By Kieron Gillen on December 6th, 2007 at 12:43 pm.
Now, I was planning on doing this at some point in our Advent games, but Tom over at EG and I were talking about the backlash against Bioshock. He wondered if I had anything to say, and waved some of that fat EG dollar. And lo – I did. 4000 words worth. I may keep my sanity by not reading the EG comments thread – as I noted in the piece…
You see, I was surprised to find BioShock’s not my favourite game of the year. I’m also aware that perhaps the intensity of discourse around the game had something to do with it. When I think of BioShock, I have to wipe away pages of forum nit-picking and genuinely bitter pub-based rows before I can even start thinking about, at its best, how clever and elegant it is and how on its own grounds it makes everything else released in this incredible year for videogames distinctly second-rate. For most of this year, I’ve been too tired to actually do this. But when the response to a patch with free new content is just a shrug and a bunch of whining over free stuff, I can’t help but think we – as a community – need a good slapping and a reminder that we should be a little bit grateful.
Something to annoy virtually everyone herein, I suspect. But, as my old mate Rorschach once said, we don’t do things because we choose to. We do them because we’re compelled.
06/12/2007 at 12:51 fluffy bunny says:
I thought it was a very good read. And no, you shouldn’t even look at the comments thread at EG. It’s insane.
06/12/2007 at 12:51 Feet says:
Well it’s certainly a provocative article… :P
Also, don’t read the EG comments thread, you’ll only die inside. Again.
06/12/2007 at 12:54 Alec Meer says:
I’m too stupid to understand.
06/12/2007 at 13:07 Pidesco says:
I sent you a short e-mail on Bioshock’s meta theme. I hope I don’t come off as an insane Bioshock hating monkey.
06/12/2007 at 13:08 Kieron Gillen says:
You don’t, Pidesco. I mail back.
KG
06/12/2007 at 13:14 cullnean says:
woot need more watchmen quotes
06/12/2007 at 13:29 Dracko says:
No-one cares about the patch, even as its free, because hey, a game shouldn’t have to be fixed, for one, and the new Plasmids are underwhelming. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean we should give a damn.
Don’t go crazy with an implemented game mechanic? Don’t use the resources given to you? Ignore a fault (it isn’t one, but fuck it’s embarrassing to be able to kill Big Daddies so easily with a wrench when you’ve researched them) by ignoring a method of game interaction? That’s a pretty bad defence there. Maybe if they’d bothered to make sure the research would assist the player without completely undermining the game’s difficulty, and therefore sense of personal vulnerability, there wouldn’t be a problem which requires you to say “Hey guys, don’t use the camera so much!”. The fault is entirely theirs.
Yeah, lousy players, wanting to have as smooth an experience as possible. I don’t see how you can say this without coming off as a pretentiously defensive cunt.
Your defence of the last third of the game is just utterly pretentious and trying too hard. Like reading The Escapist. Same with the moral issue: Both endings were dull, uninspired and refused to tackle any of the themes the game brought up at any point. When there is no moral choice (and there isn’t), there isn’t any personal investment. That the game beats you over the head with this even to the point where it rewards you for taking the good guy option in spite of what it claimed (And that’s forcing the player’s hand, incidentally. When I realised this, I only helped them because it benefited me. I couldn’t give a fuck less about little plastic bug-eyed critters that barely look like girls even once you’ve saved them). I mean, why would I want to help these things again? They’re vicious and all too ready to kill people off. Stabbing Fontaine to death in the same kind of vindictive pay-off as many, many Hollywood films do is NOT by any extent pushing the medium.
I agree with the former. What it does however is nothing new. Frankly, all you’ve managed to show me with your article is that fans are indeed an annoying lot, especially those of sub-par games who feel the need to write defences then claim being alienated vindicates them somehow. Get off your fucking cross.
Also, don’t give us the cutscene bullshit. Loading screens between transits are just as bad and remove from the sense of place. And you’re “rewarded” with dubious ones by the end anyway.
06/12/2007 at 13:30 Jae Armstrong says:
Super Mario Galaxy had cutscenes?
