Pfft

I wish there was a game where right off the bat we were chucked into a row of cubicles in an office with five other strangers and forced to work together to escape from the building (and the city, and the planet) because we had all been identified as rebels or something.

And one of us might be all trigger-happy and bloodthirsty, y'know, like a real Mr. Blue or something, but we'd be stuck helping him because he was a fellow player and everybody else was stupid-ass npcs.

Yah, it'd be just like that bad dream you always have.

In a world where we could design and build our own spaceships and capital ships and spacestations and space-hotels and purchase and terraform planets and build agricultural and mining bases (not that I'd actually have the patience to actually do any of that, even if it was all snap-together lego pieces and monitoring consoles, but it'd be cool to see and use what other people built).

A game where the captain of a ship could hire a crew of other players and npcs (if the job was too boring for a player), where those players could work as dockhands (with a tetris-like cargo-loading mini-game) and save up their money and eventually buy (or salvage) their own ship to captain.

And eventually, after enough Freelancer Money Runs, the captains of ships would be able to afford to build their own spacestations and shipyards, and eventually a spacestation owner would be able to terraform his own planet, and dole out areas to colonists and settlers and people who wanted to run restaurants and entertainment companies and mercenaries, all working together to make more money and increase their empire.

A game where you could crash-land your busted-up non-auto-repairing spaceship on the pleasure-garden-planet of beautiful waitresses that was built over an ancient alien archaelogical site that's just begging to be explored (I'll leave the exact meaning of that sentence up to your discretion 'cause I'm all cool like that).

A game where you could be arrested and go to intergalactic prison (where you'd learn how to make fake IDs and pick locks and catch up on all your soap operas) for allowing a spy aboard your ship, even if you didn't know they were trying to illegally transport an alien lifeform or stolen scientific documents or a vaccine for some virus that was cost-ineffective-to-cure inside their own body.

A game where you might get an email from your boss (who may or may not be an npc) telling you you had to kill your travelling companion (who also may or may not be an npc) because he was secretly a corporate mole from a rival corporation (full of people who may or may not be npcs), and if you didn't, you'd be next on their hit list.

A game where you could kidnap scientists and force them to help you make cool cybernetic upgrades and genetic augmentations for you and yer dumbass hairband-metal space-pirate buddies, and eventually the scientists would start diggin' yer taste in music because of that weird psychological thing that happens between people who are kidnapped and their kidnappers.

A game where other players could design cool clothes and assorted gnarly ground-and-air vehicles for my super-awesome-kungfu-grip-space-guy.

And sure, you'd be able to at least try to kidnap those people too heh.

But sometimes it seems like we're not even heading in the right direction for any of that to happen.

Pfft.