Was the original Bioshock as good as it is remembered?

[Therumancer]

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I'll disagree with your second twist because Rapture crumbled do to the crushing capitalistic environment Ryan had set up. I mean come on, you had to pay money to use a bathroom stall. Which leads to the argument what else was there that you had to pay for. The other idea is although the "bad guy" did pour the fuel on the fire, there shouldn't have been reason for the fire to start out in the first place. Like Fontaine put it "somebody had to scrub the toilets." and I take it Rapture was not kind to its blue color counterparts i.e. the fisheries.

It's a bit weird how you dissected Bioshock enough to interpret the "second" twist, but didn't dissect infinite enough to get past the superficial parallel worlds twist, and see its commentary on how decisions are a fickle thing, that can change a man in profound ways. Anyway different strokes for different folks.

There is no second twist just one twist more or less, it's just an extension of the reveals that your given. Rapture didn't fail due to it's ideals or any madness on the part of Andrew Ryan, but due to an outside force. The whole gimmick was Fontaine wanted to get his hands on Rapture itself and Ryan's technologies to use in the outside world, his actual powerbase, other than his own competing R&D was in smuggling stuff from the outside world into Rapture, more than exploiting any real disparity that existed. Rapture was ultimatly a think tank made up of the brightest and best and that's why it ultimatly functioned as well as it did. Even objectivism wasn't taken to the extremes it could have been as you see from the existance of an Orphanage, etc... which showed that there was some social service network in place as well.

Most of the stuff about an oppressed underclass within Rapture came about through the second game, which is in part why it was such a mess and didn't follow from the first one. Half the point of Rapture was that it managed to avoid that kind of a pitfall, at least on a large scale. Now whether Rapture would have survived a century or two, or even beyond the lifetime of Andrew Ryan himself is a matter of debate, however it was by definition working fine until Fontaine pretty much undermined it, one of the reasons why he had to go to such extreme lengths in his final acts was because he just didn't have the sheer support needed to try and overtake Rapture, there was supposed to be no massive oppressed "underclass", at least not at this point. Whether one would have developed is a matter of debate.

As far as infinite goes, I haven't played it as much or put as much thought into it yet, and might not. I think with infinite they kind of stuggled for a way to make it profound and decided to do it in the laziest way possible, any meaning they project onto it doesn't really come accross with the same kind of weight, largely becayse of the way they went about it. Whether it's lazy, or trying too hard, is a matter of debate I guess. At the end of the day I suppose a lot of people will wind up liking Infinite's ending, but I think the general response right now is pretty much how it's going to be remembered... not good, but not so horrible that it's going to spawn any kind of outrage.

While it's been debated by others, and some have their justifications for it, I personally don't think the whole Constock/Booker thing follows very well simply because the two characters are too fundementally differant. To put it mildly you'd have to argue that baptism would have raised his IQ about 100 points if your supposed to accept that Comstock is Booker, and no desician like that is going to alter someone on such a fundemental level. Sure, one can argue Comstock has all of this experience with the technology, and peering into varient worlds, etc... by the time we see him, but at the end of the day that takes a level of smarts to even exploit that I think are beyond Booker who to be fair might not be totally dumb, but is kind of a thug (which is arguably his job description). There are too many X factors (when they try and say chance is irrelevent at the same time) combined with too many fundemental changes for it to really resonate since it's just to me, not portrayed in a sense I find inherantly believable. It's sort of like saying that tomorrow I could simply make the desician that I want to purify the world and build a giant flying doom fortress, and by doing so I would instantly become a genius capable of interpeting the work of the people who could actually build that kind of thing, be guaranteed to meet them, etc...

Rapture was really pushing it too mind you, but I think it was a better story because it at was at least able to create a certain degree of suspension of disbelief for the harder to swallow moments. In infinite we're basically expected to accept that Forrest Gump can become Lex Luthor depending on his desicians after a post military crisis of faith.

 

[FallenTraveler]

Well, since I really loved the original bioshock when it first came out, I may be a bit bias.

