Theres no sneaking up on people, no flanking around shit, no clever use of terrain to force an engagement. Its a 'Keep the target in the reticle as bullets fly up from behind you' sim. That's really the gameplay of the space sim. Hence most space gameplay devolves into jousting or turning matches, then press R and turn towards the next target. Their combat is terrible, as it must be, because its space, and space is an incredibly uninteresting tactical environment, because the thing that defines space is the complete lack of anything. Really sit back and examine most space shooters. The genre lost the fanbase of 'I just want an action oriented 3d and dgaf about space' that was pulling up its numbers, and developers who were making space games folded. Then computers got powerful enough to really do FPSs properly, and Half Life showed everyone the true possibilities of the genre, and that was the end of the space games. But space and flight sims, lacking any real notion of terrain, could look better and perform better for a fraction of the cost. Once upon a time, people wanted action oriented games, but FPSs were major performance hogs and difficult to make and had some pretty serious tradeoffs no matter what you did. And I say that as a pretty huge space game fan. Imo, basically because the gameplay mostly sucks. I don't understand why there has been so little interest in modern renditions. The game is old as dirt so for cutscenes, don't expect modern quality stuff. Is there much meaning to deduce from Freespace 2? Probably not much, though the final sequence is interesting to think about as are some of the earlier set pieces. The final mission requires an unusual solution to "win" and only if you are paying attention to the game or look it up online will you figure it out. Others people betray you and you have to pay attention to choose sides. Some you lose no matter what and then have to fight to scrape back what you could not gain. It's really the design of the missions that make the second game so enjoyable. The second game is similar, but every plot point twists things around that you are not so sure if anything is achievable. The first game feels like the routine your squad beats the bigger squad sort of deal. Freespace 2 was where they thought more deeply about what such a game could do or portray. Freespace 1 was sort of the tester-ground to show they could make it work. ![]() I think the concept is better in Freespace 2 than Freespace 1.
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