Originally the brainchild of famed Wing Commander designer Chris Roberts, Freelancer has been a long time coming. The game was first announced nearly four years ago, and it has survived, among other things, Roberts' departure from the development team at Digital Anvil, a studio that he founded. On paper, the game is the supposed sequel to Microsoft's StarLancer, which was a space-based combat flight simulator in the same vein as X-Wing or FreeSpace that was released in the early months of 2000 and was designed by Erin Roberts, Chris' younger brother and creator of Privateer 2: The Darkening. But after recently having had the chance to play a nearly complete version of this long-awaited game, it's clear that, beyond sharing the same setting, these two games have little in common.
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