Freedom Force Devs on What Could Have Been

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<strong>[ Interview ]</strong>

<p>While a few days old already this <a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/998/998719p1.html" title="Everything you wanted to know about the FF franchise?">IGN interview with <strong>Freedom Force</strong> creators</a> Ken Levine, Rob Waters, Dorian Hart, Alex Kay and Joe McDonagh shouldn't be missed. These gentlemen discuss the cancelled Freedom Force sequels (Freedom Force 3 and Ultimate Freedom Force) and the successes and failures of the first two titles in the franchise. </p><blockquote><strong>Ken Levine:</strong> Well, the first game was reasonably commercially successful: we sold around 400,000 units. For a PC game at the time it was reasonably successful. The second game sold around 40,000 units. I think the mistake we probably made, in retrospect, but I don't think that it was a mistake creatively, is that it was definitely a love letter to the 60's era Marvel comics. The Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko stuff. Sorry, probably Don Heck and Gene Colan as well. (Laughs) It was such a love letter, that for the modern audience, it may have been too weird and different, and not what they knew of comics than what Rob and I knew of comics growing up.  </blockquote><p>That's seven(!) pages of questions and answers. It seems like Irrational Games actually had a good chance to do <strong>Ultimate Freedom Force</strong>: </p><blockquote><strong>IGN:</strong> So do you think that's the direction of the artwork and art style of Freedom Force 3 and Ultimate Freedom Force would have gone in, considering the images we're seeing of these two games? These look a bit harder edged in some ways. 
</blockquote><blockquote><strong>Ken Levine:</strong> Yeah, the Ultimate Freedom Force, which was just a working title, was definitely that. The idea was definitely to make it more hard edged. We went back and forth &ndash; we had something that was very colorful and something that was very hard edged, but I think the idea was to make it much more modern feeling. That was a game actually that we had a buyer for, and <strong>we ended up deciding whether we were doing BioShock or that, and we ended up doing BioShock</strong>. But we actually found a buyer for it and got a good budget for it, and we just ended up not doing that game because we ended up doing something else instead. But I always wonder: would that have worked?</blockquote><p>Keep in mind UFF would have been quite different compared to Freedom Force and Freedom Force vs The Third Reich: </p><blockquote><strong>IGN:</strong> Definitely. Here's another quick question: Was there anything that you wish had been implemented for multiplayer? Elements of multiplayer that you felt didn't work as well? 
</blockquote><blockquote>Ken Levine: I don't think, to be fair, it was ever a great multiplayer game. I think it was just the limitation of the type of game it is. That's why <strong>Ultimate Freedom Force was a direct control game, where you actually controlled a single character. I think co-op would have been really fun in that game</strong>, but I don't think the nature of Freedom Force worked great as a multiplayer game. But some people played it that way, and we tried to support it. We added a bunch of modes for Third Reich, and I never played that way much myself. It's such as story origin game, it's about seeing what happens and tooling around with individual powers that I really stuck with it that way. That's really hard to do in multiplayer, because <strong>I tend to pause a lot when I play. I play it like a turn based game.</strong> </blockquote><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.ign.com/">IGN</a></p>

Broken link or I am doing it wrong....

It is working now, was it working before?

Edit: I think it might be a problem with their site - I'm getting the error again...

The marketing for the 2nd one just sucked, if there even was one.

I always wondered why they would do an addon for that game over a year after the original release.
It took me this article to notice that it was not an addon...

FFvsTTR wasn't that great, which might have had something to do with the muted release. There was also something of a furor among the FF fanbase (which was considerable, at the time), over gameplay being reduced in favor of graphical enhancements --- hard to believe, I know!

If you can find them, there were (are?) several professional-quality fan-made modules using the 1st FF engine. Don't know of too many for the second --- which is also something of a red flag.

Prepare for ultimate X-COM in a similar vein.

It has Starforce. I still bought it though.

The gameplay features were practically gutted. What used to be a 100-point scale power meter with multiple gradations got dumbed down into a 3-point scale, as the most visible change. The actual graphical improvements were minimal at best. It is no surprise that it thus rather flopped: It took everything that was good and removed it!

The first FF was a fantastic game. I finished it in a matter of days. El Dablo was cool.

So, when is a new party based, turn based FF coming out?

As soon as someone figures out how to turn it into an MMO... but let's not give anyone ideas.

I played the demo when it first came out. I wasn't impressed.

The sequel was severely dumbed down compared to the original, with many of the tactical options and finer controls entirely stripped out. That's why it sucked.