I-War Intro Movie

I purchased the I-War/Defiance pack last Feb, but never got around to putting it on my legacy machine (I need to come up with a new joystick for that).

I tried to start the intro movie on my up-to-date machine a few months ago, but couldn't get any sound. Decided I didn't want to spoil it by watching it with no sound (and pretty lousy picture too).

Today, while going after the comsec model, I tried again, and found the bink/smacker movie viewers I downloaded a month ago play the movie fine.

So, I have now seen the I-War intro movie.

In fact, I've watched it four times in a row...

All I can say is... Damn! That's the way things should be done! Very impressive. Now I understand the "To the Navy : Catch Me If You Can", the jump blocker, and know a little more about Jefferson Clay.

Amazing movie. PS made excellent use of the LW Jolt plugin and motion blur features. The textures, specularity, and lens flares were absolutely dead on. That's the kind (and style) of stuff I've always wanted to create.

Mark my words... I get these models done and I'm going to make some movies!

No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

Yeah, very nice. Great action. Good tutorial. Introduces pbc's, shields, destroyers, lpoints. The two sides. The president. Clay. And still manages to pack in a great story. All in 14 minuits. And the final lines are great "And that is how Jefferson Clay died ...<snip>... but it wasn't until 10 years later that he learned what was really going on". A perfect setup.

-Gtrout

i remember when i used to have G$TV (TV for gamers) they had a show called.....something, they used to play the intro movies and cut scenes from games. i wonder why i never saw it played (the I-War intro that is).

oh well, their loss.

It's a shame I-War and EoC never received much press. I somehow missed I-War's release, and I usually stay on top of those type things... at least where space sims are concerned. But, before I picked up EoC in a $20.00 bin sale, I never knew either existed.

I think the game would have been a stunning hit (the kind of thing that actually sets the industry standard for the genere) with the right press work.

I viewed a Battlestar Galactica special this weekend and was surprised (but quite happy) with how they 'dirtied up' the space combat for the mini-series. Smacked of I-War. This is something PS appeared to be doing before anyone else. (In addition, there was a shot of a battle and a Viper pulling the same maneuver as the Dreadnaught in the I-War intro movie, flipping on the Z-axis to engage rear enemy.)

I'd heard similar things about the FOX show Firefly though, sorry to say, I never caught it.

I perceive a shift from the glitzy Star War's fantasies to something more gritty... a little more realistic. Not that there's any way of actually telling, but I wonder what influence the I-War series has really had on the game and film industries. It appears (and I may be mistaken here), that I-War was at the forefront of this shift. Wing Commander (Prophecy) and MOO2 were still pretty glitzy in 1998.

Wonder if the Battlestar Galactica GCI nerds (who have my greatest admiration!) have a copies of I-War and EoC on their home computers...


No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

My guess is that there has been a fair amount of influence by Independence War on some productions like Firefly, and even on other space-genre games, whether direct or indirect. It seems to be a game that alot of people in the biz know about, and hail as a great groundbreaking game, but that never garnered the press and PR success it deserved. Oh well. Places like these websites, and fans like us help give it a life beyond the expected PC game shelf-life. People continue to talk about and make references to the good ones long after they're considered commercially dead.

I STILL watch the I-War intro movie regularly. GT's right it's a great combination of tutorial, background and stage-setting and drama all done with some of the coolest graphics and well-designed cinematography ever packed into a game's intro sequence, no matter what length you're talking about. I wish there were more I-War movies available to watch.

--
Hot4Darmat

There are a couple of sequences in Firefly that definitely reminded me of I-War. In one sequence near a space-station a suspiciously I-War 2 style corvette / patcom type ship flies past. In another episode the Firefly comes across an abandoned ship, which slowly rotates end over end while the firefly's spotlight plays over it. Seems kind of familiar to me

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.