Yeah a sense of taste
(lol ahahaha j/k)
Well Freespace 2 is much more compelling and manages to actually get an emotional reaction out of the player, I found myself more then once playing freespace 2 wanting to scream at the Damn shivans who blew my squadron out of the stars.
That and a lot of the missions in FS2 evoke a feeling of desperation (in a good way) where your sitting there going "Damn hold on one more minute just one more minute" while flak is exploding all around you and a major space battle is going on all around.
It's just a very visceral and excellently told story within the game.