In Crusade, you’re present for the negotiations of a treaty between the Confederation and the Firekka, a birdlike race. This continues into Secret Missions 2: Crusade, where there are also a few firsts – the first plot-mandated death, the first non-Kilrathi alien race, and the first new enemy fighters. The crew start to show the signs of stress when you talk to them in the bar, thinking more about the fate of their loved ones and whether they’ll ever come back, and it adds a sense of urgency to the whole thing. The stakes are higher, and so is the drama. In Secret Missions 1, the TCS Tiger’s Claw goes deep into Kilrathi space to track down the superweapon responsible for wiping out a human colony. That said, the writing quality is improved in the addons. It’s not so much the quality of the writing, which is a bit hokey and not exactly Shakespeare throughout the series, but it’s the little touches that allow you to forget you’re nerd sitting in front of a monitor staring at pixels. So, when I say that the addon packs are more immersive than the vanilla game, it’s saying something. Not bad for 256-colour VGA graphics and some text captions. I carried on through that game, a more cautious pilot because of that ‘KIA’ on the pilot roster. You’re going to carry on, and you’re going to own that mistake. Mariko can’t just reload her life from a save. You don’t get to just walk away from that. Just going to reload from a save? A woman is DEAD, Pilgrim. What are you doing? asked a little voice in the back of my head. Then, rather than going back to the barracks, the game took me to a platform outside the Tiger’s Claw. She’ll be right back in a sec when I reload. Colonel Halcyon meets me for the debriefing and offers some words of condolence. So I come round again and land, fully expecting to just reload and try it again. First mission in the game, you want to get off to a good start. Okay, I guess it’s fair to mulligan that mission, I thought. My hand twitched, and my Hornet violently yawed to the left – straight into Spirit’s already-damaged ship. It exploded, a yellow-orange fireball blossoming as the cockpit atmosphere went up. I contacted the Claw and got clearance to land, and was just coming in on final approach when the unthinkable happened.
Okay, no worries, we iced them and got back to the Tiger’s Claw – Spirit had taken damage but we could still fly. I’d gone out on the first mission with Mariko “Spirit” Tanaka on my wing, and we’d run into some kat fighters. To explain a bit more about the immersion in this game, let me tell you a story about the first time I played. The basic gameplay is unchanged from the main game, but it kinda seems like they got new writers onboard. I’ve not actually played the addons, I only had the vanilla game as a kid, so this is terra incognita for me.
Sooo, I’ve been continuing my playthrough of the addon packs for Wing Commander.