Date of an output: 2003

  Genre: Run on a space circle

  Publisher/developer: Microsoft/Digital Anvil

  Directly we will clear up from now on not to return: the person by the name of Chris Roberts was the main thing in a genre of space simulators always. Elapsed time has special value here — began to use it in 2000, and three more years later it was fixed finally. Chris Roberts is live, healthy, is a producer in Hollywood of cinema ("Chastener", "The weapon baron", "Happy number of Slevin") — that you won't tell about a genre of space simulators which actually already became property of the past.

  Having created at the beginning of the 90th the outstanding series Wing Commander, Roberts I left Origin and I founded own studio — Digital Anvil. Its first project created under the leadership of Erin Roberts (the younger brother Chris) was called as Starlancer, it was game about war between the countries of the West and the Russian-Chinese-Arab coalition for possession of Solar system. Chris developed the most ambitious project at this time — Freelancer. Formally — continuation of Starlancer (only their subject knot integrated: The West lost war and emigrated to distant sector of space), actually absolutely other game. Unlike Starlancer here not battles, but wanderings on space in a manner of Elite and a series X were regarded as of paramount importance.

  All dealers estimate my ship Anubis no more than at 1100 credits — that is are at least 350 times cheaper than any fighter of the class super heavy. Nevertheless it is necessary to be the full idiot that to sell him — such give only after you frilansit 13 missions through towns and villages a black chasm. And the weather-cloth has quite good, in the people called "my respect". From the third time having convinced that not to avoid a baker's dozen of missions planned by the scenario, after their passing and you are torn to will — the plot opens slightly more than a half of star systems, and the most full of the game maps existing nowadays actually that isn't. Names of all systems and planets are with rare exception interfaced to Earth geography (though here and doesn't smell as Earth, it somewhere it is very far) so traveling sets up on a healthy harmony: New York — California — change in system Magellan — Manchester — Cambridge — two-hour wandering on systems of the Omega — long-awaited Rheinland, it is Germany — eventually Dresden, where such fog that itself fiendish difficulty. And any open planet...

  Freelancer took from Digital Anvil five years — not a record, but quite to itself unfinished construction. The foundation laid by Roberts reminded of all great kosmosima at once, but then everything swept under a slope: having been fond of cinema, Chris left a position of the leading designer, and the last three years game was developed unclear as.