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by Microsoft
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"Thats
one of those massively multiplayer games, isnt it?" my friend asked
when he saw me playing Microsofts Freelancer. The comment got my brain
thinking (it sometimes takes a lot to do that, but on that particular
night, just a tap set things in motion). Freelancer is like a massively
multiplayer game, at least, it sure as heck felt like one at first.
Large, expansive, filled to the brink with hundreds of different places
to visit and explore, ships to destroy and purchase, and weapons to
uncover, Freelancer radiates the feel of an open ended massively
multi-player environment. Its not, however. Instead, its an
interesting mix of the expansive and the directed, a gigantic universe
with a tight nit story that walks you down the path in episodes. These
episodes (the scripted missions that progress the story) are compelling,
often mysterious, interesting, and separated by commercial breaks
stretches of the game that allow you to roam at will, accept missions
for money and level up potential, and generally have your way with the
world. The resulting mesh of unyielding plot and free flowing universe
offers a great deal a touch of the unlimited, but still with a great
single player experience. Freelancer is a good game that hands the
player a magnificently designed universe, but the freedom that universe
offers, unfortunately, is an illusion.
Freelancer
is set thousands of years in the future, following the events that took
place in the game Starlancer, released by Microsoft in 2000. After Earth
nearly destroyed itself in a century long-war, five ships were sent
into deep space to start again, to rebuild humanity. Eight hundred years
later, you are born as a freelance fighter pilot ready to take your
skills and kick the butt of whoever has an enemy that pays well. The
story is told at the beginning by one of the most compelling video
sequences Ive ever encountered, and the rest of the story plays out
through pre-scripted interactions with characters you meet on various
different planets and space stations. At its heart, Freelancer is a
flight/combat simulator, designed to be played with the mouse.
Everything in the game centers on this one element: build your ship
bigger, stronger, and faster.
The meat
of the game is in the form exploration and combat. At planets and
stations you trade goods, buy weapons and ships, and accept missions for
cash flow, but throughout the game your goal is to "Level-up". You do
this by earning money, and you earn money through combat (you are a
freelance fighter pilot, after all. Much more exciting life than the
freelance writer, let me assure you). Leveling up means that you acquire
enough net value to activate the next episode in the storyline. The
story itself is interesting, well plotted, and well played out.
Navigation in the universe is governed by one of the best-designed
interfaces Ive ever had the pleasure of using. Combat is handled via
the mouse, and when not in combat, it is very easy to use your map to
lay waypoints for your ships computer to fly to. Great distances can be
traversed through jump gates, and as you use them youll see hints of a
living, breathing, independent universe with rogue pirates,
intergalactic traders sharing your space routes, and military
battleships. The result of such detail is quite breathtaking, and is the
reason for the games open and free atmosphere. It is also that freedom
which can be misleading.
What is
freedom? In Freelancer, its a ten-minute flight to cross a single star
system, of which there are many. Disembark from the space station, and
you can go left, right, up, down, any direction you please. Curious
about what sort of products are being sold at that far away planet in
the distance? Fly to it, find out. Hopefully you wont be blown to bits
on the way there. Is this freedom? Certainly. Become a trader, make some
money, build a fortune; youre free to do as you please except, you
really arent. Every time you hit a level up (meaning you make a certain
amount of money), the storyline kicks in. At these points in the game,
you are forced to take on mandatory missions, ones that, unlike the
missions you accept in the bars for excess cash, you cant quit once
youre into. If you do, a prompt appears on the screen informing you
that your mission has failed and asking to reload the auto-save. Try to
ignore the missions, as I initially did, and many times the game will
intercede. Once, when I leveled up, the computer told me that a contact
was waiting on a distant planet. It automatically set a waypoint in my
map, and I promptly pretended it didnt exist. I accepted a few missions
on the side, and soon discovered that the computer no longer let me do
so, because, as it said, I already had a mission. The one from the
storyline. Additionally, it wouldnt let me set my own waypoints on my
map the only place my computer could fly, really, was down the
preprogrammed path.
Is this a problem? Not really. Ive already said that I think the
storyline is well worth playing. I also expect that many people are now
shaking their heads, bitter in anger, saying, "What are you talking
about? You have complete freedom. I mean, you can be a trader, a pirate,
or a miner. Isnt that enough?"
In many
ways it is. However, how you play the game outside the storyline only
affects who you accept missions from. Every randomly generated mission
basically asks you to fly out, blow something up, and fly back. Having a
bad reputation with the law enforcement just means you work for someone
else instead, blowing up different ships. The name and where you hang
out is really all that changes, not the heart of the gameplay the
missions tend to look the same. When your actions dont really affect
how the game is played, mission to mission, there is no freedom.
And what about within the story? The question occurred to me: what if
I wanted to bat for the other team? The story line basically has you
working hand in hand with what amounts to the police, helping capture
smugglers at the beginning. What if I wanted to be a smuggler? How could
I, in good conscious, help capture my brethren? Could I do anything to
affect a change?
