Why wasn't Bioshock our Watchman?

[ShatterPalm]

I think the main reason would have to do with the fact that when Watchmen came out, it took EVERYTHING people knew about the SuperHero genre and threw it completely in another direction. It was unexpected, something no one saw coming. Whether or not you saw BioShock coming, it doesn't change the fact that it's so close to System Shock 2 that anyone who recognized it as such was genuinely unimpressed. It's hard to really praise something when you've already seen it before.

In addition to that, it was limited to the 360 and the PS3, which were (and still are) pretty damned expensive, and on the PC, which is really hard to get going to a respectable degree. Watchmen, being a comic book (or graphic novel, if you preffer) was considerably less expensive and more widely available.

Thing is, Watchmen was so amazing because it took everything you thought you knew about the medium and really made people think about what it was. BioShock was simply not up to the standard. The game that will truly open games up as an artistic medium so we can finally get the respect we deserve has to either say something incredible in the way it's written or be so genuinely well thought out that no one at all can come up with any criticism for it. (Here's hoping that game ends up being 'The Last Gaurdian' or something similar )

Anyways, I haven't actually played the game yet, or read watchmen for that matter, so feel free to ignore my opinion on the subject. But all of my friends love both of them, so here's hoping BioShock Inf. sets out to be it's own game rather than a less impressive but still great re-telling of the same story.

 

[godofallu]

It wasn't "Our Watchmen" because it was an overwhelmingly mediocre game with a mildly intriguing setting. The only thing that stood out to me was how underwhelming it was.

Seconded. Watchmen is a work of genius, Bioshock is just another bland FPS that didn't even bother to include multiplayer.

Plus Comics are not main stream at all. I have never seen anyone read a real comic book in my entire life.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Well, not every FPS game needs multiplayer, in my opinion. I enjoyed Crysis but not once did I check out its multiplayer component.

But I will second that Bioshock was bland, and ultimately not the least bit worrying since it was impossible to get a game over. Other than a few obligatory plasmid puzzles you could basically wrench your way from start to finish like an angry engineer if you felt like it.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Because we've had any number of games already that have superb stories, and none of them had the effect you're looking for.

All the OP does is reveal how insecure we gamers are about our medium. If a game's not going to be 'our Watchmen', then it's going to be our 'Citizen Kane', or our 'Gone With The Wind'. We're so desparate for a game to come out with a legitimately good story, that we're blind to all the games that have already proven that games can tell stories as well as any other medium.

Examples include Planescape: Torment, Final Fantasy VI/VII/IX, KotOR I/II, Half-Life/HL2 + episodes, Deus Ex, System Shock, Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus/ Ico... I could go on.

Those game haven't proven that games are a good at storytelling and personably I wouldn't rate any of them highly. The exeptions being Planscape which I haven't played and Deus Ex. The rest of the games only have acceptable narratives despite being games. The player's control by it's very nature interferes with the narrative, you can break character or sequence break any of those games. The narrative always can always be comprimised by the player.

Videogames are not a medium, they are simulations that allow you to interact with a scenario. Using them to tell a story only dilutes the story. Meaningfull interaction (role playing) is what story based games should strive for (Deus Ex is actually a good example of this.)

EDIT: In regard to Bioshock I agree with Chibz.

 

[VanillaBean]

A more important question: How does it fucking matter to us whether or not people see gaming as an art form?

This seems pretty good.

Anyways despite what we may think the Video Game industry really isn't that old. Sure its surrpassed three decades but it really hasn't gotten to the point where Watchmen was in the comic industry. The mass apeal for gaming is still growing up. In this day I'd say a good 90% of the people I know play some form of a video game every week. Sure this is good, but we have to remember that not all people who play video games play or like games such as Bioshock, therefore it hasn't gotten the universal appeal that Watchmen got when it came out. I do believe that we will probably get that "Star Wars" of the video game industry some day, but for know we'll have to do with Bioshock which I think is more along the lines of the Lawrence of Arabia of gaming.

 

[Kufaz]

I wouldn't say Watchmen made the general public accept comics as an artform-thats-totally-not just-for-kids. How many non comic geeks have actually read it? Yeah, maybe it was what made the medium critically accepted, but i'm guessing that most people skimmed over that part of Times 100 books.

The weird thing is, Superhero Movies, particular the last decades worth have probably done more to get comics accepted as something beyond the domain of geeks, something that isn't uncool to try and get into than anything else. Which the gaming equivelant is probably the CODs and the Wii sports come to think of it.

I agree. I think that games might be accepted when someone produces a movie from one that doesn't completely suck scrotum. Unfortunately, we will probably be waiting for a long time, considering how different telling a story with a game is than a movie.

Extra credits once made the point that video games may need a "re-branding", like how comics were marketed as graphic novels. The term video game, is after all, not very accurate. They certainly aren't videos, and most are not strictly speaking, games.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

I thought the ending really held the game back. There was a good thing going with your relationship with Ryan, Atlas, and freewill. The scene where you confront Ryan would have been powerful in most mediums, but it was lost after that. There wasn't any real consideration about the revelation you made.