Whereas the live action cutscenes for the previous game were shot on video in front of a green screen (all the scenery was computer generated), this game had a higher budget and its cutscenes were shot on film using real sets (although CGI backgrounds are used for some scenes, such as the flight deck scenes). So this time camera actually moves during shots and there's focus pulls and zoom ins/zoom outs. The video resolution is higher and there are more cutscenes, this game came with six CD-ROM discs, the previous game came with four.
The last game in the series in which Christopher Blair is the player character. In the next game, Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997), Lance Casey is introduced as the new player character for the series and Blair is in a supporting role.
Seether (Blair's nemesis in this game) wears the same 3 medal ribbons as Blair, but in reverse order.
Originally Chris Roberts only intended the Wing Commander series to be a trilogy, but due to the success of the previous game and Electronics Arts not selling enough other computer games, he was asked to make a fourth game. However he was only given one year to make it, whereas he would have preferred two years in order to develop a new "engine" for the game. Wing Commander IV uses the same game engine as Wing Commander III i.e. the gameplay and overall design of the game is similar, but with enhanced graphics. Roberts tried to compensate for this for focusing more on the storytelling with more live action cutscenes than in the previous game.
The game contains over 4 hours of live action video cutscenes, about an hour more than in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994).