Characters / FreeSpace

Terrans

In General

• Humans Are Warriors: In cooperation with Vasudans, they defeated murderous aliens while being heavily outmatched in terms of technological developement. For all their boasting about superiority of their own pilots, Vasudans still respect human military prowess, or the Alpha 1 capabilities at least, as evidenced in vasudan part of campaign in Freespace 2, where they praise the terran pilot a lot.
• Standard Human Space Ship: Most of terran ships in series are designed that way: as a grey, metalic, blocky, utalitarian pieces of work.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Downplayed in the first game, when a single mission against a group of terran "traitors" is implied to be the result of McCarthy's awareness of events in Ross 128. Played straight in Silent Threat and Freespace 2, when we see emergence of two terran factions that rebel against the GTA and GTVA.

Alpha 1

• Ace Pilot: In both games they start as talented Rookies and are this at the end of both games.
• Featureless Protagonist: As the main campaign is focused on greater scope story and not on personal level, the narrative treats player character as one of many regular combatants instead of being the center of the setting. Your character is only ever referred to as Alpha 1. You can change how you look by changing your portrait in the Barracks room, including making yourself into a Vasudan pilot in the second game, but this doesn't have an effect on gameplay and never shows up in the campaign proper.
  • User-made campaigns don't even necessarily make you Alpha 1. FS2_Open can allow a mission designer to assign the player to any slot in any wing.
• The Hero Dies: At the end of Freespace 2 one of the possible fates to Player Character is to die in supernova blast.
• Silent Protagonist: Player Characer has no spoken dialogues, with the possible exception of final monologue in outro of Freespace 1.

Galactic Terran Alliance

• Enemy Mine: Innitially at war with PVE. After Shivan attack, they ally with their former enemies to save their own butt.
• The Federation: Collapses after the Great War and GTI Rebellion, but serves as a major model for the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance, from name to symbols.

Christopher Snipes

Voiced By: Jason Scott

• Badass in Distress: In "As Lighting Falls" mission, where saving him is main goal of the player.
• Fake Defector: He is undercover GTVA Special Operation Command officer who allegedly defected to NTF.
• Shoot Your Mate: He and Alpha 1 are forced to open fire on Vasudan ships who compromise their mission in "Rebels & Renegades".

Neo-Terran Front

• A Nazi by Any Other Name: While they seem more interested in separation and isolation from Vasudans than conquering them, they commit atrocities to reach that goal.
• Defiant to the End: Some NTF commanders seem to have this attitude, like admiral Koch, who instead surrendering to GTVA tries to ram the Colossus with his flagship NTD Repulse, or commander of rebel corvete Belisarius, who declined surrender demand from GVD Psamtik and died because of it.
• Evil Counterpart: Of the GTVA.
• Fantastic Racism: Towards Vasudans.
• Humans Are Bastards: Xenophobic, villainous faction guilty of war crimes against Vasudan civilians.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Their modus operandi.
• Villainous Valour: Many rebels seem to be really dedicated to their cause and ready to die for it.
• You Have Failed Me: Way too eager to execute their officers for incompetence.
• Unwitting Pawn: Only few out of highest ranks from NTF are fully aware what real Bosch's goal is. Lampshaded by second Bosch monologue entry, when the admiral openly calls Neo-Terran Front "an army of stupid cattle".

Aken Bosch (WARNING: Major spoilers)

Voiced By: Ronny Cox

• Anti-Villain: He himself admits that condemnation of his crimes is fair and justified. He just believes he had no choice but commit them as a smoke screen to his elaborate plan to contact and ally with the Shivans.
• Cultured Warrior: Admiral Aken Bosch is intelligent, cultured, and self-aware; hardly the kind of man you would think would be leading a rebellion based on open racism against Vasudans. In his log, Bosch expresses contempt for his NTF movement, calling it "an army of stupid cattle, driven by their hatreds, their fears, and insecurities." This provides an early hint that his motives are quite different from what they appear.
• Fallen Hero: He is an old veteran of the Great War who is also the leader of the xenophobic Neo-Terran Front. It is revealed during the Freespace 2 campaign that xenophobia against Vasudans is not his motive at all.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: He wants to pull a spiecies-wide version of this trope with his plans to ditch Terran-Vasudan alliance and create a new Terran-Shivan alliance instead. Whether his plans have any chance of being realised is yet to be seen.
• Necessarily Evil: How he explains his actions in his journal entries. He knows that leading Neo-Terran Front is a crime, and ditching Vasudans in his attempt to ally with the Shivans is a betrayal. He still is ready to do this as he believes it will ensure survival of the human species in the long run.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: All his crimes and betrayals are motivated by his hope of ensuring the survival of humanity by allying with the Shivans.
• What Happened to the Mouse??: As with almost everything in Freespace 2's ending, his final fate remains a mystery, but according to the developers his story didn't conclude with a Happy Ending.

