Poll Archive

There will be a main storyline that the game will deliver, should you choose to seek it out, but you will just as easily be able to go off on your own. You can be a galactic trader, or a pirate, or just about anything else you might care to be at the helm of a spacecraft. The game world will react to the choices that you make-a dynamic system of supply and demand will govern the profits that you make as a trader, and you might find yourself pursued by bounty hunters if you choose the pirate's lifestyle.

Although the game can be controlled with a joystick, Roberts is really trying to move away from the standard Wing Commander type of gameplay that he actually helped popularize. “The way I look at it,” explained Roberts in an interview with IGNPC, “the interface hasn’t changed [in space combat games] since Wing Commander. Since Wing Commander’s not the easiest game to get into, I wanted to lower that bar of entry for the new player.” To this end, Roberts has put together an interface that allows control of most of the ship’s functions with the mouse. As you move your cursor around the screen, your head also turns to follow, so you see a great deal more of the inside of your ship and the space around it that the locked view of most space combat games. “I think you’ll definitely want to play this game with a mouse rather than a joystick,” said Roberts in summation. Although it takes a little getting used to, the interface actually seems quite functional, and makes targeting enemy craft much easier (you just have to get your cursor over them and pull the trigger).

Unlike Privateer, which forced players (to some degree) to follow a straight storyline, Freelancer has done away with heavy scripting and has instead created a deep world that responds to situations as they happen in the same way it would really occur. Here’s an example. If there’s an obvious trade route between two planets, say an agricultural world that is producing loads of food and a nearby industrial world that is producing a great amount of medicine, then computer controlled trader ships will start moving back and forth between those two worlds seeking to turn a profit. This means that the space traffic that you see as you move from world to world is actually doing something – they’re not just mindless automatons that follow a preset pattern.

From here though, things get much deeper. When several traders start working a route, they will impact the game universe in and of themselves. As more goods get shuttled back and forth, the price of those goods will drop on each of the worlds on the trade route (supply and demand ya know). Further, if a lot of merchant ships start filling up an area that’s not being heavily patrolled by police ships, they’ll almost certainly start attracting pirates who will begin raids on the ships. Once this happens, more than a couple of times, worlds on the trade route will start offering bounties to anyone who can kill off the pirates who are doing the damage. In this way, the game can create logical dynamic missions that have been pre-scripted. While this is all well and good, just keep in mind that if you start attacking merchant ships yourself, the game will respond in the same fashion and sooner or later you’ll be facing some well-armed bounty hunters.

Here is a small excerpt from a latest Freelancer Design Journal which was written by Andre “Stumpo” Garcia, Assistant Designer:

Control: First off, a lot of people seem to have some questions about our interface. And let me tell you, after playing with the mouse I just can’t go back to the Joystick. There is really no way to put it into words other than saying flying a ship is like “Buttah”. Combat is completely different now. The days of flying loops around your enemy are long gone, tactics are the key to success. Dissecting your opponents is the key. Nobody likes limping around with one of their engines blown off =). I can tell you the new interface is like a breath of fresh air.

If you want to read the whole journal click HERE.