If you missed the Freespace 1 thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU-NvK0i2QQ
Facepunch might be dying but gosh darn it I'm gonna keep self promoting til I can't self promote no more
As it is right now I think you'd only be successful in catching the attention of people who already care or at least have some level of familiarity with the subject of the discussion. I would strongly suggest sprinkling some gameplay footage in there - and starting the video off (either immediately before or after introducing yourselves) with a summary of the game over some of said footage. Yeah, it might be formulaic, inauthentic even - but that's the case for a good reason when you look at successful gaming channels.
Something to the effect of this: "Hey, we're Cynic, Klipper and Frosty and today we're gonna be discussing Freespace 2" <insert gameplay footage> "Released in 1998 by Volition - who you might know from games like Red Faction, or <XYZ> - Freespace 2 is a 6-degrees-of-freedom, semi-arcade space-combat sim... <continue gameplay summary, brief plot summary>" - spiced up as appropriate.
I like that it's generally unscripted, but for the benefit it brings, "20% of the work gets 80% of the result" - On top of the intro, prompting the discussion with just one of you outlining or expounding on the first subject for the following bit of discussion might help give the viewer a further sense of cohesion.
In any case, you're still in the early stages where experimentation literally can't hurt you, but do take all this with a grain of salt cause I've never tried to start or run a youtube channel - I can only relate what I like about others.
Anyway, on to FS2 its self - it's been a long time since I last played it but I've completed it 3 or 4 times - and I never played D:FS. While its presentation was excellent for the time and type of game it is, I echo the sentiment that its plot was kinda disjointed and had a lot of unexplored threads that could've been capitalised on it to make it even more interesting - particularly having the conflict with the NTF factor more into the plot especially as it relates to the player.
For example, an early mission could've had you essentially neutralise an NTF force while Vasudan reinforcements are on their way to you. The surviving enemies assume a passive stance and your wing leader is negotiating terms of surrender with them. The Vasudans show up, some NTF gunner fires a shot in panick or anger, and the Vasudans obliterate all of them - some of your surviving wingmates then decide they're going to defect and do so in the next mission - abandoning you and the wing leader in a particularly dangerous situation. Some things along those lines would have helped enrich those elements of the storyline, and make things a bit more morally ambiguous than "The NTF are space racists" - they even have understandable motive for fighting the Vasudans and opposing the GTVA with the whole Terran-Vasudan war thing.
Gameplay wise I feel games like Freelancer, House of the Dying Sun, Elite: Dangerous - even the FS2 mod Diaspora, and countless others have spoiled me in terms of the speed, physics and handling characteristics of space ships - When I last had a go at FS2 it felt more like I was playing as a space-borne turret gunner than a fighter or bomber pilot - movement is slow but the ships are all extremely maneuverable, absolutely contributing to carpal-tunnel if you're using a mouse, because of how tight the turn-fights are - in addition to the strengths of shield and hull, the maximum speed of the ships is generally too slow while also having minimal effect on maneuverability for any advanced maneuvering to really ever be worth it in dogfights.
Awesome, thanks for your reply! We do have some things in the works for adding more visual elements (pictures, perhaps video) during our discussion. We'll see how that evolves going forward.
I like your idea for setting up the NTF, that would have really helped the story which I found lacking. That's crazy you've never played the original!
Although Freespace's physics left advanced maneuverability limited, it made sense when you looked at it from a balancing and presentation perspective. Both games had plenty of escort missions where you had to catch up with bombers and waste their payload before they reached their target, something you didn't do much in a game like Dying Sun. The limited speed also gave capital ships a scale that other space games to this day haven't really accomplished, which made something like the Colossus and Juggernaut fight in FS2 the star of the show. Compare that to games like Independece War 1 & 2, where a dreadnought or a cruiser felt like "fighters".
There was also the fact that unlike the games you mentioned (with the exception of Diaspora), all those games have gimbaled (and sometimes even hitscan) weaponry. I wouldn't say this is automatically a bad thing, but I never felt like combat in such games were very challenging (or fun if you were at the receiving end) when fighting anything that moved. Just my two cents.
Yeah, I largely agree with you. With regard to scale (I know hardware limitations would've been a factor in FS2), the size of capitals could just be inflated even more to offset what loss of that sense is incurred through greater speed. But maybe it's not so much the speed as it the combination of low speed, high maneuverability and high durability that just feels more wrong each subsequent time I try to play FS2.
My preferences gameplay-wise are pretty much nailed by Diaspora - being able to cut your engines/thrusters to drift, and turn to target enemies independent of your trajectory. Non-missile weapons were also almost entirely fixed-forward, high-velocity projectiles fired at a high rate which is more challenging and fun than hit-scan, more satisfying and reliable than the slow-moving projectiles of FS2 and feels a bit more grounded.
The HL2 mod Eternal Silence got very close to those ideals too, even if the meat of gameplay was really only fighters v fighters.
HotDS (I wish it got more post-release content cause what's there isn't very much and fails to offersignificant replay value), I really enjoyed because you were immensely powerful compared to most enemies, but were still more or less just as vulnerable. Even though you could demolish sub-capitals in short order, you had to maintain a break-neck speed, dodging asteroids and enemy fire, adjust your heading and speed eratically so as to not give them a solid lead, and overall rely on hit-and-run tactics and maneuvering.
Whereas in FS2, once you were engaged in a close-in dog-fight, there was no getting out of it until you or the enemy were dead - any attempt to put some distance between you is usually met with the opponent staying on the other's tail, and very rarely did it make this particularly difficult - just tedious as the enemy ship weaved about and you follow as you dump shots into them.
The real difficulty comes in repeating this process for however many enemies there are, and being lucky enough to not accumulate enough damage to kill you throughout - usually something you had little control over since disengaging was so rarely a good option, if you so choose your limited speed means you have to rely on the same tedious bobbing and weaving while you hope a friendly ship comes in to assist. Combat never felt very decisive or opportunistic, more that it was based on attrition - depending more on your ship, weapon choices (and aforementioned luck) than how you choose to employ them.
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