The game includes a large number of branching conversations in which the player must choose what response his character, Christopher Blair, will give the choice may affect the other person's attitude toward your character, the morale of the entire crew, the player's next assignment and even the game's ending. The first game set after the end of the Terran-Kilrathi War, WC4 depicts a galaxy in the midst of a chaotic transition, with human civilians, Kilrathi survivors and former soldiers on both sides attempting to restabilize their lives. A single-sided DVD version simply repackaged the game's content, while a double-sided DVD edition re-encoded the video to MPEG2 DVD-quality. The game required 6 CD-ROMs, but was later re-released on DVD for special DVD-ROM kits. The majority of this budget went to the shooting of its full motion video, which retained the previous game's cast and used real sets instead of bluescreen techniques. Released in 1995, WC4 was produced on the then-unheard-of budget of USD $12 million. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, commonly abbreviated as WC4, is the third direct sequel in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space combat simulator franchise of computer games, produced by Origin Systems.