Was the original Bioshock as good as it is remembered?

[CrazyCajun777]

This is going to be a slippery topic. I know many people are massive fans of this series, even the lovely Susan Arendt. However, I must say that I was slightly less of a fan. Please do not be misunderstand me, I did not hate the game. I simply feel that it had a lot of flaws that make it slightly less than the glorious work of art it is sometimes portrayed as. To all who remain adamant in this belief, I mean no offense I would just like to point out some issues that I felt the game suffered from and hope that it will improve upon in further incarnations. Now without any further ado...


*************************SPOILERS*******************SPOILERS**********************************what?*****************SPOILERS FOO

The Setting
I list this issue first for a reason. Plot and setting are inseparable in any story. In every story we as the audience must understand the setting to understand what is happening. More specifically we need to understand how the world works. It all has to follow some form of logic or else we can not understand why people do what they do. For example, if you have magic then magic needs rules. If there are no rules then the audience will always wonder, "why don't they just use magic?" This problem is not only immersion breaking, but it can also destroy the plot. The plot is destroyed because the characters' actions are no longer dictated by reason but contrivance. However, I feel that in Bioshock setting is even more important because story and setting are one. Rapture and Bioshock's story are inseparable because the setting is almost all the PC interacts with, and it is how we as the audience experience the story. The problem with Bioshock's setting is that it doesn't make any sense.

The examples are pretty limitless so let's just do a big one, the Big Daddy. Now the Big Daddies are a huge deal. I know this because one of those little monsters is right on the front of the cover. In fact, he dominates the box cover, so it is a problem that he makes no sense. Let's start with the Big Daddies' creation. Why do they exist? To protect the little sisters. Okay, why though? I mean Rapture has people in it. Why not train and hire some of them to do this job? Well maybe they are more loyal than people (not explained I just have to guess...not good). Really? Because Andrew Ryan seems to have a pretty firm grip on when splicers show up and muck up Atlas's plans so why now do they not listen? Well I guess the lure of Adam is to great. Okay I suppose. Let's try something else. The Big Daddies' actual job. Why then do the little sisters need so much protection? don't they just make adam or something? Well kind of but they also go out and collect it from dead people. Why are they the ones doing this job? It would seem that you would want someone more expendable doing this job wouldn't you? Well maybe they are the only ones that can do this (again I guessing, it isn't really explained). Wrong you can use the little syringe on _________ at the end of the game. Well maybe you are just special. Okay, but why don't the Big Daddies just go out alone and grab the dead bodies and bring them back to a special fort where the little sisters are? I mean currently all of Rapture is filled with tunnels and special doors and such specifically so the little sisters can muck about, so why not save a boat load of money and just send out your weird frankenstien's monsters to just bring the "angels" to them? Cause...

This may seem like I'm nitpicking, and maybe I am. However, in a story like Bioshock where setting and plot are so tied together a lack of reason behind the setting is a serious problem and not one that should be dismissed as nit picky. Now, I'm okay with a degree of weirdness if it is in service of a good plot point. For example, how adam works doesn't really make sense either. However, there is a trade off. I give up a little narrative coherence so that I can set people on fire by snapping my fingers like Roy Mustang. In these areas there is no trade off, only a contrived moral choice as to what to do with little sisters. I would also like to say that what I have pointed out are only some of the illogical problems with Bioshock's setting not all of them... just ya know remember that. Basically, I would argue that Bioshock suffers from Fallout 3 syndrome. There are a lot of lovely set pieces that are all devoid of reason or substance.


The Characters
I list this second for a reason, that being that it is the most important to me. Note, I did not say the most important objectively merely that I find this issue to be paramount. Characters are important because they are why we care. Look at a well established series like Game of Thrones. That story has a massive world with all kinds of depth and complexity. However, when people speak of it they speak of Jon, Bran, Rob, ect. This is because all the setting in the world won't make you care about it. It takes character. In knight's of the old republic, one of my favorite games of all time, I might not have cared about the republic if I hadn't seen how much it meant to Carth and Bastilla. I probably wouldn't give a hoot about the bickering of the Wookies on Kashyyyk if I hadn't seen its importance to Zaalbar. The point is that the characters are at the core of our emotional attachment, and when they fail the story fails.

