BioShock Spoiler Thread

Andrew Armstrong

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Well, they worked as "resurrection" chambers (or in the words of a diary, some gobblde gook about quantum and states and matter teleportation, so advanced is one word for it, impossible is another), but only for Ryan and his son (the player!).

Like I mentioned, I am sure he'd have turned it off/disabled it for himself, but disabling any nearby working ones if he couldn't turn them off would have been just as effective. I wonder what happens if you die from the security later released in the room (I didn't bother to try).

I found the device utterly sickening for gameplay and if I died, I reloaded a save even if it was far back, on that point I think some people agree, since it removed any challenge from the game - almost going the route of the "flawless" MMO which doesn't even penalise a player.
 

Alex Karls

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I don't recall any dairies saying that. I remember one about Ryan's crew locking down the bathyspheres so that only Ryan and his family could use them, not vita chambers though.
 

Andrew Armstrong

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You must have missed the diary then, it was from Suchong, and the Vita Chambers never got past the testing stages due to the civil war.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/924919/49868

99 Suchong - The Vita Chamber

Initial Deployment, Vita Chamber/Client Ryan Industries Stage one is
complete. Sinclair and Alexander tried to explain the science to me, but
Suchong does not believe them. They keep saying plasmid reconstruction
this and quantum entanglement that, and then poof, dead people come back
to life. Bullshit! Of course, Ryan will only allow it to be tunes to his
genetic frequencies for the testing...
 

Alex Karls

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No, I heard all of the diaries, I just didn't remember that one. That's one of the few things I was intentional about, gathering all of those dairies.

And that certainly seems to be...disappointing. The whole vita chamber idea, it just seems so out of place in the game. And as everyone seems to have mentioned in the media, it isn't really necessary and reduces the difficulty of the game to beyond simple.

I have a personal gripe about Suchong though. His accent. It's so absurd as to almost be insulting.
 

Andrew Armstrong

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You're insulting probably the only non-Caucasian diary speaker, heh. He was a bit hard to understand at times I'd admit though.

And Vita Chamber I think are there for the console market. I already said I used quicksaves myself rather then suffer the indignity of them, but console versions never have a quicksave.
 

LxDarko

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Andrew Armstrong said:
You're insulting probably the only non-Caucasian diary speaker, heh. He was a bit hard to understand at times I'd admit though.

And Vita Chamber I think are there for the console market. I already said I used quicksaves myself rather then suffer the indignity of them, but console versions never have a quicksave.
There's been alot of talk about the chambers. I just finished a short session I was fighting an Elite Big Daddy in Fort Frolic I died because I didn't feel like healing with the vita chamber right next to the fight and the Big Daddy would die with one more shot. So, I die respawn open the vita chamber BAM finish off the big daddy within 3 seconds of dying instead of you know having to survive the whole fight. So the challenge of Big Daddies is non existent.
 

Lametta

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Sep 9, 2007
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**BIG SPOILER**->Ending






Well i wonder what the other endings are so ill write the good one down and hope soome1can tell me the bad one

Well after you turn into a big daddy,face fontaine and the little sisters kill fontaine you see how you and the little sisters go back to the surface
The little sisters live normal lives and they study, marry etc and still treat you as a family member till your very end :>

Edit: Just watched all 3 endings on youtube
Well i like the good ending the most :>
 

David Miscavidge

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LxDarko said:
There's been alot of talk about the chambers. I just finished a short session I was fighting an Elite Big Daddy in Fort Frolic I died because I didn't feel like healing with the vita chamber right next to the fight and the Big Daddy would die with one more shot. So, I die respawn open the vita chamber BAM finish off the big daddy within 3 seconds of dying instead of you know having to survive the whole fight. So the challenge of Big Daddies is non existent.
The challenge of the whole game diminishes. I resorted to saving, rather than using the chambers, because it just felt weird and wrong to me.