*goes to boot up Wii. Plays. Comes back*
Okay, apparently it does have cutscenes. This makes me slightly confused in that ten minutes ago I would have sworn blind that there wasn’t ten seconds of hands off storytelling in the entire game.
On the other hand my kneejerk response to that little paragraph (despite the fact that intellectually I know it follow Half Life in its incredibly self satified “look ma, no cutscenes!” approach) was that the number of times I was standing around doing nothing in Bioshock while people talked at me was… uncountably large.
I think this is probably a psychological thing, down to the fact that Bioshock’s narrative is far more forward in the game than SMG’s. Obv.
Moving swiftly on, I did make the mistake of reading the comments thread. Thankfully I sold my soul years ago, so I didn’t have anything to lose.
06/12/2007 at 13:37 Kieron Gillen says:
I love Super Mario Galaxy, I stress. Just “Pure” is one of those words which always raise my hackles. It’s a bit Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Mario.
KG
06/12/2007 at 13:42 Kieron Gillen says:
(And you’ll probably guess that I’m not going to much defending of the piece. Its’ 4000 words. I’ll almost certainly just be repeating myself)
KG
06/12/2007 at 13:44 Muscrat says:
It was one of my most anticipated titles this year, and was set to be my favourite – which it now isnt – and it was a little bit of a let down – but still exellent. However the backlash is a bit unjust. It is a great game.
Methikns the big difference between Bioshock and Shock 2 imo, was that Shock 2 felt alot more like a survival horror, and Bioshock a (uh) – shooter.
06/12/2007 at 13:45 Theory says:
Tactically maybe, but not thematically. I’ve played the game with a controller and with a keyboard and the difference analogue movement makes is profound. When you aren’t forced to choose between running around like a nob and perambulating gently the game’s spaces become marvellously immersive. Creeping around nervously and making quick dashes is as natural as moving your thumb. It gives the design more meaning when you’re interacting with it in a more organic way.
06/12/2007 at 13:48 Kieron Gillen says:
Theory: You note, your argument has nothing to do with whether BShock is “Dumbed down”. It’s an immersiveness argument. I don’t disagree.
KG
06/12/2007 at 13:53 Andrew says:
One thing regarding the moral issue – I’ve no real problem with a binary ending, as such, in that even one Little Sister death is enough to doom you, but the problem is that it doesn’t apply to player redemption. I read things from quite a few players saying that they’d harvested one Sister then been shocked by it and rescued every single one of the others. But they still got the ‘Oh my you’re Darth Rapture’ ending, because the game doesn’t keep track of that.
Same with people who stopped harvesting once they’d reached Tenenbaum’s sanctuary and seen the Little Sisters up close, away from the Big Daddies. While the first ‘redemption’ is somewhat nebulous, you’d have thought the game would be able to tell if you’d harvested Little Sisters post-Tenenbaum or not. That would have been a fairly easy thing to register, I think.
That brings me to another criticism of the narrative – actually being brought to Tenenbaum’s in the first place if you’ve been harvesting every Little Sister you come across. I first thought the Sisters had rescued me because I was such a good guy and had rescued them – like for like, so to speak. But then I found out that this wasn’t the case and I was very disappointed.
Meh.
Bioshock is a good game. But it could have been better. A lot better. It’d be that film getting the Cinematography and Make-Up Oscars but none of the really big ones, essentially.
06/12/2007 at 14:00 Mr Pink says:
Enjoyed the article Kieron. I think it was something which needed to be written- but I guess such a backlash was inevitable considering the hype the game received.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
While I’m firmly in the pro-Bioshock camp, I must admit that I didn’t really enjoy the game nearly as much after the big reveal. My biggest complaint of all involves the sequence where you “become” a big daddy. During this time you are constantly told of the consequences of your actions. You are told this is an irreversable procedure. You are becoming a monster. I found this idea very interesting, and the mechanics (the bubble on the display when you put the helmet on, the “clump” of the boots) reinforced the horror at what I was becoming. But the game betrays itself. As soon as you arrive at Fontaine, the big daddy helmet disappears, and the boots stop stomping. And in the final movie, you are human again. What the hell? Where are my consequences?
