Did Mass Effect Steal It's Story Outright?!

[wonkify]

There are a number of recurring tropes in science fiction.

And there are a number of well known threads in hard science circles with forward thinkers positing circumstances should contact with alien races occur. Lots of these then get picked up into fiction as well.

A doomsday or trip wire device placed by an advanced race to 'mouse trap' other races is one that appears in various forms and types.

It is pretty much impossible not to repeat elements in fiction of any genre, not just sci fi.

I really doubt Bioware would stand for it either, it just isn't worth it to plagiarize anymore. The chances of getting away with it anymore is about zero. In large degree due to just this sort of 'community intelligence' at work in this thread and thousands of others.

Someone will tumble to it then your reputation is smeared forever.

It's never worth it and that's why they spend very good money on writers. No need for them if you are just going to cut and paste somebody else's work is there?

 

[Arcticflame]

Science fiction and fantasy recycle so much there are barely any original plots left. It's just the nature of the genre's. Tbh, the similarities between mass effect and this revelation space seem to be substantially different enough to be a completele cooicidence.

 

[Petromir]

I think you guys need to stop getting in such a twist about this. Mass Effect's story is similar to many others, as is Star Wars and Star Trek. Lord of the Rings is an amazing story but "heavily influenced" by Beowulf and the Ring Cycle.

What they have done is put together an original IP with a very believable working universe. Some elements may have appeared almost exactly the same in other fiction but others may be wholly original and when joined together as a whole, it creates the universe that we know and love as Mass Effect.

I've read the synopsis of Revelation Space and it seems only loosely similar to the overall arc of Mass Effect. Honestly, I think you're reaching here. There are many details to ME that separate it from this.

All fair but your slighghtly of with lotr and the ring cycle, both are based on an ancient norse/germanic tale. It wasnt the only place that Tolkien borrowed from. Whats impressive about middle earth, and tolkiesn stories in it is the depth, and the execution of the world. Everybody steals from something, hell i'm fauirly sure that genral opinion is that Homer et al were taking word of mouth legends adding some polish and writing them down.

 

[JEBWrench]

Should Kevin Costner sue James Cameron for ripping off Dances with Wolves when he made Avatar? No. People also say that Mass Effect is a rip off of Star Control 2. Some stories are as old as time, they just get retold over and over again.

Nah, but Frank Herbert's kids might have a thing or two to say.

They'd lose said lawsuit, but hey, they might have something to say.

 

[TheSeventhLoneWolf]

The way I see it. If you've seen/played it and you don't notice it's copied then its fairly alright. If you notice, then it's wrong.

 

[swolf]

Well, since their both the same (according to you, I wouldn't know. I haven't read the book yet or played enough of the game to make the comparison)...like I was saying, since they're the same and the book doesn't require me to change bullet types, scavenge out-of-the-way places that I wouldn't be visiting if it weren't for the stupid resources or whatever, and I don't have to babysit squadmates or replay a good section of the level everytime those idiots die (I've seriously considered playing through anyways but I kinda figured the game would get incredibly hard after all my squadmates died... and the story would probably have trouble with that. Though I don't think they really helped as much as I would've liked Like I said, they did make good bullet/laser sponges...kinda makes me wish I could've just tied them to me and used'em as a human shield. At least that way I wouldn't have to stop shooting at the imminent threat to my life to tell their dumb bullet-ridden, useless, low armor, low health, low IQ butts to take cover every other minute.) Sorry for the rant, it's just that everybody hyped the game up so much and I was expecting better and instead just got frustration instead of fun.
What I was trying to say was that I'll read the book instead.
Edit: I guess the term "human" shield isn't really appropriate in this situation. Oh well, you know what I meant.

 

[Vrex360]

To be fair, there's only so many plots in the world and in some respects what Mass Effect did was make a well told version of a classic sci fi story which of course is centered around some kind of galaxy consuming force that has to be stopped by the hero.
It's simple epic storytelling and was wonderfully mastered in Mass Effect. So regardless of whether or not it was original I still liked Mass Effect's plot.

