[TurboNed]

Originally posted by the Slammer

(in my opinion, the last really good Star Wars game was TIE Fighter)

Well, actually, LucasArts is pulling themselves out of their slump.  Jedi Knight II rocked (not as good as the...errr.....original?  Not as good as Dark Forces 2, but a very good game nontheless.  They've also made some fantastic adventure games.  Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island (okay, that was kinda "nyeah"), and as was already stated, X-Wing Alliance wasn't bad either.

True, though, TIE Fighter was definitely one of the best games ever.  Ranked slightly...........above Freespace 2 IMHO.  It gets the extra points for being such an awesome game and being so old.  (-:

Originally posted by mikhael

MOST GAMES, I'll grant. Stories don't always end with a tidy, happy ending. I'll direct you to 'The Longest Journey' and 'The Empire Strikes Back', any number of anime and manga, etc. Freespace1 had a great ending, but let's face it, the ending alone doesn't make the game original. Lucas did it years before with ESB. Heck, if you want a closer parallel, the end of Freespace1 was not the 'happily ever after' complete victory you spoke of. In that, Freespace2 was just rehashing the end of Freespace1

Its a great ending, but its just not enough to make the game 'original'. MOST GAMES, I'll grant. Stories don't always end with a tidy, happy ending. I'll direct you to 'The Longest Journey' and 'The Empire Strikes Back', any number of anime and manga, etc. Freespace1 had a great ending, but let's face it, the ending alone doesn't make the game original. Lucas did it years before with ESB. Heck, if you want a closer parallel, the end of Freespace1 was not the 'happily ever after' complete victory you spoke of. In that, Freespace2 was just rehashing the end of Freespace1.

Its a great ending, but its just not enough to make the game 'original'.

Okay, so you had the destruction of Capella figured out 5 missions in advance?  Even if the "game ends in a non-happy way" paradigm (wow, I found a usage for that word...is it correct???) wasn't original, the actual ENDING itself was original.  Not a whole lot of movie/games/whatevers end with the bad guys mysteriously destroying the sun....[announcer voice]find out why in the NEXT INSTALLMENT of FREESPACE![/announcer voice].

Originally posted by PhReAk
Even though the FS1/2 storylines may have been cliched, the method of presentation was what made the stories original.

Heartily agreed.  It was stuff we, as gamers, were not accustomed to seeing in our games.  TIE Fighter was a good game with a great story, but it failed to really suck me into it (took me ~1 year to beat it...but I defeated each and every mission.  Pretty impressive with all those stupid training missions.  ).  X-Wing Alliance took me about a year and a half to beat (neither of those figures is continual playtime - that's just how long it took from the day I bought it until the day I finished it).  Half-Life - one of my favorite games ever took me about a year to finish it.

Freespace?  About 2 weeks.
Freespace2?  Another couple weeks.

Only other games that did that to me?

STVoyager: Elite Force (about 2 weeks)
Jedi Knight 1 & 2 (1 week each)

Those are the games with the immersive, original storylines that suck me in and don't let me go (much to the dismay of my mother).

Oh, and Mikhael...you preordered Rebellion?  You think that's WORSE?!?!  Rebellion at least wasn't completely unplayable due to the stupidity of the guys.  At least I thought the bad part in that one was the micromanagement...which some people can actually find enjoyable.  Force Commander was a game so horribly bad I couldn't even stand to play it with cheats!

And your preordering of Rebellion is nowhere near as bad as a friend of mine....he bought Rebellion off the shelf.  After I told him how bad it was.  While I was standing right next to him, telling him how bad it was.  THAT was bad.  (-:

Okay, I'm signing off for now.
  --TurboNed

[Nico]

Tie Fighter  was great, but it sufferers fom a sydrom common to all the Lucas spacesim games: it's ridiculously hard. Ok, I'm not a hotshot, but still. And this is a huge drawback, for me. I hate games I can't finish w/o using invulnerability

[Sesquipedalian]

My personal favorite ship to fly was the actual TIE Fighter itself.  Just two guns and a speedy little engine.  Shields-schmeilds, nothing improves your piloting skills like flying every mission in a TIE Fighter.  I actually had better kill ratios in it than in the TIE Advanced, I believe.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by PhReAk
Even though the FS1/2 storylines may have been cliched, the method of presentation was what made the stories original.