I hope this doesn’t come off as hugely negative, as I really loved Bioshock, but I thought this was indicative of a “lack of polish” in the story post “twist”.
06/12/2007 at 14:00 Andrew says:
Oh, also – System Shock 2 had weapons upgrades.
And the Invention system never felt right to me in Bioshock, because it didn’t seem real that you could make a first aid kit out of rubber hose and a bit of pipe. The ingredients didn’t match the end product except for the shotgun shell casings.
06/12/2007 at 14:01 Thelps says:
In defence of KG’s article (not that he needs my assistance) he himself is writing ‘A Defence’ of Bioshock. It’s been my perception, and a lot of people’s, that the game has been treated unduly harshly for what is, in my opinion, one of the strongest narrative experiences any game has managed to execute. When I say this, I mean, on every single level. The game itself, the mechanics of combat, the need to scavenge weapons and armor, the art style, the characters, all complement the story-arc itself in a way that so few games manage to marry together. That Bioshock has little replay value is a testament to this in itself: the game is telling a story in a massively refined, balanced manner. Any variation on that story for the benefit of replayability weakens the quality of the storytelling itself. This is what leads me to sympathise with Ken Levine’s resistance to multiple endings, as, again in my opinion, it would strengthen the story itself to have a more open ended, ambiguous ending that makes less direct conclusions for the player, but rather invites them to think about what has happened for themselves.
I absolutely agree with you Dracko, in that BioShock DOES cop out in a number of ways, in that it doesn’t always encourage you to try the full range of your options, and rewards you sufficiently for sticking to what you know, but, again, I believe that if it was more forceful about making you test your options then the game experienced would be narrowed as a result. As it stands, you pick how you want to play the game, and are free to vary your style as you go. If the game pressured you into making FULL use of every option available to you then surely you would find yourself forced into picking specific solutions much more often, as the developers tried to show off every little game mechanic they came up with, in fear of you not noticing them yourself. For example, because there are certain plasmids some people never use is, to me, a strength, since the game is clearly stating that they’re there if you want them, but it’s your choice to employ them, not merely the requirement of a contrived scenario so you can marvel at all the pretty little animations associated with each of them.
I could go on but basically, I believe BioShock is an excellent game, one showing a hugely coherent narrative that bleeds into the gameplay much more than the vast majority of narrative-based games. I believe it’s more a good game than a bad game, and that definition is predicated on how it uses the narrative as its utter focus, even so far as into the sense of choice of HOW you play the game (mirrored by the narrative’s binary choice of how to deal with the Little Sisters, and the clear political motivations and choices of the city of Rapture as a whole, and of the characters you encounter via the recorded logs). I totally see Dracko’s point, but I chose to overlook his criticisms as they appear within the game (though the ones I don’t refute I consider completely valid).
I didn’t get much sleep last night, and my argument has holes, most of which I’m confident I can fill, with a little more coffee, but I think BioShock DESERVES the benefit of the doubt because, to me, its a sub-genre of game that isn’t attempted often, and that has chosen a rather unique path which could do great things, if followed by more developers.
06/12/2007 at 14:02 Piratepete says:
I am struggling to put my finger on why, for the first few hours I was “Wow” with Bioshock, the setting, the music, the beautifully constructed non-cutscene set pieces (The pram shadow for example), and yet felt so unsatisfied at the end of it.
I think its easy to blame the game, but is it that I as a gamer suffer from a kind of FPS ADD, where after the initial wow you end up wanting to find the end of the story, and in the urge to get to the end you don’t appreciate the journey at all. I mean I thought I was pretty thorough about investigating each area but was I? Obviously not due to not seeing the Pavlovian electric shock thingy John mentioned.
Having recently just finished it I am coming to the conclusion that I am going to play it again (a rare thing for me), and this time be the good guy.
