Why was the Bioshock plot twist such a big deal?

[Mr.Pandah]

Meh. I didn't think it was a huge deal personally...and I don't know why everyone else thinks it is/was. I knew that Atlas wasn't really in this to help me out at all, so I didn't see it as a huge plot twist by any means when shit went down like it did.

 

[Stoic raptor]

Half life or Half Life 2 never did that. Have you tried those games, or Bioshock?

Yes they did, yes I have and yes I have. Perhaps you haven't played all the way through Half-Life or Half-Life 2, so I'll sum it up for you:

Spoiler: Wall of text

At the end of Half-Life (the first) the G-Man approaches you after you kill Nihilanth, revealing that you were used in order to weaken Xen and allow the Combine to take control of it, as well as Earth, even stating that "You can be a useful pawn, for those who can control you." Basically, he set the whole experiment up, knowing it would fail, so that this outcome would come about. In Half-Life 2, again near the end, Breen reveals that it was he who bought your contract, and used you to inadvertently weaken the resistance by revealing the location of Eli-Vance. You do wind up killing Breen, but after that th G-Man once again shows up, saying you've performed admirably and that he's received numerous offers for your contract.

Yes, that is true. But you really don't know G-man, or trust him. And he never used mind control to command you. At least, not what we know.

 

[Smooth Operator]

What big noise?
I honestly never heard about a plot twist before playing it, which made it even more world shattering when it happened.
And it was done extremely well, unlike Cod7 where people really made a noise about it and you could see the end about half an hour into the game (for those who didn't, you really need to read some books).

 

[Turio]

It was decent. I'm personally not a fan of "BIG" plot twists but it was decenttly done. Now, my problem is that the game went rather downhill after it.

 

[shadyh8er]

One of the things that make video games different from every other medium is that sense of control you have over the actions taking place. When the plot twist came about, it was basically showing that you weren't as "in control" as you thought.

 

[_Janny_]

I think what makes it stand out is the fact that the twist makes you rethink everything you've done in the game until that point. Not to mention that it baffles you how easy it is to trust someone when you're in a tense situation.

 

[i7omahawki]

Spoiler: Wall of text

At the end of Half-Life (the first) the G-Man approaches you after you kill Nihilanth, revealing that you were used in order to weaken Xen and allow the Combine to take control of it, as well as Earth, even stating that "You can be a useful pawn, for those who can control you." Basically, he set the whole experiment up, knowing it would fail, so that this outcome would come about. In Half-Life 2, again near the end, Breen reveals that it was he who bought your contract, and used you to inadvertently weaken the resistance by revealing the location of Eli-Vance. You do wind up killing Breen, but after that th G-Man once again shows up, saying you've performed admirably and that he's received numerous offers for your contract.

[/quote]

Spoiler

But thats an entirely different plot twist, and though Half-life is great, that plot twist is nowhere near as a good as Bioshock's.

As someone stated above, nobody trusted G-man anyway, there was no real bond beyond "who the hell is that guy"? Where as Bioshock had someone holding your hand the whole way, making the reveal actually affect the way you played the game. Half-life couldn't and didn't do that with its plot twist.

Where Bioshock falls down though, I think, is that it didn't make enough of a change after the plot twist. The video game tropes that have just been handed back to us, that is: following a stranger's orders. Now that our eyes are open, we realise we're still just doing as the game says. Sure there's the Harvest/Rescue choice, but thats not really a choice.

If Bioshock had made the most from its excellent plot twist, I think it could have been one of the greatest gaming moments out there. By itself the twist is probably the best I've seen, but it didn't make enough of a difference to the gameplay in the end.

 

[VanillaBean]

I think what happened was that people weren't really expecting some big betrayal. When I reached Ryan I remember thinking "Dang final boss already." But then the twist comes and your faced with the revelation that your biggest ally wasn't really an ally at all, plus the phrase is just too cool.

 

[purf]

Most gamers are used to firing up a game and taking orders from whoever is giving them to us. It's an element of game design that goes back as far as there's been narrative in games, to the point where we no longer think about it any more. We expect it and we don't question it.

Well, I for one did question it in Bioshock. More than I ever did in any other game. To the point where I was seriously irritated about having no motivations of my own and instead just being a stupid tool for random strangers. Which is why I deinstalled the game prior to that plot twist...

 

[HT_Black]

Because what Bioshock did was emulate the scripts of so many games before it and hurl subtlety out the window. The deconstruction of linear gameplay in HL2 was discreet, subtle and overarching; and in Bioshock it was grand, in-your-face, and succint. Personally I prefer HL2's take on the matter, but each to his own.

I don't think subtlety means what you think it means. Or, maybe I don't know what it means... When bullets are flying through the air and explosions are going off, that's and example of activity such as adrenaline neccessary to survive. Where as if you experience adrenaline in expectation of what's coming even though you have no idea what it is and then it happens in a completely different way or doesn't happen at all is subtlety, to me anyway.

Never at any point did that game feel "In your face" Call of Duty is in your face. Bioshock is not. HalfLife has way more grand moments then bioshock. You never shoot down helicopters in bioshock,you never take on 80 foot tall walkers, you never experience explosions at the top of towers... No offense I think you might be a little bias based on fandom.

Subtlty, in this instance, has nothing to do with the grandness or scale of the games' narratives, but rather how they approach the deconstruction of linear gameplay. Half-life 2 is more subtle than Bioshock in this regard, because it never directly calls attention to how the player character is nothing more than a figurative puppet. Throughout the campaign in HL2, you are funneled through vast cityscapes and countrysides, under constant surveillance by the omnipresent G-man. The message is simple but subtle: whatever you may think you're doing, the G-man knew you would be doing it first. This culminates in the finale section, where you step into a metal sarcohpagus to be shuttled around the villain's lair and directly into his waiting arms. Dr. Breen himself notes how stupid you were to do so--that's the game poking fun at your blind faith that whatever way you go is the right one. That's as direct as the game gets about the matter; while the hidden layer of depth is still there, it takes some thought and effort to find.

