Freedom Force would be even better if....

[Sorceror]

1) No cannisters.  Nuclear destruction is imminent and the games on pause whilst I look under every piece of foliage and rock on the map for cannisters.  Ruins the vibe.  Health, energy etc bonuses should be given immediately pro rata on the accomplishment of each mini task or at other points within the mission.
2) The reduced energy regain rate for flying characters were restored.  Flying characters have too great an advantage otherwise.
3) Both games are spoiled by the fact that at the end only four characters are used so any experience etc used elsewhere seems to be wasted.  I'd have all future finale sequences to be: - four separate missions for four characters each and at the final level one hero is chosen RANDOMLY from each group (or even four at random).  It's then worth developing every character (at least up to 16) because youi wouldn't know who was going to be in the final battle.
4) Charles Wilson/ Blitzkrieg had an origin.  How does a World War II Fascist suddenly end up as Deputy Head of the CIA (although that might explain a few things to be honest...) ?
5) More variation in missions with more against the clock.  Avoid any scenario where the heroes can wait around for energy and health bars to return to full before continuing onwards - this is dull.
6) Whilst the control system was far crisper on  :ffvstr: the game wasn't perhaps as innovative as it could have been.  The airfield battle was good fun,  defusing the nuclear missiles was exciting, and the battle with Nuclear winter was probably the highlight of the game.  However the WWII scenes were perhaps overly repetitive (although the running battle whilst Sky King fixed his suit was interesting) and the end sequence felt heavily recycled.  In particular second time around Time Master was more easily defeated even by my injured heroes than he had been first time around.  It was good fun playing as Time Master though.
7) :ffvstr: should have been longer.
8)There were more supervillains.

Sorceror....x.   

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

There are actually a couple of mods where the end lets you play all of your characters.  The Strangers and The Great Hunt come to mind, both of them very good mods in any case.

[JKCarrier]

I think the cannisters add a nice strategic element. If your Health starts to dip, do you use the cannister now, or save it for a possible worse situation later? "Do ya feel lucky, punk?"  ;)

[lugaru]

4) Charles Wilson/ Blitzkrieg had an origin.  How does a World War II Fascist suddenly end up as Deputy Head of the CIA (although that might explain a few things to be honest...) ?

This is not much of a comment, just purely cynical. Read "legacy of ashes: a history of the CIA" and you will see lots of spies from many different countries becoming high ranking CIA officers while we boasted that "we've got a guy disguised as a janitor in a soviet building!".

As for the canisters I agree that they add a minor packman element. Hmmm... I wonder what the desginers would do now? Based on Bioshock they are still full of gaming convention but pushing the envelope at the same time. Personally I would love to see characters recieve points for performing heroic acts and then spend points with special attacks, healing and performing other adventure hero abilities.

[stumpy]

I can take or leave the canisters. There are missions where I use the health canisters and there is a very strategic aspect to the energy canisters, since someone like El Diablo is suddenly very uber in many missions when he is energized.

The XP canisters are a contrivance, I'll agree, and they were even more so in the first game where the whole team could use one at once. I remember, in the final Mr. Mechanical mission, I would send some quick squad member who wasn't going to be of much use against a giant steel robot with 1300+ health (like Liberty Lad) over to the green canister and have him punch it over until it was near enough that the other characters could all gather around and use it without leaving Mr Mech alone long enough to take down the buildings. Obviously, that was completely unrealistic, but it was one of the few missions that didn't have a pause in the fighting or an interrogation after the fight was over where the canister could be found and used. (That was also pretty early on, before I realized that everyone in the squad sharing the XP canisters made the later missions too easy...)

BTW, as far as that Blitzkrieg story goes, I don't think Charles Wilson was ever actually in the CIA. It's unlikely he was really even named Charles Wilson. He just used his mind control powers to fool the team into thinking he was so that they'd grab Time Master for him.

I have a whole laundry list of scripting improvements that would really change the add-ons we could make for the game (or improve them, like having "the hand" be optional for custom actions).

Insofar as game play is concerned, I really wish the percentages shown in the status bar were strictly adhered to / accurate. I know it's a nitpick and it may not come up as much if you don't play at the "impossible" setting, but I hate it when a target is shown to have a 0% chance to resist an attack and then he resists it or when your beam has 100% chance to hit and it misses. I know that the difficulty setting changes those chances (or something does) but, I wish the display reflected that.

