Freespace (was HL2 thread)

[Quarto]

what is everyone else's problem?

...We turned off invul?

Just kidding. I don't know why you found them easy - maybe you're just a much better player (in fact, in my case, it's not even a maybe - you'd have to be pretty lousy indeed to be worse than me ). In any case, I certainly didn't find them easy, and it seems that many others didn't either. Although, to be fair, it's not that those first Shivan missions were terribly difficult to survive - but I certainly didn't find it as easy to kill them as you seem to have.

The only reason Freespace escapes from being that banal is that the Shivans weren't dumbed down. We never beat them, we just escaped by the skin of our teeth both times. It also helps that there's at least some indicator of there being a deeper purpose behind their actions and existence, even if we may never find out now.

Wait, you mean they were out to kill everyone... but for a reason?

I don't think it's quite that simple. In each of these cases, there was undoubtedly a deeper motive. We know, for example, that Privateer 3 and Strike Force would have revealed a bit more about why the Nephilim dropped by for a visit. We know that those aliens in Voyager (which I've never watched a single episode of, so I don't know what I'm talking about ) were dropped due to budget reasons, and so nothing was ever explained about them. Something similar may have been the case with those other aliens you mention. In any case, I don't see any reason to believe that the Shivans had deeper motives than any of these other aliens.

 

[Starman©]

...We turned off invul?

LOL, this is good.

Seriously, like Lynx said, some of the models from freespace2 suck, escpecially the vasudans, the others weren't so bad at all (exception of course). But the game was very unbalanced (again).

After I played the first time, I first figured out how to edit the tables and made some improvements to it, so the game get's more fun.

About the background-graphic, I think there was not much equal in the time it was released which could conquer it, so the graphic was rather good (again, except some really ugly tilling-textures on big ships).

@Lynx : Think about that, and don't compare with the tga-backgrounds we use now, it's 6 years later, in a a time like this bill gates invented 3 new operating-systems (not that they work, but he did )

 

[Lynx]

LOL, this is good.

Seriously, like Lynx said, some of the models from freespace2 suck, escpecially the vasudans, the others weren't so bad at all (exception of course). But the game was very unbalanced (again).

After I played the first time, I first figured out how to edit the tables and made some improvements to it, so the game get's more fun.

About the background-graphic, I think there was not much equal in the time it was released which could conquer it, so the graphic was rather good (again, except some really ugly tilling-textures on big ships).

@Lynx : Think about that, and don't compare with the tga-backgrounds we use now, it's 6 years later, in a a time like this bill gates invented 3 new operating-systems (not that they work, but he did )

Yeah the graphics were kind of mixed, there were good looking ships in FS2, and incredibly ugly looking ones(pain in eyeballs and all). Strangely most of the good looking ones were FS1, while most of the sucky ones were FS2. It looks like FS2 was rushed and nothing more than to rip the money of those people who liked FS1. The quality drop is quite astonishing.

And there was a general rule for the capships - the bigger the uglier. The Colossus, the biggest FS2 ship was the ugliest piece of trash in scifi history. It looked like a car crash. FS2 felt like a dick sizing contest: ORION 2km! LUCIFER 2.8km!! COLOSSUS 6km!!! WE wIN!!! SATHANAS 8km OH NOES!!!!!111 would be appropriate for the game blurb on the back of the box.
What's even stranger that there are several FS mods that go for even bigger ships. I already though that those existing were boring enough, but bigger ones -
That's a receipe for a disaster. Boring no end.

@Starman: Yeah the new tga backgrounds are a huge improvement, but I still prefer starfields and the blackness of space. You'll see it when I finally start work on my pet project.

 

[powell99]

The Shivans in Freespace were scary IMO because in the first missions when you fought them your guns had no effect and they had shields! However They got less scary when you got the Athena Bomber

 

[Quarto]

What's even stranger that there are several FS mods that go for even bigger ships. I already though that those existing were boring enough, but bigger ones -

I'm sure the fans can't beat whatever Volition had planned for FS3 - probably 200 km capships or something like that .

 

[BigsWickDagger]

Interesting thoughts from all of you- on a controversial topic no less. I bought both Freespace games about a year or so ago but haven't tried either one because I decided to replay all of the WC games through instead. Heck, I've never even played Privateer, Armada, or Academy, though I do have the games. I've got to admit that I was looking for a WC fix, something fresh that would run on a modern PC when I decided to plunk down the cash to buy FS and FS2- Tachyon also. I thought, from reading the boxes (Ha) and many reviews, that FS looked pretty decent. I've always wished WC would have had more attention given to capital ship engagements. Maybe I'm just a sucker for eye candy.