With that said, I felt that the first Bioshock was sorely lacking in this department. The characters are all very simple and largely one dimensional. Pretty much everything you need to know about Andrew Ryan, the coolest of the bunch, is established in the intro. Andrew Ryan is a crazy power hungry rich guy who made Rapture, likely because he has issues with authority and wants power all to himself. Now that is okay, he is the villain. After all, the villain is not the star. Knight's of the Old Republic was about the PC and the crew of the Ebon Hawke not Malak and Bioshock is about... well... I'm not really sure. I mean I used Ryan because he is the most interesting but that is because we know nothing about the PC, Jack, except that he does what he is told. Atlas... I don't even want to talk about him... frankly Bioshock's world is inhabited by one character. The mustache twirling villain. Nobody in this world is good! The audience, or at least I, have no reason to care who lives or dies or what happens because everyone is a jerk, and we have no attachment to anyone and by extension anything. Except for Tenenbaum I guess, she is the closest thing to a decent character. However, she isn't important until the final 1/4 of the game. For the other 3/4 of the game you have to just bounce around from bad guy to bad guy and kill them for their villainous deeds. Again, there is nothing wrong with these guys, but a lack of anything worth fighting for is evident.

Basically, Bioshock demands that we just have an emotional attachment to "good" and "innocent" people that we don't know rather than to anything more substantial. I mean, okay, so I killed the crazy doctor... that's nice but other then because he was bad I didn't really feel any motivation to do so. In fact, story wise, you kill most of the bad guys simply because they are metaphorically blocking the door and not because of anything they did. In Star Wars we root for the rebels not just because they have better ideals, but because we like Han, Luke, and Leia. We gain an emotional attachment to defeating the bad guys because we can see that this is needed for the good guys, the people we care about, to achieve their goals.


Game Play
Okay, well, I'm pretty sure this has been touched on before, but here we go. In the first few minutes-hours of Bioshock the gameplay is fun. You are conserving ammo, shooting splicers in the head, and using crazy magic to do fun stuff. Then something happens, or I guess nothing happens. The game doesn't even try to throw something different at you. All the game does is amp up the health of the preexisting baddies, and make you do it again. I mean halfway through the game I literally started to use one ability. I would stun with my lightening thing then shoot the bad guys in the head. Everything else cost too much mana, I don't care what you call it, so this is all I did. It wasn't fun. I can remember getting in shootouts where I unloaded my pistol into a baddy twice, and he was still kicking because I didn't get enough head shots. I didn't feel more powerful as I progressed, I just felt annoyed.

This doesn't mean I like it easy. I have beaten Dark Souls several times. However, in that game I could feel progression in my powers and variety in my enemies. In fact not only did Dark Souls make me feel more powerful as I progressed, but it made me feel like I accomplished something. Which is the second problem with the gameplay. Bioshock was crazy easy. I know this is an odd thing to say after complaining that the bad guys were to hard to kill, but it is true. When you die any enemy you hurt stays at the same health as when you left. The worst first person shooter player in the world can beat pretty much the whole game on the hardest difficulty with just a wrench and patience. This mechanic took out the difficulty, and made you feel lame. You come to a difficult encounter and fail, then the game just gives up and lets you win. So now you have a game that doesn't make you feel powerful, and then it takes away any feeling of accomplishment by throwing underhanded once you die.


In Conclusion
Now I know this was pretty rough. I know some of you are cracking your knuckles as you prepare to tear me a new one on this forum. However, I request that you keep in mind that I do not think Bioshock was bad. I simple feel that it doesn't live up to the outrageously high honors that have been bestowed on it. It is a fun game...sometimes... and the "Would you kindly bit?" was very cool. However, I do not think it stands up to giants like Final Fantasy 6...or 3 or whatever... KOTOR, Balur's Gate, Mass Effect, Planescape Torment, Elderscrolls, Halo 4 (you know you wanted to cry at the end), Half-Life, ect. Soooo yeah just my thoughts.

 

[hazabaza1]

I remember playing it a few months back and it was still damn good. We need more games in that style of "solitary shooter that's mostly linear but not scripted shitebags and encourages exploration". Still working on that title.

