BreachAndClear
02-20-2009, 03:12 PM
The last game that I followed closely enough to bother signing up as a member of their message boards was Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 (which is how I derived my screen name). Anyway, I recall there being MASSIVE amounts of complaining about the guns, how they handled, how they sounded, etc. Gun buffs complained that the iron sights on the AK-47 were all wrong, the sound was wrong, how it handled was all wrong, etc. There was an expectation since these were real guns, the developers should make them true to life. Later, an interview with one of the developers was released in which it was explained that the guns were made to behave in a way that the average person thinks they should, and not how they actually do. An example given was that one of the guns (the MAC 11, more specifically) was made more unwieldly and given a faster rate of fire to conform to the representation of the similarly looking Uzi in movies as a barely controllable weapon of terrorists, rather than how the gun behaves in reality.
Naturally there was a lot of flak about this because it wasn't authentic. A lot of the fans were demanding an authentic experience and were finding out they were getting shortchanged by developers that tweaked the performance of guns to conform with abstract imaginings and not to how the real counterparts worked. I am aware that this is impossible in science fiction, given that phasers and Galaxy class ships aren't grounded in reality.
However, a license like Star Wars heavily regulates the material established in the various mediums in which the stories are conveyed. For instance, in the films there is nothing to imply that the Y-wing is any more heavily armed, heavily shielded, or slower than the X-wing, or that the A-wing was any faster than an X-wing etc. Yet it was established early on in Star Wars videogames that they were slow, heavily armored and armed bombers, and this stuck. No matter what Star Wars fighter game you pick up you can expect that the Y-wing will "behave like a Y-wing" (or how it was canonically established that they perform following the release of games released a decade or so ago). Other forms of media like the SW books also recognize the establishment of the Y-wing as a bomber, etc. I'd imagine if a game was released in which the X-wing could hold more torpedoes than the Y-wing or in which the Y-wing could fly circles around an X-wing there would be complaining, because that's not how they "really" perform.
I was simply curious as to what extent (if at all) the developers of Star Wars games (specifically this one) tackle such issues. For instance it's widely been circulated that the Akira is a carrier/gunboat given a quote by the ships designer, yet this was never explored in any of the series. In Legacy, the idea that the ship was a heavily armed gunboat was supported a bit given that the ship had 4 forward and 4 aft torpedo tubes. However, in Bridge Commander neither of these ideas were really explored and it was scarcely different than a Galaxy class in armament or performance, suggesting that there really isn't much regulation or agreement on how such things should be in the Star Trek universe. Similarly, according to the DS9 Technical Manual (or so memory-alpha claims) the Centaur type is described as a ship built from salvaged components, and it can be inferred that ships like the Centaur, Yeager and Curry could simply be interpreted as unique stand alones without a well defined class, given that they are amalgamations of the parts of other classes, yet we know the Centaur will be available in STO as though its a recognized class that was in full production.
In short. Is there any sort of regulation of how things operate in the Star Trek body of canon. Are the developers taken into consideration and recognizing what others have established or are they doing their own thing? More importantly, do you care either way if there is some form of quality control that is consistent from medium to medium?
Naturally there was a lot of flak about this because it wasn't authentic. A lot of the fans were demanding an authentic experience and were finding out they were getting shortchanged by developers that tweaked the performance of guns to conform with abstract imaginings and not to how the real counterparts worked. I am aware that this is impossible in science fiction, given that phasers and Galaxy class ships aren't grounded in reality.
However, a license like Star Wars heavily regulates the material established in the various mediums in which the stories are conveyed. For instance, in the films there is nothing to imply that the Y-wing is any more heavily armed, heavily shielded, or slower than the X-wing, or that the A-wing was any faster than an X-wing etc. Yet it was established early on in Star Wars videogames that they were slow, heavily armored and armed bombers, and this stuck. No matter what Star Wars fighter game you pick up you can expect that the Y-wing will "behave like a Y-wing" (or how it was canonically established that they perform following the release of games released a decade or so ago). Other forms of media like the SW books also recognize the establishment of the Y-wing as a bomber, etc. I'd imagine if a game was released in which the X-wing could hold more torpedoes than the Y-wing or in which the Y-wing could fly circles around an X-wing there would be complaining, because that's not how they "really" perform.
I was simply curious as to what extent (if at all) the developers of Star Wars games (specifically this one) tackle such issues. For instance it's widely been circulated that the Akira is a carrier/gunboat given a quote by the ships designer, yet this was never explored in any of the series. In Legacy, the idea that the ship was a heavily armed gunboat was supported a bit given that the ship had 4 forward and 4 aft torpedo tubes. However, in Bridge Commander neither of these ideas were really explored and it was scarcely different than a Galaxy class in armament or performance, suggesting that there really isn't much regulation or agreement on how such things should be in the Star Trek universe. Similarly, according to the DS9 Technical Manual (or so memory-alpha claims) the Centaur type is described as a ship built from salvaged components, and it can be inferred that ships like the Centaur, Yeager and Curry could simply be interpreted as unique stand alones without a well defined class, given that they are amalgamations of the parts of other classes, yet we know the Centaur will be available in STO as though its a recognized class that was in full production.
In short. Is there any sort of regulation of how things operate in the Star Trek body of canon. Are the developers taken into consideration and recognizing what others have established or are they doing their own thing? More importantly, do you care either way if there is some form of quality control that is consistent from medium to medium?