In essence I suppose I feel that it was perhaps too easy towards the middle and the end, and I (certainly one evening where I was tired and a bit ratty) did ‘rort’ through certain sections missing perhaps key things and using vita chamber like they were going out of fashion. I completely missed why the Vita Chambers aren’t used by the Splicers. However I also missed some of the narrative through pure practicality, such as a sleeping baby next door that i needed to be able to hear but not wake up with the screams of splicers being eviscerated.
If you played Bioshock can you truly say that you gave it the full attention that it perhaps deserved? Is it that it was so rich in detail that we collectively missed key elements that made it all hang together?
I fully agree with Johns point, personally I am now a pipemania expert after hacking everything in site, was that just lazy because it was easiest for me to do? Should I have deliberately challenged myself to be inventive or should the game have challenged my inventiveness?
Is it really the Developers fault if we are too lazy to appreciate or see the effort that has gone in to make it a coherent plot, or rich and detailed world setting? Does the average gamer need to be lead more by the hand in this age of high def graphics where it is no longer the case where a door can be found by looking at the change in texture on its surface? Do we need to have ‘plot item glint’ as well as loot glint?
Or shall we just blame it all on being dumbed down for the 360?
I haven’t got the answers but I think I am going to play it again in the near future with the headphones on and give it my full concentration, and with the vita chambers off.
06/12/2007 at 14:07 Andrew says:
On the other hand, things I liked about Bioshock:
1. The masterful opening.
2. The weighty combat.
3. Some of the plasmids.
4. The setting.
5. The ghosts – better than SS2′s, though the logs definitely weren’t.
6. The big twist.
Definitely a game people need to play. But I like picking holes in things, and Bioshock can have many holes picked in it. And there were bits that genuinely disappointed me, as mentioned above.
06/12/2007 at 14:07 Matthew Gallant says:
Wow, what part of the game is that screenshot from (the “Smuggler” one)? I don’t remember seeing it, which is strange because it looks like it would be really memorable.
06/12/2007 at 14:09 Andrew says:
It’s from the very beginning of the docks area that you enter, very early in the game. After your first bathysphere journey, I think.
06/12/2007 at 14:09 drunkymonkey says:
“Your defence of the last third of the game is just utterly pretentious and trying too hard. Like reading The Escapist.”
Jesus fucking Christ, you really hate The Escapist, don’t you?
–
As far as the article itself goes…it’s funny, because as someone who would deem Bioshock a very good game rather than, say, an excellent one, I do agree that the narrative is brilliant, and the morals presented to you are probably the most complex ever in a videogame. One of the strange things I picked up on – and I do wonder if anyone else did – is that when Atlas tells you “would you kindly pick up a crowbar or something” even though you do indeed pick up “something”, it isn’t a crowbar. Lo and behold, a lot of the people who will play Bioshock will be fans of Half Life, and so they might find it disappointing, or at least unexpected, that they’ve picked up a wrench instead of a crowbar. I’m probably looking too much into this, but I presume that the designers were trying to give the player the same sense of disappointment that the protagonist would feel by not fully carrying out Atlas’s orders. But then this is more than likely complete dribble.
My main point is thus: Internet fanboys are a rabid lot, and I do find it annoying that I can hardly go to any sites without people bickering and insulting both their opponents and their dislikes because of what they feel is right, and the best. Bioshock was a typical example of this. In the EG comments thread, you have people purposely mis-quoting Kieron to make it sound as if he thinks Bioshock is the best game this year. The insanity, intolerance, and spitefulness is really dispiriting to see, and to be honest makes me lose a bit of hope for games as a medium. If fans could only debate about these things logically and politely, then that would be great, and I think gaming itself would lose the negative image of itself. But when you have people on supposed mature gaming comments boards, such as The Escapist, GamePolitics and even this one calling other people “pretentious cunts”, claiming if they ever saw Jack Thomspon they’d go right up to him and kill him to prove that gaming doesn’t effect anyone, and the other malarkey that goes on, I can’t see progress in that field being made.
