remastered HD video for the remaster. The demo requires 3.3 GB diskspace, ideal recommended GPU is somewhere along the lines of an NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti, and supports keyboard + mouse, gamepads, and resolutions up to 4K.
We are supremely proud to announce that the first playable demo of Wing Commander IV – The Price of Freedom: Remastered is now available to download!
You can download and play it now from https://wcrespace.com
Wing Commander IV – The Price of Freedom: Remastered is a fan preservation project; it was created for experimentation, education & research, is completely nonprofit, and should be considered fair use as stated in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. section 107.
It is not an official product and it should not be sold nor bought. This mod is intended for private use and any sale or for-profit use is prohibited.
To install this mod you must own an original, unaltered, retail-release of the game. Please, respect the rights of the copyright holders and purchase a copy of the original product if you do not own one already.
The original game can be purchased at https://www.gog.com and https://www.origin.com
The developers have even included a step-by-step tutorial for installing the demo on a Steam Deck.
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom Resmastered loads the original game’s mission files and parameters into a whole new engine with all new, specially crafted, high-definition assets.
High quality, high resolution ship models, new audio files and remastered High Definition video have all been created to bring Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom into the 21st Century.
Discussion (6 replies)
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I remember playing the original when it came out. I was not impressed - in fact the opposite - by the mix of computer simulation events and real actors in video scenes. The transition between the two was, and probably still is, incredibly immersion breaking.
I loved 3 and 4 back in the low 90's, but I don't think I could stand this level of cringe nowadays. I think I tried to replay 4 a while back and it was just.... pure cheese. Sometimes you just can't go back...
I liked the idea of interactive movies, IDK why it stopped being a thing. WCIV and WCV were my favorites. But I had nothing against actors in the cutscenes of Jedi Knight either. Why is it better to digitize them?
That makes no sense, you are literally in the cockpit while playing, and you still have the actors talking to you over radio, where is the immersion breaking? You are making it up.
The immersion breaking occurs when transitioning from crude polygonal 3D modeling space combat (mostly state-of-the-art for the times) to live action video; the universe is thus rendered inconsistent, and by plot choices cannot be justified by explaining it away that the player has entered a computer simulation in the real world (ala Avatar). I thoroughly enjoyed the first several Wing Commander games prior to introduction of live action video, but afterward I felt the producers made a poor decision in the direction they took with the property.
It's your prerogative whether to share my opinion. You do you.
Why doesn't the same "immersion breaking" occur when transitioning from crude in game models, to CG cutscenes with much more detailed models? Like 99% of the games used from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s? Literally every major title I can remember was like that in those days.
It does not need to be explained "by entering a simulation", I don't know where you get that from.
I cannot fathom, how deliberately making the characters look less real would improve immersion. (as the backgrounds are CGI, since it is a greenscreen production)
Well, it is up to you to defend your position. But if you don't want to, we can conclude that it is completely arbitrary and move on.