FREESPACE 2
We reinstall the iconic space combat sim. Do its interstellar adventures hold up in 2021? We try to stay unexploded long enough to find out.
Released in 1999, Freespace 2 is generally regarded as one of the best space sims ever made. But it’s worth bearing in mind that, for a long time, Freespace 2 didn’t have much competition. In the 2000s, space sims almost disappeared completely, with only a handful of notable titles like Freelancer, X3, and EVE Online appearing through that decade. Freespace 2 was the last of the great ’90s space sims, and there appeared to be little new coming out that could challenge it.
Since 2010, however, the situation has changed. Space sims have seen a welcome resurgence, with major projects like Elite Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, and Star Wars: Squadrons careening out of hyperspace alongside a swarm of indie titles like Evochron Mercenary, Everspace, and House of the Dying Sun. Can a 20-year-old space combat simulator really hack it against these newer, glossier, more powerful vessels?
I don’t want to spoil the ending, but the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Not only is Freespace 2 still fantastic, it remains astonishingly fresh.
Playing Freespace 2 does initially come with a side of narrative whiplash, especially if you haven’t played the first game—the somewhat awkwardly titled Descent: Freespace. Set 32 years after The Great War depicted by Descent, Freespace 2 drops you smack into the middle of a brewing conflict between a humanalien coalition named the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance, a rebel human splinter-faction called the Neo-Terran Front, and another, much more dangerous alien faction known as the Shivans—the primary antagonists of the first game.
WTF?
There are more acronyms flying around a Freespace 2 cutscene than in an episode of Line of Duty, though in an age where games tend to guide you by the nose through every plot-point, it’s quite thrilling to be unceremoniously dropped into a briefing littered with military technobabble and names of ships and officers you have no frame of reference for. It makes you feel like a rookie pilot, which at the game’s outset, is exactly what you are.
Frankly though, the why of the fight doesn’t matter much at first. You’ll be too preoccupied grappling with how to fight, while cooing at the tremendous spectacle Freespace 2’ s combat offers. Thanks to a combination of a highly active
modding community and smart creative decisions of the time, Freespace 2 has been exceptionally well preserved. The game only looks noticeably old during its few quiet moments, when you’ve got time to dwell upon the angular spaceships and the painted-on skyboxes.
The moment combat commences, however, Freespace 2 literally explodes with color. The pockmarked black of space is suddenly illuminated with motley bands of laser-fire, golden missile-tracers, and the searing green and blue bars of mighty beam weapons from larger ships like frigates and destroyers. Speaking of explosions, Freespace 2 does those brilliantly too. Damaged ships will trail sparks like clusters of baby stars, before erupting in a bright and soupy fireball. The best moments in Freespace 2 happen when the largest ships go boom, sending out a massive blue halo as they burst into smithereens.
Sound and scale play equally significant roles in making the game’s combat so satisfying. Every weapon in the game’s vast arsenal has a palpable weight behind it, whether it’s the thud of your lasers or the roar
of your cluster Hornet missiles. And while Freespace 2’ s ships may lack the sleek lines and chrome plating of
Elite Dangerous, larger ships like Destroyers and the GTVA’s Colossus are still daunting to approach in your tiny, fragile fighter.
Freespace 2’ s spectacle effectively draws you in, but what keeps you sticking around is the combat simulation itself, as well as the structure Freespace 2 builds around it. The basics of Freespace 2’ s ship combat are familiar stuff. Every ship has six degrees of movement, shields, a targeting and tracking system, and fixtures for various weapons like lasers and missiles. But it’s the nuance with which Freespace 2 represents these systems that makes it so interesting to grapple with.
With targeting, for example, you can cycle through targets as you would in any other space sim. But there are also keyboard shortcuts for specifically targeting hostile ships, friendly ships, the ship currently hovering in your crosshairs, and even specific points on larger ships, like turrets or crucial systems. Similarly, your shields can be managed in a range of different ways. You’re able to shunt shield power to a specific quadrant, or press Q to equalize shield power across your ship. Even movement has multiple shortcuts, letting you instantly max out your throttle, or press M to match the speed of any ship you’ve targeted.