06/12/2007 at 14:10 Piratepete says:
Oh and I fully agree with Andrew about the little sisters, if you are going to have multiple endings then I would have thought a redemption ending would have made more sense than the black and white version we got.
06/12/2007 at 14:13 Piratepete says:
Matthew Gallants comment is interesting, he didn’t see the hung smuggler, but I did, yet I still don’t know why the splicers don’t use the chambers.
People missing out on different parts of the narrative maybe?
*rubs chin*
06/12/2007 at 14:15 Steve says:
I just thought the general combat mechanics were a bit weak, and I don’t know how a first-person shooter can get 10/10 without great shooting.
Maybe I need to evolve.
06/12/2007 at 14:17 Matthew Gallant says:
I probably saw him at the time, he just dropped out of my memory like my math skills after a final.
06/12/2007 at 14:17 Steve says:
Piratepete, they’re tuned to Ryan’s (and therefore your) genetic code. That is pretty clearly explained in game, so if you didn’t know that, it really does validate Kieron’s point about people not paying attention.
06/12/2007 at 14:21 Mr Wonderstuff says:
Yea the EG forums are a bit of a sesspit at the best of times. Not sure why Kieron was ‘compelled’ to write this as I, personally, saw no reason to defend it. Fab game…not the greatest, but very enjoyable and a good addition to my ever-expanding collection of 360 games.
06/12/2007 at 14:22 I_still_love_Okami says:
Just because Bioshock failed to live up to all the things people were expecting it to do (i.e. be something that transcends gaming and leads humanity to a bright future where everybody lives happily forever and has sex with beautifull women all the time.) doesn’t make it anything less than a great game.
It could be argued that it failed in many respects. But it only failed relative to what it was trying to do, compared to other games it excelled in most departments.
06/12/2007 at 14:24 Dot says:
There is one single flaw in all of that: you can’t have a spiritual sequel to a FPS/RPG without actual RPG elements, as far as I am concerned. I did play through the game and I did enjoy it somewhat, but it staggers me that regardless of all the technical innovation, it plays far worse than SS2 did, and unlike SS2 which I replayed a total of five times, I’ll probably never touch Bioshock again.
06/12/2007 at 14:25 Bonus says:
I loved the article.
As a developer at a small company who knows how much time and effort goes into even what would be considered “small” and not particularly stellar scoring games it’s encouraging to see people sticking up for truely great games.
I can see where the time and effort must have been spent getting things in and it’s always a push to get something out the door in the end but these guy’s must be commended on making a game worthy of a debate and not just another title to be thrown away and forgotten about a couple of months later.
06/12/2007 at 14:26 Jachap says:
I loved Bioshock and I largely agree with your article, Kieron.
The repetition issue is a tough one. Bioshock is really no more repetitive than any other game. The trouble is, it has the balls to give you the full range of options pretty much right from the start instead of rationing out the abilities level by level, in the old Command and Conquer “Have the really good tank now” sort of way.
This means that by the second level, you’re electrocuting people in water, igniting them when they’re standing on oil etc. And you can repeat those actions as much as you like until the end.
The reason people pick up on the repetitive nature of doing so is because… there’s all these other plasmids. You’re led to think that – given how Adam has corrupted a whole city and how totally awesome it must be – that by the last level, you’ll have even more options for manipulating the environment to your will. In reality, you’re still setting people alight/electrocuting puddles.
I harvested Little Sisters because that’s what Atlas told me to do (and I was doing everything else Atlas said so…) and I wanted to become fucking Superman.
The fact was, I didn’t ever become Superman and if I have a real criticism of Bioshock its that. I felt like the Plasmids were an extension of my arsenal. I used them and my guns though, really, I had hoped that, by the end, they would have superseded my “conventional” weaponry all together and I could just deck the halls with Splicer blood at the click of a finger.
Anyway, whilst failing to become Superman, I found out about Atlas and visited the nursery and thought, “What a horrible murdering fool I’ve been.” Everything about that section spoke to me directly, in the reverse way it spoke to Andrew, I thought the Sisters had rescued me because I was their only hope and it the only way to show me what an ogre I was being.
