Wing Commander II
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Quick facts:Wing Commander II
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi is the second game in Chris Roberts Wing Commander series, produced by Origin Systems, released 34 years ago on September 4, 1991.[1]
Plot
The player is blamed for the destruction of the Tiger's Claw, demoted, defamed and reassigned to InSystem Security as glorified chaperone to convoys far from enemy lines, where he is out of sight and out of mind in the backwater of Caernarvon station. Meanwhile the Kilrathi advance their plans. But it’s not long before the player is back in the frontlines with allies old and new, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Kilrathi defectors, and trying to uncover the conspiracy behind the destruction of the Tiger’s Claw.[2]
Gameplay
Wing Commander II retains much of Wing Commander I core, namely an interstellar war between the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi, with multiple allies as wingmen and a wide variety of ships on both sides of the war.
It places a greater emphasis on storytelling than the first game, providing various sprite-animated cutscenes and some of the industry's first examples of voice acting.
The storyline is less open-ended with the game's campaign tree being much more structured and the player can no longer be awarded medals nor be promoted. Wingmen can no longer be killed during normal gameplay as they can eject, however some still die in scripted sequences.
Because the story is a direct sequel to Wing Commander I, many Kilrathi ships have names similar to the Wing Commander ships they replace, such as the Sartha replacing the Salthi, and the Confederation using an upgraded version of the Rapier medium fighter.
Gallery
Trivia
- Martin Galway worked on the music and voiced a Kilrathi in the original demo.[3]
- There were ambitious ideas about making the player character customizable, multiplayer modes through modems, and even a mission construction set for both Wing Commander I & I, however those ideas never made it into the final game.[2]
- It was released on Pedro Camacho birthday.[4]
External links
References
- ↑ Wing Commander Combat Information Center, Discord, Loaf, 2024-08-16
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, hardcoregaming101.net, August 4, 2019
- ↑
Meet Martin Galway!. Transmission - Comm-Link. Retrieved 2012-10-22
- ↑ "I didn’t know this was released on my birthday!!", @pedrocamacho, Twitter, Sep 14, 2025