Vasudans

In General

• Fire-Forged Friends: Vasudans are that for humanity in the aftermath of Freespace 1. Unfortunately, at the time of Freespace 2 not all Terrans share the sentiment.
• Proud Warrior Race: Downplayed. While they are proud civilisation and they do respect combat martyrdom and heroism, they are not more warlike than humans. They are very good at war nevertheless.
• Starfish Language: It looks like even their names are unpronounceable for any human, because Terrans use ancient Egyptian names as codenames for prominent Vasudan individuals, instead of oryginal ones.
• We ARE Struggling Together: In the first game the internal strife inside PVE is caused by a group of dangerous religious fanatics, who rebel against the vasudan gouverment, guided by some ancient vasudan holy texts, known only as "Omen of Darkness". This trope is averted in the second game, where entire Vasudan species is united under GTVA banner.

Parlamentary Vasudan Empire

• Enemy Mine: They are still at war with Galactic Terran Alliance when the series starts. When Shivans arrived, they almost instantly allied themselves with humanity.

Hammer of Light

• Apocalypse Cult: They seem to worship xenocidal Shivans believing they are a part of old prophecy being fulfiled.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While not even in tenth as menacing or powerful as Shivans, their actions almost result in human and Vasudan extinction. They are a minor nuisance for the most of campaign, leaving the Shivans as more prominent adversary untill "The Great Hunt" mission, where their involvement could potentially derail GTA plan of destroying Lucifer.
• Evil Counterpart: Of the PVE. While the majority of Vasudans cease fire with humans once the Shivans arrive, those fanatics continue their war in belief that Shivans are the holy race of Redeemers.
• Friend or Foe?: The Hammer of Light just love to pose as your reinforcement, and then turn on you as soon as you turn your back.
• Religion of Evil: Dangerous doomsday cult that believes in Shivans being a race of redeemers. Their actions endanger both Terran and Vasudan war effort during Freespace 1 campaign.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: And their dogmas are dangerous enough to threaten the existence of human and Vasudan civilization.
• Too Dumb to Live: They believe the xenocidal race that glassed their own homeworld and attack them on every occasion are the Great Redeemers. Their fanaticism has gone so far that even after Shivans obliterate their own homeworld, they are still ready to attack the forces that are the only chance to destroy Lucifer and save the future of their own species.

Emperor Khonsu II

• Big Good: He was the main proponent of joint Terran-Vasudan project Colossus, which aimed in both building mutual superweapon program against Shivans as well as strongering friendly bonds between former adversaries.
• The Faceless: Is heard only in one cutscene and never seen in person.
• The Good King: During his reign Vasudan economy prospered, they forged steady alliance with humans and were capable of rebuilding their military might.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A very competent ruler who supports establishement of Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He is heard only in one cinematic cutscene, yet he is one of the founding fathers of GTVA and author of Project Colossus.

Shivans (WARNING: major spoilers)

