"No Gods or Kings" revisited

[Professor S]

http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/02/nogodsorkings.jpg

I recently finished BIOSHOCK after having played it for a bit, but then putting it down after getting stuck at one point. I have to say I greatly enjoyed it, but it's definitely not your average FPS. Some thoughts:

1) Bioshock is a literary experience, more so than any other modern game I've played. Often games are compared to movies, and the format fits that of film, but Bioshock is decidedly not like a movie. It has multiple characters, several side stories that run in non-linear fashion but all compliment the end story. It plays out much more like a book that way. And like a book, the game really doesn't pick up steam until you're 30% of the way through it.

2) Whoever the artists were for this game should be millionaires. The game oozes ambiance and beauty.

3) Bioshock uses the nature of video gaming to tell it's story. It's always been a accepted conceit that you move from one mission to another based on objectives. But who is mandating these objectives? What are their motivations? Why are you blindly following these orders, assuming they are the best course of action. By using this conceit as a plot device, the designers turned the nature of electronic gaming into a plot device, and it played out brilliantly.

4) Finally, the game did make you think. Even though Rapture is by no means a true reflection of objectivist ideals, I think it shows what can happen when anyone becomes so enamored with their own ideology that all reason falls before it. In actuality, I think the world of Rapture borrows from a deadly mix of objectivism (markets uber alles), fascism (everything in the end interest of Rapture/the state) and early 20th century Fabian progressivism (eugenics and social. This story is about all absolutist beliefs, not simply those of Ayn Rand.

In the case of Bioshock, objectivism just happened to be the canvass for this story to be formed and told. It would have worked just as well, with Communism or any other "ism" in it's place. We just wouldn't have had that pretty art deco design to look at the whole game, and I think it was a new world and idea to explore that hasn't been done to death.

I'm eager to visit this world again, and await Bioshock 2.

[manasecret]

Spoilers!

I'm probably 75% through, and I just got past the humongo plot twist. (The fact that there was a plot twist was spoiled for me, though I did see the inevitable one coming.) So far I really love the game. And having a girlfriend who lovingly demands my time has forced me to slowly play the game, which has let much of the plot sink in instead of rushing by. For example, the fact that Andrew Ryan mind-controls you into killing him and getting as far as you did in the first place -- why? When he could have stopped you at anytime himself with the same mind-control? Is that because he truly did love you, being his son, and wanted you to be free of the "slave's" bond? Probably the most thought-provoking question I've experienced in a video game. And it's not even over yet.

[Professor S]

*Spoilers, but honestly at this point, if you don't know already you have to expect them*























Andrew Ryan doesn't mind-control you into killing him. Fontaine is the one who implanted the suggestion in you, and asked "will you kindly" kill Ryan. The reason Rapture is in such a state is due to a civil war brought on by Fontaine and his inluence over the mentally damaged populace addicted to splicing. He wanted Ryan dead, and Ryan wanted Fontaine dead and you'e in the middle of it all.

Andrew Ryan was asking you/the protagonist to overcome the mind control by repeatedly stating "A slave obeys, a man chooses!" Ryan's belief in the individual was so great he believed you would overcome Fontaine's unconscious suggestion, and he was willing to give his life for his principles.





















End spoilers.

[manasecret]

Well, unfortunately, I can't read that. I'll reply in about a month or so. :)

Btw, if you didn't know already, the tag for that blackout is [ spoiler ] without the spaces.

[Professor S]

You can read that. The spoiler was meant for those who haven't played at all yet. I only spoil what you've already seen.

[manasecret]

Ok, wasn't sure...

You say that Andrew Ryan doesn't mind-control you into killing him, but doesn't he? He mind-controls you to sit, stand, and run before he finally commands you to kill. And if he could also use the mind control, he could also have stopped you early on by using the same that Atlas/Fontaine uses. Seems to me he is trying to free you, or as you say is willing to die for his principle. I wonder if there is not much in Ryan's narrative that comes before that reveals some tinge of love for you, since you are his son. He does say soon before you get to him, "You are my greatest disappointment." Yes, I think he died for his principles, but maybe he also died because of his fatherly love for his son.

