Freelancer (video game)

Players take up the roles of pilots who fly single-seat spacecraft, trading with merchants on space stations and planets, and engaging in combat against other vessels. Starting with a small spacecraft in a star system, the player's character explores the region, opening up new systems for further adventures. Each system provides opportunities to increase the pilot's wealth; aside from taking on jobs to ferry goods and hunting for bounties, the player character can engage in trade. The player character's primary goal in the game is to accumulate money, so as to buy more advanced weaponry and equipment to upgrade his ship. The game is played primarily through "pointing and clicking" with the mouse and a few keyboard commands. This system is also used to control the spacecraft, a breakaway from the traditional use of joysticks for space flight simulators. Observing their spacecraft from the rear, players fly their ships by moving the mouse in the direction they want the vessels to go. Freelancers spacecraft follow simplistic flight dynamics; however, a dash of realism is implemented by allowing the vessels to cut power to their engines and turn to face any direction while drifting along their original path—conservation of momentum. After the pilot docks with a space station or lands on a planet, the screen and its interface change to a rendition of the area he is visiting. The player moves the pilot to different locations and interacts with certain objects, such as reading a bulletin board and talking to other characters, by clicking on their graphical representations. Freelancers economy consists of buying and selling spacecraft, their armaments and components, and commodities. Certain goods are considered contraband in some systems, and they have to be smuggled past police patrols to their buyers. Computer-controlled characters (non-player characters or NPCs) in certain locations on the planets or stations offer quests and jobs. Multiplayer games are hosted on game servers; personal computers that meet the requirements for the game can act as a server. Gameplay is similar to the single-player mode, but is absent of story-driven quests. The server keeps individual records of the players' progress, and they can resume their game on their next log on to this server. A persistent virtual galaxy is thus maintained for them. ==Plot and setting==

The events in Freelancer take place 800 years after those in the video game Starlancer (2000). The Solar System was engulfed in a civil war, fought between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. Facing defeat, the Alliance placed its people in stasis and sent them to the Sirius system, where they settled and transformed the surrounding space (the Sirius sector) into a region of political intrigue and opportunity. The rule of the sector is mostly split among four houses, each named after the sleeper ship that brought them to the system. Each house exhibits the culture of its terrestrial ancestor: Liberty of 1920s United States, Bretonia of Victorian era United Kingdom, Kusari of Shogunate era Japan, and Rheinland of Second Industrial Revolution Germany. Freelancers planetary bodies and space stations lie close to a single plane in each system, although some are above or below this plane and ships can travel out of the plane. and spacecraft can travel from one system to another by passing through jump gates. Within a system, spacecraft can travel in the trade lanes—a series of gates that connect to form a "space highway"—to quickly reach places of interest, such as planets, space stations, and mining operations. Asteroid and debris fields populate some of the systems, Merchant ships ply the trade lanes, carrying cargo from system to system and occasionally coming under attack by pirates. Police and Militaries generally patrol the areas, while larger warships can be found near some hubs. Characters The player takes on the role of Edison Trent, a "mercenary freebooter", in single-player mode. Regardless of Trent's background, the player can play him in different roles, such as being a trader, pirate, or bounty hunter. The story is linear in structure—the player is unable to effect a different storyline—and broken down into stages. Cutscenes inform players of background events and the goals in a stage. Most stages have no time limits for their completion, and players can put the main story on hold while taking on missions (jobs) not crucial to it. and is mysteriously taken away by the LSF. His death is later announced, and Trent is contacted by a thief who reveals that a mystery party destroyed Freeport 7 to get an artifact in the thief's possession. An LSF officer kills the thief, but the officer is shot by Zane in self-defense as she arrives at the scene. Zane and Trent are forced to flee Liberty space, traveling across approximately half of the Freelancer world in their flight. Trent locates xenoarcheology expert Dr. Quintaine to learn more about the artifact. While finding additional materials for their research, they discover the existence of the Nomad alien race, who are the caretakers of an empire that belonged to the previous inhabitants of the Sirius sector, the Dom'Kavash. The Nomads can possess humans and have slowly infiltrated the four Houses in this manner, planning to ignite a civil war to weaken the humans for elimination. Trent joins the Order, a secret organization formed to combat the Nomads, and helps to rescue the Liberty president from the aliens. Quintaine's research reveals the artifact to be a map and the key to the Dom'Kavash's hyper gate—super jump gate—network, which currently acts as the Nomads' source of power. The Order launches an attack on what they believe to be the Nomads' homeworld, aiming to activate the hyper gates and cut off the Nomads from their power supply. The activated gates suck the Nomads to an unknown location, and the Order watches over the gates for their return. With the Nomads' defeat, events return to normal in the Freelancer world. Trent and Zane are granted full pardons by the governments, and Trent is asked by the Order to be their eyes and ears in Liberty space, allowing the player to continue the game without any story elements. ==Development==