Saw an interview somewhere with some members of the Bioshock team who said that the Vita-Chambers were created to give something of the feeling of immediate respawn in online FPS games. I see the rationale, but it still doesn't sit well.

As a game it is seriously flawed, but engaging nonetheless. As an interactive-cinematic experience, though, whoah. Worth every penny.
 
Sep 11, 2007
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Just finished this bad boy ; took me a while to get my hands on it. The vita-chamber was handwavey explained by an out-of-the-way-diary ...

It was a very different "respawn" paradigm from other FPSes ... console games usually resort to the 'checkpoint.' Given the cinematic and plot-oriented nature of the game I think the vitachambers were crucial -- especially for console gamers. While it decreased the difficulty of the game, it *increased* the immersion and enhanced the simulation, which it is apparent were two incredibly important elements of the game for the designers.

And, more than anything, it's an optional mechanism, like the guide arrow or on-screen hints. PC gamers can "quicksave/quickrestore" to play to the old "don't die" paradigm, I imagine; consolers could do the same but with a little more intrusion. The vita-chamber spawn mechanism allowed you to challenge yourself as much as you want to, without having game events replay distractingly after respawn.

I'm going to come back to this game in a few months and replay it "good," and I'll probably enforce the "no-dying" rule on myself to make it challenging, now that I've experienced it as cinema.

It's apparent that every design and playability decision the 2K team faced was made in the interest of creating the game as literature. I'm coming back to gaming after a 5-ish year hiatus and it's great to see things go in that direction ... people using the new technology to enhance the immersion and *engage the player,* not just draw pretty pictures. Playing this game was like reading a great book; I imagine that's by design
 

Cordelia

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The problem I had with the Little Sisters was that you're asked to make your first decision about harvesting or rescuing before you're emotionally invested in them either way. Atlas has told you that they're monsters, Tennenbaum has asked for your kindness, but it's so early on in the game that the moral dilemma is virtually non-existent. I understand that they want to give you access to ADAM as soon as possible, so that you can start adding more plasmids, but if they could have somehow waited until, for example, we'd heard the diaries about Masha, I think the decision would've been made more difficult.

Ultimately, as other folks have noticed, the decision is moot. The ADAM you get eventually evens out, and even in the escort mission where you have to protect an ADAM-less Little Sister, if you let them die, another one pops out of a vent, ready to help. There just isn't enough consequence for your "evil" actions...or your good ones, for that matter.

As for Ryan willingly giving up the ghost...he'd seen his dream turned to ruin right before his eyes. He even tried to destroy it all a few times himself (destroying the trees, setting the self destruct) just to keep you from wresting any more control from him. If he couldn't save his own son...well, really, with Rapture in ruins, why bother going on?
 

xbeaker

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The death of Ryan is pretty easy to explain. It was his ideal that every person should live free and reap all the rewards of his work. The fact that you are under the mind control of another flies in the face of that and he wanted to prove that you are stonger then that and still free. If he were to tell you to kill him, but there was a vita chamber to resurect him there is no compelling reason to fight the control. But when it will mean the death of a helpless person he hoped you would have the will to break free. And if he wrong... well everything else in his life had fallen apart and there was nothing left o live for.

As for Fontain/Atlas and the sub. I don't think he was even in any real danger. He was trying to compel you to do his bidding without having to out himself as Fontain. Ryan believed Fontain was dead. And if you have reason to believe you are doing all of this of your own free will, there is no reason for you to seek to break the mind control. So the elaborate ruse of Atlas was a great benefit to him. All you see if him, then an explosion, then a bunch of splicers. Don't forget that Fontain has his own splicer army... what is to say they were Ryan's splicers you saw? I think is was all just a way to get you to think the only way out of Rapture was to kill Ryan. Then once Ryan exposes the control, well no reason to keep up the ruse anymore.
 
Sep 7, 2007
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I only got the "good" ending, and I thought it was ridiculous.