COCKPIT STOP
All this is designed to give you the tools you need to deal with whatever scenario Freespace 2 launches at you. Indeed, the breadth of information you need to retain can be a little daunting, but Freespace 2 mediates your education through several tutorials in the campaign. Even the first few missions are also designed so you can take a backseat if you need to, letting your AI squadmates do most of the work while you learn how to fight effectively.
Inevitably though, there comes a point where sitting back will simply result in your ship being quickly obliterated. Freespace 2 can be seriously challenging. It frequently pits you against seemingly overwhelming odds, often tasking you with protecting a station or a convoy with just a few fighters as an entire fleet of enemy vessels slides out of subspace. There were several missions where either my own hull or that of the vessel I was tasked to protect escaped with only a few hitpoints remaining.
This leads onto where Freespace 2 truly shows its quality—mission structure. Most missions ultimately involve either attacking or defending a target, but Freespace 2 has a remarkable ability to frame this in ways that make missions thrilling. An early mission sees you trying to stop a rebel cruiser before it jumps into subspace, despite it being too far
ahead to intercept. As it escapes, your wingmates grumble that command deliberately allowed the ship to flee, before you’re forced to deal with an ambush by rebel fighters.
DAREDEVILS IN THE DETAILS
As the game goes on, missions become evermore interesting. In the middle of the first act, your faction unlocks a subspace node to a distant nebula. The following mission sees you exploring its purple haze as part of the Suicide Kings—an outfit of daredevil pilots. In the next mission, you return to the nebula to destroy a vast alien ship known as the Ravanna, blind-firing powerful warheads at it while needled by enemy fighters. Freespace 2 also has a knack for mid-mission twists—a signal on the radar revealing a rebel cruiser lost in Shivan space, or a massive allied ship emerging from subspace to turn the tide of battle when all hope seemed lost.
Curiously, some of the game’s best missions are optional. While the campaign is mostly linear, it offers a brief side-story that sees you go undercover as a rebel pilot. These missions are filled with natty twists and turns, such as your co-agent springing an ambush on a rebel convoy without first warning you, forcing you to suddenly fight the wingmen you were flying alongside mere moments ago. In this way, these missions effectively generate an atmosphere of paranoia, where you’re never quite sure what exactly is going to happen, or the extent of the rebels’ knowledge about your true identity.
For the most part, Freespace 2 plays just as well as it did 20 years ago, though there are a few areas where its age is understandably on show. Some of the audio is quite scratchy, particularly cutscenes and briefings. Moreover, the heavyhanded tutorials betray the game’s age. If Freespace 2 was made today, these would be carefully woven into the campaign itself, rather than suddenly pulling you out of the story for a lecture in advanced targeting.
Finally, while Freespace 2’ s plot is enjoyably twisty, its approach to storytelling is rather cold and impersonal, leaving little room for character development. There is a reason for this—the game wants you to buy into its highly militarized fiction, which is why most of the story is told through briefings with gravelly voiced officers talking in sci-fi jargon. This element succeeds, but the game otherwise fails to imbue much personality into its cast, particularly the player character and their wingmates. Ultimately, while individual missions are excitingly structured, the story lacks the same color as the brilliant combat.
One final point. It’s crucial to note that Freespace 2’ s state of preservation is owed largely to the community, which has created a huge range of mods, visual enhancements, and other support tools that ensure the game runs well on modern machines. If you plan to play Freespace 2 yourself, I recommend that you download the Freespace Open Installer. This includes support for higher resolutions alongside a whole bunch of other inbuilt mods like better quality cutscenes. You’ll also need to download Java and a separate Windows executable to get it running, but it’s worth the effort.
Freespace 2 deserves its reputation as one of the finest space sims around, remaining every bit as thrilling and elegantly crafted as it was back in 1999. Having not played it in years, I wasn’t prepared for how fresh, immediate, and exciting the experience is, which is a testament to Volition’s talent as a studio, and a fine demonstration of how great design can withstand the passage of time.
AS THE GAME GOES ON, MISSIONS BECOME EVERMORE INTERESTING