Freelancer

Moby ID: 8565
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Description official descriptions

The war between the Coalition and the Alliance depicted in Starlancer had raged on and the Alliance forces were losing. A final plan was organized to punch through the Coalition attackers and send five colony ships across space to the Sirius Sector. 900 years have passed since then and the Sirius sector has been colonized by the surviving ships, dividing the area between four major nations: Liberty, Rheinland, Kusari and Bretonia. The fifth sleeper ship, Hispania, suffered a malfunction in flight, and is thought lost. In the spacelanes between these nations borders and outside of any specific jurisdiction lie undeveloped solar systems, pirate bases, corporate outposts and the neutral Freeports. One of these Freeports has come under attack and been destroyed by an unknown enemy attack. Survivors of the attack, including a freelancer Edison Trent and his business associate, Lonnigan, are evacuated to Planet Manhattan, capital city of the Liberty nation. Once there Edison hears rumors about military buildups and friction between the Sirius nations. It will be up to Trent to seek employment, rebuild his lost assets and discover the meaning behind these rumors.

Freelancer is a third person or first person space simulator and trading game, much like Elite or Wing Commander: Privateer. Players, taking the role of Edison Trent, will need to visit several locations on each planet in order to trade cargo, buy and repair equipment as well as obtain information. In space, Trent controls his spacecraft from either a first person or third person perspective and is able to use primary and secondary weapons. Destroyed enemy spacecraft often leave behind cargo which can be tractor beamed into the cargo hold.

Freelancer is a plot-driven game that slowly becomes completely open-ended. As such the player (eventually) has the freedom to fly around 150 planets across 40 solar systems looking for profit. As Trent trades cargo and undertakes missions (following an expanding story arc), he will affect the faction status of over 50 different groups (comprising of 3000 NPCs). Faction status will affect their attitudes towards Trent, including interaction planetside and in space.

Spellings

  • 星際遊俠 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 自由枪骑兵 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

177 People (157 developers, 20 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 39 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 93 ratings with 9 reviews)

Such a long wait for this game and all in waste....

The Good
Not much I liked about it - the storyline was pretty good if typical - government abducted by aliens and sinister plot, but I liked it anyhow. Music was up to date also, can not say same about graphics at all times, but they were at least decent....

The Bad
Horrible experience for me. I expected something like Privateer reborn, but instead got more or less shooter, and on top of it - one you dont even require joystick to play with, so it feels like one of the free windows all-mouse games. Missions are way WAY too repetitive, only 3 kind exist - kill someone, destroy ship and capture escape capsule or kill all alltogether. I am talking about the random missions of course, 13 plot missions are fine - but 13 is such short number. People in bars talk in same sentences (and voices) - there is abundance of weapons, but unlike in Privateer where you could just feel difference between shooting laser and tachyon cannons, they feel all same. Even ships are same, with only difference that larger ships are making mouse slightly more clumsy to turn around, creation illusion of bulky ships. Its an Earth and Beyond, stripped down and called Freelancer and just like Earth and Beyond it gets very boring after relatively short time.

The Bottom Line
If you are old Privateer fan like me, dont get this one, better to dig out two old Privateer games or Elite ones, or even X-tension (or what was its name) or at least decent space shooter that doesnt pretend to be Privateer reborn. No hard feelings, Microsoft, but trying appease everyone in crowd never really worked out fine.

Windows · by Marina Shoykhet (6) · 2003

Great game, but too linear and too short...

The Good
The controls for the ships were one of the best parts of this game. To make a real-time space game easily be controlled without a joystick is not a simple task, yet that's exactly what this game does. I love to use a joystick, but this game had great controls without needing the joystick and that really helped. There aren't too many space sims out there that have good controls... and this is one of the top.

Graphics in the game were also very nice, though they could use some work in various areas. The fact that you can fly through a planet's rings is a first (as far as I know) in space games. Usually the rings are part of the background.

The missions themselves were very nicely done as well, though there were too few.

The Bad
The thing I disliked most in the game, and the reason I went from playing constantly to rarely touching the game almost instantly was the ending of the story. The story just stops and leaves you hanging. Perhaps there is meant to be a sequel or an expansion... if so, great! However, the ending of the story could have been handled better.

The game was too linear for what it was supposed to be. Sure, once the "game" ends, it is no longer linear and you can do anything you want. But for the main part of the game, it is very linear. In a game that is supposed to be so open, the game should allow you to start out and act in whatever manner you want and follow that in the story. For example, the advertising on the game says you can be a pirate and prey on unsuspecting ships. That's great.... but until you finish the story, you really can't choose that option. The same for if you want to be a trader... or anything other than a mercenary.