 

[Snowden's Secret]

The way I see it. If you've seen/played it and you don't notice it's copied then its fairly alright. If you notice, then it's wrong.

Basically this. As with so many things, the only crime here seems to be Being Found Out.
And as (a lot of) people have already pointed out, these kind of concepts run rampant throughout pretty much all of sci-fi anyway.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I find I have a hard time caring. At all.

Oh no, Mass Effect has a similar plot to this book series I've never so much as heard of prior to this, er, "scandal". ME was fun. The book does not effect me in any particular way.

404: Give A Fuck Not Found.

This.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Every love story with a happy ending is the same to me, call the police!

 

[crudus]

Holy crap I have actually watched that. It amazes me you found it.

Yeah. I have had a lot of lonely nights reading Cracked. More facts below.

ACTUALLLY
The lion king was based on the historical story of the actual "lion king" Sundiataketa (Spelling) he was an African king, the story is almost exactly the same, go check your history book it's there.

actually, the films creators admit got it from Joseph and Moses from biblical stories and Hamlet(not Macbeth, I was tired and got them switched). Matthew Broderick thought he was doing the voice of Kimba the White Lion when he was casted for the roll of Simba.

Lion King is actually inspired greatly by Hamlet.

OT: It's not about how original the story is, but how original it is told.

yes yes yes, I got the stories mixed up yet again. I have no problem with them retelling a story if they admit that is what they are doing. Disney admits they got their inspiration from Hamlet and Joseph and Moses from biblical stories yet there remains a lot of similarities to Kimba the White Lion even down to setting, scene, and camera angle.

 

[Doug]

There are a number of recurring tropes in science fiction.

And there are a number of well known threads in hard science circles with forward thinkers positing circumstances should contact with alien races occur. Lots of these then get picked up into fiction as well.

A doomsday or trip wire device placed by an advanced race to 'mouse trap' other races is one that appears in various forms and types.

It is pretty much impossible not to repeat elements in fiction of any genre, not just sci fi.

I really doubt Bioware would stand for it either, it just isn't worth it to plagiarize anymore. The chances of getting away with it anymore is about zero. In large degree due to just this sort of 'community intelligence' at work in this thread and thousands of others.

Someone will tumble to it then your reputation is smeared forever.

It's never worth it and that's why they spend very good money on writers. No need for them if you are just going to cut and paste somebody else's work is there?

Pretty much this. No matter how hard you try, pretty much every plot arrangement you come up with will have been done somewhere else before, or will have had all its elements done elsewhere.

Because, well, there are only so many plot devices that humans are capable of thinking up that work in a logical chain of events in the real world, and cartoons and other fictions also have their limitations imposed by their modified physical laws and expectations.

Hell, this is why TVTropes.com exists.

 

[VulakAerr]

Snip!

I'm not sure if you've actually played the game or not? You show very little understanding of its mechanics here. Downed squadmates get up automatically when you finish the current encounter. The only time you lose anyone in ME2 is during the Suicide Mission. The squad-mate AI can be frustrating sometimes but generally they can look after themselves. If they are struggling, try directing them to some cover. The scanning is dull, yes, but has been vastly improved since the latest Title Update.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I believe that if more people had a broader experience of modern science fiction novels then they would not find Mass Effect as impressive. I noticed the link to Alistair Reynolds when playing it but it is a pretty tenuous link and there isn't that much common ground. Mass Effect is more influenced by retro TV and movie sci-fi. It was made to trigger nostalgia and they said as much. And anyway, War of the Worlds was there much earlier than both.

 

[Bigeyez]

There are no more "original" stories. Everything is influenced by everything else that came before it. With that said, no ME is not a blatant plagerism and calling it that is just plain stupid. It follows a set of tropes that have existed for a long time and outdate Revelation Space as well.