That’s proof, if anything, that the narrative is a powerful one. It played on the role I had taken and the role Andrew had taken – despite the fact we chose different options.
So I changed my ways. As an enemy of Atlas, I was, by extension, a friend of the Little Sisters. That was just part of the U-Turn incurred by Atlas’ revelation.
The idea that you can continue to play and still Harvest Little Sisters, despite the fact you are obligated to protect them, just baffles me slightly. I mean, if you do that, you really are a cunt and the ending should have been the Little Sisters killing Fontaine and then swamping/killing you, too. That’s got a sort of poetry to it.
06/12/2007 at 14:28 Tellurian says:
I guess it’s just my personal thing to find the combat mostly annoying, and thus through the endless repetition provided by the rampant respawning pretty much wrecking the game for me for the most part.
I played through it, enjoyed some parts, like it even overall, yet due to me totally buying into the hype can’t shake of the feeling of diappointment.
I wanted to love it, hug it and hold it forever, but… This is no relationship material. One night stand okay, but I’d rather be gone when morning comes, so I can just stick with the memories and not face the painful truth.
(Tellurian just gained +3 on his geek score)
And that’s hopefully the last thing I’ll have to say about Bioshock online.
06/12/2007 at 14:32 Andrew says:
Jachap, that’s a great idea about the ending. It would have made so much more sense than the ‘muahahahahaha now take over the world’ bollocks.
As Kieron says in the article, even Bioshock’s lowest ebb (the final battle) has good points. Or at least one good point. Which is the way the Little Sisters deal with him. That was brilliant. The rest of that section… nah. Not brilliant.
06/12/2007 at 14:38 Dracko says:
Thelps: I agree with you with the options. What annoys me in the defence is then hearing that somehow being an efficient player is a bad thing.
What pissed me off the most about BioShock in the end was that for all the claims of environment, there wasn’t one: You get this brilliant set-up at the beginning and a brilliant mid-game moment (Hephaestus should have been the end point, honestly) and then what does it do? Make you face off superzombies, a tank and screaming little girls in some exceedingly restrictive corridors. With loading screens between them. Whatever happened to the idea of the player having to genuinely use a living, breathing environment? All you have are maniacs rushing at you with lead pipes and the like. They seldom bother to do what we were told they would do: Search for Adam, wander around, get in fights (Instead, they just want you all dead). This isn’t a world, it’s a bloody shooting gallery. I can think of far older games that at least made your enemies come off as, you know, characters, by virtue of context alone.
drunkymonkey: The Escapist is pandering elitist nonsense and one of the many reasons gaming will have yet to be considered seriously for a long while going. It puts in evidence a frustrating symptom of games not wanting to tackle themselves on their own grounds or even merits. And I don’t intend to kill Jack Thompson, like you’re so quick to assume (Which doesn’t make you any better than any other rabid fanboy, incidentally), I just think Kieron here is being a nonce, and an insulting one at that. You can’t write an article calling people idiots for not liking your precious game and then claim you’re a martyr for the Internet Hate Machine. The notion that he was “compelled” to do so further proves that BioShock fans really aren’t secure with the way the medium is going. It’s a footnote game in that regard.
The most unfortunate thing here is, and I’m sure many will agree, there were the makings of something great here.
Somehow when Yahtzee says it, people laugh and laugh and roll on their backs. Funny that.
06/12/2007 at 14:40 Dracko says:
Oh, and Dot, the last thing FPS games need are RPG mechanics. Talk about a lack of self-assurance in game design.
06/12/2007 at 15:04 drunkymonkey says:
“And I don’t intend to kill Jack Thompson, like you’re so quick to assume (Which doesn’t make you any better than any other rabid fanboy, incidentally),”
And I don’t assume you intend to kill Jack Thompson, as you’re so quick to assume. I was making a statement about the Internet gaming community a whole.
And you’re also quick to assume that Kieron is calling people idiots. I don’t know where you got that idea from, but it’s one without merit.