[JKCarrier]

I would send some quick squad member who wasn't going to be of much use against a giant steel robot with 1300+ health (like Liberty Lad) over to the green canister and have him punch it over until it was near enough that the other characters could all gather around and use it

:lol: That's brilliant! I didn't even know you could move the cannisters.

[stumpy]

Yup, but it only works with the XP canisters, for whatever reason. I don't know why they don't allow it for HP, EP, or PP. I know it would be a great help in the FFvT3R mission where Black Jack fights Red Sun. He is desperate for a health recharge, but the nearest HP can is on top of a roof and he has no way to get to it...

I used that XP canister knockback trick with Man-Bot's focus power in the first ant mission as well and with Alchemiss' repulsion power in the raptor mission. I think that, in both missions, only one character could get to the canister if you didn't move it.

[TaskMasterX]

2) The reduced energy regain rate for flying characters were restored.  Flying characters have too great an advantage otherwise.

With the ability to use Flying Melee, the Fliers' advantage have been cut significantly. ^_^

[Panther_Gunn]

The XP canisters are a contrivance, I'll agree, and they were even more so in the first game where the whole team could use one at once.

The what to the what??!?  Sharing XP cannisters?  I've never even *heard* of that before.  How the heck does that work?  I thought it was just whoever picked it up.  That trick doesn't work for other cannisters, does it?

[Previsionary]

The XP canisters are a contrivance, I'll agree, and they were even more so in the first game where the whole team could use one at once.

The what to the what??!?  Sharing XP cannisters?  I've never even *heard* of that before.  How the heck does that work?  I thought it was just whoever picked it up.  That trick doesn't work for other cannisters, does it?

Yes, in ff1 all characters can use a single hp or energy canister if they all crowd around it, iirc. You can't move most of them though since they only have 1 hp and only one canister, that I know of, has a minimum health. Why that is? I don't know.

[HumanTon]

I've tried several times to understand the whole Charles Wilson/Blitzkrieg thing and every time I do my mind goes all wonky. How, at the start of the story, did Blitzkrieg make it to 1963 if the 3rd Reich was defeated? Once he got his powers did he lay low and allow the Reich to fall, just so 20 years later he could go for Time Master? But that can't be the case, since it's predicated on him getting the Energy X in the first place and if he does that we know FF goes back and time and defeats him so he can't appear in 1963 and get the Energy X so the whole story could never have happened to begin with. And how did he know there was Energy X to be gotten in the first place? Brain ... turning ... to mush ... from time travel contrivances .....

[Previsionary]

OMGah, Humanton. First rule of time travel stories...Don't think about it. You're violating a rule. I hope you're happy about that.

[stumpy]

I agree with Previsionary. There isn't a good way to have time travel make causal sense in the world. It's inherently acausal.

That said, my assumption was always that Blitzkrieg didn't exist as a superpowered person during WW2. He might have been alive then and maybe was even an adult, but he was just an unpowered person until Energy-X showed up in the sixties. Then he got his Blitzkrieg powers and, eventually, realized that if he could somehow get control of Time Master, he could go back in time and rewrite the outcome of WW2. That brings us to the start of the FFvT3R storyline.

[BentonGrey]

Yeah, Stumpy's got it.  Think about Vandal Savage in JLU (The Savage Time).  Wilson got his powers in the 60's along with everyone else, and just figured that the easiest time to take control would be WWII (also, conveniently before FF existed).

[UnkoMan]

And here I always thought he didn't actually get his powers until AFTER getting Time Master.Then he went back in time and gave other people powers, too.  I assumed that, before that, he really WAS a CIA agent who happened to be corrupt, then he saw an opportunity and took it.

[JKCarrier]

I assumed that, before that, he really WAS a CIA agent who happened to be corrupt, then he saw an opportunity and took it.

That was my guess too.

[BentonGrey]

Nope, if you watch his first cutscene, he reveals his mutated form after FF leave.  He may actually have been a CIA agent, but he certainly wasn't just a normal guy.

[HumanTon]

I don't think his being a CIA agent fits in with his over-the-top German accent. Plus I'd expect a CIA officer to use his mind control on US officiials in 1963 instead of going through all that complicated time travel stuff.

The most plausible scenario, based on what people said here, is that he was a former fanatic Nazi officer who gained Energy X powers in the 60s and somehow found out about Timemaster. So he assumed the identity of Charles Wilson* then after getting access to Timemaster travelled back in time to make sure the Reich won the war, taking Energy X with him.

