What with my sporadic updating schedule of late, I’ve missed several weeks of Wing Commander II videos. Not to say that I haven’t been publishing them, just that I haven’t been talking about them here. However, the main plot has taken a rather dramatic turn, so consider this a general catch-up post with a lot of video.
When we last left our hero, he was flying Broadswords in the Novaya Kiev (or Novaya Kiev Alternate for the losing path) system. There’s not a whole lot of difference between the C missions in this series, other than some chatter about how the war is going.
The D missions are functionally identical as well, mainly because they’re plot critical. In both of them, we’re going to rendezvous with a courier ship with an important message for the Concordia. Except that the courier doesn’t make it, and we end up finding off a bunch of cats and picking up a data capsule instead.
In any case, the storylines merge in the Heaven’s Gate system. We’ll be flying with Spirit this time, who is suddenly under a cloud of suspicion. But there’s no way Spirit could be a traitor! She was our very first wingman way back when we were just a fresh-faced rookie on the Tiger’s Claw!
The Heaven’s Gate missions also introduce the F-54 Epee. This is a Ferret replacement with less armor, longer-range guns, and four missiles – two heaters and two dumbfires. Most of the time, I’d probably rather have the Ferret. The only thing that the Epee really has going for it is the ITTS target tracking system, which comes in really handy against stealth fighters.
After two missions, Spirit’s still under a cloud – we’ll be flying the next mission solo. Remember what I said about Stealth fighters? Yeah… here we go again.
Finally we come to the end of the system series. With the element of surprise lost, the only choice is a quick strike to take out the starbase. But Spirit is conflicted, to say the least. Her fiance is aboard the station as a Kilrathi prisoner. Destroying the station condemns him to death. Then again, her choice to not betray the Confederation has already condemned him to a slow, painful death. Perhaps an exploding station is a mercy of sorts?
Also, welcome to another new fighter, the F-57 Sabre multi-role heavy fighter. Fast enough, maneuverable enough, and armed with a formidable array of guns and missiles, the Sabre is easily my favorite WCII ship. We’ll be seeing quite a lot more of it too. But for now, it’s just going to be a relatively simple mission to take out the starbase.
Or not. So as we end this system, some things are constant, whether we move on to the winning or losing paths next: Spirit is dead, and Blue Hair and Angel are now in a relationship. That’s going to go just fine…