The Greatest Space Combat Video Game No One Was Ever Able To Play, Based On A Mega Sci-Fi
Babylon 5 has everything a hit video game needs: deep world-building, clear factions with opposed philosophies, distinctive-looking aliens, dogfights in space, and multiple wars that could be the setting for a series of games. Instead, the groundbreaking '90s series suffered from poor timing, and we never received an official video game adaptation. Babylon 5: Into the Fire was months away from being released when its developer, the legendary Sierra Entertainment, went through massive cutbacks and multiple studio closures, denying fans the chance to ever get in the cockpit of a Starfury.
Babylon 5: Into the Fire was set for release in 1999, two years after the show's finale, and it would have included new video cut scenes of the original cast reprising their characters, filmed on the original sets, one final time. Creator J. Michael Straczynski was involved and helped pen the story, which would take place two years after the end of Season 5, during a time of tenuous peace among the members of the Interstellar Alliance, now led by President John Sheridan. Even back then, Babylon 5 fans were grateful for anything they could get their hands on to experience new corners of the intricate universe JMS created, but this game was going to do a bit more than that.
During the era of MS-DOS and Windows '95, space simulators were popular, but still a niche market, dominated by the likes of Wing Commander and Star Wars: X-Wing . As has been promised so many times before, Babylon 5: Into the Fire was going to revive the genre and take it to new heights with innovative gameplay and cutting-edge graphics. Not only could players fly a Starfury, they'd end up in command of capital ships, and eventually, an entire fleet.
There's a good chance that you, the discerning sci-fi fan, are rolling your eyes at that last statement because it's something that's been touted as a feature by countless developers over the decades, and not even Star Citizen has made it happen yet. Not in a full 3D engine with the ability to zoom into the smallest fighter and zoom out to the largest capital ship that is. Babylon 5: Into the Fire wanted to push the boundaries of combat in a space combat game, mixed with the politics and scheming of the series, including a soundtrack scored by the show's composer Christopher Franke, and it all sounds too good to be true.
Footage from Babylon 5: Into the Fire
To date, the only available footage of Babylon 5: Into the Fire is from an Alpha playtest build early in the game's development, even before shadows were added to the spacecraft (the actual shadows that are cast by light, and not The Shadows, who have always been here). If the series had come about a few years later, it would have received at least one official game, even Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse have multiple game tie-ins, and Lexx might too, but I'm too scared to look.
Babylon 5 was a grand series made on a 90s sci-fi television budget, and any game that tried to bring it to life would have to have equally as lofty ambitions. We'll never know if Babylon 5: Into the Fire would rise to the occasion and deliver on the promises of rising through the ranks of the Interstellar Alliance, but all any fan of the series can say, is that maybe, some day, a new developer will take a swing at immersing us in the multifaceted world of the best 90s sci-fi series set on a space station.