Edit: After reading the link the only things ME and that story even have in common are the futuristic sci-fi setting, an ancient alien race of precursors and a machine race that wants to kill everything, all of which are established tropes that date back decades....so yeah this thread is officially stupid. /goodbye

 

[Stabby Joe]

The most similarities I found was with Babylon 5. Now I would engage further in this discussion, but it seems from the first line of the OP that you're a JRPG fan who took offense to a Bioware developer comment and now have some need to go through with a vendetta of sorts.

 

[mjc0961]

So I was reading up on the "JRPG's aren't RPGs" bullshit when I came across a Kotaku member that mentioned how Mass Effect was a work of outright plagiarism. They name-dropped a novel called "Revelation Space", and I just had to see if this was true. No way was the game I held in such high regard a work of plagiarism.

It is.

At first glance, there's only a few similarities between the two. Archeologists studying a 900,000 year old dead race that left behind tons of tech and was killed by a single cataclysm, tech-enhanced humans fucking with colonies, grotesque deformed monsters born from mutated tech-enchanced human (slightly resembles husks the way they describe it in the summary)...

But then I happened across the crux of the novel, the whole point laid bare, and I shat a brick...

"As Sylveste [Main character & archeologist] and the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity [tech-enhanced humans] approach Cerberus [a planet, not the organization], Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all -- but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realizes, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the Inhibitors to the presence of the Amarantin [the protheans in this case], and ultimately caused the demise of that race."

Fuck me, mate. This novel's pretty renoun in the UK, listed as a collectible being a first in a series of Revelation Space novels. Surely I don't have to point out the copy-paste plot here, right? Oh, and the novel was published in 2000.

Link to Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space

1. JRPGs aren't RPGs, they are turn based strategy games that are almost always linear as all fuck in the plot department with zero roleplaying. That doesn't mean that "JRPGs" are bad, mind you. I enjoy quite a few myself (Grandia, Golden Sun, Pokémon, and Shining Force to name a few). They just aren't RPGs.

2. I don't see any proof that the Mass Effect story writers ripped off anything. Someone may have done a similar story first, but unless you can prove that the people who wrote Mass Effect were already aware of this work and purposefully took its ideas, I don't see it as plagiarism*. For all we know from the story you have told here, they came up with the idea completely on their own without reading that book. Basically, what I'm getting at here is, they can't steal an idea they didn't know about until they came up with it.
As for what actually happened (if they stole from the book or came up with the same thing on their own), I can't say. But from what you posted, it seems neither can you. And I'm not about to demand the heads of Bioware on sticks based just on speculation.

*Maybe it is still legally plagiarism, though. I don't claim to be a lawyer.

 

[Pearwood]

The basic plot of Mass Effect is pretty bland and definitely generic, it's Bioware's characterisation and in-depth writing style that make it stand out. Personally I don't really like the game that much but I certainly don't regard it as being plagiarised, the main plot is not what keeps people playing, the attention to detail is what makes it popular.

An example from a Bioware game I actually like - in Dragon Age the plot is that an ancient evil has awoken and is now leading a race of evil creatures in an invasion of the rest of the world. How many times have you heard that story before, lots yes? But how many times have you heard it told in a way as effective as Dragon Age?

 

[MinionStarwind]

Which one made millions and defined a genre?

Thought so. Next.

 

[Ickorus]

That really is quiet the similarity but as others have said Mass Effect's success comes just as much from it's gameplay as it's storyline.

Anyway, if the guy who wrote those books feels he's being cheated out of credit then he should complain to Bioware about it, and since he hasn't i figure it could easily just be a big coincidence.

Lion King outright stole their story from a Japanese animated movie(who stole their story from Macbeth)

Spoiler: evidence

The original story was Kimba the White Lion. Should Disney be sued?....yes actually, but they weren't! (Simba's early depictions were even of him being white)

You just destroyed my childhood.