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Never get out of the ship

In Activision's car combat game I-76, one of the oft-repeated rules was "never get out of the car". This was mainly because the game engine wasn't built for anything but driving around in your car. Too bad Digital Anvil didn't take this advice to heart, because Freelancer seriously stumbles when it comes in from outer space.

If you lived here, you'd be home already

Where'd you get the funny hat?

Tradelane arrival

It's obvious that a lot of resources were spent on "getting out the ship". There's unique artwork for a lot of the planetside locations and space stations, which are presented as non-interactive 2D pictures, some of which can be viewed from different angles. There is an elaborate character animation system, complete with detailed facial expressions and lip syncing. There's a dynamic conversation system that required a lot of voice work and some pretty fancy branching structures for all the options it can handle. There are some complex cutscenes that tell the single player story in a cinematic fashion. And, truth be told, Freelancer doesn’t need any of it.

The planetside artwork is ultimately annoying busywork. At first, it adds a nice bit of flavor to see the rain on New London, the crags of Malta, or the snowy mountains on Denver. But when all you want to do is get a mission or sell a load of luxury goods, you have to click through a few too many screens, sometimes even frantically slapping the escape key to avoid sitting through another stilted conversation between two creepy marionette character models in a bar that's about as lively as a senior center rec room. No thanks. Freelancer would have been better served with the simple menu system Elite used when you docked with a space station. It would have also been more consistent with the feeling of piloting your ship by popping a few screens open and shut. Instead, you're taken out of the rest of the game and shunted through something that looks like it was created for one of Sierra's Space Quest titles.

Multiplayer dual

Blue planet, purple space

Ice-stroids

Unfortunately, the single player game relies heavily on these devices to tell a story that gets increasingly clichéd as it goes along. One of the best things about the story is that it's fairly short and when it's over, it leaves you to your own devices to keep playing and exploring. It's almost like Freelancer is just getting warmed up by the time Mission Thirteen comes to its conclusion.

A-trading we will go

This is also where the multiplayer game comes to the rescue. Sort of. Here is where you get the best and worst of Freelancer in nutshell. On one hand, all the freedom the game affords is dropped in your lap. Go anywhere, earn money to buy any ship, fight anyone, trade anything. Group with other players and take missions for some low stakes Diablo-esque multiplayer action combat. Band into formations and make risky trade runs where you stand to lose all your hard-earned money. There's nothing else out there that offers Freelancer’s free-form multiplayer gaming in space.

Space race

Eat this, Toby Lisowski

Take that, Bobby Elders

But on the other hand, as a multiplayer game, there's no storyline to cover for some of Freelancer's shortcomings: the unchanging universe, the superficial faction system, the lack of options for ship upgrades, the meager weapon variety, the homogenous missions, the limited multiplayer interaction, the utterly static economy, and the poorly thought-out trading system. In some important ways, Freelancer feels sadly underdone. These are all substantial shortcoming that you might not notice in the rosy glow of those first few hours of 'hey, look how well it turned out!'. But the longer you play, the more likely you are to notice how much better Freelancer could have been. There are so many ways this very good game falls aggravatingly short of greatness.