Originally posted by Corsair
Ermmmmm...I point you to the ending. Most games would have figured out some way to make it a "they lived happily ever after" ending, something more along the lines of managing to destroy the Sathanas fleet with a better superweapon. Only FS would have an ending like "and they blew up the star and killed millions upon millions of people, thus ending the second Shivan invasion.
MOST GAMES, I'll grant. Stories don't always end with a tidy, happy ending. I'll direct you to 'The Longest Journey' and 'The Empire Strikes Back', any number of anime and manga, etc. Freespace1 had a great ending, but let's face it, the ending alone doesn't make the game original. Lucas did it years before with ESB. Heck, if you want a closer parallel, the end of Freespace1 was not the 'happily ever after' complete victory you spoke of. In that, Freespace2 was just rehashing the end of Freespace1.
Its a great ending, but its just not enough to make the game 'original'.
Originally posted by CP5670
FS2 definitely had one of the best and most original plotlines I have seen; the best part was that everything in the game universe fits together so well that it seems quite realistic. Very few games have such a well-designed story that not only draws you in, but leaves you speculating about everything and makes you think further into the universe. (only games that can match FS2 story-wise are Deus Ex and Mission Critical IMHO)
The story was, overall, average. It doesn't come close to Deus Ex, which really, was a rehash of every silly conspiracy book ever (with especial homage to 'Illuminatus!'). Mind you, as Venom will point out to rebut my point: every thing that can be written has. Freespace just happened to rehash all the big, obvious ones. I can deal with that. I just won't call it 'original'.
The general gameplay was basically a very polished version of that of earlier space sims, but there are essentially two ways to make a classic game: have lots of original concepts and novel ideas, or take everything that is good in other games and polish it to perfection. In terms of gameplay alone, both FS and FS2; got the second part right.
No doubt about it, the gameplay in Freespace 1 and 2 carried the day, making up for the shoddy story, lame voice in-mission voice acting and overall more-of-the-same design. Gameplay won out.
