We’re not in the business of guaranteeing scores, hence the loss of a cover exclusive every now and then. However, there are a few games that you come across, an elite few, where after just a few minutes play you know you are playing a future classic. Freelancer is one of them.
First unveiled in May 1999, Freelancer was the brainchild of Chris Roberts, creator of all things Wing Commander. It was for me the best game on show at that year’s E3, the best game I'd seen since Half-Life and, more importantly, destined to become the best space sim since the original Elite. Watching him play through some very early missions, I was absolutely slack-jawed at what I saw, and thrilled by the plans Roberts had for his all-newassault on the space-trading genre. I asked him at the end of the demonstration when would the game be out? 'At the end of 2001,' he said. 'At the earliest.'
Since then, of course, Chris Roberts’ role on Freelancer has diminished somewhat. December 2000 saw Digital Anvil, the studio he founded to create the game, fall into the hands of Microsoft, and Roberts’ role since has been only an advisory one. To its credit however, Microsoft has stuck by the game, slowly and surely filling in the gaps and despite initial fears to the contrary, has pretty much stuck to the original blueprint, thanks, among many others, to the presence of Freelancer's original lead designer and now Roberts’ successor as producer, Phil Wattenbarger. Perversely, we can take some solace in the fact that Freelancer will only be a year late. Eighteen months ago it looked like the game might never see the light of day.
Postcards From The Edge Of Space
Apart from the upheaval of Microsoft's Borg-like assimilation of the team, there are many reasons for Freelancer's delay; reasons now evident having played the game for a short time and spoken at length to Freelancer’s program manager Alan Hartman.
The first thing that hits you is how incredibly diverse it is graphically. No more do we have to endure in our space games a black backdrop, pocked with white pixels and the occasional purple swirl. In Freelancer, space is as beautiful as you imagine it to be. Moreover, rather than travel through an endless tunnel of stars towards a distant nebula (knowing full well you’ll never make it), here you can cruise from one end of the universe to the other, passing through dust clouds and nomadic asteroid fields that to those who might stick to the regular trade routes appear as distant landmarks. Each system of stars -their planets, moons and man-made stations are all linked by jumpgates - but rather than have each system as a self-contained 'level’, the entire game universe is mapped as one. Hidden in deepest space, perhaps, will be secret bases and ships - the stuff of online legends - much like Elite’s mythical Generation Ships that may or may not have ever existed. Some people love that kind of thing.
House Party
Experience a vast, open-ended universe filled with an infinite number of adventures. You are the freelancer Edison Trent, an intergalactic jack-of-all-trades. Your mission: whatever you want. Become a smuggler or a ruthless space thug, a naval hero.
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But exploration isn’t what Freelancer is about, not initially anyway. Sequel to the enjoyable if somewhat formulaic Starlancer, the game picks up from its predecessor with the Alliance now divided between four main houses, each based loosely on old Earth civilisations: the morally upstanding Kusari (Japan), the technically advanced Rheinland (Germany), the capitalist House Liberty (USA) and industrial beer-swilling House of Bretonia (Blighty). Starting off in Liberty space with a basic Ford Fiesta of a spaceship and a small stack of credits, where you go from there is - in the true Elite tradition - up to you, but the main aim is, in Hartman’s words: 'To become the ultimate bad-ass freelancer.'
Everyone On A Mission
For those who become disorientated and confused unless they’re told what to do, Freelancer will also feature a tightly focused story, set around 13 key missions, many of which will be split up into small bite-sized chucks. At any time however you can elect to go off on your own, take on smaller escort missions for cold hard cash, trade valuable commodities between the game’s 200 planets, bases and cities or just turn on anyone who comes across your path.
'The story is linear, but the universe is wide-open,' says Hartman. 'We’ve been talking for all these years about building this vast universe that is just alive, but only now is it really happening: armadas, traders, the four major and numerous minor factions generating situations -where for example pirates may be attacking a naval outpost, and you can just get involved or fly on by.'
