Descent: Freespace Intro Cinematic

This is the intro cinematic from Descent: Freespace - The Great War. Of all the other cinematics for this game (and even any for Freespace 2 for that matter), I believe this one to be the best of the bunch. It deftly establishes the mood and hints of the overall back-story without giving away too much, has great pacing, and the voice actor playing the pilot of the injured Terran Alliance fighter sounds truly terrified.

A special note on the visuals: Anyone out there think that the virtual "camera-shake" and "whip-pan" CGI style for Firefly or the new Battlestar Galactica was ground-breaking? Watch this cinematic a few times. This game was released sometime around the summer of 1998 (almost 10 years ago). I'd say the game designers and animators for Volition Inc were the one's to break ground on this style of virtual camera use. Can anyone out there give any examples of this style of virtual CGI cinematography predating this game? I'd be interested to know...

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Descent
• Freespace
• Cinematic
• VEKdigital

[cmsl1993]

is descent freespace part of the descent games??

[vekdigital]

Descent: Freespace (and Freespace II) were both made by Volition Games. Freespace games are made by the same company that made Descent using pretty much the same game engine, but that's where the similarity ends. Descent was a first-person arcade-style shooter. Freespace is also a first-person shooter, but adds elements of squad-based tactics and a story-driven, scenario-based game play.

[cmsl1993]

ya i played the demo right after i watched this and i think i need to get a copy.

[vekdigital]

Best of luck finding a copy of either. I haven't seen Descent: Freespace (or Freespace II) on store shelves for almost a decade. They're so old you don't even need a serial number to install and play them. You may want to try torrent sites.

[Alectr0n]

First time I played this I was 8 years old.

A decade later this remains the best video gaming experience of my life.

[Pabitan]

Best game ever !!

[Mrpnut08]

With today's graphics... this can be made, easily surpassed (launch it today and reviewers will look at it as outdated graphics)...

By the way... Core I7 is still an overkill for gaming PC (For people who buy effectively) best thing around is a 2.6 - 3.0 Ghz quad core

and something a bit better than a 9800GTX (though this one works fine).

[Usul573]

I think I'm positive a PC game could, if they made a very taxing space game, and you're running it on a Core i7 and GTX 295.

I think some of the cutscenes from Halo Wars looked kinda like this.

[KrassoSzoreny]

a real time game on 360 or PC could easily look better than this - check out those people, and the objects aren't even bump-mapped and have low-res textures, no shadows - etc etc.

[Usul573]

Hey, you guys think a real time Xbox 360 game can look like this right now?

[Aardwolf001]

The problem is only the source was released, not any of the art content. Apparently though, it's being sold on Good old Games for somewhere around $6.

[BlueSpawn]

Any chance you still have the 1.6 patch for this game. Mine is constantly crashing and I can't find a single working messageboard dedicated to the game.

[fdnfdjnedb]

i was 5 when i played for the first time

[axellenium]

excelent game indeed and the background music is awesome, i only have this track tho... :(