You won't want to miss the little feature on freedom force posted on Irrational games website recently. Ah, what could have been...
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/from-the-vault-freedom-force/comment-page-1/#comment-34546
Ah fun stuff, thanks for the link.
I need to play FF again, it was a fun ride.
Yeah. I just started the FF1 campaign again haha. Minuteman's patriotic witticisms never fail to put a smile on my face, lol.
These are some fun concepts here.
Zounds! Did anyone notice that psychopanda commented on that article? A blast from the past, indeed!
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker
Quote from: ShawDAMAN on April 21, 2012, 08:50:38 PM
Yeah. I just started the FF1 campaign again haha. Minuteman's patriotic witticisms never fail to put a smile on my face, lol.
"I detect the presence of evil!"
That's the ringtone I have set up for when I recieve text messeges. My students get a kick out of it every time.
Quote from: Cyber Burn on April 22, 2012, 12:49:29 AM
Quote from: ShawDAMAN on April 21, 2012, 08:50:38 PM
Yeah. I just started the FF1 campaign again haha. Minuteman's patriotic witticisms never fail to put a smile on my face, lol.
"I detect the presence of evil!"
That's the ringtone I have set up for when I recieve text messeges. My students get a kick out of it every time.
Haha great idea.
Wow! I TOTALLY want an FF ringtone...how in the world did you do that?
Ohh man, this is some fantastic stuff. I would KILL for Irrational to actually make that game.... ^_^ Look at all these great concepts! Thanks for posting this man!
Quote from: BentonGrey on April 22, 2012, 01:04:50 AM
Wow! I TOTALLY want an FF ringtone...how in the world did you do that?
I don't know how Cyber did it, but I do know some phones allow you to use any mp3 as a ringtone. Sadly, my phone is not one of them :( haha. But mp3's could easily be sampled from the game or youtube clips.
Hmm, my phone is not likely one of those types. Still, that is really cool. I think next time I upgrade I'm going to check for that.
So folks, which of those concepts do you think is the coolest? Which one would you most have wanted to see/play in the game? I think that Primordial sounds the neatest. What about the rest of y'all?
Computress and Primordial are my two favorites.
I wonder what Primordial's section of the campaign would be like; if he had minions or if he was just a loner.
And I second your feelings, Benton. I really wish that Irrational would make another Freedom Force game. Their stories were just so good. Freedom Force was what got me into comics, actually. The story was clever and the villains were/are very distinct from one another. Playing through Freedom Force and then Freedom Force vs the Third Reich campaigns for the first time was really awe-inspiring and fun.
My favorite moment: When I finally beat Nuclear Winter before he could set off that nuclear bomb in the first game. I remember trying many times to beat it but Minuteman kept dying (stupid irradiation!)
QuoteComputress and Primordial are my two favorites.
Same here!
My phone lets me use mp3's if they are small enough in size. One of it's best features. :D
I wouldn't mind seeing Outback in FF. But Shifty would have been cool as well.
To be honest, I think all of the characters showcased in the article would've been neat to see in the game.
I think we've just seen our next challenge for our talented community of meshers & skinners: bringing all of these to life (it worked for sky king!). Would Primordial's abilities need to be scripted, or could most of it be built into the mesh? Then we get the fun of figuring out what their powers would be! yay!
And, I can't believe nobody else has said this yet, but Shifty is *totally* daglob!
I also like Primordial...And Young Starr sounds kind of neat. I also dig the villain, Shifty.
Dana
Why dont WE make these characters!!!?? :blink:
Some of us have already started making some of the 70s characters. ;)
Dana
Yeah, these are all really awesome concepts. I have to say, Young Starr really fascinates me...especially that subtitle that no-one knows what to make of...even the guys who designed him!
Yeah, Dana, JJ, and others have created some really cool versions of a few of the earlier 70's designs Irrational released. I'd love to see more of these made.
Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on April 22, 2012, 08:21:35 PM
Some of us have already started making some of the 70s characters. ;)
Dana
Quote from: BentonGrey on April 22, 2012, 08:32:46 PM
Yeah, these are all really awesome concepts. I have to say, Young Starr really fascinates me...especially that subtitle that no-one knows what to make of...even the guys who designed him!