I get a feeling of "what could have been" when I read several of these posts- disappointment mainly- "Great idea, weak execution" as a professor of mine used to say. I'm also very familiar with what many people who post in this forum believe FS did to the Sci-Fi combat sim market. It is unfortunate because I would have loved to have been given the opportunity to play another WC game. But, I will give FS a spin one day soon, and I hope to enjoy many of the positive aspects of the games as pointed out by those here who have already played them.

 

[Starman©]

@Starman: Yeah the new tga backgrounds are a huge improvement, but I still prefer starfields and the blackness of space. You'll see it when I finally start work on my pet project.

Does that mean I cannot count on you in my own pet-project ?

(After WC-Saga of course)

 

[Maj.Striker]

"Great idea, weak execution"

Those four words precisely sum up Freespace 1 & 2. The game was playable but could have been so much more.

 

[powell99]

True. I figured out why I liked FS I liked the Big Ships. Just kidding. I liked the fact that it was challenging. Well I am bad at games but still Prophecy was too easy. thats why i liked UE and why I will love Standoff and probably Saga

 

[ZOmegaZ]

Wait, you mean they were out to kill everyone... but for a reason?

More like for a reason that might actually be interesting. 8472 wanted to kill everyone to maintain the purity of their domain, or some crap like that. The Derrivas were never explained at all that I saw. Pretty sure the Thirdspace aliens had no stated motivation, even in the novel, though they MIGHT be related to the Hand in "Legend of the Rangers". The Nephilim might have had potential to be explained more, but they're still lame villians. The Shivans, though, obviously had reasons. They freaking blew up Capella to block our space from theirs, instead of invading again. And they captured Admiral Bosch when he figured out how to communicate with them. There's SOMETHING going on with them, and the hints are enough to make me want to know what. That's what makes them better.

Oh, and Tachyon sucked. Might have been good, but the support was lousy. No patches to fix obvious problems. Very disappointing.

 

[Edfilho]

I had fun with the FS games, and I found them to be very hard, maybe because I was used to the WC style of space dogfighting.

The game didn't have MUCH characterization, but it had a solid engine... And not all gamers seek personality in every game. Maybe combat flight sims are in trouble because of that, but they never have ANY character...

The sudden appearances by Shivan capships were always great, and FS 1 and 2 have the best cap ship battles of any game.

 

[Eder]

The game didn't have MUCH characterization, but it had a solid engine... And not all gamers seek personality in every game. Maybe combat flight sims are in trouble because of that, but they never have ANY character...

Never got too far into Pacific Strike (was that even its name? Origin's WW2 thing), but it seemed to use characters quite a bit. Still just an exception, though.

On a side note, European Air War is my favorite flight sim mainly due to its style - it didn't have any characters, but it had a lot of atmosphere.

 

[BigsWickDagger]

There are two new boxed "Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition" copies of FS2 being offered on Amazon.com for $150.00 each. Wow- I never thought the price for it would rival Kilrathi Saga's. I think I payed $50 or so for mine last year. I should have bought ten!

 

[cff]

Amazon is insane at times. There are people offering (English) books or games for 150 Euros that ARE IN PRINT in the USA for $20...

 

[criticalmass]

Now, how often do we want to repeat it again... - but let me do it in my own words: FS had great technology in presenting an action-based game experience, but no emotional capacity, no narrative structure to draw the player in.

Why? I can only guess, but a good reason may be that companies have been looking more at technological skills of their staff, and less toward storyteller talents. It seems to me that if somebody is able to code a branching mission tree, he is viewed as God's gift to interactive plot development.
What both games and their successors (WCP & FS) lack is a good writer. Both plots look to me as if the lead programmer has watched a couple of sci-fi flicks in his spare time, and concluded that he can do the same.

We had the Starship Troopers reference once before, and that's the prime example for the whole deterioration of the "scary bug-enemy"-idea: One guy writes a great, scary, deep book. Another guy only reads half the book and understands probably one tenth of it, but makes a very expensive movie out of it that everybody goes to see because of the F/X. Ten game developers see the movie, grasp the idea and run off to make scary bug enemy games, which are all botched because they need to be sold at a T rating - so all the scariness, the deeper philosophy and the idea of individuality vs. hive brain needs to go.

