[Mobius]

Yep, you didn't specify it, that's why I had to explain.

[terran_emperor]

Maybe i should have specified...I knew what i was talking about

[Droid803]

Not the ones i played. Untill recently, i was limited to consols - you cant edit Colony Wars Trilogy, Battle Engine Aquilla, Dropship UPF or 90%of the rest of the games i own. The only 2 games that i own that were anythinh near editable were Worms and Worms Armageddon

Funny thing that I've managed to mod 80-90% of the games I own. Probably because I shun consoles for being unmoddable.

[Colonol Dekker]

Wing commander was the best space-sim ever. Origin cocked up when they killed off the Kilrathi, revised Blair, killed off Tolwyn and removed conversation choices. That's why they went bust

[terran_emperor]

I actually agree with most of Mobius' original points

In fact all the other fighter sims i own had better characters than the FS games with one exception:

Colony Wars 1 - It had only 3 noteworthy characters
*The Father - only apears in one cutscene and mentioned in half-a-dozen others. According to the official website, the Father and the General from Red Sun are the same character...
*The Tzar - never seen ever.
*The Narrator - Never seen - implied to be the player character

[General Battuta]

The entire point of FS2's lack of characters is to reinforce the feeling that the player is just a cog in the war machine. V even said as much. Combined with the high wingman casualty rate, it creates this bleak, clinical feel -- as if you, the player, sit down in the ready room before every mission and see only strangers, then fly missions to protect warships that will be sacrificed in an instant by Command if the tactical situation demands it.

Besides, the ships themselves almost become characters.

[Admiral_Stones]

Has anyone made real bombers?

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTTB_Armageddon 

[Al Tarket]

sorry i cant vote on this poll, their either bias to one side or the other, i don't see a middle choice. however if i had to give my view, the jury is still out on freespace 2 as this new game Dark horizon is looming, once that is done i will give my view.

in war time choices have to be made that never sit too well with either one side or the other, to say it's bleak for the sake of choice is irrelevant you have no choice when your on the battlefield, nor can you quit when you signed on for the armed forces in the first place to do so would only dwindle numbers when it came to a critical moment that could either swing the war in yours or against your favor. and thats what i like about this game, i dont focus on what anyone wants, i just focus on finding a weakness in the enemy and exploit it, like you should be doing .

[General Battuta]

Uh, what? Can you clarify your general statement and whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with something in particular?

[Al Tarket]

how can i clarify anything without any real oppositon to the game? thats only going to come in the form of this new game and without any opposition i can not make a determination. but if you want my opinion of fs2, i can do that.

[lostllama]

I tend to agree with Colonel Dekker about the lack of immersion. Although I wasn't expecting anything like you see in Wing Commander, I found the  cold feel of the briefings just added to the lack of atmosphere. Remember the first mission of FS1 in which the guy briefing you mentions a Lt. Harbison as being your wingman? And the banter that follows in the mission? I would've liked to have heard more like that throughout both games.

I also think that because you don't take on the role of a character with any depth (e.g. Blair in WC or Ace Azzameen in X-Wing: Alliance) that also means less immersion. But I don't think it's always necessary to have the player take on the role of a character with some background behind him/her to make it feel more "real." BtRL is a step in the right direction with the pilot chatter and the briefings. 

I could go on about the ship speed, unrealistic collision damage, lack of Newtonian space physics, the plot and the FS universe's inconsistencies between FS1 and 2 blah blah blah but I won't as I'm sure it's been mentioned here already. FS just has something going for it that still makes me play it today. I do get the feeling though that I might see a new space combat sim that'll eclipse it and make me forget about FS altogether (The Tomorrow War, X3: Terran Conflict or whatever it's called...). I hope not though.

[Fenrir]

I always found FS to be pretty immersive even though your character is sort of ambiguous. I half suppose that it doesn't seem "immersive" to many now because they've been playing it for the past 10 years and have been busily dissecting every aspect of it in the meantime. <_<

[General Battuta]

I tend to agree with Colonel Dekker about the lack of immersion. Although I wasn't expecting anything like you see in Wing Commander, I found the  cold feel of the briefings just added to the lack of atmosphere. Remember the first mission of FS1 in which the guy briefing you mentions a Lt. Harbison as being your wingman? And the banter that follows in the mission? I would've liked to have heard more like that throughout both games.