That being said, Jack is probably one of the least interesting protagonists in the history of... ever.

 

[Strelok]

Yes, played BioShock and BioShock 2 both are great, part one is better but 2 gets on par with part one when you add Minerva's Den. Just finished Infinite today and I loved it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Bioshock was good, the story was interesting as was the setting, and it was a really unique game. The reason it's so fondly remembered is because of how unique it was and because the plot twist at the end was interesting. The only problem I have with the game is that the shooting mechanics were floaty and didn't feel great, and the hacking was a boring pain in the ass.

 

[Freaky Lou]

It's a dumbed-down ripoff of System Shock 2 with an admittedly unique setting and cool atmosphere. No, it wasn't as good as it's remembered.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Right so in summary you were bothered by every single piece of that game, no I guess it wouldn't be as good to you as it was to others.

For me... certainly not perfect, but considering what sort of meaningless drivel most of this medium consists of Bioshock is still one of the top games ever made.

 

[NeutralDrow]

The game itself was quite fun. Other than my main gameplay issue of rarely ever using plasmids because they just weren't as useful as guns (I started using them more later, but because I felt bad leaving behind EVE hypos, and to mix things up slightly), I had a blast playing, especially once I got the houdini splicer stealth and turned into a Cloak&Dagger Ambassador Spy.

Far as the story, I liked the little sisters, I liked the setting. Some of the tapes were interesting (especially what's-his-gut the doctor's final tape, hehehe). The design was cool. The villains were people I hated and wanted to bring down, which was a positive.

And yet, one thing ruins the story for me: the fanbase. I came in expecting story depth, especially from a purported "Would you kindly" thing (which everyone on the internet used as an inside joke so often I actually guessed correctly what it meant before I played). I didn't really get depth, but what I got I probably would have enjoyed...if people just didn't keep harping at me for missing the point and missing the genius of Andrew Ryan's character and misunderstanding how a man chooses but a slave obeys.

Spoiler

I admit, the mind control twist was cool. And it was a good kind of frustrating once Ryan, who I hated pretty much immediately during the bathysphere ride, took control of me and made me kill him with his own riding crop. The guy I'd been hunting down for half the game, intending to put an altruistic crossbow bolt in his eye, escaped my clutches and died on his terms. And what's worse, he did it with an insult on his lips, insisting over and over that "a man chooses and a slave obeys," essentially the suicidal variant of "you can't fire me, I quit!", mocking me for being a manipulated ***** and turning me from an instrument of justice into an assisted suicide tool. But once I got over it, at least he was de-

What? You say he mind controlled me into killing him because I was his son, and his final words were intended to inspire me to break free of Atlas' mind control and become my own person?

...

That is pure nonsense.

I see absolutely nothing to support it. I cannot see a repeatedly-demonstrated megalomaniacal, borderline-sociopathic, hypocritical Objectivist who cared for no one and nothing besides himself and his city, who decided to blow up his city rather than die while leaving it intact, who didn't even know I existed until a half-hour before I caved in his skull, who outright called me his greatest disappointment, giving any kind of shit about me. And the idea of his last words being shounen anime-style inspiration to choose my own path is even more ludicrous, since he had just demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that choice was impossible for me, and I had no prospects of escaping.

But other than those things, I liked it. It's probably not "as good as it's remembered" (not that I would know, I just played it last year), but still good.

 

[Mikejames]

That being said, Jack is probably one of the least interesting protagonists in the history of... ever.

There was definately more focus on the setting than there was on Jack, but at least his sparse dialogue can be defended in the sense of building Rapture's isolated atmosphere and his unwilling role in the big ending reveal.

Makes more sense than Gordon Freeman anyway.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd be hard pressed to call it bad, but I didn't really enjoy it at all.

The shooting gameplay felt rather flat, and the narrative leaning almost completely on audio files didn't engage me in the slightest. I'm currently having these same two issues, although to a smaller extent, with Bioshock Infinite.

