I always wanted to ask. Is it just me or Mass Effect is heavily based on story of Freespace? There's a powerful race that wipes out every advanced society once in a while (Shivans/Reapers). There's ancient extinct civilization that has key to defeating this threat (Ancients/Protheans). There's traitor on your side who's trying to forge alliance with your archenemy (Admiral Bosh/Saren). In the end you don't destroy your enemy you only block the way for them. And the story itself is somewhat similar. Of course there are differences in all the details but still I have hard time believing that it's just coincidence. Now I'm wondering, am I the only one who noticed that?
Nothing against Mass Effect though, I really enjoyed it.

lol, never thought about this like that. The way you put it.....it indeed seems very similar.
And we can go even further, the alien jump nodes (Portals/Mass gates) , the first war at the beginning with race that mankind will ally later (Vasudan/Turians), the final battle with the most advanced enemy ship (Lucifer/Sovereign) ... :)

Yes, thanks for another examples. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Glad I'm not the only one who can see it.
And if you find it interesting maybe you could give me one tiny little plus point, I hate to be zero :)

:) there.......I've done all I can...

Yeah, you're very kind. Unfortunately I know now that it's not that easy gain reputation here. But I'm more disappointed that no one else joined this thread. Never mind...

Hmmm..... I do believe that you guys have something there.
I guess if a dev. was to pick a series or game to "homage" then it was good choice for them to pick this one.

Yep :-) When I was playing Freespace, I thought "Hmmm... Either Freespace developers can travel in time, or Mass Effect can very well copy things"

Seems all very Babylon 5 to me.

I remember having the same sense of deja vu when playing Mass Effect myself! The plot's really are very similar, though both are still very good games. Maybe Freespace is just old enough that the Mass Effect guys didn't think anyone would notice? Then again, Freespace has been open source for some time now, perhaps that also includes the story?

Probably just me, but it just seems like both games picked a fairly generic storyline. I'm sure the same general plotline has cropped up in hundreds of sci-fi films, books and games.

Namely Fred Saberhagen's Berserker books and the even older myths about once brilliant civilizations that were destroyed in a cataclysm (Atlantis and so on)...

well, Isaac Asimov had a short story dealing with some form of what's being talked about here. In the story, a scientist was a great joke teller. He theorized that humor was implanted by some "alien race" or supreme being, since it triggered something in ourselves even though the joke was outdated or highly unlikely, even for educated individuals.
Kinda like stories repeating itselves, be it in myths, religion, tv shows and games :-P

Seconded.
Incredibly Babylon 5
Gosh do you think its possible that one of the nineties biggest and most ambitious tv series 'inspired' one of the nineties biggest and most ambitious space sims?????
Vasudan=Minbari(though they where much harder)
Shivans=Shadows
although yeah there are alot of similar sci fi plots like that really. I would imagine Babylon 5 to be the main inspiration for alot of these things though.

I thought the same thing about Freespace/Mass effect but like others have said it is a fairly well used plot, similar themes have even popped up in Star Trek and Star Wars Novels.