I was in love with bioshock, but going back I can't help but feel disappointment. I feel like there is a great game in there, and bioshock was just an extended proof of concept.Talvrae said:
I mean it's an underwater city, that has hardly any actual water to interact with. They took the time to have a swimming mechanic for the opening scene, but not anywhere else in the game. Buoyancy physics!! It could have had environmental challenges like the Poseidon Adventure but the only water obstacles we encountered was ice... ICE??!
All this adds to Rapture being less of a "place". I really felt that Shadow Moses was a place from the many subtle things, like the unique sounds, the music motifs in the score, not overuse of public domain 1950's jingles. The crunch of boots on the snow and condensing breath in the air. The effective use of colour and warmth of lighting to delineate different types of areas.
The audio logs of Bioshock were some of the better in games, but too often felt like contrived exposition, radio messages as well didn't exactly gel with a silent protagonist. And here is the thing, unlike Metal Gear Solid's codec calls where they hired some of the best voice actors (you'll hear many familiar voices in MGS) and were snapily written even for a Japanese translation, these audio-logs were a slog to get through. I'd listen to them the first time just hoping to get something good, then I'd only listen to get passwords.
I know it's not realistic for every conversation to be like Orson Welles' finest rambling, but this is my free time and I don't want this exciting environment get dragged down by stilted voice acting.
And there is just something so much more captivating about hearing a two sided conversation as opposed to a monologue.
It's all great stuff but could have just used some refining. Like far more revealing would be finding bugged phones and intercepted telephone calls, that's much more natural exposition than audio diaries. I'd even except written notes being read out aloud by some sort of psychic link. And keep em brief, keep em concise.
You had no one to root for in the whole story, it was just you and a thousands maniac gene-junkies. I mean other than the little sisters there should have been scavengers, who were just people running around avoiding getting clobbered by the roving gangs of splicers.
But I can see know how Bioshock was a victim of its own ambition, it had the very original concept of Splicers in an underwater city and wanted to do those elements justice, but what about the supporting cast?
For a society ripped apart by Ayn Rand style individualism and self-fulfilment, money and bartering made for surprisingly insignificant parts. The splicers all universally attacked you on sight, no prospect of bribery or reasoning. That would be interesting, and have made them less of one-dimensional foes.
I also think the great idea of Big Daddy, those wonderful designs, were ruined for how they were coded. I remember a developer was quoted said it was like big game hunting. Well they failed in that by how you can walk right up to a Big Daddy and and dance around him like an idiot. You can't do that when hunting and elephant! It's easy to set up traps for those guys, especially with later weapons that are especially OP in combination.
Again, just a few changes were needed. They needed to make you afraid of being seen by a Big Daddy, you need to be terrified that any door that opens a Big Daddy may come through. If you are going to hunt them, you need to be stealthy... REALLY stealthy. One simple element would be to make their vision based on movement, so when one comes in you just have to freeze and hope he doesn't get too close and suddenly knock you across the room.
The weapons were unsatisfying to use with a weak and slow shotgun, unstable SMG pea shooter. And I'm not talking about damage stats here, I'm talking about how they felt. That's how they look and how they sound.
Really I love what Bioshock promised to be and no one can doubt it's a good game.
But looking back, I can only see the missed opportunities.
