Wing Commander: Privateer

About Wing Commander: Privateer

Wing Commander: Privateer (1993) is Origin Systems' open-ended space game in which freelancer Grayson Burrows trades, smuggles, hunts bounties or turns pirate across the Gemini Sector, while uncovering an ancient alien artefact.

Wing Commander: Privateer in Depth

Unlike the main Wing Commander games, the player is not a navy pilot but a freelancer who can be a pirate, merchant, mercenary or any mix of them, and can ignore the plot entirely or keep adventuring after finishing it. Play consists of flying and fighting in star systems, jumping between them, landing on bases and planets, talking to people and buying and selling equipment and goods across the quadrants of the Gemini Sector. Seven factions, merchants, bounty hunters, Retros, pirates, militia, the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi, react according to their nature and the player's actions. Merchants profit from price differences between planets, while randomly generated missions from the mission computer pay for better weapons and equipment. Flight is seen from the cockpit, with combat like other Wing Commander games of the time, and bases use static first-person views.

In the story, a mysterious drone is attacking ships. On New Detroit, a man named Sandoval hires Burrows and gives him an artefact, then turns up dead. The xenoarchaeologist Dr. Monkhouse reveals it is half of a map left by the ancient Steltek, leading Burrows to a powerful weapon, a deadly drone and a Steltek scout come to remove the last traces of their technology.

Making Wing Commander: Privateer

Origin Systems released Privateer in September 1993, with VGA pseudo-3D graphics at 320x200 in 256 colours. It was very popular, second in PC Data's DOS chart for September 1993 and first in Computer Gaming World's reader survey that November. The magazine liked its less structured story with Ultima-like "real moral choices" but called the writing "sophomoric" and recommended it to owners of high-end 486s, later noting unusual incompatibilities with sound cards and joysticks. It was runner-up for Computer Gaming World's Action Game of the Year, the editors saying it "introduced a free-wheeling open-endedness". White Wolf said it was "as close as you'll get to a true roleplaying experience". A 1994 CD-ROM edition included Righteous Fire and full speech. Privateer 2: The Darkening, led by Erin Roberts and featuring Clive Owen and Christopher Walken, was a self-contained spin-off in 1996, and Chris Roberts later made Freelancer with similar ideas. It was re-released on GOG.com in 2011.