Yeah, Dana, JJ, and others have created some really cool versions of a few of the earlier 70's designs Irrational released. I'd love to see more of these made.
Yeah, I agree. The concepts for these new characters are really neat.
I really liked the Modern Age concepts of them, too.
Yeah, the modern concepts were sort of neat, but seeing as the Bronze Age is my favorite era of comics, these designs are what appeal to me most! For those of y'all who don't remember the other article, you can find the images that we're referring to here:
http://www.ign.com/images/games/freedom-force-pc-15161/2908198
Dana has already created a neat Liberty Lad, and JJ with (I THINK) Tiobe's help created a very nice Sea Urchin.
Quote from: BentonGrey on April 22, 2012, 08:47:53 PM
Yeah, the modern concepts were sort of neat, but seeing as the Bronze Age is my favorite era of comics, these designs are what appeal to me most! For those of y'all who don't remember the other article, you can find the images that we're referring to here:
http://www.ign.com/images/games/freedom-force-pc-15161/2908198
Dana has already created a neat Liberty Lad, and JJ with (I THINK) Tiobe's help created a very nice Sea Urchin.
Yeah, the 70's concepts are my favorite. There's just such diversity in them all.
But the Modern Age Nuclear Winter just looks so cool.
What an awesome find!
Outback makes me cringe (In a good way). The only thing worse than Scottish stereotype characters is Australian stereotypes! :)
"Young Star - The Man Who Was Never Born" is absolutely awesome. I've always loved the 70s cosmic stuff like Adam Warlock. That tag-line is up there with "One Who Knows" for sounding portentious without actually meaning anything. Its brilliant.
Hmm, Irrational's site seems to be down...I can only assume that the vast seas of FF fans overwhelmed their site looking at the awesomeness....it makes perfect sense!
Dr. Mike, always great to see you! Ha, I suppose you have a different perspective on the Australian stereotype characters...heh, I hadn't considered that. Yeah, Young Star is a concept that is just begging for a story!
"Where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes?"
What I still don't know is why didn't it ever happen?
First of all FFvTTR was a tremendous flop. They lost their shirts doing that one.
This was followed shortly thereafter by a buyout.
Quote from: DrMike2000 on April 23, 2012, 06:27:57 AM
"Young Star - The Man Who Was Never Born" is absolutely awesome. I've always loved the 70s cosmic stuff like Adam Warlock. That tag-line is up there with "One Who Knows" for sounding portentious without actually meaning anything. Its brilliant.
Now that I think of it, I don't recall being born; moreover, I always sound brilliant whilst meaning nothing. Ergo...
Dr. Mike thinks I'm awesome! ^_^ :thumbup:
Just think how well Irrational Games could have done for themselves, had they hired Dr. Mike to do the FF sequel, eh? Brilliant.
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on April 29, 2012, 12:33:42 AM
First of all FFvTTR was a tremendous flop. They lost their shirts doing that one.
This was followed shortly thereafter by a buyout.
Just how tremendous of a flop was it? All I've read is that it did rather poorly compared to FF1. Not saying you're wrong, just assuming you have info I'm ignorant of haha
I don't have numbers, but they self published and could promote it properly. The store that had it discounted it to 10 bucks or less pretty quickly. It was pretty sad. The Irrational folks said it was pretty bad.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on April 30, 2012, 09:16:11 PM
I don't have numbers, but they self published and could promote it properly. The store that had it discounted it to 10 bucks or less pretty quickly. It was pretty sad. The Irrational folks said it was pretty bad.
Yeah, I got mine for the mark-down price pretty quick after it came out if I remember correctly.
:cry: I want another Freedom Force game.
Ha, ditto. We all do. I wish Irrational would try to get FFIII off of the ground with a kickstarter. I'd shovel money at them with both hands for that.
Ditto.
Double ditto. :( :lol:
Unfortunately they are no longer an independent studio and can no longer do any such thing. If they were and they could though, I would promptly tell them to shut up and take my money.
