The Lonesome Death of FreeLancer 2 (December 5, 2007)

Pistol reports that a neat site called Such Things That Never Was has run an article about the long-cancelled FreeLancer 2 project. Development on FL2 went on for quite a while, and included several Wing Commander veterans. We actually get regular e-mails asking for information about this game, thanks to what we thought was an obvious April Fools joke update. They say:

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Original update published on December 5, 2007

FL is a sad story - I really feel that if it had been an Xbox title to start out with we'd be drinking FreeLancer-branded disgusting-flavored Mountain Dew today.

I don't really know what these screenshots are - the whole article is part of the recent trend of 'look how much inside information I have, aren't I special that I released a tiny hint of it for you?' in video game reporting... which kind of sucks.

That said, I'm absolutely sure there *was* an early version of the game - it was in development for a *long* time! You usually have 'something' pretty early in the process (which is how I've 'played' Privateer Online...)

The color balance was excellent!

(For those who don't know the color balance story - back in 2003 (2002?) Microsoft invited a bunch of StarLancer fans and me to come preview FreeLancer in Austin. Flew us down, gave us the royal treatment complete with a Texas BBQ and a pretty girl to show us around (... the city I'd lived in for years) - heck of a show... and then they asked us to review the beta for our sites.

I enjoyed the heck out of it, so I wrote a glowing review full of all the beautiful language you've come to expect from CIC updates that I actually think about... and one thing I hammered home was how *pretty* it was. Not only was it colorful, but the colors were balanced well and it did a good job of making different parts of space feel unique (as opposed to Prophecy which just was BRIGHT THIS COLOR and BRIGHT THAT COLOR depending on where you were.)

So, the weeks and months roll by and then Microsoft sends out a PR package to stores... including a huge page of quotes from all the magazines. Freelancer is the best thing since sliced bread, PC Gamer, FreeLancer cured my broken leg, CGW, etc. And right in the middle was a quote from my review saying only that Freelancer 'had good color balance' - Ben Lesnick, WCNews.com.

(Truth be told, I spent most of the time I was supposed to be playing the game chatting with a couple of the old Origin vets I'd known from years earlier... I also managed to get my ship stuck inside a space station somehow while everyone else was fighting it out in multiplayer.)

I was never all that happy with the Digital Anvil box covers - none of them approached the quality of most of* the Origin artwork

* - you know who you are, Space Rogue guy.

Well... 'played', anyway. I happened to be visting Origin the exact day that everyone on the second attempt at Privateer Online was fired. The guy who was going to be my guide actually didn't show up for work because he was at Digital Anvil interviewing for a new job... so I sat around in the lobby until a couple of familiar faces passed through. Some were on their way out for got and the others were getting ready to be transferred to Ultima Online or Harry Potter or somesuch... but they very kindly showed me around the Wing Commander offices for the last time. I saw some concept art, some mockups for the flight part of the game (using Vision!) and I wandered around in a partially textured environment on the ground for a bit. I don't think any of us realized at the time that it meant Wing Commander was over for another half a decade - but the atmosphere was still grim, with the layoffs, and I can honestly say that the development group was gracious to the last.

I do know that the FreeLancer 2 script was written - at least in part by Adam Foshko, who did the first game (and ran the show on Wing Commander for quite a while.)

Well, you can ask...

No, I don't think it's any kind of secret - we've just kept in contract with a lot of the old Wing Commander developers, many of whom went on to work with Digital Anvil while it was around.

I personally don't have a copy, but I'm sure it's preserved somewhere... wait for the FreeLancer community to mature a little and then let them go searching for it.