Of all the features cut from Freelancer's original design, planetary landing is the one the community still talks about.
Here's what was planned. Chris Roberts' original pitch for Freelancer — and there are records of this from pre-2000 interviews, before the Microsoft acquisition — included the ability to fly your ship down to a planet's surface, land, and access ground-level content. Not just a landing cutscene: actual environments on the surface, vehicles you could drive, missions that took place in planetary settings. The pitch was of a piece with everything else Roberts envisioned: a game where the barrier between "in space" and "on a planet" was as seamless as the barrier between different regions of a system.
Environments were reportedly built in some form. The technology existed in prototype. When Microsoft acquired Digital Anvil in 2000 and the scope reduction began, planetary landing was one of the first things to go. The reasoning was practical: the planet environments needed their own art assets, their own gameplay design, their own AI systems, their own interface elements. It was a game within a game. With a shipping deadline looming, it was cut.
What survived, in a reduced form, is the landing cutscenes. You dock at a planet and see a ship flying into atmosphere, a short cinematic of descent, and then you're in the station interior. The game gestures toward a surface it doesn't let you reach.
Chris Roberts has been trying to build planetary landing again ever since. Star Citizen has it — you can land on planets, walk around, drive vehicles. It is exactly what Freelancer's planetary landing was supposed to be. Whether Star Citizen will deliver the rest of Roberts' vision is a separate question. But on this specific feature, two and a half decades later, it exists.
For Freelancer as shipped: the planets are there, visible from space, beautiful in their rendering. You just can't land.