Did Mass Effect Steal It's Story Outright?!

[TheDoctor455]

Hey, Halo took it's entire concept from Ringworld, it happens all the time man.

Of course... Ringworld was actually good...
Halo fucked the whole concept up.

As for ME... no... it doesn't really sound like plagerism... its just a common story being retold... in this case... "ancient evil force returning"... hell... most of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos was based on that one premise alone.

 

[Souldead341]

As one poster already said, if the author of those works doesn't see the similarities, then I'm not going to fuss over it.

Your assuming that he has played Mass Effect. As he is really the only one who would really know if it was subject to copyright infingement.

That's a valid point. Any author would have to read a work to see if it was stolen.

However, after this much time it's probably safe to assume that the similarities have tricked to Reynolds, if only by word of mouth. Also, it's not just the author who has a stake in this, there's also the editor and publishing company who could notice or be informed of the similarities.

 

[McNinja]

And your point is... what? Things like this happen all of the time. There's no need to get all hot and bothered over it.

 

[UberNoodle]

snip

Mind taking this in PMs? Or we might end up spamming the hell out of the poor guy's topic.

Kinda sounds like taking things 'outside' lest we ruin this fine establishment.

Yeah we could, but it's not really worth it. Honestly, Avatar was cool fun and I bought it on BluRay and enjoyed examining its attention to detail, but my love for it doesn't go much further beyond that. Then again, I think that is exactly what JC intended. Otherwise, if I came off a bit snappy in my response to you, it was in the spirit of heated debate.

Anyway. I think that this thread is repeating itself. Not much to spam.

 

[Akalistos]

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.
-Star Wars. Star Wars' story is older than recorded history. Should George Lucas be sued? The answer is no.

It depend how much is plagiarism. If they took the whole series and turn it into a video game... Yes! James Cameron did it. It's the writer that should sue, not Costner. You legaly own the story that you produce and therefore, you should make money if someone use it.

Star Wars is nothing more than the Black knight story in space, it didn't rip enough of the story to really be in trouble, Bioware Fanboy! How much copying a source does it take to become plagiarism? When the plot, setting and character are the same. In this case, it his.

Also, Fanboy, Don't defend Bioware.... Like Yahtzee said, they are big boy that doesn't need defending

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

snip

Mind taking this in PMs? Or we might end up spamming the hell out of the poor guy's topic.

Kinda sounds like taking things 'outside' lest we ruin this fine establishment.

Yeah we could, but it's not really worth it. Honestly, Avatar was cool fun and I bought it on BluRay and enjoyed examining its attention to detail, but my love for it doesn't go much further beyond that. Then again, I think that is exactly what JC intended. Otherwise, if I came off a bit snappy in my response to you, it was in the spirit of heated debate.

Anyway. I think that this thread is repeating itself. Not much to spam.

Nah, it's okay.
I usually feel the same when I defend Modern Warfare 2 - things get real heated.

 

[KAPTAINmORGANnWo4life]

Well, it's hardly copy/pasted. Yes there are quite a few similarities between the stories, but who's to say they didn't just come up with something they thought was original? I wrote an entire twenty-five-page thesis in University and it turned out almost everything I wrote was similar to a book written in 1984 that I'd never heard of.

And at any rate, the set pieces, characters, and all of the nuances to Mass Effect aren't plagiarised, and the story is told in a manner that differentiates it from this other work.

I'm not denying similarities, but if something with similarities to older stories was considered plagiarism, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and plenty of other works would have never been made.

ONE MORE THING!

I'd actually be glad if a story had clear elements of something else, but wasn't a remake. That way it isn't shackled to the existing story, and can progress as the writers want.

 

[wolf thing]

does it matter. it less about the story and more about the player involvment. and besids most scinen fiction movies story are taken from some where else. mening is les about the story more about the world the story is set in

 

[Necromancer1991]

Why do people get pissed when a movie or game paraphrases a plot from something else? Sure the plot of Mass Effect is similar to this but it has enough personality and originality to be considered it's own thing, is it a ground-breaking narrative, no but it still a great narrative (anyone else notice how late this post is, we've already gone through Mass Effect 2 for god's sake).