Actually, the presentation wasn't original. It was standard space sim stuff, with story snippets coming as in-flight radio chatter and a series of very good cutscenes. TIE Fighter did exactly the same thing.

There's not a single thing original about Freespace except that they ended the last game on a down note with a supernova. The supernova-as-cliffhanger was pretty groovy. Other than that? More of the same, but coordinated pretty well.

Turbo Ned, you're right. That's much worse. Your friend should have his computer license taken away.

[ZylonBane]

Sheesh, and I thought *I* was a crank!

Originally posted by mikhael
Freespace2 was just rehashing the end of Freespace1.

False. At the end of FS1, the GTA successfully destroyed the Shivan's most powerful weapon, accidentally sealing off Earth in the process. At the end of FS2, the GTVA intentionally sealed off Capella, since there was no freakin' way they could defeat the armada of Sathanases. And it turned out that the GTVA wasn't even the Shivan's target.

The story was, overall, average. It doesn't come close to Deus Ex

Considering that Freespace is a pure space combat sim, and Deus Ex is a plot-driven role-playing game... you think you could have said anything more screamingly obvious here?

the gameplay in Freespace 1 and 2 carried the day, making up for the shoddy story, lame voice in-mission voice acting

A paragraph ago the story was "average", and now suddenly it's "shoddy"? Trying to dodge around and make yourself a harder target for the troll-snipers? And the voice acting in FS2 is about as good as it gets. They had well-known Hollywood talent doing some of the voices. While Red Faction had exceptionally lame voice acting, Freespace most assuredly does not.

[Shiva Archon]

Personally, I really liked all of the FS2 voice acting, even the persona stuff you hear constantly sounded good.  And all the mission-specific stuff was done exceptionally well too, notably Snipes.

"I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense!"

"Don't kid yourself, we're the ones being hunted pilot."

"Stop laughing there copilot!"

Ahh, good stuff

[mikhael]

I don't know why I bother, but...

Originally posted by ZylonBane
Sheesh, and I thought *I* was a crank!

Yes, you are.

False. At the end of FS1, the GTA successfully destroyed the Shivan's most powerful weapon, accidentally sealing off Earth in the process. At the end of FS2, the GTVA intentionally sealed off Capella, since there was no freakin' way they could defeat the armada of Sathanases. And it turned out that the GTVA wasn't even the Shivan's target.

End of Freespace 1: We don't know who they are, or why they were there, and we fought them. We got away, just barely, losing something precious in the process.
End of Freespace 2: We don't know who they are, or why they were there, and we fought them. We got away, just barely, losing something precious in the process.

Considering that Freespace is a pure space combat sim, and Deus Ex is a plot-driven role-playing game... you think you could have said anything more screamingly obvious here?

Open your eyes and read again. I didn't compare Freespace to Deus Ex. I responded to CP5670 saying that Freespace's story stood up there next to Deus Ex. Your aim is off, pilot.

A paragraph ago the story was "average", and now suddenly it's "shoddy"? Trying to dodge around and make yourself a harder target for the troll-snipers?

You are correct. Please change the former 'average' to the latter 'shoddy' to bring the post completely in line. Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency.

And the voice acting in FS2 is about as good as it gets. They had well-known Hollywood talent doing some of the voices. While Red Faction had exceptionally lame voice acting, Freespace most assuredly does not.

Freespace's celebrity voice acting was confined to cutscenes and briefs. I think if you will go back and read, you will find that I addressed that. That doesn't fix the patheic voice acting in mission (they all sounded bored most of the time, with a few notable exceptions, like 'Dive dive dive' etcetera). Having a Baldwin do an intro voice over doesn't save a game. If I were to look for a game with good voice acting, I'd have to head on over to the Looking Glass Studios collection and point out games like Thief and Thief2 and System Shock2, where the voice actors actually portrayed some emotion and depth.

