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By
George Jones
Genre:
Action
Developer:
Digital Anvil
Publisher:
Microsoft
Target Release Date:
Q4 2001
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1. Freelancer
Chris Roberts Sets His Sights on the Big One
Consider Texas, a state so enamored with the enormous that even Austin, a city very low on the Texas-ometer, buys into the big. Wanting a bigger airport, this city chose not to simply expand its current facilities, but to build an entirely new airport five miles down the road.
This bigger-is-better mentality must be part of what keeps Chris Roberts in Austin. After all, it's a good fit - his favorite games are enormously large, epic, big-splash titles with high production values, envelope-pushing technologies, and a massive sense of scale. Games like Freelancer.
In Freelancer, Roberts is setting his sights on the Holy Grail of computer games: A game with unparalleled visual and cinematic style that is totally and completely open-ended, but also features a compelling central story. And, oh yeah, it should also be fun and accessible to the masses.
Freelancer's tone and visual power are illustrated simply and powerfully. The very first scene Roberts showed us - an overhead view of a bustling space port - emphasized that although this space sim uses plot and gameplay elements that have existed since Elite, Digital Anvil's take on the genre will be something special.
A Flying Start
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The spaceport, from which you assign yourself missions, outfit your ship with new weapons, trade goods, and peel away layers of the story, resembles nothing you've ever seen... in a computer game, at least. The sun sets and rises, ships fly between skyscrapers or landing platforms, and the cities themselves are very stylistically and dramatically represented. More reminiscent of Star Wars than even the LucasArts Star Wars games, this one scene conveys the scope of what Roberts is trying to accomplish here - a detailed, dynamic, living world.
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You begin play as a lowly mercenary, indentured to the House Liberty, the all-American good-guy clan in the game. Getting hooked up with this clan at the start means you'll have plenty of protection in your early missions, at least until the plot gives you the chance to join up with other houses. As part of your indentured servitude, House Liberty supplies you with your first spacecraft - the futuristic equivalent of a 1979 Pinto. It gets the job done, but you're going to be very excited to earn enough money to put yourself into something a bit fancier.
Ooooh, fancy....
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