3 points
I do think that the amount of money people have poured in does show that there is legitimately a lot of consumer demand for a new Freelancer (well, or Wing Commander is maybe more apropos for Star Citizen).
Frankly, I’d rather have one done with minimal assets, and then go back and sell aesthetic DLC packs to make it pretty if people want.
Freelancer scrimped pretty hard on the out-of-cockpit assets. I feel like a lot of newer space games have blown a lot of work on building a pretty world that doesn’t add a lot to the actual core flying around and fighting bit, like X4 (particularly relative to earlier games in the series).