The movie industry slowly understands that quality is not technology, after some great and funny disasters over an amazingly long stretch of time (starting with Tron, probably ending with Final Fantasy-The Spirits Within). I wonder how long it takes for the gaming industry to get the same impression.

 

[Death]

Starship Troopers

We had the Starship Troopers reference once before, and that's the prime example for the whole deterioration of the "scary bug-enemy"-idea: One guy writes a great, scary, deep book. Another guy only reads half the book and understands probably one tenth of it, but makes a very expensive movie out of it that everybody goes to see because of the F/X.

Actually, your estimate on how much of the book was read is rather optimistic. Verhoeven said, in an interview afterwards, that he hadn't even read the book before making the movie.

Also, the movie-making process for it had already started before it became SSTM (to differentiate it from the book, which BTW really wasn't scary, and the aliens in it were almost background characters), with the working title of "Bug Hunt". Someone got a wild hair up their ass to find a name to license, and SST was noticed. The film was then retooled to take some of the names and general settings and shoehorn them into the existing story.

The rest is history. Or infamy, depending on your viewpoint.

 

[Lynx]

Does that mean I cannot count on you in my own pet-project ?

(After WC-Saga of course)

Meh, modelling and texturing are what I'm here for, I think I can shave of enough time for that (unless the sun explodes or something)

On the big capship issiue:

Here's an anecdote: Inferno, a mod has a 20 km long capship...I don't know if it's supposed to go belly-up in the mod or not, but if it dies, the model will take about 20 minutes to explode(In the FS engine it depends on the ships size, bigger ships have smaller explosions all over them destroying some turrets, etc befor the big boom which is calculated through the ships radius on the X-Axis). So it'll feel like WCP.
Has anyone sticked around long enough near a dead capship in WCP. Maybe after some hours, they finally blow up.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

We had the Starship Troopers reference once before, and that's the prime example for the whole deterioration of the "scary bug-enemy"-idea: One guy writes a great, scary, deep book. Another guy only reads half the book and understands probably one tenth of it, but makes a very expensive movie out of it that everybody goes to see because of the F/X.

I disagree -- Starship Troopers is a very intelligent movie. It doesn't make exactly the same point as the book, but it's certainly not the mindless set of action sequences that the internet likes to consider it.

We have a thousand Vietnam movies where we follow our draftee into war, he sees how terrible it is and then starts spouting poetry about his revalation. Starship Troopers is the same pattern: we follow our character into war, we see how terrible it is but the character *never learns anything*. The audience sees why that is -- he lives in a world full of government propaganda, 'personal' emotional issues and so forth. When he starts to break at the end, they promote him and he's following orders again. It's a much better commentary on the nature of war and the reasons it goes on regardless than other movies that try to do the same thing in an "actual" setting.

It's probably my favorite "anti-war" movie -- because it's the most realistic.

(Also, come on people, a thread about Freespace 2? The only things separating this from HLP are the fact that we can keep our server up for more than an hour at a time and the fact that we're not selling your personal information to the Russians.)

 

[criticalmass]

Well, for taking the risk of having hijacked the thread into SST, I still feel the obligation to answer - but I'll try to be short:

@Death: You're right, it's actually worse than I thought. I only read the book (which, in its anti-democratic, sometimes racist, somtimes militarist message I thought to be very scary) and watched the movie without knowledge of the background.

@LOAF: SST may be an intelligent movie, if it would have chosen another name. In its present condition (and I watched it only the day before yesterday), it is a very good ant-war movie, and a very bad book adaptation.

Just as FS might have been a very good game, if the publisher would have chosen to release it as "X-Com - Interceptor2".
...well, but that doesn't quite save the thread from slipping, I know. To point again: Great technology with crappy story doesn't result in great game. Maybe in a great, deeply moving and haunting anti-game...

 

[Delance]

As far as metaphors go, it's assumed the bugs represent collectivst states. Since the books was ritten on the 50's, it can be either about WW2 japanese or cold war soviets or chinese. Considering the bizarre remarks on the Robocop DVD, it's amazing the movie was not about peaceful socialist ants being attacked by evil capitalist humans. Make it's a good thing they didn't actually follow the book.

And the result is not that much anti-war, since peace isn't given as a reasonable option. It seems to be more against that sort of state than the war itself.