My PC’s firmware, GPU and Wine are talking properly now, so it is time to play Freelancer again.

It’s got a forgettable plot and stock scifi action-thriller cast, but I keep coming back for the very pretty nebulae and the enjoyable piracy. Zero attempt is made to make the star systems to scale. Also, it has incongruently historically materialist worldbuilding? Descriptions of every pirate/“terrorist” faction explain the historical circumstances and contradictions that gave rise to them, and it boils down to capital abandoning or squeezing workers in like every case. Unfortunately, the story is not about overthrowing the decrepit empires and bringing socialism to the Sirius Sector.

Has any kind of Space GTA that chooses intuitive fun over realistic portrayals of space physics been made since? It would be nice to haul highly illegal space drugs through an ASMR thunderstorm nebula I haven’t been to before.