Anyway, I played it the weekend before Infinite came out and I had no real big complaints other than the very end feels a bit overplayed. That and the final boss was a kick in the balls that should have never happened. Overall I still loved it though.

Of course I also absolutely adore Infinite.

Say what you will, it is still a very powerful piece of storytelling through atmosphere and audio logs.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Yeah it's good. Combat is mainly certain combinations and playstyles more than "shoot it with a big gun until it dies". Characters are rich and memorable without showing up except over intercoms. The environment is incredibly unique and interacts with the gameplay and the story in ways that haven't been recreated. Art and general imagination of the visuals is still unmatched in its charming post-WWII way. Mapping was superb, with focus on exploration and manipulating machines in the maps. Backstory was very, very well made with big focus on the right (recurring) characters. Much of the game's secrets and help was optional, thank fuck. Big Daddy fights were tense, but with the right use of dodges and Electricity plasmids you could theoretically avoid all damage, and most damage you took was your fault instead of the Big Daddies being too powerful.

Enemies are... stupid bulletsponges, I'll give you that. The graphics are pretty good, but nothing to write home about. And plasmids weren't as useful as they were played out to be. But it's still a fucking good game.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Bioshock:

Good writing, story, atmosphere, etc. Lots of colour and variety, even though they reused a shit-tonne of ideas from SS2.

Horribly unbalanced gameplay. Telekinesis + chemical thrower = win the game.

 

[Warachia]

Why do the Little Sisters require protection? Well, a rough 99.99% of the inhabitants of Rapture have gone bonkers and are now running amuck, maiming and killing everyone on sight?

Making the Big Daddies the garbage trucks of the game would certainly make some sense, had you been given writing and directing positions, but it wouldn't make for much of a fun gameplay mechanic. Don't forget this bit - it's a game. The mechanics you have to bow down to are basic and simple, and yet their execution is what keeps people entertained.

Then why are there little sisters in the first place?

It would make for a more fun gameplay mechanic because you'd need to hunt down the little sisters by exploring the map, or trailing the big daddies, don't assume that just because he says he doesn't like a feature as it's presented means that the feature shouldn't be there, making the player work for their abilities makes them appreciate them more.

You're handing out your jury cards of ultimate judgement to characters in other people's games, but, despite your tightly packed wall of text, it really seems to be a very shallow approach. You seem to take things at face value, without so much as even considering reading some of the source material, or in Bioshock's case, just melonfarming googling up Ayn Rand and reading snippets of her thoughts or watching her talk and walk and sit around by the powers of Grayskull Google.

So I'd need to do supplementary reading/watching to understand Bioshock then? If a game isn't self contained and you need to find an outside source that the game doesn't mention, (though Bioshock does in a way that doesn't make sense regarding the characters) is a serious misstep.

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For the most part you seem to enjoy a game more the less the game has an involving story, not a bad thing, it simply means that you can't expect others to be like you, having never read 1984, or Atlas Shrugged, I'd never have had any of your impressions playing the game and even if I did I judge games specifically on how the game is and not by how it relates to other things I've read/seen, I played Dark Souls and Demons Souls and didn't like either of them partially because of some true bullshit in the gameplay, but also because the games don't do anything with the setting, you enter an old town area, and it's an old town area where you fight dogs and guards, most of the areas are for scenic viewing and when the game tries to get you to interact with the area you are in it gets a lot worse, yet I enjoyed the metroid prime series because the environments felt natural and were more than glorified hallways from one point to another.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

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I'm pretty sure bioshock 1 pointed out through that the working class was treated like utter crap. Fontaine disregarding the fact that he is the antagonist, creates the home for the poor, and the orphanage because for some reason these people are literally in the shitter starving, and homeless. Which brings out the question, why??? I realize that Rapture was not perfect, but come on within two decades a sizable population was in poverty. I know Fontaine isn't the best person to trust, but since it's an audio diary he has no reason to lie. Also like I said, although Fontaine is the "bad guy" any person could take his role and incite riots do to the situation of the lower class. The fact that he did had an agenda to do so, does not change the fact that he managed to sway an army of people to his side, due to the seriously fucked up lifestyle Rapture had granted them.