I also think that because you don't take on the role of a character with any depth (e.g. Blair in WC or Ace Azzameen in X-Wing: Alliance) that also means less immersion. But I don't think it's always necessary to have the player take on the role of a character with some background behind him/her to make it feel more "real." BtRL is a step in the right direction with the pilot chatter and the briefings. 

I could go on about the ship speed, unrealistic collision damage, lack of Newtonian space physics, the plot and the FS universe's inconsistencies between FS1 and 2 blah blah blah but I won't as I'm sure it's been mentioned here already. FS just has something going for it that still makes me play it today. I do get the feeling though that I might see a new space combat sim that'll eclipse it and make me forget about FS altogether (The Tomorrow War, X3: Terran Conflict or whatever it's called...). I hope not though.

I will say that I found the cold atmosphere of the briefings to be one of the most atmospheric and immersive things about the game -- so perhaps it's a matter of perception and taste! Even the art design contributed to that feeling.

Are you sure it's not that very atmosphere which provides the 'something going for it' you describe? Or perhaps it's the game's level of polish?

[lostllama]

I always found FS to be pretty immersive even though your character is sort of ambiguous. I half suppose that it doesn't seem "immersive" to many now because they've been playing it for the past 10 years and have been busily dissecting every aspect of it in the meantime. <_<

I will say that I found the cold atmosphere of the briefings to be one of the most atmospheric and immersive things about the game -- so perhaps it's a matter of perception and taste! Even the art design contributed to that feeling.

Are you sure it's not that very atmosphere which provides the 'something going for it' you describe? Or perhaps it's the game's level of polish?

Yeah I should've said that it isn't totally lacking in immersion. Maybe just lacking a bit of that human touch is all I meant. The desperation of the situation, especially in the later FS2 missions definitetly added atmosphere for me. Hmm yeah you may have a point there about the cold atmosphere providing something.

But the wingmen are very faceless, not to say nameless (well, apart from Snipes for one) and just seem to die without anyone batting an eyelid - even if the mission was successful there's no mention in the debriefings about the cost in human life involved when most of your flight or squadron gets splashed - it would have added more character if the debriefs mentioned that sort of thing (or maybe command just isn't meant to care about that stuff ). I suppose it's because the FS story experience is plot-based and not character-based, at the end of the day.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, I think it's in part because no one cares. The only times human deaths are really mentioned are when warships or transports go down.

Fighter pilots appear to be, in the greater scheme of things, expendable. Informed on a need-to-know basis and discarded as pawns, even when the game doesn't make sense.

[terran_emperor]

Well the lack of proper characters in the main campaign is why i prefer Homesick, Blue Planet and Derelict. They have some good charaters, especially Leftenant "Duct-tape" Macky

[Androgeos Exeunt]

* Androgeos Exeunt has voted.

Whatever anyone says, FreeSpace 2 is not perfect. It has a good number of errors in it, in particular the briefing and debriefing texts. The Colossus died in a not-so-glorious way, there aren't enough missions focusing on stealth ships, I find myself flying Terran bombers most of the time, and there's only one campaign. There's no point in having a Campaign List if most people hardly touch FRED to do a campaign in retail FS2.

FreeSpace 2 is a great game, no doubt, but it has too many errors for me to ignore, so I've voted accordingly.

[eliex]

Freespace retail is a great game, but it isn't a kind of game that you want to play over and over again, for the average casual gamer, because the campaign does have some things to improve, like ( according to a friend who I tried unsuccessfully to play Fs2Open )

 Only 3 types of missions
- Assault
- Defend a convoy for 10 mins <  >
- SOC missions

 The retail campaign according to my friend was so boring that he quit Fs2open totally after the Endgame.

[lostllama]

Well he may have a point there. The retail campaign involves repeatedly blowing stuff up;FS is a bit like an FPS but in space after all. But with FRED the possibilities for making more interesting missions are there.

[Fenrir]

Of course there are also those to whom FreeSpace simply doesn't appeal. Maybe he was one of them.