When I heard about this, I was scared.
I should have expected that it would happen eventually, with Interplay dying and all. They sold Fallout after all, why wouldn't they sell Freespace? And like when they sold Fallout to Bethesda, I was scared at the thought of Freespace going to Derek Smart. I was scared that the result would be an awful, terrible game, something that would overshadow the greatness of the name. That's how I felt about Fallout, and the same applied to Freespace.
But it's more than that. When I read the words "you will regret this" aimed at us, from the person who was going to buy and make a new Freespace, I went from scared to angry, as I'm sure many of us did. How dare he! In that moment, I wanted to go to war, I still do. I want to destroy his hopes for his game, make it so no one will want to buy it. I want to put pop up and banner ads to use to stop his ambitions, or make them worthless. I so wanted to do it that it burns just under the surface to the point of EXPLODING! And then a thought came to me:
I want to destroy Freespace 3.
I've been part of the Freespace community since just after the game came out, just after I beat Freespace 2. That was, what, six, seven years ago? Longer perhaps, it's hard to say any more. After beating the game, watching the ending scroll by, there's only one thing I, and everyone else, ever wanted:
Freespace 3.
A sequel, to fill in all the missing information, to finish the story at long last, to give us the answers we've been waiting for. And we waited, and waited, and waited. I think that a few years ago, when the vbb was originally shut down, I think that if this had come up then, even with Derek Smart doing, we would have welcomed it. We would have fallen at his feet and thanked him for making Freespace 3, perhaps even worshiped him for it. But that was then, now I want to destroy Freespace 3. Why?
When Volition closed its boards, I think we all decided that there would be no Freespace 3. Intellectually, in our minds, we realized that it was never going to happen. Our hearts thought something else, and held on to the hope that it would. But eventually, the idea made its way down, and we all but stopped hoping for it, because it wasn't going to happen. And then the source code was released.
The Source Code Project began, initially, as a way to fix the small problems in the original game, I believe. Then add a few of the neater ideas that had been mulled over in the various discussions of what should be in Freespace 3. Today, the code has been added to, reworked and rewritten to the point that maybe half of it would be recognizable to the original programmers.
Meanwhile, the various campaigns and mod projects got underway. A couple dozen or more have started, all building on ideas, on storylines, on what we wanted in Freespace 3. Then there are the histories (something I'm proud of) and the examinations, the questions, our answers, the jokes, the gags, the renders, and more. All of that was put towards filling the hole left by Freespace 3, taking the bits and pieces and making everything we each, individually, wanted to see in Freespace 3.
Now we have things like Ferrium, a new engine for, what else, Freespace 3. It's why it's being build, even if Kazan and the others say otherwise. A new engine for a game that will never exist, with all the ships, and missions, and mods, and campaigns and weapons and species and whatnot there waiting, for nothing.
And as I thought about all this, I realized why I wanted to destroy Derek Smart's Freespace 3: I don't need it. We don't need it. Not anymore.
Look at all we have accomplished on our own, using only two games, an expansion pack, some notes and some quotes. This forum, and all the other sites and forums, created something we all longed for, but never got. We don't need Freespace 3, because we already made it.
There's no campaign, no mission pack, no mod called Freespace 3, of course, but all the pieces, all the elements are there. In the last few years, we've done more with what little we were given than anyone has ever done with anything I can think of. Even Half Life, king of mod packs, had nothing built for it compared to what we've made for Freespace. We not only kept it alive, we invigorated it, made it bigger and stronger than it could have been even if Volition had made Freespace 3. We not only created Freespace 3, but we went beyond it. I'll even be so bold to suggest that we're now on Freespace 5 or 6 now.
And then Derek Smart comes in, say's he'll make "Freespace 3" and we're all terrible people (not in so many words, of course, but he implies it). Why? Because he already knows what I've just told you, we've moved past him. His plans, his ideas, are little more than just another mod project, one we've done countless times. He's angry about that, the thought that this game, which he thought was abandoned, still has an active, intelligent, and skilled community creating for it. He wants it for himself, alone, but he can't stop us, we've done too much, and he'll never be able to top all that we have done.
So he'll own the license, good for him. Interplay owned it and it didn't do them much good, and it likely won't do him any good either. Let him make his game, because in the end we'll know the truth. It's not Freespace 3, we made that already. And he'll yell and scream and cry and threaten, but he's done that before to more people than can be counted. We know the truth, and one day, perhaps, he'll accept it.
We aren't just the fans of Freespace, not just mission designers and modelers, coders and artists. We are Freespace, and that's something no code of law can change.