And as far as The Escapist goes, it’s pretty much irrelevant to this topic, but what I will ask is: where else do you think we can forward games journalism? Gamespot, perhaps? Jostiq? 1up? The Escapist, much like Edge, is a publication that treats games seriously, and while a few articles are sub-par, the majority is thoughtful intellect.
06/12/2007 at 15:16 Lorka says:
Games leave themselves open to missed subtlety more than any media. I had to grit my teeth in a pleasant smile as a friend stumbled blindly through the exquisite world of HL2, blind to all but the most glaring spectacles.
Thinking about it, I took the same approach to Bioshock after a while. The combat mechanics weren’t perfectly fluid, and I felt like the Rand references were bloodily on the nose. Quite soon, I was powering through sighing at conventional set piece design and pedestrian weaponry.
Now Kieron, I feel like I may have missed out.
06/12/2007 at 15:31 Kieron Gillen says:
To be honest, Dracko, I stopped reading when you used the word “Pretentious”. It’s one of my off switches.
KG
06/12/2007 at 15:36 kwyjibo says:
The most serious criticism of BioShock is that it’s combat does not match the lofty heights set by Halo, Half-Life et al. That in trying to revolutionise everything, it forgot what was most important.
06/12/2007 at 15:47 Dracko says:
Kieron: No surprises here.
We were reading the same article, yes?
The Escapist takes games anything but seriously.
06/12/2007 at 15:56 Kieron Gillen says:
Really, no offence, Dracko. It’s just one of the things which make me sigh when said in an actual perjorative fashion. I’ll come back later and read everything properly, I’m sure.
The only actual thing I consider an actual insult in the piece is the stuff about people’s ignorance of history influencing their views. I couldn’t work out a way to say people lacked some knowledge without making it one.
KG
06/12/2007 at 15:57 hazylium says:
The most serious criticism of Bioshock was what Dracko mentioned earlier: contrary to the pre-release hype, Rapture didn’t actually feel like an environment populated by creatures that felt like they actually lived in the place, rather than simply being bog-standard videogame enemies, as they turned out to be.
Given that this was one of the primary reasons a lot of us were interested in the game in the first place, you can hardly begrudge us for feeling disappointed.
06/12/2007 at 15:59 drunkymonkey says:
Kw: I actually thought the combat in Bioshock was quite good. While I haven’t played Condemned for its blunt weapon goodness so couldn’t compare, the first time I used the wrench in Bioshock felt very kinetic, and very satisfying. The later weapons, like the tommy gun, were less impressive.
Unless of course you mean the AI of the enemies. In which case, yeah, they’re not as challenging as the ones in Half Life, with their intelligent cover-seeking AI, but methinks they weren’t supposed to be. They were meant to be crazed, and not at all bothered about tactics.
But overall, I agree. The combat certainly did not match the cinematics of those shown in the trailers, and it was that kind of mis-leading hype that Irrational really should have avoided. Aside from the physics plasmid, the game kept reminded me that I was firmly rooted to the limits of my arsenal, and the environment around me, and my body, could not be exploited as they seemed to be in the CGI.
When you look at it though, very few games, if at all, allow you to properly do this, aside from dreaded ATEs and scripted moments. No one really capitalised on the ideas put forward by Red Faction, and Dice’s Mirror Edge is a long way off. Sure, it could have tried to innovate, but it had its hands full enough with crafting an original world and the most morally driven narrative in gaming.
06/12/2007 at 16:06 Alistair says:
You know how in Being John Malkovich the character who takes Malkovic over is a puppeteer? He wants to create great art & drama in his chosen medium… and everyone thinks he’s a twat because they’re just puppets. I see Bioshock as limited in the same way. As Ken said, it’s a shooter. You can refine the genre all you like, and create whatever kind of setting or backstory you like, but when the only thing I can actually do is… shoot, you ain’t never going to achieve nothing. You can say – No! There are no choices! That’s what’s so great! Personally, I would fire up say, Oblivion and choose to do or not do a bunch of things. Problem solved, by games that have, you know, choices.
Bioshock does a lot of great things, but like all shooters, it’s a Quake TC.