The dynamics of the Freelancer universe has perhaps been one of the biggest hurdles Digital Anvil has had to contend with. Each ship has a character flying it, and each character has their own aims and allegiances with each of the 48 factions in the game.
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'You’ll start knowing some of the pilots by their reputation, and in the same way your reputation will precede you,' says Hartman. 'You can go off in the world and just focus on being, say, a pirate, and the pirate factions may try and recruit you while all the others will hate you. You can be friends with certain factions and make enemies of others, or try and stay neutral to everyone. You can do whatever you want. You and everyone else in the game are basically on a mission.'
Sound And Vision
- Freelancer is a space trading and combat simulation video game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft Game Studios. In the game, players take on the roles of spacecraft pilots. These characters fly single-seater ships, exploring the planets and space stations.
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- Freelancer is a space trading and combat simulation video game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is a chronological sequel to Digital Anvil's Starlancer, a combat flight simulator released in 2000.
It’s difficult to gauge just how convincing the Al is at this stage, but while we'll have to wait to test out the gameplay, the graphics have already been turning heads. The visual interface appears sleek, simple and modern, the ship and station designs are suitably varied and the sense of scale light years ahead of any current games. Most importantly, to move the adventure along, rather than boring text messages or grainy video, Digital Anvil has created a stunning character animation system featuring around four hours of actual story footage, plus all the other real-time cinematics that are generated on the fly whenever you land or go to talk to people in bars or stations to ask for information or missions.Less obvious but just as important are the small innovations Digital Anvil has forged. In a sense it all comes back to variety and focus. As is usual in space combat games, you can jump from system to system via gates, but within each system there is a network of trade lanes; high-speed ringed superhighways where ships can quickly jump between stations and planets. And like Elite’s infamous witchspace, the trade routes can be a costly way of getting about.
'The idea behind the trade lanes is to give the game points of focus,' says Hartman. 'If I’m a pirate I can hide out in a debris field near a trade route, shoot one of the jump nodes on the trade lane, which will disable it for a short period of time and then when ships come along they will have to drop out. I can then take out the transports and hide back into the debris field.'
Privateer Plus
As you progress, building up fortunes and knocking down reputations, you will of course begin to upgrade your ship: adding weapons, restocking missiles, patching on-board tactical software -whatever you need to increase the functionality of your craft. As for the equipment and the ships themselves, not much has been revealed. Each of the four major houses will have its own trio of pilotable ships, each offering varying characteristics over their rivals. There will be around 15 playable craft in the game, none larger than a freighter. However, though we won’t be able to fly any of the large cruisers and battleships, there will be around 40 ships in total, a couple of which there may only be one or two of in the entire game. Again for Elite fans, remember to have your screenshot key ready when you chance across Freelancer's version of the Constrictor.
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As for the flight model, Digital Anvil is keep ng to the tried and trusted arcade dynamic rather than going down the Newtonian route. As such the game will be simple to get to grips with, as was Wing Commander, FreeSpace and the X-Wing series. What is radical however is the control system. In a bid to bring space combat to the unwashed masses, Digital Anvil has maintained throughout Freelancer's development that the game has been designed for mouse control only. It is unclear whether you'll be able to plug a joystick in, but even if you can. the game will be optimised for mouse users. It's a slightly disconcerting development, but it does work and after some acclimatisation is a joy to use.
Open University
With its rich, detailed universe, open-ended gameplay, expansive multiplayer game and innovative control method, it’s hard not to go a little overboard on a game that promises to provide the biggest shake-up in the space combat genre for a number of years. Five years is a long time to be making a game, and there have been a few shaky bumps along the way. but (if you’ll allow me to put a personal spin on things), there is no one game that I am looking forward to quite as much as Freelancer - aside from of course the long-awaited announcement of Elite IV. If I am as impressed after 40 hours of playing the game as I have been watching it for 40 minutes, then Freelancer is well on course for a Classic score, which is about as close to a guarantee as you’re going to get.