All in all, as I said, the game is a collection of rehashed components coordinated pretty well to make a pretty good game.

[TurboNed]

Ohhhhh, look.  I'm starting to see two-dimensional geometric figures whose shapes are defined by all points equidestant from some arbitrary point!

It's very pretty....

  --TurboNed

[Setekh]

Originally posted by TurboNed
Ohhhhh, look.  I'm starting to see two-dimensional geometric figures whose shapes are defined by all points equidestant from some arbitrary point!

It's very pretty....

  --TurboNed

?

[NotDefault]

Originally posted by TurboNed
Ohhhhh, look.  I'm starting to see two-dimensional geometric figures whose shapes are defined by all points equidestant from some arbitrary point!

It's very pretty....

  --TurboNed

Like this?

[SIZE=100]O[/SIZE]
[SIZE=100]O[/SIZE]
[SIZE=100]O[/SIZE]

Erm, now on to the actual topic .  I like the voice acting in FS and FS2.  While it may sound a little unemotional, I think that adds to the feel of the games.  Then again, it is emotional sometimes (Oh my god, it's the Lucifer!) when it would contribute to the overall effect.

[the slammer]

I'm gonna agree with Zylon on the voice acting subject.  Sure, the voice actors may have been a bunch of C-list (at best) Hollywood talent, but they got the job done, meaning there was no point in the game where the voice acting reminded me it was a game.

I didn't find that the in-mission actors sounded bored all the time, either.  They sounded just like I expected them to, actually.

[CP5670]

LOL mik, you should know better than to say anything bad about a game on a forum for that game. (I'm not going to argue with you any further here as we all have our likes and dislikes when it comes to these things, but I have gotten more out of FS2 and been more impressed by it overall than any other game in my life)

The voices sounded fine to me though; as slammer said, they never really felt like acting and sounded like a realistic situation, which was what they were supposed to accomplish.

[aldo_14]

Freespace 2 still has the best voice acting of any game I have, IMHO.

And I vastly prefer the sequel over the original, possibly because I got FS2 beforehand.   It just seems to have more drama for me...the mission where you escort 2 Tritons to rendezvous with the Warspite in Gamma Draconis is still one of the most visually atmospheric things I've played......

[TurboNed]

Originally posted by Setekh


?

The conversation was going in circles.  (-:

  --TurboNed

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Setekh

AAggghhh

Have a little thought for the hungover, eh Setekh?

[FSW]

I was actually looking for X-Wing Alliance when I found out that Freespace 2 existed. I already had FS1 and asked myself why I didn't know about FS2.
Both classics.

[Mr. Vega]

The one origional thing that distinguished Freespace 1 & 2 was the interface. Here's a quote from Gamespot:

The customizable interface of Descent: Freespace is outstanding - easily the best yet seen in the genre. The interface was clearly designed to make useful information, such as the status of escorted ships, the direction and the distance of approaching missiles, mission objectives, and the condition of your wingmen, constantly available on your screen. Find some of that information unnecessary or obstructive? Then remove it from the interface entirely, or set it to only appear when there is a change in its status. You can also change the color of the interface and control its relative brightness. Descent: Freespace's interface is among the best I've seen in any game.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Mr. Vega
The one origional thing that distinguished Freespace 1 & 2 was the interface.
 

It's not original (come on? A hud? Original?) but it is the single best HUD ever put together in a game. I dislike some of the elements in it, but what really sets it off is the customizability of it.

[Galemp]

Not to mention the comm menu. Thank God for the comm menu! Now if only the AI were better...

[VW-Dynamo]

Originally posted by venom2506
Tie Fighter  was great, but it sufferers fom a sydrom common to all the Lucas spacesim games: it's ridiculously hard. Ok, I'm not a hotshot, but still. And this is a huge drawback, for me. I hate games I can't finish w/o using invulnerability

X-Wing was hard, but I thought all of the subsequent LucasArts flight sims, including TIE Fighter, were much easier.