In General

• Absolute Xenophobe: The entire Shivan race suddenly shows up and tries to kill everybody non-Shivan. Their known history suggests they treat any spacefaring alien life the same: as prey.
• Abusive Precursors: Of the worst possible sort. They caused the extinction of the Ancients and the words of admiral Bosch imply they did it to every single civilization that emerged over long period of time. They started the conflict with humans and Vasudans without prior provocation, so regardless wether they are a race of Omnicidal Maniacs or just extremely warlike species, they are directly responsible for death and suffering of billions of Vasudans and Terrans.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Attacks against mankind and Vasudans are completely unprovoked. Their war is a methodical campaign of extermination, with no quarter given and with no option of surrender.
• Always Chaotic Evil: They are xenocidal aliens with whom real diplomacy may be impossible. While there are some evidences they might be a little more complex than just a race to kill every other inteligent life in the galaxy, like a temporary contact made by Bosch or their mysterious behaviour in battle of Capella, there are still too few of them to contradict this trope.
• The Bad Guy Wins: It is clear that whatever the Shivans wanted to achieve at the end of Freespace 2 by destroying the Capella system, they succeeded.
• Big Bad: While there is no shortage of villainous factions in this series, Shivans remain the most diabolical and menacing one.
• Conflict Killer: Their incursion effectively ends the war between GTA and PVN, although one Vasudan religious group do not drop hostility against terrans.
• Crazy-Prepared: No matter how many times they are beaten, the Shivans always have a contingency plan. For example, they countered the Alliance's answer to future Lucifer threats with the even more frightening Sathanas; when the Alliance destroys the first one, they send in the other eighty-plus.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Shivan warships are built entirely around launching a massive Alpha Strike from a Hyperspeed Ambush. When they pull it off most fights are over in seconds, but when they can't Terran and Vasudan ships can outmaneuver them and get out of their limited fire arcs fairly easily.
• The Dreaded: Called "The Destroyers" by the Ancients and considered the ultimate enemy by both Terrans and Vasudans. Their mere reappearance after 3 decades of relative peace makes GTVA pilots horrified.
• Evil Is Bigger: Aside from the fact that Shivan ships are generally more advanced than their Terran/Vasudan counterparts, many Shivan designs are the largest of their specific class. Seraphims are the largest bombers; the SD Lucifer is the largest warship of the first game; the SD Demon has 60% more hitpoints than most destroyers in the sequel and is slightly larger than its Allied counterparts; and the SJ Sathanas actually looks larger than the Colossus, mainly due to its protruding armor plating.
  • The Shivans themselves are physically the largest of all three races, measuring about 10-15 feet long, with spidery limbs, multiple eyes, metal skin, energy-molten knives, built-in beam weapons, and are nearly immune to bullets. Not to mention the fact that they glow red.
• Inscrutable Aliens: Very little is known about the Shivans other than their talent for blowing things up en masse. In fact, as the series goes on, they actually get more mysterious the more that gets revealed about them. The best that can be theorized is that they operate smaller scouting fleets and destroy societies at a certain point of advancement and military aggression, then a demolition fleet arrives to destroy their very stars. Perhaps to create new subspace portals back to their home systems, perhaps for resources, or to use the energy to return to their own dimension. But none of these are confirmed motives, further adding to their menace.
• Life in Zero G: They are theorized to have somehow evolved in a zero-gravity environment, highlighting how enigmatic and inscrutable they are. Their five limbs have a vaguely radial arrangement (two on top, two on bottom, and one behind), each one ending in a grasping appendage, and appear most suited for grabbing and pushing rather than any standard sort of locomotion.
• Precursor Killers: They have at least one civilization on their kill count. Admiral Bosch speculates that extermination of the Ancients was not their first time, and so did the Ancients towards the end.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Standard color theme for the Shivans. All of their vessels glow ominous red lights, and the lt. Ash describes these as "death black ships". Originally, however, they were meant to be green.
• Starfish Aliens: They more closely resemble giant five-legged spiders than anything else, having apparently evolved in (or designed for) a zero-G environment. Among other interesting quirks about them are: nearly bulletproof exoskeletons, multiple red Glowing Eyes of Doom, and the ability to survive prolonged exposure to vacuum. Don't forget the integrated laser beams.
• Starfish Language: Even moreso than Vasudans, as they don't posses a spoken language and they communicate by phenomenon called "quantum pulses".

The Ancients (WARNING: major spoilers)

In General

• Apocalyptic Log: The first Freespace game has the log shown in segments during cutscenes, and documented the rise of the Ancients, their conquest of hundreds of star systems, their contact with a powerful new race, and ends just before their destruction by the Shivans, thousands of years before the game starts. Bonus points for being the last recording not just of an individual, or a group, but an entire species. The last message, which is found by the player's side of the war late in the game, is the key to the survival of the human and Vasudan race.
• The Empire: They brutally subjugated or eliminated many civilisations before they were put down themselves by even more ruthless and brutal species.
• Face Death with Dignity: Their final act before their extinction was leaving instructions for future species to destroy Shivan shielded ships inside subspace.
• Fling a Light into the Future: The Ancients do this after realizing that they have no chance whatsoever of surviving their fight against the Shivans. The information they record regarding their downfall and the Shivans' weaknesses proves vital to humanity and leads to the Shivans' defeat in the first game.
• Posthumous Character: They were exterminated by the Shivans long before the video game events.

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