Microsoft failed to make Freelancer 2, so fans decided to create their own sequel. It took them 15 years

The game Freelancer, released in 2003, never received a sequel. Not because the developers had no plans for it—people from the now-defunct Digital Anvil studio were actually working on a continuation (a short video leak from the project still looks impressive as hell) —but the project was ultimately canceled. Fans never came to terms with this, and a group of them decided to do something about it. They’ve spent fifteen long years creating their own, unofficial second installment in the form of the mod called Freelancer: The Nomad Legacy. Now, its full version has finally been made available to the public.

The mod is based on an interesting idea. It’s creators decided to try to realize the original plans of the Freelancer developers. The game was initially conceived as a much more ambitious project, representing a strong evolution of the concepts from the Privateer series. However, the publisher—Microsoft—grew impatient with the prolonged development and forced significant cuts to the project. Freelancer: The Nomad Legacy was designed as if it were an official sequel, in which the developers could fulfill their original ambitions while also improving many elements of the game.

1. Download Freelancer: The Nomad Legacy

The result is a mod of impressive scale. Freelancer: The Nomad Legacy offers a large number of new planetary systems as well as an original story-driven campaign. Importantly, the missions are highly varied, and beyond typical combat tasks against ships similar to our own, we also take part in battles with massive cruisers or are required to use stealth-based approaches.

The modders have also thoroughly refreshed the visual presentation, introducing much higher-quality textures and models, as well as lot of new graphical elements. What’s more, the progression system has been significantly expanded too, making ship upgrades far more important than before. Many pieces of cut content have been also restored, and locations from the base game have been enriched with additional space stations (including Mega Bases, which completely dwarf in size and complexity anything the base game did offer).

According to the mod’s creators, the leap from the base version of the game to The Nomad Legacy is comparable to the jump between GTA 3 and GTA 4. This claim is somewhat exaggerated—but only slightly—because the mod truly makes a huge impression. And since there is no indication that Microsoft ever intends to develop Freelancer 2, this modification is the closest thing to a sequel that players can hope to experience.

Freelancer

March 4, 2003

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• Overview

• Microsoft
• space simulators
• mods / fan projects (games)
• FTP