*Whether Charles Wilson was a real person of whether Blitzkrieg just made people think he was I leave to greater minds than mine to debate.

[Cardmaster]

He's actually a chipmunk.

[alberik]

I don't think his being a CIA agent fits in with his over-the-top German accent. Plus I'd expect a CIA officer to use his mind control on US officiials in 1963 instead of going through all that complicated time travel stuff.
......

He could be in the BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst) because in untill the sixtees they have a lot of former Nazis Spys that work for them. The BND was founded of the so called group Gellen, witch was founded in WWII to enspionage the USSR. And after the war this group works closely with the CIA against the Sovjetunion. So it would be possible that an formely Nazi Spy work for the CIA.

[JKCarrier]

I don't think his being a CIA agent fits in with his over-the-top German accent.

But as Wilson, he has an American accent. So which accent is the fake one? I'm guessing the German one.

I think Wilson was a 1960s CIA agent who got Energy X powers, but kept them hidden while he made his plans. Once he got access to Time Master, he used Timey's powers to go back in time to the 1940s and take over. He did it that way so that there would be no Energy X heroes to get in his way... between his powers and the future technology he brought with him, it was a piece of cake to assure that the Nazis won WWII. He probably thought that Freedom Force would be erased from history when the timeline changed, but he didn't know that Energy X would make them immune to the alterations.

[stumpy]

I suppose being an agent of some sort might have given him the inside scoop on what Nuclear Winter was up to and involve himself in that plot. Maybe. He could have come by that info in any number of ways. It may even have been him who got ahold of Nuclear Winter and convinced him to steal Time Master in the first place.

But, honestly, I don't see why Wilson had to be an actual CIA agent at all. His illusions/mind control/whatever tricks allow him to fool the team into thinking that he was someone they should believe. Since it turned out that Nukey was up to something, it wasn't much of a leap for FF to buy into the notion that he was an ally. Heck, MM was ready to break bread with Red Oktober without any mind control influence...

BTW, Blitzkrieg used a German accent when he was just talking to himself. I would tend to think of that as his natural accent. (And, I will blissfully ignore the question of why wouldn't he just be speaking German rather than English with a German accent... Gotta love comics. :P)

[BaronGrackle]

Old topic, but thought I'd weigh in.

1) Agree that the last level set would have been more fun with all the heroes playable. A bonus set of levels that involved all the heroes would have been terrific.

2) Agree that the supervillain origins should have been better explained. I would have enjoyed origin videos for EVERY major character, hero and villain alike.

3) Along with more villains, there should have been more fights that involved MORE THAN ONE VILLAIN at the same time. Most fights against villains involved four superheroes wailing on a single fiend. That's great for giants and super-bosses, but where's the balance? Where's the fight of four superheroes vs. four supervillains? The recent game had a team of three WWII villains working together; it would have been easy to make the player fight all three of them simultaneously. The closest thing the games had to this was the first dream level, with Bullet/Eve and Man O' War/Sea Urchin fighting together.

4) A little variety on the World War II theme. Does EVERYTHING have to happen within the city of Berlin? You can tell it's not even occupied Europe, since the civilians are all German. Why is the Pacific Fleet decoding happening in Germany, instead of Asia? I wanted to fight me some Japanese soldiers!

5) The Bard really has absolutely nothing to say when SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST FOLIO is going to be destroyed? I have the Ant telling me how important these works are? AAAGGHH! :-)

6) I REALLY wanted a level that featured Man O' War and Sea Urchin doing something important underwater. I know it's hard to digitize water sets, but I don't think we would have expected much in terms of graphics--even Mario has underwater levels. Once I found out that they were RECRUITABLE characters in the second game (again), I put the pieces together that no level would feature them as mandatory characters. My heart sank, just a little.

All these things said, the Freedom Force games are terrific!

[GogglesPizanno]

...the supervillain origins should have been better explained. I would have enjoyed origin videos for EVERY major character, hero and villain alike.

I still have an idea for an EZScript reworking of the game that expands out some missions and fills in some plot holes (including some better villain introductions). Kinda like the "Directors Cut" if you will.

I REALLY wanted a level that featured Man O' War and Sea Urchin doing something important underwater. I know it's hard to digitize water sets, but I don't think we would have expected much in terms of graphics--even Mario has underwater levels.

As Benton, myself and cmdrkoenig (among others) will attest... an underwater map that actually feels underwater is still the holy grail of map making. We all have had somewhat limited luck with certain ideas, but nothing has quite worked right yet.