True Cat, but you never know what the future holds, I suppose.
I tried looking for some actual data in vgchartz (http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=freedom+force) :unsure: on how much sales :ff: or :ffvstr: was able to acquire? But there doesn't seem to be any data recorded there.
Yeah, it's too bad :ffvstr: didn't do that well for them. Still,i hope they will have the desire/opportunity to try and make another Freedom Force sequel in the future.
I'm a Johnny-Come-Lately, but I just discovered this article today! Those are some very cool looking concept art pieces. So glad to know that Irrational Games hasn't completely forgotten about their late, great franchise.
I always wondered why, rather than a full game... just do downloadable content packs or "issues" with a new scenario with a map or two and some new characters. In this day and age where people are much more interested in micro markets for MMO's than full subscriptions, its something they should consider.
-RTT
That's basically the model for most successful iOS games: get the basic game free (or for a small fee) and sell add-ons.
I would buy add-ons for :ff: or :ffvstr:. Of course, I'd still pay for an FF3 as well.
Actually the Rts genre has really been improving over the last few months for iOS. For example, the Walking Dead: Assault game has a perfect engine for a freedom force game.
6 months late to this thread but FFvTR sales were actually respectable 12 months in. I seem to recall 180k units or so shipped around the time the were bought. They also didn't need to make as much since they self-published. The real unspoken problem with FFvTR was Piracy. It was one of the earliest warez I've seen, full playable version was available at least 7 days before it shipped. This killed critical early sales momentum, forcing retailers to discount it far earlier than they should have.
Piracy is killing the game industry, and part of why there has been such a pronounced move to consoles and MMO's.
Ohh, that's heartbreaking! If there was ever a game that truly deserved to be bought at full price, FF is it!
While piracy is always an issue, I strongly doubt that it was the main factor in IG's woes. The lack of ambition and the quasi-absence of any proper marketing meant that the game couldn't generate much buzz. Combined with a lack of liquidities, they weren't able to wait for word-of-mouth success.
Also the idea that piracy = lost sales is an unproven and even doubtful assertion. Certainly it doesn't help, but many pirates would never pay for games anyway, or they pirate the game in order to try it out and often buy the full version if they like it (particularly if it has no copyright protection. Games with a lot of intrusive DRM are often cracked and pirated as a form of protest) or they do it to replace a copy they've already purchase. I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt the industry, but I am saying that blaming piracy for a game not doing well is usually pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
Got agree that the reason the game never had the same impact was a cumulation of issues.
* The game didn't actually have much that was new. There are new powers and attacks (such as cones) but as Dr Mike once said, they weren't compelling. Drivable vehicles was perhaps the main advance but you only get to do it once. They didn't even finish implementing ladders, which I've always presumed were a 'not quite enough time' feature of FF that couldn't have needed much to complete.
* The Campaign was way too short AND seemed shorter because it was presented as three, very different arcs.
* In light of the former, the actual campaign structure supported could have benefited from some work. Random filler missions in a campaign surely wouldn't have needed much work and would have helped Irrational with the length of the main campaign.
* The chosen art style (even more cartoony) was a mistake, and actually failed to leverage the advances available in the 10.x.x.x Nif format. To me, the graphics engine appears MORE primitive, although I know it isn't.
* Changes to the way combat worked (the energy system, naturally) were ill conceived.
* The choice of Digital Jesters, with their 'lets use our install paths and copy protection to make the game un-moddable in Europe' as distributors was disastrous. I suspect that poor European sales were 50% DG's fault. I imported a US edition when I realized how bad it was. I was then unable to give my DG copy away, even to people who had really enjoyed FF!!!
* Nazi villains was always a questionable choice. Maybe they play well in the US still, but in the UK the reaction was a shrug and in Europe its always seemed tricky to me. There is much about that period that many in France and Germany prefer to forget. I think there was an inability to remember that the US is not the rest of the world here. This is very likely the other 50% of poor European sales.
In hind-sight, one of the other planned directions would have been a better choice. The 70's characters released by Irrational and the concept art that's been shown show what might have been quite well.