Another unsolicited rant

[cmdr_zoom]

I've often said that Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing Commander series of space fighter games, wants to be George Lucas in the worst way... and in many cases, he's succeeded. One of his big achievements in this regard is using offensive Asian stereotypes and removing any trace of moral ambiguity or depth from a character and story years before George got around to Episode I or "Greedo shot first." I speak, of course, of Ralgha nar Hhallas, known to his friends and fellow pilots as Hobbes.


For those of you unfamiliar with Wing Commander, the enemy are the Kilrathi, aliens who greatly resemble bipedal tigers. They are a Proud Warrior Race - part Kzinti, part Klingon, and a whole lot of Japanese. They're at war with the Terran Confederation because (1) we showed up and (2) they're a Proud Warrior Race, duh. The war goes on for over a generation, with lots of stalemates and seesawing reversals (with the player character being almost singlehandedly responsible for several of them).

In the second game of the series, we get to meet a Kilrathi up close. First mentioned in one of the expansions to the first game, cruiser captain (and later fighter pilot) Ralgha nar Hhallas defects to the Confederation because of his disgust with the dishonorable way that the Empire is conducting the war. Though initially distrusted, he manages to prove himself to his new allies and especially the player character. He even grieves over the death of a young Terran pilot he rescued from his own people as a "cub." It's all rather touching in a samurai way.

Then along comes the third installment, and Roberts decides to throw all of this character development on a fire. Like its rival (and predecessor) space fighter franchise, the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, Wing Commander takes many of its cues from WW2 - not just because of the Japanese thing, but because most people prefer to fly ships that handle like Spitfires or Zeroes rather than box kites with lawnmower engines and two crappy guns that might accidentally shoot off your own propeller. And if this is a WW2 game, then eventually we have to go drop the Bomb on Japan. Actually, the Bomb is Plan B this time; Plan A is a giant flying gun that can destroy planets. That's right, in Wing Commander, the "good guys" have the Death Star. When that fails (and blows up real good), Mark Hamill has to fly down a long trench and drop a bomb on a particular spot. Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction that...

(Sorry. See what I mean about "the worst way"? And we haven't even covered the actual movie yet. Oh noes, Freddie Prinze has to perform a feat of navigation that's impossible even for a computer! Good thing he's got Pilgrim blood; it's chock-full of midichlorians!)

Why do we have to blow up the Kilrathi homeworld? A cutscene earlier in this game has established that the Kilrathi don't understand this human thing called "surrender." Never mind that the very first story cutscene in the first game showed a bunch of Kilrathi soldiers being held at gunpoint with their hands up; never mind that a race of carnivores (or omnivores, like us) who have no concept of "surrender" could never form a society, when every little dispute has to end with someone fleeing or lying dead on the floor. (The novel Footfall made a big deal out of the point that the two sides didn't understand each others' submission signals and rituals at first.) Never mind that Hobbes himself surrendered to the Confed (I'll cover that in a moment). This is the New Truth. No diplomatic solution is possible, only genocide. It's them or us.

Now, for some reason, Hobbes doesn't like this plan. You might think that this is for moral reasons, or because it's still his homeworld too. (Imagine if you had serious misgivings about the way our country is conducting its current wars, then found out that the solution your new friends had come up with was to nuke the entire Eastern Seaboard. Hello, Echelon; thanks for tuning in.) But it's not. Because, in a retcon as breathtakingly bold and as ineptly executed as Han's head-fake, Chris Roberts said that Hobbes was never really our friend, never really questioned the Empire - he was a sleeper agent, brainwashed to be our friend until triggered by hearing the words "Heart of the Tiger." The honorable warrior we flew with in this game and the one before was just a cover personality. And we have always been at war with Eastasia, and Willow has always been gay.

Of course, you have to go after him and shoot him down. And with the death of the only "good" Kilrathi (who never really was, honest), the way is clear to blow up Kilrah with a clear conscience. It's not just necessary, it's the Right Thing To Do, because the Kilrathi are all just bloodthirsty buck-toothed glasses-wearing monsters who can't be negotiated with.

Amazingly, it works. With their political, military and cultural center destroyed, the remaining Kilrathi somehow figure out this "surrender" thing. Convenient. (Something tells me that if we'd tried this for real with the Emperor and the Home Islands, the IJN would have regrouped and set sail for the West Coast, intending to kill us all or die in the attempt.) And the hero and his choice of girlfriend, blonde or brunette, get to fly off into the sunset.

Too bad about Hobbes, though. But as they say in the movie, "He never existed."

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

Man, thank you. This would be a great post to point at when people ask me why I get irritated by the FMV/Post-FMV Wing Commander games.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

*thumbs up, salute*

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

It's said that when the young Abraham Lincoln met his future wife, socialite Mary Todd, at a party, he said to her, "I want to dance with you in the worst way." As she noted to a friend after the fact, "And he certainly did."

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Now that you've commented here, I'm tempted to edit the above to include a mention of the Evil Sting.

[shadur.livejournal.com]

Well, there /is/ the minor fact of the Kilrathi attempting to dust a planet with a bioweapon just because Confed is about to liberate it and they never liked the slaves there anyway. And I'll note that in WC4 the death star advocate gets to play chief bad guy with what I thought was a pretty well-written conflict of ethics...