[Professor S]

I see what your saying. I thought you meant Ryan initiated the mind control. Ryan certainly used it, but like you said, he was trying to free you and show you how you were manipulated, while Fontaine just wanted to use you to his own ends.

[manasecret]

As part of your point 3, about using accepted video game conceits, I loved the explanation of the VitaChambers. I thought it was silly that, in the midst of all this story giving explanation to how you are essentially a super-human (the number one video game conceit), that they couldn't give an explanation for another major video game conceit, the idea that you are given free reign to come back to life whenever you want, but your enemies can not. And then, bam, there it was. Nice and simple, a seamless part of the plot. Lovely.

[manasecret]

We ought to make a list of video game conceits that BioShock turns on its head. I'll start --

1. Mario Conceit 1 - You are a fucking superhero who fucks up turtles and other crawling shit with a smile, and no one else is.
2. Mario Conceit 2 - You have as many lives as you want. Just pretend to be sad and come back to life a few screens earlier with a knowing smile. Because you are a superhero (see Mario Conceit 1).
3. Mario Conceit 3 - You get extra-super superpowers when you eat weird shit. No one else gets superpowers (see Mario Conceit 1), except (caveat) that asshole Wario and possibly Waluigi.

Any more?

[Fyacin]

I don't remember them explaining vita chambers?
The end of that game freaked me out so bad I basically ran through it. I am not good with that kind of stuff LoL.

[manasecret]

I don't remember them explaining vita chambers?


Well, it depends on how much of an explanation you want. They explained how and why they were built in at least one or two diaries. They don't, however, explain how exactly they work, but I don't expect that for a science-fiction device.

For the explanation of how and why they were built, there is one diary by Dr. Suchong that you get very soon before you kill Andrew Ryan. Suchong explains that Andrew Ryan commissioned them somehow, through Suchong maybe but that's not clear because it sounds like even he didn't believe they could work. But he also explained that Ryan set them up to only work on Ryan's DNA. This explains the video game conceit of why the protagonist can come back alive at will but no enemies can, in this case, through the VitaChamber and because you're Ryan's son.

Something I didn't think about until now -- why can't Ryan come back to life then? Or does he?? Hmm....

[Professor S]

Hmmm.... checking IMDB Armin Shimmerman (brilliant voice of Andrew Ryan) isn't slated to be working on Bioshock 2, but then again B2 isn't on imdb at all. So take it for what it's worth.

[Typhoid]

I love Bioshock a lot. To me, it was one of the first games where I didn't really feel I was playing a game, more like watching a movie unfold. Except that this game is much better than a movie.

To be honest, I still haven't beaten the game (while I've heard all about it) because I left it at my friends so he could play it on the 360.

Anyways, it's subtle things about this game that make it amazing. While the game feels vastly wide open (in the sense of clear corridors) the fact that you're under the ocean and seemingly trapped from all escape hits you. The lighting, graphics, and especially the diaries are what make this game the most epic thing I've played - or seen be played in the past few years.


Although Dead Space is a pretty close 2nd.

[manasecret]

My only complaint so far is that, while early in the game I experienced true fear in entering new areas and fighting certain foes, now that I have a nuke's worth of firepower in my pocket there's not much fear any more.

And Big Daddies were a cinch by the third one I faced. Just lay a bunch of proximity mines in a row, leading to a big column that you can play ring around the rosey with, and then grenade him to get him mad, run away leading him through all the proximity mines, then finish him off with a couple more grenades while using the big column as cover.

The only time I'm scared of Big Daddies is when they're close to other enemies and it's hard to kill the splicers without a stray bullet hitting the Big Daddy and getting his panties all in a wad. Which also makes the Big Daddy hypnotizing splice virtually worthless IMO.