Sat Mar 01, 2003 2:13 pm
Freelancer: Good already, but has the potential to be the be
I beat Freelancer at around the 14 hour mark on the game timer, and I've played it for about 4-5 hours since then, and I have to say that it is still fairly enjoyable even after the single player campaign is over.
What almost brings me to tears, however, is that this game is just SO CLOSE to being the best game I've ever played. As it stands now, its just 'good' along with C&C Generals and the rest of the good games that have come out in the last 6 months, but I'm going to outline what they could do to make Freelancer a game everyone will be playing daily for years (They could do most of this in a patch, but some might require an expansion pack) -- And I know a few of these things are noted at the IGN review too, but I'm going to emphasize them for clarity and add my own ideas as well, and this list is in order of importance, most important is first and least is last:
The most important thing to make Freelancer the game to end all games is so important I'm not even giving it a number: Expand the RPG element of the game. Thats it! Dialogue options, more inventory and items, more consequences, types of missions, and specific people and personalities instead of the entire universe feeling generic and "generated" like it does now.
On to the detailed list!
1) More types of missions, with dynamic events and consequences, and more CONTENT both within and outside of mission environments. An example or 2: You get approached RANDOMLY in a city (or in space!) and are offered a job to ship a contraband shipment of alien artifacts to an extremely remote point in the universe (say a corner of one of the jump hole systems that has nothing else in it, bases or anything) -- If you're smart you'll probably suspect a set up, because you know there are no bases there, the empoyer assures you a ship will meet you at the waypoint to pick up the cargo (you'd jettison it with him ready to pick it up) -- If you accept, you COULD just run off with the alien artifact cargo and sell it, but then the mission would dynamically update to a new mission goal: Escape from the 2 bounty hunters that your empoyer has sent to 'take you out' for cheating him. (They'd have to be really tough, maybe a legendary guy and his apprentice or something) You could escape by 1 of 2 ways: 1) Kill them if you see them. 2) Bribe someone to change your neural net ID (or something I dont know the roleplaying term for that, exactly) The bounty hunters would be after you PERMANENTLY after you cheated the guy on the trade mission, but in order for that to work correctly, you'd have to be able to take on other missions while they stalked you. Which brings me to my 2nd point:
2) Being able to take on more than 1 mission at a time, and have missions 'screw up' once in a while -- If Liberty Police send you to assassinate a guy right now, he is ALWAYS either at the mission waypoint or at a 2nd waypoint. There needs to be an element of doubt in there, where you go and wipe people out but the person they were expecting to be there never showed up. They'd pay you but only a small fee instead of the full fee. More beleivable, and adds that element of doubt, so you never know whats gonna happen. As a further bonus, make it have a small chance of them trying to assassinate YOU once in a while. Lord knows I've killed enough VIP people of at least 6 or 8 factions for them to want to murder me in the face a few dozen times.
3) A personal place for you to live, where you could store trinkets, loot, etc that you collect while roving the galaxy. (There would have to BE pointless but cool loot.) An example: If there was an item in the game right now that let you put decals and "kill marks" on your plane, and your NAME painted near the cockpit, I bet you 2 tickets to U2 in dublin people would go nuts looking for it, ignoring EVERYTHING else like weapons and stuff. Never EVER underestimate the value of cool but pointless gear!
3) More single player communication options. You NEED to be able to say more things, like in Privateer and such. Even if its limited to hail, taunt, yes, and no. It would do wonders for the universe.
4) Wingmen and Mercenaries. This is self explanatory, and obvious.
5) Bring Juni, Tobias, etc, back into the world after the single player game is over as wingmen but make most of them have their own agenda as well and only accompany you when you specifically request it for a reason. Give them intelligence to break off to 'do their own thing' if their need arises. Most of all: I WANT TO RANDOMLY MEET THEM WHILE IM DOING SINGLE PLAYER MISSIONS, even if its nothing special just a "Hi Tobias, whats up, you heading for Leeds?"
6) Capital ships. If not being able to pilot them, then at least have more missions involving them (escort, attack, defense, recon, etc)
I'll post more later but I REALLY wanted to get this off my chest now, because Freelancer is starting to fade as something I enjoy playing for hours on end. If they continue supporting the game and adding at least SOME of the stuff mentioned above I have no doubt it'll be the best game in history.