 

[Hoplon]

Having read revelation space, and played both mass effect games.

My answers to the OP is "Uh no, it didn't rip anything off"

they approach the same idea in very different ways (the idea being something wiping civilisations out) but once any two story's try the same idea out they will inevitably be compared.

It's not like it is the same setting with the names changed just enough to avoid being sued *cough*warcraft*cough* they are very different settings.

 

[Starke]

anc[is]Not taking sides yet, just wanted to point out that the ancient race's tech thing is pretty common. Precursors from Star Control come to mind.

Yeah, but we're in Starship Troopers is to Armor type territory here, not just random themes popping up again.

The Starship Troopers movie had (very nearly) nothing to do with the book, and the book's author said he took lots of themes from Armor and was in a way paying homage to it as being a great book.

Because in 1959 Heinlein took themes from a book published in 1984 as a way to honor it... wait... this makes sense to you?

As for previous ancient races leaving behind advanced tech... a LOT of sci-fi does that, from Halo to Stargate. It's nothing new. Stories have been recycled since the beginning of time. Just look at the major religions to tell you that

Yeah, and as I said, there's a hell of a lot more being copied here, but, seeing how your previous paragraph makes sense to you, I can understand how this would as well. It's still, you know, wrong, but, hey.

 

[Starke]

anc[is]Not taking sides yet, just wanted to point out that the ancient race's tech thing is pretty common. Precursors from Star Control come to mind.

Yeah, but we're in Starship Troopers is to Armor type territory here, not just random themes popping up again.

You mean Armor by John Steakley? I loved that book.

That's the one. It still bugs me that he reused Crow and Felix in Vampire$, but, yup.

 

[Meggiepants]

As one poster already said, if the author of those works doesn't see the similarities, then I'm not going to fuss over it.

Your assuming that he has played Mass Effect. As he is really the only one who would really know if it was subject to copyright infingement.

That's a valid point. Any author would have to read a work to see if it was stolen.

However, after this much time it's probably safe to assume that the similarities have tricked to Reynolds, if only by word of mouth. Also, it's not just the author who has a stake in this, there's also the editor and publishing company who could notice or be informed of the similarities.

Also a valid point.

Personally, I think by this point it is likely that an author of a popular work has heard of the plot of a popular game, particularly since fans tend to be protective of their favorite authors and will make a fuss.

When Avatar came out, I looked up a book on Amazon and several of the reviews were already mentioning how the movie ripped off the book. This was a book published in the 70s by an author of some renown but not at the level of fame as say, Stephen King. Apparently this author was also aware of the similarities and blogged about it.

It also should be pointed out that an author has the believe they will win such a case. I read an article recently about the author of "The Lonely Polygamist" whose book was originally titled "Big Love," coincidentally also the name of the popular HBO show about polygamy which had many similarities to the book. But instead of suing HBO, the author decided to capitalize on the show's success. His book is now a best seller.

Sometimes suing is not the best option.

 

[Always_Remain]

Pointless discussion is pointless. For a writer OP, you sure seem narrow minded. Also this is less of a discussion concerning Mass Effect then it is you just telling us how much you dislike Bioware.

 

[Penguinness]

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)...

Reminds me of Halo.

 

[Starke]

Having read revelation space, and played both mass effect games.

My answers to the OP is "Uh no, it didn't rip anything off"

they approach the same idea in very different ways (the idea being something wiping civilisations out) but once any two story's try the same idea out they will inevitably be compared.

It's not like it is the same setting with the names changed just enough to avoid being sued *cough*warcraft*cough* they are very different settings.

The story that I was told once way back when was that Warcraft began its life as an adaptation that fell through or something similar.

 

[PauL o_O]

Should the first 3 Call of Duty games get sued? I'm pretty sure there stories weren't that original...


cwudididthar?

 

[mysterj]

All space operas have similar plots, these are just especially similar.

 

[IWCAS]

Yeah this stuff happens all the time. Like previously stated the best part of the game is the dialogue and situations.