Multiplayer also could use work... Unless the server you are playing on stays running, you always start out at level 1. This makes advancing to high levels difficult unless you're playing on a stable server.

Also, for a game like this, I would expect most things to be destructible. After finishing the story, I wanted to act like a pirate and really go after the big stuff. First target I chose... a pirate base. I easily defeated their fighters (even the wave after wave that just come out of nowhere... which is unrealistic). But the base turns out to be totally invincible. What a let-down. The same goes for all bases and major ships other than mission-based ships. No taking out battleships in the game unless you're in a mission where there are battleships you can take out. Granted, that's not an easy target... but neither are the SDs and SSDs in the TIE Fighter/Xwing series of games and you could take them out if you were good at avoiding being hit.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game to play if you like Space sims. You will love the game until you finish the story and then you'll feel cheated. This game starts out as a great game with great potential, but it really feels like it was supposed to be completed at a certain time and they ran out of time, so they just threw together what was completed and sold it as-is.

Windows · by Riamus (8480) · 2003

Jeu intéressant

The Good
De nombreux systèmes et région avec leur propre politique, une histoire suffisamment intéressante et original et une bande son honnête.

The Bad
Le gameplay "full mouse" est rébarbatif au fil de temps, peu même devenir douloureux et poser problème. Impossible de jouer au gamepad ou au joystick (alors qu'une sortie sur la xBox était prévu !) et sans trop m'étayer sur ces sujets, le commerce est intéressant mais manque d'économie en temps réel (limite d'unité à vendre, stock trop important...) alors que même Elite de 1985 incluait ce concept (!) et les combats sont intéressant mais le ciblage de sub-systems (réacteur, armes...) est rarement utile. L'exploration elle aussi intéressante mais les bonnes trouvailles sont rare. Quand au multijoueurs, le manque de contenu adapté à une jouabilité multijoueurs prolongé le rend chronophage (ont devient puissant trop vite) et seul le PvP garde l'intérêt de ce mode.

The Bottom Line
Malgré que le jeu soit intéressant et pleins de bonnes intentions, il aura fallu des mods développé par la communauté pour le garder encore un minimum actif jusqu'à nos jours. Je recommande particulièrement le mod Discovery qui use du contenu original et non utilisé en plus d'apporter du nouveau contenu parfaitement en raccord avec le jeu de base et le rend beaucoup plus intéressant en solo et en multijoueurs.

Windows · by Saig Omaristos (138) · 2023

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
88 Flak - Awesome Mod! John Doe Apr 21, 2009

Trivia

Intro (Spoiler!)

There's a previous version of the intro video. Alike the final release version, the intro told the story of how the Alliance was losing the war to the Coalition and launched five sleeper ships to the Sirius sector. Unlike the final version, the story continues where the Alliance retreated all the way to Pluto to make their final stand. Just when they were about to engage the Coalition ships, a large alien vessel appeared... and destroyed the Solar System! There was a young Alliance general who survived the destruction and headed to warn the colonists at the Sirius sector... saying that mankind has finally found their real enemy: The Nomads.

For certain reasons this version of intro was changed into the final release.

Mods

If you have issues with how controlled the jumpgates are in relation to the plot or how pirate shields never regenerate or how you never see battleships patrolling the spacelanes... then rejoice! There are player-made mods to address all these issues. New Systems, New Ships... even options to turn off the plot and explore the galaxy like a real freelancer. See related links for mod sites

References

In Freelancer you can talk to many, many people. Most of the time in bars. And all of them have names... sooooo many names had to be invented for all those people... why not take real names from real people, might have thought the designers and gave some people in the bars vip's names like Erin Roberts and Martin Galway. - There is one planet that mimics the movie Planet of the Apes and can be found somewhere in the Fringe system, but beware of the nomads there.

  • Before Freelancer's release, Bargib, aka Christian Koerner, a site admin of Freelancer fansite The Lancers Reactor, requested to be featured in the Freelancer release. He got his wish; the bartender on Planet New Berlin is named Christian Koerner.

Awards

  • E3
    • 1999 - Best of Show
    • 1999 - Best PC Game
    • 1999 - Best Simulation
    • 1999 - Outstanding Achievement in Graphics

Information also contributed by Arvin Chandra, tsukasagoeth, Twilightseer, WildKard and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • Freelancer
    Official Website
  • Lancer's Reactor
    A good source for Star/Freelancer information and a growing collection of player-made MODs, editors and utilities.
  • Project UberLancer
    A Freelancer community wide project to build the ultimate Freelancer mod

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 8565
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Arvin Chandra.

Additional contributors: Rebound Boy, Indra was here, Felix Knoke, Shoddyan, 梦迪 高, Patrick Bregger.

Game added March 4, 2003. Last modified August 7, 2023.