The plot twist Bioshock, however...well, it was the plot twist in Bioshock. It was built up to, directly adressed, and unimaginatively narrated by an antagonistic NPC. It leaves nothing to the imagination and spells out the "you were my pawn all along" aspect plainly and simply. As I said earlier, some people may prefer such an approach, but I don't.

 

[OliverTwist72]

What version of Half-Life were you playing? Last I checked, the only real person you could possibly be referring to is the G-man and he doesn't befriend you, he is a mystery, one we rarely get to see. He is an obvious villain with his own agenda and Gordon is nothing more then tool that does the job.

Atlas was our only ally going into the world of Rapture. He was there when we got off the Bathysosphere and he guided through the perils and troubles of Rapture. When the twist came, most of us believed Atlas, sympathized with him about his family and believed that Andrew Ryan was truly evil. It wasn't until the twist occurred that we realized that our greatest enemy was our most trusted ally and to top it all off, he had control of us and forced us to do his bidding.

It was something that no one saw coming and that is what made it great.

Maybe I can't get immersed like some people but I don't see it as being controlled by Ryan. It was more of a lack of other options. When he asks you to do something, you aren't given a choice to do it. You either do what he asks, or you don't progress through the game. A couple of times when you're asked to something I would say why, or I don't want to. But you can't make that choice because of the limitations of the game.

Everyone seems in awe that you weren't in control of your character, and that's correct you were not. Because the design of the game limits you to no choice, not the narrative.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

What version of Half-Life were you playing? Last I checked, the only real person you could possibly be referring to is the G-man and he doesn't befriend you, he is a mystery, one we rarely get to see. He is an obvious villain with his own agenda and Gordon is nothing more then tool that does the job.

Atlas was our only ally going into the world of Rapture. He was there when we got off the Bathysosphere and he guided through the perils and troubles of Rapture. When the twist came, most of us believed Atlas, sympathized with him about his family and believed that Andrew Ryan was truly evil. It wasn't until the twist occurred that we realized that our greatest enemy was our most trusted ally and to top it all off, he had control of us and forced us to do his bidding.

It was something that no one saw coming and that is what made it great.

Maybe I can't get immersed like some people but I don't see it as being controlled by Ryan. It was more of a lack of other options. When he asks you to do something, you aren't given a choice to do it. You either do what he asks, or you don't progress through the game. A couple of times when you're asked to something I would say why, or I don't want to. But you can't make that choice because of the limitations of the game.

Everyone seems in awe that you weren't in control of your character, and that's correct you were not. Because the design of the game limits you to no choice, not the narrative.

But you weren't controlled by Ryan. You were controlled by Atlas. He pretended to be your friend, he promised you a way out of Rapture, in exchange for finding his family. We listen to him for the 3/4th of the game because we are promised a way out. The game paints the picture that the long term goal is to defeat Andrew Ryan and escape Rapture, while the short term goal is to stay alive long enough to reach the long term goal. Then when the long term goal is completed, the game yanks the carpet beneath your feet and reveals to you that you just killed the one thing stopping Rapture from being taken over by another. Now the remaining 25% of the game is spent breaking free of Fontaine's grip and destroying him. The twist wasn't something anyone could of predicted on their first-play through and the writing was so good that no one even noticed Atlas' key phrases.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

Because it's probably one of the only plot-twists in video games which actually surprised people while still making sense.

Take FF9, the big bad at the end came out of nowhere, but that was only because nothing, absolutely nothing, hinted at it in any point in the game. The hints in Bioshock could only be appreciated in hindsight, but it becomes amazing to see how it all led up to that point.

Now consider Shadow of the Colossus. It was obvious from the start they were going to screw you over. Disembodied choirs dealing with souls tend to do that. Atlas was pretty much the rebel leader archetype. Ryan was on a quest to destroy him because he revolted against his oligarchy to help the poor. That was what we thought the entire time. Ryan had an army of splicers trying to kill you, you were alone, and Atlas was the only person that helped.

 

[Somebloke]

However: the way the game drives home the matter, with Ryan's little puppetry/gamble-on-Jack's-ability-to-wrest-control-once-informed scene, where the script took away ALL the player's control of the player character, was kind of lost on me, since I still had this strong dislike for Ryan and I bloody well CHOSE to bash the bastard's head in.

 

[Netrigan]

The big problem with Bioshock's twist is that it's the last interesting thing to happen in the story. The rest of the game just stumbles it's way to a Grand Finally.

 

[Bananahs]

Why Bioshock has the best plot twist ever:

Spoiler

It's hard to explain in such short of a post but Bioshock's plot twist is not about the narrative but about the game design. Ken Levine, the Creative Director, specifically wrote the game to give commentary on the linear video-game. We as gamers don't often question our objectives or their meaning, we're just there for the hell of it, but then the whole plot twist happens and we realize we are the enslaved ones all along. We, the gamers, have not been carrying out our wishes or following our own motivations. It's said Andrew Ryan is based heavily on Levine and that he supplied 100% of his dialogue, so in this case we can suggest Ryan himself is the manifestation of Levine and the "You are a slave." is basically "You are a puppet, not a player."

Slaves could also be NPCs, who have defined goals and paths along an environment. There is barely any difference between the player and the programming of the machines, or even the mental programming of the Big Daddies.

It wasn't just the first major plot twist in a video-game that was genuinely shocking but also revelatory in the fact it was the first to provide commentary on its very basic design philosophy. It's beautifully well done if you think about it.