Req
What almost brings me to tears, however, is that this game is just SO CLOSE to being the best game I've ever played. As it stands now, its just 'good' along with C&C Generals and the rest of the good games that have come out in the last 6 months, but I'm going to outline what they could do to make Freelancer a game everyone will be playing daily for years (They could do most of this in a patch, but some might require an expansion pack) -- And I know a few of these things are noted at the IGN review too, but I'm going to emphasize them for clarity and add my own ideas as well, and this list is in order of importance, most important is first and least is last:
The most important thing to make Freelancer the game to end all games is so important I'm not even giving it a number: Expand the RPG element of the game. Thats it! Dialogue options, more inventory and items, more consequences, types of missions, and specific people and personalities instead of the entire universe feeling generic and "generated" like it does now.
On to the detailed list!
1) More types of missions, with dynamic events and consequences, and more CONTENT both within and outside of mission environments. An example or 2: You get approached RANDOMLY in a city (or in space!) and are offered a job to ship a contraband shipment of alien artifacts to an extremely remote point in the universe (say a corner of one of the jump hole systems that has nothing else in it, bases or anything) -- If you're smart you'll probably suspect a set up, because you know there are no bases there, the empoyer assures you a ship will meet you at the waypoint to pick up the cargo (you'd jettison it with him ready to pick it up) -- If you accept, you COULD just run off with the alien artifact cargo and sell it, but then the mission would dynamically update to a new mission goal: Escape from the 2 bounty hunters that your empoyer has sent to 'take you out' for cheating him. (They'd have to be really tough, maybe a legendary guy and his apprentice or something) You could escape by 1 of 2 ways: 1) Kill them if you see them. 2) Bribe someone to change your neural net ID (or something I dont know the roleplaying term for that, exactly) The bounty hunters would be after you PERMANENTLY after you cheated the guy on the trade mission, but in order for that to work correctly, you'd have to be able to take on other missions while they stalked you. Which brings me to my 2nd point:
2) Being able to take on more than 1 mission at a time, and have missions 'screw up' once in a while -- If Liberty Police send you to assassinate a guy right now, he is ALWAYS either at the mission waypoint or at a 2nd waypoint. There needs to be an element of doubt in there, where you go and wipe people out but the person they were expecting to be there never showed up. They'd pay you but only a small fee instead of the full fee. More beleivable, and adds that element of doubt, so you never know whats gonna happen. As a further bonus, make it have a small chance of them trying to assassinate YOU once in a while. Lord knows I've killed enough VIP people of at least 6 or 8 factions for them to want to murder me in the face a few dozen times.
3) A personal place for you to live, where you could store trinkets, loot, etc that you collect while roving the galaxy. (There would have to BE pointless but cool loot.) An example: If there was an item in the game right now that let you put decals and "kill marks" on your plane, and your NAME painted near the cockpit, I bet you 2 tickets to U2 in dublin people would go nuts looking for it, ignoring EVERYTHING else like weapons and stuff. Never EVER underestimate the value of cool but pointless gear!
3) More single player communication options. You NEED to be able to say more things, like in Privateer and such. Even if its limited to hail, taunt, yes, and no. It would do wonders for the universe.
4) Wingmen and Mercenaries. This is self explanatory, and obvious.
5) Bring Juni, Tobias, etc, back into the world after the single player game is over as wingmen but make most of them have their own agenda as well and only accompany you when you specifically request it for a reason. Give them intelligence to break off to 'do their own thing' if their need arises. Most of all: I WANT TO RANDOMLY MEET THEM WHILE IM DOING SINGLE PLAYER MISSIONS, even if its nothing special just a "Hi Tobias, whats up, you heading for Leeds?"
6) Capital ships. If not being able to pilot them, then at least have more missions involving them (escort, attack, defense, recon, etc)
I'll post more later but I REALLY wanted to get this off my chest now, because Freelancer is starting to fade as something I enjoy playing for hours on end. If they continue supporting the game and adding at least SOME of the stuff mentioned above I have no doubt it'll be the best game in history.
Req
the more the merrier, take it from the nature of your post that you have not played the multiplayer portion of the game yet i would urge you to go in that direction as many of the more immersive and interesting diversions to be had can be found there,thers nothng like human player interaction to keepa game interesting i willl give you an example from my own game playing sof2 for example i have not played more than 10mins of the single player game because after playing online the a.i. is no subsitute for another human player,(even a noob,hey can be very unpridictable) you may want to think about this issue before getting to excited about an add-on/patch.
. Lovely game that one.