If it were anything close to resembling a realistic outcome (as realistic as a giant underwater city with genetically modified psychopaths can be, I guess) the Little Sisters would've ended up as whores, junkies, or criminally insane.

So they spent a large portion of their childhoods mutilating dead bodies while in the protection of hulking mutant divers (that smelled like reeking ass) and after they're freed they become perfectly well-adjusted members of aboveground society? That's fucking ridiculous. Get the fuck out of here.

The ending would've been much better if after being freed they showed a montage of the now-adult Little Sisters strung out and wandering the streets, hooking... doing shit like picking at the stomachs of dead bums in dark alleyways because of the murderous compulsion permanently burned into their minds; and when you die you'd be shown dieing in the hospital alone, that's the reward you get for giving them "choice" (after all the game was so fucking heavy on the "A man chooses, and slave obeys" theme.)

Better ending.
 

aegis7

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Jun 20, 2007
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I'm with xBeaker on this, it seems like the splicers for the most part are under Fontaine's compulsion. And with how powerful he is at the ending, I don't think that he is in any danger. I think it's here that I admit, I played it on Easy and never died. Truth be told I had a harder time hitting things than surviving, I just am incapable of aiming.

I'm pre-coffee and less cohesive and thoughtful at the moment so all I can say about strung out Little Sisters is, "Buh?" The main character never explicitly buys into any of the propaganda in the game other than well, "You have free will." So, I'm guessing that he isn't above a little parenting.
 
Sep 19, 2007
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It seems to me that Ryan actively chose death, not to try and free you from the mind control, but to show he could decide to die on his own terms, rather than being forced to obey when you eventually caught up to him.
 

Cordelia

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Ok, I just replayed the sub level part, and Fontaine/Atlas was never in any danger. It's all classic misdirection, it's staged theater for your benefit. What do we actually see? Fontaine running toward the sub. Then there's lots of shouting, some spider splicers show up, and then mist and debris cover the window. We never actually see Fontaine after that, we only hear him. At this point, of course, we have no reason to disbelieve him, so we think that he's trying to get to Moira and Patrick, but he could've legged it out of there as soon as the splicers showed up. It's all geared toward earning your sympathy and getting you on his side.
 

Chaplain1981

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Ryan guesses pretty early on that your an assassin sent to deal with him after surviving a few traps he laid for your character. In reference though to the scene when you finally confront Ryan, I honestly believe that he is trying to get you to break the mental conditioning that Jack went through. As your crushing his face in he says three different times I believe (it's been awhile since I last played), "A man chooses, a slave obeys." Will you subject to another man's wills and ideals or will you have the fortitude to make your own choice and stand on your own? My question is, did Ryan ever come to the conclusion that Jack was his son?
 

Bongo Bill

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It was clear that Ryan knew the code word for controlling you. I think at the end that he preferred to stick to his ideals - there was a diary where he said something along the lines of that he had made no laws and issued no edicts - even if it meant death.

As for why Fontaine went to the trouble of letting Ryan blow up the submarine, it's simple. Fontaine had been posing as Atlas for months. The submarine, and the people on it, were a show put on for Ryan, not for the player. Fontaine was basically invincible at the time; a few splicers would be like gnats to him.
 

ChaosStep

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Dec 28, 2007
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as much sense as the story eventually makes... did anyone else think the ending (good, since its the only one i got and dont plan on going through it again) seemed a bit cheap and rushed... as if someone was telling you the most amazing story and fell asleep 3/4 of the way through, or forgot how it ended and made it up as they went along, or just obnoxiously ended with "and blah blah blah the end"

i was expecing a bit more with an intro and a build up like that
 

PurpleRain

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Still at the end of the day, Rapture isn't a place I would like to stay. It's a perfect horror setting. Some underwater place secluded place meaning no way of escape. Trapped in there full of thousands or mutant splicers all wanting to kill you. Big Dadies trotting around is all kinds of death and little sisters harvesting dead bodies. Power shortages, frozen tunnels and leaky tubes are also a different kind of horror.