I like yourself am a very big I war 2 fan. The differences between freelancer and EOC are as follows: First of there is a huge difference in controls. EOC uses a joystic while Freelancer uses a keyboard/mouse config. While some look down upon the new control system I think it looks interesting and I cant imagine playing freelancer any othere way. Second of both Independance war games had a newtonian physics flight model freelancer has a normal wing commander /star wars flight model. I personaly liked the newtonian flight model but thats your own personal taste. Also the most important difference is that I war 2 only gave you a skin deep illusion that it was dynamicf you formated with a freighter you would realize that after while of following them that they would just dissapear. Not so in freelancer. Each ship has a place to go and/or a job to do so it is a completely dynamic living universe. Freelancer is just as free form as Iwar 2 as inyou cna basically do anything. You can land on planets whic is a big advance in space sim techollogy. There is a living breathing economy and certain planets have certain ships/commodities to offer. In Freelancer your reputaion is important while in I war 2 it want. the list foes on and on. But I think I war2 fans will like thsi game because it takes the dynamic/free form space sim past only being an illusion and into reality.

wow, that helps a lot. thanks.

bummer on the flight model change though, iwar2's felt very real.

I don't think I'll mind, I'm really excited about this mouse flight system, because I've never been a big fan of joysticks.

Well I personaly LOVED the newtonian flight engine but hey you cant have everything. And what freelancer has is ALOT.

One thing I never liked about EOC was the commodity system, whereby you had to trade specific goods for specific goods. I always found that incredibly frustrating when you had to sit at an L Point for an age, scanning every cargo ship because you needed one more crate of station components. With Freelancer the trading system is a lot more easier, where your goods are traded for cash, so you can buy new weapons or a new ship.

I thought EOC was pretty cool, but Freelancer is going to offer so much more in terms of gameplay. There is a whole lot more to do than just pirate cargo.

Oh, and also if you thought I war2's graphics were excellent (and they cerainly are even by todays standards) the freelancers will knock tyour socks off. It has excellent graphics and it doesnt need a super computer to run it.

One more thing I'd like to add is that we are lucky Freelancers story line has been spoiled for us like it was in I war 2. They basically told you enough so that the story was incredibly predictable. Especially with the marauders in I war2 I knew from the start that they were owned by the corporations, thats because so much info was given away. One of the Many other reasons freelancer is so intriging is that the story line is so interesting.

Last but not least anther big thing in freelancer is that you can explore and find knew jumholes which might give you that o so neccesary escape route wen running away frm bount hunters.

Maybe I'm stupid but I didn't actually discover who the Marauders were and what there job was until I ran into Caleb Maas at the end of that long battle in the Dante system. I guess I fell for it. Still I loved the story in EOC, or maybe I'm just a dork.

Hi hairy,

I too loved i-war, it has the most realistic feeling of all scifi-spacesims i know, accompanied with the best missions I have ever played. I played a bit of I-War 2 until an early mission which frustrated me and I stopped playing.

To come back to your question, I have to say I am none of the Betatesters, so all I know are numerous videos and descriptions.

However, I do not think there are a lot of similarities between those two games. The navigation in FL is completely different beeing extremely arcade in contrast to I-War's hyperrealistic one.

Both I-war and I-War 2 were mainly linear, although I-War 2 allowed piracy on your own but IIRC there was no trading or landing on planets, only your own home. This was not too bad, but after they had announced it to be like Elite or Privateer I was quiet a bit disappointed when I played it.

I hope freelancer will be much more free with all the different ships you can fly, all the planets you can land on,....

Together with a good story and a way of telling it I like more than in I-War I hope FL will be even more immersive than both of the I-War games. I also like the setting of FL with former earth-nations to be galactic empires more than the setting of I-War 2.

If it is about the missions, I expect FL to have much more simple missions compared to I-War 1, even during the story. I guess they will be more like in former Wing Commander games.

(For those who do not know I-War: The game had highly interesting missions - no one was like the other. One time you had to catch a container which was flying towards a station by flying parallel and dock with it - really tricky with an newtonian flight-modell, another time you had to fly into a transporters LSI (some kind of real space bubble when flying at lightspeed) field and fire at it to stop it)

I would be really interested in the opinion (regarding the missions) of a FL betatester who has also played I-War 1 or maybe 2.

-Maniac

Hairy your not stupid or a dork I just played that game more than I should have and I also am and was an active member of the forums so I had alot of clues.

The I-War games are great, but I thought the first one was much better than the second.

I basically liked both of them the same for different reasons.

I didn't really care for the charectors in I-War 2, sometimes I downright hated them. The script was extremely cheesy.

I liked EOC in some ways (graphics, storyline), but there were a lot of things I didn't like about it, like the commodities system (trading goods for hardware which could be used on your ship). The thing I missed the most in EOC and what is one of the best things of FL IMO, is the fact that you can land on planets

iwar2 must not be anything like freelancer, cos as many have said here iwar2 was a hugely missed oppurtunity. the engine owned, as (to a certain extent) did the storyline, but the linear nature of it ruined it IMHO

that said I liked it more than the immensely overrated X series of games