I got the pack of I-war and defiance, and after it goes through the CGI cutscene (very cool the first time you watch it and wayyyy ahead of its time), a popup comes up titled "Independence War Loading Error".... the body of the message says "A problem has been detected during Brender initialisation. Please see the readme file for details on how to fix this problem." After clicking OK, the game crashes. HELP!!!! (please)

Can you give us some more information about what system you're running the game on?

There can be a few reasons why this is happening - graphics drivers, screen resolution, etc.

There is an infile which you can edit to tweak the games Glide wrapper graphic settings in (if you're using Windows 7) Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\

The file is called glide_wrapper.zbag.ini.

Dell Dimension 2400 series (a dinosaur lol)
Windows XP service pack 3
Pentium 4 CPU
766MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c
Intel Integrated Graphics card 82845G
Creative SB Live!

Anything else you would need to know?

Thanks! What's the maximum resolution of your screen?

After a little googling it seems you going to need a glide Wrapper of sorts because of your Vid Card.