Summary
Most influential addon ever?
The Good
The revelation of this Speech Pack cannot be overstated. In 1991, sound cards were still considered something of a luxury commodity, and most gamers were content with the beeps coming out of their PC box. However, all it took was one session with a fully-speech enabled Wing Commander 2 to sell Sound Blasters by the dozen. At the time, the level of immersion it added to the game was entirely unparallelled. And I'll always remember my amazed reaction the first time I heard a wingman spot an oncoming enemy and shout "Oh S@#$!" It was likely the biggest single step forward in game immersion up to that point, arguably the biggest ever.
The Bad
Some of the wingman vocal performances were pretty bad, but that didn't matter. They were TALKING! (and most of them were surprisingly good, considering the actors were just Origin employees hauled off to a recording booth)
The Bottom Line
Well, it is nothing but a historical curiosity now, since all subseqent editions of Wing Commander 2 came on CD with the pack pre-installed. But it represents a real turning point in PC gaming and should be remembered for that.
