FreeSpace 2

FreeSpace 2's gameplay involves the player piloting a starfighter using mounted weapons to destroy enemy starfighters, performing reconnaissance behind enemy lines, or escorting other starships. Its flight model is based on a looser interpretation of space physics instead of realistic Newtonian physics. Hence, the ships are weightless and feel more responsive, though they require constant application of engine power to move. The result is that the game plays more like a "WWII dogfight simulator" unaffected by gravity. Although joysticks are the recommended controller for this game, the mouse is a viable alternative.

The pre-mission briefing stage is where the player gets information on the background and objectives, and selects the ship and weapons. The choices of ships and weapons increase as the player proceeds further along the campaign. Certain missions, however, will dictate certain ships and weapons to be used. Weapons can be classified into primary weapons and secondary weapons.

FreeSpace 2 takes place entirely in outer space. The playing area is vast when compared to the small starfighters piloted by the player and the effective range they have. This space is populated with interstellar bodies such as stars, planets, asteroids, etc. The implementation of nebulae as an interactive environment is one of the most distinctive aspects of FreeSpace 2.

Flying through a nebula involves impaired vision, and occasional disruptions to flight electronics. Nebulae have become known as an eerie and suspenseful arena of play.

The news of FreeSpace 2 being in development was confirmed in a chat on November 6, 1998. FreeSpace 2 was developed in less than one year. The Volition team revealed they had written up a story and will be targeting high-end hardware with dogfights for a greater number of ships and even larger and more deadly capital ships. The team set themselves the goals of setting new standards for both single-player and multiplayer space combat simulations, and started to modify the FreeSpace game engine for FreeSpace 2.

This team was the same team which had worked on Descent: FreeSpace, plus several new members. In order to flesh out the story, Volition hired Jason Scott as a full-time writer before work even started. The linear mission structure was adopted as it was decided it would help the immersion factor of the story greatly.

FreeSpace 2 has garnered high praise from most established reviewers. FreeSpace 2 received numerous "Game of the Year" awards for 1999, and was nominated for "Computer Simulation Game of the Year" during the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Every review praised FreeSpace 2's graphics. From the ships to the backgrounds, the reviewers were pleased with the details Volition had paid attention to, such as the thematic differences in the ship designs between the races, the textures and clarity of the backdrops, and even the realism of the explosions, though FiringSquad pointed out explosions from torpedo strikes were lower in quality.

The nebulae feature was also praised for its rendered atmosphere, which reviewers described as tense and paranoia-inducing as they keep expecting enemy ships to appear out of the gases in a deadly ambush. Even though a couple of reviewers wrote that the nebulae made them dizzy, they still liked the feature. Combatsim even claimed FreeSpace 2 was unrivaled among its space combat peers in the graphics department. The graphical standards were such that when XGP reviewed the Anniversary Edition in 2004, Wehbi found the graphics to stand up quite well to the recent games then.

With the release of the game engine's source code, the possibilities of changing the game greatly opened up, and the fan community made use of the code to update the game using recent technology. Led by Edward Gardner and Ian Warfield, the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project was formed to standardize changes and maintain a core engine for others to take advantage of. Using the new fan-updated engine, projects such as Beyond the Red Line, based on the new Battlestar Galactica, and The Babylon Project, based on Babylon 5, have become possible. PXO, the free Internet gaming service handling SquadWar, was initially acquired by THQ in their 2002 acquisition of Outrage Entertainment (renamed as Outrage Games).

The service was continued until July 2003, when Outrage Games was dissolved and PXO terminated. The components of its website were, however, later handed over to the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project to help them create a similar service in tracking statistics and rankings.