Well... here's a thing and you guys who want to complain about Freelancer probably won't like it but it may well be what's at the root of your disappointment. I like Freelancer very much! I play all the time, I'm on my second time through SP and I like to play MP on my own server with my friend over our LAN at home (I've never been a fan of playing with strangers that I can't trust online and Freelancer is, sadly, no exception. ).

"OK... that's really nice Gig--but so what?'"

Well, I think this is important because... it's never, ever happened with a space game before--ever, ever, EVER! I'm an RPG player... that really covers my range of interest in computer games. I also almost never replay games. In the entire history of history I've only replayed one other game--just one! When I finish a game I do have a sense of fulfillment but the urge to do it again is a rare urge indeed. That means that Freelancer, whether you like it or not, has something special. That special thing will most likely turn out to be far more important than all of the supposed shortcomings that you guys seem to see. Freelancer has broad scale commercial appeal.

"Why do you say that Gig?"

Ok... to understand the answer to this, you need to know a little bit about me. I'm 24 years old and I picked up computer gaming very late. In fact I completed my very first computer game less than a year and a half ago. Since then, I have completed fewer than 20 games (though I've started and abandoned many more than that).

I entered computer gaming through a side door, so to speak. After my divorce I moved away from my home town and rented a room from a family in their home. My landlord (LL from here on) was and is an avid gamer. LL plays every game that comes out bar none ! I would watch him play games sometimes and little by little I became interested in computer games myself.

"Yes, yes... very nice... what's your point."

Ok here's the part that I think is really important about Freelancer. I don't like science fiction (no stoning allowed now, this isn't a criticism--it's an explanation). I don't like science fiction a lot... nothing, with two notable exceptions (Douglas Adams and Farscape... only because of Ben Browder), bores me to suicidal tendencies faster than science fiction and Star Wars could be a topic for me by itself! Are you starting to see? Freelancer is a very unlikely game to get my attention and even less likely to be my #2 all time favorite.

Freelancer isn't an RPG and it's a space game, two big disqualifiers in my book. This is a game that would, in general, be completely off my radar as a possible play chioce. However, these are not general times. 2002 was a stellar year for RPGs. Some of the biggest long term projects in the genre were released and they were all released together in a single year. These games... Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege, to name just three, pushed the envelope and, in their own way, changed the landscape of the genre. This means that 2003 has been the opposite for RPG games... the meager offerings this year have been largely uninteresting. The most attractive games this year, for RPG players, have been hybrid or derivative games. These games, while solidly and securely in another genre, contain enough RPG elements to suffice in a pinch between decent RPG titles. Freelancer is one of these games.

I discovered Freelancer because the owner of RPGDot (my online home away from home) played it and wrote a delicious review praising the RPG elements to be found there. With no interesting games in sight and none for months before, I was willing to download and try a demo that under any other conditions I would have ignored completely.

I really don't think I can make you understand what an obstacle Freelancer had to overcome in me. I downloaded the FL demo from File Planet and I expected nothing! No! Worse than that, I expected utter garbage!! The demo sat on my drive for a week before in installed it. I nearly deleted the thing out of principle more than once. However, as more and more players on RPG gave Freelancer good ratings I came around and decided to at least try the demo.

Whoa! I played the entire demo in a single session, something very unusual for me. The Fl demo left me dying for more. I went out and bought Freelancer right then and I've been playing it ever since.

So the point to this whole long story is that while Freelancer may be weak in some ways to you "hardcore space sim players" or whatever you called yourselves, overall it is a very strong title. Freelancer does something that none of the other space games I've been roped into playing such as Independence War 2 and even, yes, your beloved Starlancer can do... it appeals to a more casual, mainstream player.

As I understand it from what I've been reading the space sim genre is on its last legs. The player base that likes the hardcore space sim isn't really big enough to support the development costs of large scale, long term projects. This means that every year more and more devs that have traditionally supported the genre either close or they change their focus after the current title hits store shelves.

This same thing happened to the RPG genre a couple of years back with few new titles on the horizon and fewer and fewer devs willing to take the risk of starting new RPG projects. Many of the devs that had traditionally brought us RPGs were turning toward creating shooters, hoping for a better market for their games. It was a hybrid game called Gothic that started the turn around for the RPG market. Gothic was an RPG-lite and, like Freelancer is with space sim enthusiasts, it was reviled by much of the hardcore CRPG community. What Gothic did, however, was make the RPG genre more accessible to the mainstream player (though it would never be as popular as Freelancer). The game had enough elements of a 3rd person shooter to attract the more casual player and it drew new blood into a foundering genre. This may have lead to the amazing sales explosion that happened in 2002 and may well have kept big RPG devs like Bethesda, Bioware and Black Isle in the game.

Freelancer doesn't do as much wrong as some of you think and what it does right it does magnificently. Perhaps you should be embracing Freelancer while acknowledging that it isn't really the game for you. Your enthusiasm for other genre pieces like Starlancer and Privateer (whatever that is) is bound to make the casual gamer take a closer look and some will surely be won over, increasing the market for the genre, just like it happened for RPGs.

Take it from an RPG player, Freelancer just might be your genre's Gothic.

Edited by - gig on 26-04-2003 13:22:10

Edited by - gig on 26-04-2003 13:27:39

Edited by - gig on 26-04-2003 13:28:29

Edited by - gig on 26-04-2003 13:38:23