 

[Scrustle]

I'm actually playing through the game at the moment, and it stands up really well. Obviously the big story moments don't have the same impact, and the novelty of the whole world and concepts of it has worn off somewhat, but it's still great. The story is still interesting, especially characters. The gameplay is still really fun and fast paced. In fact, playing though Infinite at the moment, I'm really missing the frantic and kinetic feel of the combat of the first. Gunplay is still a little loose, but still ultimately fun because of sound design, fun weapon, and plasmids. The game is still completely enveloped in a really strong atmosphere too. That definitely hasn't worn off. Basically, it's still as good as it used to be, both in the good and bad aspects, except it's not new any more.

 

[Karoshi]

Bioshock is very similar to Fallout 3 in many ways. It's characters are negligible and mostly unimportant. The only "character" which matters is Wasteland itself, or in Bioshock's case - Rapture. If you are a fan of enviromental storytelling, then you'll love it. If you prefer character driven stories like Kotor, Mass Effect or Dragon Age, well then this is not the game for you.

Personally, I'm a big sucker for atmosphere and exploration. Bioshock gave me both and I loved it. Characters are usually just the cherry on top - it's great if I like them, but ultimately they cannot carry the whole game on their own.

And the gameplay... It was something new and fairly interesting. As long as gameplay doesn't get in my way, I don't mind it and in most cases don't even enjoy it.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

Speaking as someone who only recently played Bioshock; I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Yes, it was good, but not as good as everyone says it is. The story was okay, but other games have had better stories. Same with atmosphere. It was good, but not great. It just never won me over to the point that it is a gaming miracle. It's remembered fondly, and I can see why. But I will not remember it as fondly as others, as it was not that good.

 

[Zhukov]

Yup.

Probably better than I remember, and I remember it being damn brilliant.

Much like Infinte however, I think it would have been better as something other than a shooter. A stealth game perhaps? That would allowed and emphasised exploration while avoiding the excessive shootiness.

 

[FourCartridge]

Much like Infinte however, I think it would have been better as something other than a shooter. A stealth game perhaps? That would allowed and emphasised exploration while avoiding the excessive shootiness.

What about Dishonored? The Mechanics are pretty much Bioshock as a stealth game, and I found an analogy for almost every part of the gameplay.

 

[CrazyCajun777]

Bioshock is very similar to Fallout 3 in many ways. It's characters are negligible and mostly unimportant. The only "character" which matters is Wasteland itself, or in Bioshock's case - Rapture.

Sir, I do believe you struck the nail on the head, or close enough anyway. I personally believe that Bioshock is fondly remembered for one reason, atmosphere. Note, I did not say setting. I said, "atmosphere."

Atmosphere: A dominant intellectual or emotional environment or attitude
Setting:The context and environment in which a situation is set; the background.
These definitions hail from thefreedictionary.com

See the difference? I maintain that Bioshock's setting is ridiculous and silly. I maintain that the characters are flat and uninteresting. I maintain that the story and gameplay were both lacking. However, I think people love it so for the way the surrounding environment made them feel. Although the the setting details and explanations were not done well the art direction and "feel" of the game was. I am not much of a fan of the game. I generally prefer a story heavy game or a game with mechanics I really enjoy. However, that first few minutes-hours of Bioshock I found very enjoyable because of how the game looked and felt. Thinking back I still loved that feeling of when Jack first enters Rapture. I loved the slide show of Andrew Ryan and that first splicer you see.The game put me in a unfamiliar and aesthetically lovely world. My problems only arose when I wanted to understand this strange new land and characters that at first felt so cool.

I thank you all for your input and for making me realize the source of people's love for the game (or at least I think I got it now). Thank you for remaining civil and not threatening my dog or anything.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

Well, I'll let you in on a secret. I only got the original bioshock today. >.>

I've only gotten to the medical pavilion, but what i've seen so far definitely lives up to what's been said of the game. I'm already in love with the setting, and am reading the book "Rapture" by John Shirley in tandem with playing the game.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Yes it is. To this day there is nothing like it. I still like to replay it from time to time.

 

[Headsprouter]

Bioshock's gameplay and reuse of character models annoyed me...both were improved upon in Bioshock 2, though. I'm wierd because I like them both the same. I played Bioshock 1 recently and still really enjoyed it. That must have been the 5th time I've done so. Bioshock 2's also been played through a similar number of times.