Is it REALLY a spiritual sequel-ish game to Freelancer?

[naomha]

You can't say that and NOT be that. C'mon. The vids on the store page don't show any story, no VO work, nada. Gameplay looks fine but that's far from being like Freelancer. So, for those that have played THIS GAME and Freelancer, is it so? Really? Are there
1. Lots of ships?
2. Lots of things to put on your ships (weapons, missiles, etc)?
3. Is there a trading/quest system in place?
4. Is there any VO work or is it all written dialogue if anything at all?

I'll be honest, there are not many games in the vein of Freelancer any longer. Been a LONG time since a Freelancer clone came out of the closet anywhere. No, the Everspace games do NOT count either!

[Trainwiz]

The only thing we don't have on that list is VA work, that'll be coming at a later date (IE once the game's money starts coming in and I can contract voice actors).

[humanevil]

vo is the only thing missing. for me it feels like im playing freelancer and i played freelancer like a job for a number of years, so to anser your op...yes.

[Replicators]

It's heavily inspired by freelancer, it is not false advertised at all and trainwiz done a great job expanding on what freelancer was and there is no denial it needs work but he definitely has something going on here. This game is Freelancer Expanded pretty much, and though you can find many mods that have expanded the original freelancer but the things he has done could only be achieved with a new game and i like where it is going.

[naomha]

Originally posted by humanevil:

vo is the only thing missing. for me it feels like im playing freelancer and i played freelancer like a job for a number of years, so to anser your op...yes.

Originally posted by Replicators:

It's heavily inspired by freelancer, it is not false advertised at all and trainwiz done a great job expanding on what freelancer was and there is no denial it needs work but he definitely has something going on here. This game is Freelancer Expanded pretty much, and though you can find many mods that have expanded the original freelancer but the things he has done could only be achieved with a new game and i like where it is going.

Awesome. Thanks for your input! Will def be picking this up at some point then. I also played Freelancer like it was my job for a LOOOOONG time. Hey, it was and still is awesome.

[LComeno]

I've been online since 1993 and I still play FreeLancer. I have Alpha and Beta tested upcoming space games for their Devs with 2 friends many times over the years. One of those 2 guys is HumanEvil who posted above. Great guy and if he says it's good, then it is. :) I just picked the demo up and only because I saw my two friends have hours and hours in it. Time to join them, even though I normally don't touch anything multiplayer.

[Meemai]

I have been playing Freelancer for many years. And I can say, out of many many other space games I have played, this one resembles the original Freelancer's feel the most.

Its art and aesthetics lean more towards an space-fantasy theme rather than Freelancer's pure sci-fi vibes. But the way the game and its ships handle, the way you set up your ships, etc, it just has a very pure "Freelancer" vibe to it.

To be honest, from what I could try so far, I can say this game made me feel as if I would be playing Freelancer again for the first time. Similar gameplay and vibes, but brand new universe to explore.

That is the best way I can describe it.

[naomha]

Originally posted by Meemai:

I have been playing Freelancer for many years. And I can say, out of many many other space games I have played, this one resembles the original Freelancer's feel the most.

Its art and aesthetics lean more towards an space-fantasy theme rather than Freelancer's pure sci-fi vibes. But the way the way the game and its ships handle, the way you set up your ships, etc, it just has a very pure "Freelancer" vibe to it.

To be honest, from what I could try so far, I can say this game made me feel as if I would be playing Freelancer again for the first time. Similar gameplay and vibes, but brand new universe to explore.

That is the best way I can describe it.

That's awesome. Thank you!

[Dave Johnson]

Originally posted by naomha:

No, the Everspace games do NOT count either!

I'm really glad that I'm not the only one that can't get into Everspace 2.
Seems like everyone thinks that game is the second-coming of god, when it just feels like an on-rails arcade game.

[Remnar]

VO can be done with AI now; though it's not a bad idea to contract real people for it, you don't do that after going 1.0. I knew of a small studio that published some classic JRPG's that did their own translations and VO work. Somehow, they were able to afford it before releasing any of their games. It wasn't a big AAA company either. I don't remember the name, Working Designs? it's been a long time.

[Sangeki]

Originally posted by Remnar:

VO can be done with AI now; though it's not a bad idea to contract real people for it, you don't do that after going 1.0.

Unfortunately version numbers and Alpha, Beta designations don't mean anything in currentday. 7 Days to Die is about to go 1.0 which was until recently known as Alpha 22.

What you probably don't want to do, especially if you're not a large studio with loads of interstellar credits, is contract voice actors before your game is content complete, which this game isn't going to be for a while yet.

I'd be worried if it was released as a finished product without voice acting. Luckily that hasn't actually happened.

Also bringing up artificially generated voice acting is quite amusing considering people were already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their pants when Underspace entered EA and there might or might not have been a handful of generated lines in the game.

[Starkillaa]

Originally posted by hypermarket:

So is this the game to play for an arcadey space game to build your character/ship up and forget real life exists?

Pretty much. I'm a bit of an open world rpg-junky and so far managed to get like 90 hours of gameplay out of this game, even though it's still in development.

[Vengyr]

Originally posted by Sangeki:

Also bringing up artificially generated voice acting is quite amusing considering people were already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their pants when Underspace entered EA and there might or might not have been a handful of generated lines in the game.

Most of these people are bad actors that'll never buy the game either way. Best to never cater to such people. I, for once, would welcome more variety in the random space chatter, AI-generated or not, and given it's a small budget game, there are obvious constraints on what can be done with human VA.

[Lu Bu]

I mean in Freelancer the Voice Acting pretty much just amounts to things like:

"We run this place"
"We have an understanding with the people who do"
"Your concern is touching, we'll see what we can do"

The voice work sounds like something an AI can do, so if we do something as freelancer as possible it shouldn't be too hard right?

[Vengyr]

Originally posted by Lu Bu:

I mean in Freelancer the Voice Acting pretty much just amounts to things like:

"We run this place"
"We have an understanding with the people who do"
"Your concern is touching, we'll see what we can do"

The voice work sounds like something an AI can do, so if we do something as freelancer as possible it shouldn't be too hard right?

Personally, I just want some varied random chatter while in SPEHSS. Just random conversations between pilots. This is something that makes the world much more lived-in and currently is a bit lacking.

[Kunari]

Only a hour or so into the demo and still getting my feet under me but as a fan of Freelancer I do feel the Freelancer vibes.

Originally posted by Sangeki:

...Also bringing up artificially generated voice acting is quite amusing considering people were already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their pants when Underspace entered EA and there might or might not have been a handful of generated lines in the game.

"Haters going to hate" If it's in the budget for a indy dev to pay for real voice acting great, but if not, decent AI voice acting can be fine.

AI voice generation is getting better and more Human sounding. I'd rather have decent AI voice acting than reading a ton of text while trying fly my ship. Other indy devs have/are as well. Just two examples: Spacebourne II is using AI voice acting as a filler while they're in EA as well. Second, when Everspace 2 first entered EA they used AI voice, except for the first system as that was feature complete.