It's rare to see a game that in one respect is so far ahead of its time and in another respect, was so left behind, but when I consider Starlancer, that's exactly what I think.
Starlancer was a space combat game in the same vein as classics such as Wing Commander, it was even developed by many of the same people. Unlike many of the space combat games of that era, Starlancer was not about humanity's battle to survive against some seemingly unbeatable enemy in the dark reaches of space, in fact, in this world, Humanity still hasnt discovered faster then light travel and is still shackled to our solar system, the big enemy? Ourselves.
Starlancer eschews the Roddenberrian idea that once you stick humanity in spaceships, the nations of the world will suddenly put aside thousands of years of differences and unite under a common banner. Instead, Starlancer depicts a solar system on the brink of all out war, the battle lines are drawn and the powder keg is about to explode, the combatants arent some bizzare planets that have no meaning to you, they are countries you know, lands you may have even visited. You start the game as a pilot for the US and are there when the first shots are fired that spark humanity's first stellar war.
Storytelling is done almost entirely though the first person, as your character walks through the corridors of the ship he calls home, you stay in this perspective at all times, heading to the flight deck, receiving your mission briefings, or conversing with your crewmates. You're treated like just another pilot, an notable pilot, to be sure, but in no way are you any sort of “chosen one,” you're part of team, a crew of people on a ship who are depending on one another to survive a horrible conflict. You hear about the heroics of other pilots and crews on the news, you feel like you're a small part of a much larger war effort.
As the story goes on, you find yourself fighting alongside crews from other cultures like the UK and Japan, and while you are all on the same side, you can see subtle cultural differences there, the ship designs lend themselves wonderfully to this, giving a distinct feel to each nation.
Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is Starlancer's downfall. As I mentioned earlier, this game was cut from the same cloth as Wing Commander, which often put its lead character in a nigh-godlike position, You're always the only pilot capable of performing any important deed, you easily score nearly every kill, you are the one completing every objective.
Out of combat, the game is like Band of Brothers, in battle, It's Rambo.
For fans of space combat, who have been weened on Wing Commander, a series which literally had the protagonist singlehandedly destroy the enemy's entire planet, this may not have been a problem, but in the time between the height of wing commander's popularity and the release of Starlancer, a little game called Freespace happened.
Freespace was a revolution in a genre that had been largely stagnant for years, it brought with it unrivaled scale, capital ships which were truly to be feared, friendly AI that was truly capable, and mission design that remains unrivaled to this day. If you played Freespace like you played other space combat games, you were in for a rough ride. Trying to take down a capital ship with your little fighter felt like trying to destroy a skyscraper with a handgun. In practice, you were a small part of a very large battle. Its play experience was everything that Starlancer's storytelling told you that it wanted to be.
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