In 1997, Chris Roberts began work on a vision he had since he first conceived Wing Commander. He wanted to realize a virtual galaxy, whose systems execute their own programs regardless of the players' presence; cities would be bustling with transports and each world's weather changes on its own time. Commodity prices in each star system would fluctuate, according to the activities of the computer controlled traders, who import and export goods. Roberts envisioned thousands of players simultaneously interacting with and influencing this world through a unique and intuitive user interface never seen before in other games. Each player could pursue a quest set up for their character, and join other players to attempt other missions together without needing to exit the game and start a new mode of play. Artificial intelligence would fly the players' spacecraft, letting them concentrate on combat or other tasks. Roberts intended the cutscenes and gameplay visuals to be of equal quality so players would be unable to distinguish between the two. By the end of 1997, it was officially announced that Freelancer was in the early stages of a two-and-a-half-year development schedule. Two years later, the project was displayed at GameStock, an annual showcase to the mass media of Microsoft's games. The media covered the event, focusing on the features promised for this game. There were concerns about the state of the graphics and uncertainties over the promise of a dynamic economy, but gaming site GameSpot gave Roberts and his company, Digital Anvil, the benefit of their doubts. Initially in 1999, Roberts announced the game would be available on the market by fall 2000. Roberts left the company on completion of the deal, but assumed a creative consultant role on Freelancer until its release. Microsoft instructed Digital Anvil to scale down the ambitions of the project and focus on finishing the game based on what was possible and the team's strengths. and Digital Anvil added all the planned content for the game by October 2002. A beta test with approximately 500 testers was conducted, and was later available online through Yahoo's Game on Demand service. Digital Anvil's role on Freelancer ended on June 6, 2003, with their delivery of a software patch to resolve issues on the server and cheating; the staff were redeployed to other departments in Microsoft. In accordance with their five-year support policy for software, Microsoft stopped supporting the game on April 8, 2008, and shut down their global server in late 2007, which managed the list of multiplayer servers and the connection of players to them. Freelancers soundtrack was released by Sumthing Else Music Works on November 18, 2003. Composed by award-winning composer James Hannigan, music group Visual Music Incorporated, and Digital Anvil's musician and programmer Andrew Sega, it includes a bonus DVD that contains the game's alternative introduction movies, concept art, scripts, and deleted content. Communities of Freelancer players banded together to produce modified versions of the game. Their software modifications included new ships—including big capital ships—for players to fly and new factions for them to join. Certain modifications allowed the players to fly ships of one franchise against another, for example, Star Wars versus Wing Commander. The communities also worked around the loss of the global server, allowing players to host the modified games on their servers and continuing the Freelancer multiple-player online gaming world. ==Reception==

Sales In the United Kingdom, Freelancer sold roughly 20,000 units during the first half of 2003. Kristan Reed of GamesIndustry.biz wrote that these were "not figures that spell H.I.T." Reviews and awards |title=Freelancer (PC: 2003): Reviews |website=Metacritic |url=http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/freelancer |access-date=October 26, 2007 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070922212136/http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/freelancer/ |archive-date=September 22, 2007 }} |last=Weise |first=Matt |title=Freelancer |publisher=GameCritics.com |date=May 8, 2003 |url=http://www.gamecritics.com/review/freelancer/main.php |access-date=November 22, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080106234548/http://www.gamecritics.com/review/freelancer/main.php |archive-date=January 6, 2008 }} |title = Microsoft "Freelancer" Wins the Electronic Entertainment Expo's Best of Show Award |publisher = Microsoft |date = June 10, 1999 |url = http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/jun99/bestofshowpr.mspx |access-date = November 22, 2007 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080122120833/http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/jun99/bestofshowpr.mspx |archive-date = January 22, 2008 }} |last = Butts |first = Steve |title = Game of the Month: March 2003 |work = IGN |publisher = IGN Entertainment |date = March 28, 2003 |url = http://pc.ign.com/articles/391/391429p1.html |access-date = November 23, 2007 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070808003203/http://pc.ign.com/articles/391/391429p1.html |archive-date = 2007-08-08 }} }} Chris Roberts is highly regarded in the field of spaceflight combat simulators due to his successful Wing Commander franchise. Delays in the schedule and Microsoft's take over of Digital Anvil gave rise to speculation that Roberts's most promised feature—the dynamic world—would be cut. The concerns were partially realized; the features, although not cut, were reduced, leaving Freelancer with a virtual world that did not live up to the industry's expectations. It presented a static galaxy, where territories of various factions never change despite the groups' frequent raids and attacks on each other, are so repetitive that they become chores to the reviewers instead. On the story side, reviewers agreed the professional actors, such as Ian Ziering, did a good job in bringing their respective characters to life. The editors of Computer Gaming World nominated Freelancer for their 2003 "Shooter of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Call of Duty. They wrote, "Freelancer dazzled us with its immersive interstellar world, wild combat, and ambitiously open-ended design, but it can't compete with the cinematic spectacle of Europe at war." ==Sequel==

There were reports that Digital Anvil and Microsoft Game Studios worked on a Freelancer sequel called Project Lonestar for the Xbox 360 until Digital Anvil dissolved in 2006. ==References==