If they were still open, Ensemble Studios. They have long experience in creating stable and well played games, Halo Wars wasn't a feather in their cap, but they're still capable.
Uh. You guys are mixing up two distinctive group of companies: publishers (Microsoft, Activision, Electronic Arts, etc) and developers (Digital Anvil, Volition, etc). Occasionally publishers may develop games in-house, but not in this case. Freelancer was made by defunct Digital Anvil who was made of people from Origin Systems (of Wing Commander and Ultima series fame) in 1995 some years after OSI was sold to Electronic Arts. Microsoft was publisher for Freelancer, and if anything they were responsible for pushing the game resulting in many features dropped and game campaign cut smaller.
Quote:I want the people who made Freespace 2 to make the next one. Sadly, I heard they went outta business about 10 years ago.
Freespace series were developed by Volition (formed from Parallax Systems, developers of original Descent 1 and 2) and published by Interplay. It's Interplay who currently holds the legal rights to the series. Volition by all means ain't dead, but it's signed to THQ instead. But it's Interplay is pretty much dead long time, yes.
You can tease yourself as much as you want, but even though Freelancer did well commercially it's the genre itself that is pretty much DEAD. Sure, once in a while some space sim comes up, but that's about it. The genre itself is not attractive and not commercially interesting for those that hold the rights to the series. Besides with game development budgets getting bigger and bigger ask yourself what is better to do for them: Freelancer 2 or keep milking Gears of War? Reality bites.
But regarding "what if" OP scenario, well I'd say put back in people who made Freelancer, add folks from Volition who worked on Freespace series so their minds would make the game epically in terms of scale and story, then best engine programming minds all across the companies around to make the gears running smooth and nice, artists from CCP to create visuals. And that's it. But unfortunately we all know it ain't going to happen, so yeah. :-)
And Treewyrm makes a good point. The age of sci-fi gaming is over. It started mostly due to the Space Race during the Cold War I think because people were all hyped about about the question "What's out there?"
Well, now we know more about space, so interest has gone down drastically. In fact, it was the main reason StarLancer, while being a good game to those who still enjoyed sci-fi games, failed commercially. The majority of the public had lost all interest in space gaming.
During initial development of Freelancer, Digital Anvil tried to make Freelancer like StarLancer (trailers show stuff that looks very reminiscent of StarLancer). In my opinion, I believe Microsoft actually made a wise choice in changing the gameplay of Freelancer after they bought Digital Anvil. The idea of doing anything you wanted, in my opinion, seemed to catch on to the public more than the idea of space, which was why Freelancer became a bigger financial success than StarLancer.
Carlos Rivera: Corsair Brotherhood Pirate - Retired, shifted to Tripoli Shipyard's Research and Development engineering teams Anthony Cameron: Guild Core Bounty Hunter - Killed in Action, committed suicide after being trapped in Omicron Minor following its destruction Juan Ruiz: Outcast Ghost of Razgriz Pirate - Killed in Action, killed by the Sirius Coalition Revolutionary Army during Bretonian piracy raid Michael Winchester: Liberty Security Force Agent - Missing in Action, likely killed during Rheinland espionage mission or trapped in Rheinland Space Eric McCormick: Order Pilot - Retired, shifted to planetside training of new recruits
Microsoft didn't change the gameplay or anything like that. If you have read interviews before the release and then listened to the interviews on bonus DVD you'd probably knew that Freelancer was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the classic Elite and Privateer. Quite frankly I can't even find out where you got that impression it was going to be like Starlancer when in fact it was spoken and written all around effectively the opposite. Pretty much Freelancer was supposed to be a sandbox type of game, inheriting open world structure and free roaming gameplay. It is actually Freelancer became, albeit with a quite limited set of features compared to those they initially wanted to put in there, and mainly that is the difference from what it was intended to be and what actually got released, and hence the reason why it got mixed reviews - because people were promised lot more than came out.
I agree with Treewyrm. Digital Anvil with a few Volition people. CCP might be nice, but for modelers, I'd say we've got a crack team here that would fill that slot nicely. *sigh*
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
I'm pretty sure that Freelancer was suppose to basically be a sand box style game set in a Starlancer like universe, but all that's left of that idea is a few tid bits here and there.
If you look at the early development cockpits, they looked like they worked more or less like SL ones, and I'm pretty sure that Heavy Lifters were meant to work like the Ripper did and I'm sure there are other things I haven't thought of out there.
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