On to the losing track missions! One of the slickest tricks that Wing Commander did, was to have a branching campaign. If you didn’t know the mission flow possibilities, the game seemed a lot bigger than it really is thanks to the way some systems are accessed. It’s interesting that almost thirty years later, this is still a noteworthy feature. Granted some of that can be chalked up to different genres, plus the amount of effort that it takes to make something that not everyone is going to see, but it still feels like something which should be a lot more common than it is.
At any rate, everyone starts in Enyo, which is as close to a tutorial system as you were going to get in 1990. Thanks to the relative ease of the two Enyo missions, it’s difficult to end up in Gateway without intentionally failing the second Enyo mission. Which is kind of a shame, because the Hornet is a lot more fun to fly than the Scimitar, and if you stay more or less on the winning track, then you only get two Hornet missions (plus the Train-sim) for the whole game.
But however you manage to get to Gateway, you find a mission set that’s not all that much different than what you fly in McAuliffe – a patrol, an escort, and an intercept. The breakroom chatter doesn’t change much either, you’re still getting to know your fellow pilots.
Gateway Mission #1 is debatably a little easier than McAuliffe 1. Both are patrols, but where McAuliffe gives you a minefield, Gateway gives you asteroids. Then again, McAuliffe pits you up against some Dralthi, where Gateway throws a pair of Gratha after you. Both missions feature a flight of Salthi. Pretty even, overall.