Trivia / Freelancer

• Abandonware: Microsoft may've abandoned the Game, and Digital Anvil may be no more, but the game has a quite large community that has remained alive for nearly two decades, and has created countless mods of great quality.
• Dummied Out:
  • The Starblazer◊. This ship evidently belongs to the same line of ships as the Starflier and Startracker, which are both available for use by the player. However, the only time the player sees a Starblazer is when they are docked with a planet and sees one flying past; even NPCs don't use it in space. Examination of the game's code reveals that the Starblazer actually has most of the properties present in player-flyable ships, lacking only a handful of parameters necessary to make it available for sale and use. Making the Starblazer available for use by the player is considered one of the various baby steps anyone can take if they are interested in making mods for the game.
  • Order, Interspace Commerce and LSF ships never spawn randomly despite the game containing voice files meant for use by these factions. The player only sees Order vessels during the singleplayer campaign, while Interspace Commerce and LSF vessels only spawn if the player accepts specific missions from that faction.
  • Tractor beams and scanners were originally planned to be customisable equipment, and the game only needs minor tweaks to its .ini files so that these show up in the Equipment Dealer menus. Such a feature would have tied in with the second singleplayer mission, where Juni apparently makes arrangements for Trent's ship to be given a scanner and tractor beam (although they are already available in-game by default).
  • The Death's Hand Mk III, a Class-7 gun manufactured by The Order, exists in the game's files but is not sold on any base, while their signature vessel, the Anubis, has hardpoints that support up to only Class-6 weaponry. This, along with the above example regarding the lack of random spawns for Order ships, implies that The Order was originally meant to have permanently accessible bases after the end of the single-player story.
  • The Paralyzer Missile Launcher. In an original unmodified copy, no station sells it and not a single wreck drops it - you can only obtain the ammo from either buying it or looting the wrecks. However, the launcher does exist in the game, and as a matter of fact the wrecks carrying the ammo also have the launcher equipped (with the issue being that it's always equipped to a non-existing hardpoint), making it possible to obtain the launcher only by modding the game.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Many of Digital Anvil's projects were killed when they were bought by Microsoft, because MS wanted them to focus more exclusively on Freelancer. Among other things, the original opening trailer was also significantly altered, removing the scene in which the Nomads blow up Sol some time after the Alliance's Colony Ships warped to Sirius.
  • As Freelancer was Chris Robert's first attempt at making a fully dynamic sandbox space simulator (his second being Star Citizen), the planned feature list was quite extensive and the main reason the game spent so many years as Vaporware. Microsoft's acquisition of the project and Roberts' move to a consulting role was what allowed the game to finally be released. While it fell far short of the final product Roberts envisioned, the suits decided a good game that was finished was preferable to a perfect one that wasn't, and the result was still a critical success.
• He Also Did:
  • The cast is made of this. Ian Ziering as Trent, Jennifer Hale as Juni, John Rhys-Davies as Tobias, not to mention appearances from Cree Summer, George Takei, Xander Berkeley, Maurice LaMarche, Corey Burton, Jeff Bennett, Charles Shaughnessy, Tony Jay (who literally has exactly one line) and Christopher Lee, who also has a bit part at best.
  • Also applies to the designers: one of the people who did character designs is Carlos Ezquerra, one of the co-creators of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog. The character designs in the finished game, particularly Trent, have his signature gritty style.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The game is not currently being sold on Steam, Good Old Games, Microsoft's own online store, or any other digital storefront.
• Saved from Development Hell: Freelancer was released 4 years after being announced for the first time, with many of the hyped-up features missing. However, the resulting game was still good enough to be enjoyable.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In addition to the stuff that was promised, which were eventually taken out, such as dynamic economies and retracting ship fins, much of Freelancer's original storyline was scrapped when Microsoft tried to speed up the game's release. Anyone who owns a copy of the Bonus DVD, bundled with the game's soundtrack CD, will have full knowledge of what the original storyline was meant to be.
  • Digital Anvil was working on a game codenamed "Project Lonestar" for an Xbox 360 release. Due to similarities in its UI elements and portrayal of nebula, as seen in these videos, it is widely regarded to be a sequel to Freelancer. However, the project was probably cancelled when Digital Anvil was dissolved in 2006.