The
pre-scripted story didnt seem to give me the option, so I performed an
experiment. I turned bad. I turned real bad. I accepted assignments and
then canceled them, just to piss people off (it affects your
reputation). I attacked random ships at key ports and then fled the
scene. I loaded my ship with missiles and heavy weaponry, spray painted
swear words on other ships at dry dock (I didnt really), and afterward
blew the gun turrets off of the jump gates and terrorized
visiting ships. I was naughty a great deal of the time, jumping from
planet to planet, driving down my reputation. Finally Id had enough. I
accepted one mission, made a few thousand dollars, and leveled up. The
plot kicked in. Did Zane, a passionate member of an intergalactic
security force, the contact and driver of my plotline, care that I had
become a terror, a scourge of the open skies?
Apparently not. She treated me exactly as if Id sat around and
played poker with the buddies all night. Free? No, in the end, my nature
was tamed, and I meekly followed the same path as every other would-be
hero. What I found was that very little of my actions outside the
scripted plot seemed to influence how the characters behaved toward me,
and within the scripted plot, failure was not an option; the game quit
and demanded you reload every time you died, turned on your teammates,
or hung back in a fight. Free to go up, down, left, right? Certainly.
Freedom to change my destiny? Hardly. Sure, a few people liked me less,
and a few other people liked me more in the end, but the final outcome
didnt seem to change. While youre allowed to become a trader or a
pirate at your discretion, doing so does not open up tremendous and new
possibilities it only means youre blowing up different ships during
your off hours. Its the definition of a non-branching storyline in a
package that looks to be as branching as they come.
There
are a few other oddities that didnt affect storyline nearly as much.
For example, some of the dialog is off, as if the two people in
conversation are discussing slightly different topics. Heres an
example. You arrive at a planet youve never visited before. You talk to
a fellow in the bar, and the first thing he says when you sit down is
something along the lines of, "I havent ever seen you here before. Is
this the first time to the planet?" You say yes, it is, and then ask if
hes heard any rumors a text then appears explaining that the man
tells you one of your friends called and would be calling back. In
short, the man goes from having never seen you before, to having
intimate knowledge of your friendships. This comes from using a database
of generic recorded comments, and then using them to cap both the
greeting and the farewell of any conversation regardless of content.
This is a byproduct of having such an expansive universe; personalized
dialog for each person at every bar would have been quite complex and
hard to pull off. Still, the lack is very noticeable.
Lest you think I didnt like the game, however, let me assure you; it
is very addicting. I instantly fell in love with the atmosphere, the
detail in which each galaxy was crafted, the conveyance of the shear
size of the universe. No science fiction fan could ever play Freelancer
and not connect it in some way to the stories painted by the greats like
Asimov, Clarke, and Simak. Its just not ever expansive, as I originally
thought it tried to be. It does, however, put on a good show of looking
like it.
An experiment demonstrated the
size and apparent life of the universe:
I was
curious to see how far I could travel. I loaded one of the advanced
saves provided by the developers, and immediately found myself lost. I
was in space with a tremendously powered up ship, mighty in my ability
to destroy, and I was as clueless as a newborn baby as to where I was. I
checked the map. There were no jump gates nearby. I was far from even a
marked outpost via regular jet engines, let alone any populated system.
I considered loading a different save. No, I decided. I wanted to know
how big the universe was; here was my chance. The developers wouldnt
have just flown to the middle of nowhere and saved for you. There had to
be a way back.
As I pondered, two ships passed. Without even thinking to ask
permission, I selected them and dropped into formation, trailing like a
ghost for several miles through a thick ethereal fog that limited my
sensor visibility and left me blind. After about a minute or so, we came
to our destination; a space anomaly, about the size of a large human
built jump gate, glowing pink, yellow, and blue. More importantly, it
was in a state of flux. Large, then small; twisted one way, then the
other, like little pixie fairies dancing in a ring. I watched as the
other ships vanished into the heart of what I could only think of as
dangerous. "What the hell", I thought, and powered my engines on full,
aiming towards its center. "Its only someone elses save".
But on
the rest of the game, it wasnt just someone elses save. On several
occasions I turned back from uncertain situations while playing my own
campaign, marking them down in my mind as a place to return to when I
had better weapons, stronger shields, and a bit more experience with the
unexplored. And there is a great deal to explore. Just as in real life
two people can have completely different experiences, Freelancer
provides a universe in which two people could play separate games for
hours (with the exception of the single player missions), and never even
trespass into each others space.
Simply put, Freelancer is an extraordinary and unique universe; a
playground for the explorer, a market for the trader, and an arena for
the warrior. While it is not a game of unlimited possibility, as I had
hoped, it is a game that is exceedingly well crafted, carefully built,
and very worthy of our attention, praise, and admiration. With both
gameplay and story that are equally addictive, you can expect Freelancer
to devour your hours of free time, providing its players with a
successful and exciting romp in a living and breathing alternative
universe. I find myself drawn to play Freelancer late at night when I
should be retiring to bed, or writing additional reviews, or upping my
score on Xbox LIVE instead. That, in the end, is the mark of a good
game.
Aaron Stanton (03/23/2003) |
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Snapshot
Ups:
Exceptionally large and well-crafted universe; a true science
fictionfeel to its plot that unfolds much like a traditional mystery;
addictive trading, combat, and gameplay.
Downs:
The storyline, unlike the universe, does not
branch; odd dialogue; sometimes steep difficulty curve.
Platform:
PC
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