I'm sincerely hoping that Volition will buy the rights back for Freespace. Up until they made Saints Row 1 & 2 (which are both quite amazing), I thought they died with Freespace. I was very happy to see them back on the scene (and of course supported them by buying their games :D), and I do hope they make a Freespace 3. The X series is indeed good, but it isn't anything like Freespace ever was. The X series and the Freespace series both need to continue on, they are really the only good space sims we have left, and it would truely be a shame to see them die completely. Hopefully if the gamers get enough support and momentum going for a Freespace 3, Volition and THQ will listen and respond :D
In the end, Freespace 1 & 2 can be summed up with 1 word: Epic. I don't say this to overuse the pop culture obcession even more. I say this because both of the opening cutscenes and gameplay, then and now, give you goose bumps and make you say, "OH #!$*". Not too many other games can or will ever do that to a gamer, Volition forever earned the love and respect of many gamers with such a great addition to the gaming world. Well done.

Even if a Freespace 3 never happens I would be more than willing to settle for a new game by the same devs, like Dragon Age from Baldur's Gate.
Here's to hoping that the space sim genre lives on in good quality.

Tie Fighter is still the best space sim ever made. :-p
But this game is awesome too. Tie Fighter had the avantage (and also constraints) of having an awesome universe to exist in. (back before it got wiped out).
But freespace had to create it's universe from scratch, not an easy job.
Keep up the editorials...

Its safe to skip, all you need to know to be up to speed is the Shivans were defeated and there is no sign of them.

Also, that the Terran-Vasudan war raged for 14 years right until the Shivans arrived, wich prompted them to a ceasefire as soon as they saw the Shivan's advanced weapons, shield technology and almost impervious capital ships. This is the basis of the GTVA (global terran vasudan alliance) in Freespace 2.
There's a lot of information in FS2 about the Great War, but IMHO it's quite different to read about the Cain's capture than to take part on bringing down that corvette. Also, shield tech is not available inmediately, so you actually learn to dogde most incoming fire since your hull can only take a few shots or a well placed missile before losing an important subsystem :D
I thank my love of the genre that got me playing the original Freespace, it made the experience way more satisfying.
Staying on topic, i loved this editorial. I hope we get another ed with some of the dev team like the one about Giants.

About Babylon 5: Babylon 5 -I've Found Her is indeed not related to FreeSpace 2 whatsoever. The standalone total conversion based on the FS2 engine is The Babylon Project.
Also, perhaps you could mention Wing Commander Saga (http://www.wcsaga.com/ ). They've already released a demo.
Furthermore, the article repeatedly says "FreeSpace Open Source Project". Though a very descriptive name, the correct form is "The FreeSpace Source Code Project", or SCP.
Otherwise, excellent stuff. We're always glad to get new fans aboard.

I just wanted to say that it's nice to see Editorials on GOG! I can only see more of them being a good thing, it's always nice to read about what we may or may not have missed in the games from the past.
Of course, if there are going to be more articles, they'll need a central location on the site.

I really enjoy the editorials on GOG. Please keep up this unique feature, even though it probably makes me buy far too many games given my backlog!

Good Editorial, now for bit o' discussion.
I'm kinda stunted when it comes to space-sims, I've played Starlancer and Freelancer and enjoyed both quite a bit. Now for the question, how does Freespace 2 stack upto them, or perhaps more importantly how do they stack upto Freespace 2?

To answer your question, Freespace focuses more on squad based combat ranging from destroying fighters to capitol ships, to protecting your own capitol ships and defending outposts or even doing recon/intel missions. What you will notice isn't in Freespace are factions that change based on your actions and an "economy" like Freelancer has. Freespace has an excellent story, but that is really all you have to do in Freespace, there isn't much in the way of exploration. Not unless you download user made content anyway. This isn't to say Freespace is restrictive, it just isn't as open ended as Freelancer. I've played both Freespace 1/2 as well Freelance to a large degree and I like both, but the Freespace series is still by far my favorite of the two. You should pick them both up asap if you like flight sims :)

It's sad to see what happened to Volition and the franchise, if not Interplay in general. Freespace had a great premise and had much to go for in terms of gameplay concepts. They were really trying to squeeze as much as they could in terms of mission variety back then, and it's a shame we never got to see the expansion nor the definitive sequel...
Just who in their right minds would play Freespace and its sequel with mouse + keyboard? It's almost unthinkable...nay, it's BLASPHEMY! People in the day were accustomed to at least has some form of tangible hardware in the form of a joystick. A joystick with hatswitch and throttle would be suitable but everyone knew how sticktwist made all the difference for these kinds of simulator games. If I were Mr. Zitron, I would tell these young whippersnappers to do it the proper way and get themselves a descent (hehe)...decent stick with most of the features mentioned above (plus perhaps force feedback). It really doesn't do the game justice to play it with todays "first person shooter" mentality and setup.

This game came out when Babylon 5 was on the air. The truly EPIC capital ship battles in this game are on par with what Babylon 5 had in the episode "Severed Dreams" and beyond that. The scale of this game was immense. I tried playing this with a mouse once and the Shivan bombers nailed me big time. I did a lot of running away toward the safety of the capital ships beam weapon ports. A lot of cat and mouse was necessary when you're facing waves of Shivan fighters. I played all but the last episode of the Derelict MOD (it hadn't been created yet) and that would be a most worthy sequel to Freespace 2. It fit perfectly and captured the same excitement of Freespace 2, created by fans.
Side note: before I actually played HALO: Combat Evolved I thought the HALO ring was like a Knossos protal.

Babylon 5: I've Found Her has nothing to do with Freespace SCP. Actually it's a third-party modification based on the Homeplanet engine. Homeplanet is another space sim made by some russian developers and released in 2003. It features newtonian physics engine. Sadly, Homeplanet has been released only in Russia but it wasn't popular even there.

The Babylon 5 modification from FS SCP is called The Babylon Project.

Nice editorial. Freespace has and always will be my favorite game of all time. Even modern day RPG's barely rival the great story telling from FS2.

It's unfortunate that a 3th installment was never made. Whoever would pick up the license now would have incredibly big shoes to fill. It's rare to see games of a quality similar to FS2 these days and with that in mind it may be for the best that a 3th installment is never made. Lest it would pale in comparison to the epicness that was and is Freespace 2.

I'VE FOUND HER IS NOT A FREESPACE 2 MOD

I am one of the project leads of said B5 mod for FS2, the name is THE BABYLON PROJECT.