A couple years ago, I proposed a discussion on this forum, that "Freelancer 2 is Politically Impossible."

The upshot: Microsoft would not, in today's political climate, risk any appearance of celebrating terrorism. Obviously, and needless to say, Freelancer *does not* celebrate terrorism, but a bonehead could misread it as such -- and that's a risk that Microsoft won't take (or so I argued at the time).

I paraphrase the previous discussion because it has been deleted from this server, which deletion is of course is just another demonstration that, for political reasons, the discussion just isn't going to get very far.

But now I think times have changed somewhat, and I do not think Freelancer 2 is still politically impossible. For instance, the Warner-Brothers movie "V for Vendetta" aired things out a little bit. (That movie, like Freelancer, could also be misunderstood by a bonehead to celebrate terrorism.) Said one star of the movie, Roger Allam, a brilliant actor and overall genius: "it's nice that we've gotten to a point that we can talk about these things."

(The previous discussion was not directly censored, and I congratulate the admins here for that decision. The discussion came to its natural close, and the thread was quietly deleted some months later.)