For the sake of simplicity we can leave out bioshock 2, because,although fun, it was not good because, like you and others have said, it was a blatant cash grab; that leached off of the success and ideas of the first one. Infinite on the other hand is trying its damnedest to make a statement, Bioshock and infinite are two opposites which have an opposing chemistry in their philosophical perspective, regarding the power of choice.

Bioshock preached the idea that having a choice is what makes a man, a man. The assumption being that it is automatically correct and good without raising attention to the adverse effects of making those choices. Infinite on the other hand subtly details these unsung effects, in the earlier conversations between Liz and Booker. Where Liz makes the idealistic remark that having a choice is better than not. Booker remarks that sometimes you can wake up and realize that you didn't like the choices that you made. These two games are caricaturing order and chaos on a philosophical ground. The whole theme of infinite is forgiveness, second chances, and the like through numerous other details.

As for your comment on the differences between Booker and Comstock, I can give you a few answers, both of which you are probably not going to like, as they are essentially plot points. One of the diaries of Lutece shows that as a man travels between time their mind gets fragmented more and more from its original self. Sort of like genetic material losing its original form as its being passed down to offspring. That coupled with the fact that the baptism already altered Booker's personality, makes for a pretty good explanation as to why they seem so different. As for your IQ example, I don's see where you are going with this, Comstock isn't that smart compared to Booker, he's pretty much hell bent on a task the same as Booker is. To answer it in another way, Comstock struck it rich through some measure, and then met Rosalind Lutece, who with his funding built columbia, and later tear technology.

As for the parallel worlds plot line, I can't convince you to like it if you think it's just a method to hand waive details and fill plot holes. All I can say this, it's not a bad plot device. Especially when a writer like Levine actually knows what he's doing. Comparing it to Lost is not really an insult also btw.

edit: I called it a second twist because I thought you called it that way, as a sort of hidden fact or something.

 

[JemJar]

Big Daddies are slow and docile unless provoked. The turrets weren't programmed to open fire on Rapture citizens. There's your answer. They didn't starve because preserved food is still widely available. They don't kill each other because they can't harvest ADAM from one another. That's why they band together in packs to hunt Little Sisters, who of course are left-over from the initial attempts to salvage something from the unrest.

So really it could be anytime between immediately after the Fall, to the day before the sell-by date on a tin of beans.

EDIT: For the poster above, who won't even get the notification of quotification - Flat characters? The splicers, Ryan and Fontaine were excellent characters! Fontaine was just enough of a bastard to be a bad guy while still being affably charming. Ryan was enough of a dick to seem like a bad guy, but his heart was in the right place. Sort of. And the splicers! Dancing, singing, looking after pretend babies, these guys were the best!

No, any time between the Fall and the point where the beans run out. Or the various bits of machinery which run the city start to grind to a halt because no-one is maintaining them. This might only take a couple of months. On top of which, unless the various populations are reproducing somehow, either the splicers or the Big Daddies are going to be killed off sooner or later.

The splicers were amusing. But they didn't really make any sense beyond being lunatics. They had a colourful set of voice samples and idle animations. Woo.

As for the flat characters... I never actually said anything of the sort about BioShock. That said they're hardly the most original or most interesting bunch out there. But I love a lot of games with worse characters.

However the plot "twist" remains the most pointless cheapshot in gaming, a combination of System Shock 2's (much better worked) face-heel switcheroo, a dull explanation of a game mechanic akin to providing an in-game excuse for invisible walls or health bars and some fourth wall breaking on a par with the even cheaper tricks of Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid.

It's fairly evident that I dislike Bioshock. Which isn't to say that it's a bad game, but it had pretentions and the pedigree to be so, so much more. And it wasn't. As Yahtzee pointed out (and I'd blogged to my mates a week prior annoyingly) Bioshock is a prettier but otherwise much worse sequel to System Shock 2, a genuine retrograde step in terms of gameplay and narrative.