06/12/2007 at 16:07 Butler says:
I read several reviews. I played through BioShock on the 360 (crime?) I rarely stray away from game related banter, but this really is an exception.
I honestly have no fucking clue what all the fuss is about.
It’s a very accomplished game (95%).
Fin?
06/12/2007 at 16:08 Jim Rossignol says:
Dracko: your problem with “RPG mechanics” is presumably levelling, D&D stats etc, rather than the idea of a more open environment with more interactive possibilities than shooting?
I normally take the idea of FPSs “learning” from RPGs to mean that FPS could be wider, with scope for talking to the monsters, etc.
My problem with Bioshock was largely one of structure. I love almost everything about it – even the combat. But I nevertheless knew, and was annoyed by, the fact that it was just a linear shooter. It never opened up, never really used a hub structure, never returned me through previous areas as in System Shock. I wonder whether if Bioshock had been structured a little more like, say, Stalker whether we’d have had half these criticisms.
As for all this hoo-ha generally, I think Bioshock was just a very big target. The fact that the people who might have been rabid about have actually been disappointed, and therefore fairly quiet, has led to a mass slaying of it. Exactly the opposite to how, say, Halo games are received. No one has leaped to the defense of Bioshock – except for Kieron – which means it’s all too easy to kick it to death.
Finally, can folks please not call anyone a c***, under any circumstances. It’s unacceptable. Thanks!
06/12/2007 at 16:09 Piratepete says:
“Piratepete, they’re tuned to Ryan’s (and therefore your) genetic code. That is pretty clearly explained in game, so if you didn’t know that, it really does validate Kieron’s point about people not paying attention.”
Its not clearly explained if the only time you can play is while baby is asleep in the next room and you have turned the sound down, as i explained above that is my fault and not the games designers, hence my commitment to play it again with more attention.
(But thanks for explaining it, kinda makes sense)
06/12/2007 at 16:11 Chris says:
Good article, and I agree with a lot of it.
The only real problem I had with Bioshock was that the speed of the game remained constant for 99% of it: slow. Sure, creeping through corridors while spooky things are going on is great fun, but it does tend to wear on you after a while.
To point out one of the magnificent things about Half-Life 2: the game changes speed constantly. You have your corridor creeping, in spades, but you also have pedal-to-the-metal airboat and buggy sequences. Sometimes you’re being hounded by choppers, sometimes you’re hunting them down. Striders make you run for cover and stay hidden, urban combat lets you cautiously proceed or rush around, guns blazing.
Switching gears helps differentiate the areas of the game, too… I don’t know about you, but other than the Little Sisters training ground and maybe the theater, Bioshock, in my memory, is just a blur of dark, cluttered corridors, whereas a number of completely different levels and areas in HL2 leap to mind. Not to say Bioshock isn’t beautifully designed, and I certainly remember a lot of the art, but I couldn’t really tell you which level was which, or what happened in what level.
Bioshock has a few sequences where you’re rushed by a mob, and they’re thrilling, but for the most part, it’s creeping around slowly, picking off baddies a couple at a time. Again, it was fun, and I truly enjoyed the game, but I think it needed a few more changes of pace. Still, fantastic game overall.
06/12/2007 at 16:12 Pidesco says:
See Kieron, Jim here agrees with me about bioshock’s linearity.
It means I must be right!!!11!!”!!!
06/12/2007 at 16:15 Jim Rossignol says:
That’s not say I have a problem with linearity. Portal and CoD4 were both excellent. It’s just that Bioshock would have been better with some reasons to return to different areas across the city. I think one of the reasons the System Shock folk are up in arms is that System Shock *felt like a space station*, if that’s possible. Bioshock seldom feels like an underwater city.
06/12/2007 at 16:18 Pidesco says:
Of course not. Linearity can work.
The problem with Bioshock (for me) is that the game seems to be saying that linearity and lack of options is bad, but in terms of gameplay all it gives us is linearity and no options.
06/12/2007 at 16:21 Bonus says:
Are people missing the point with the game’s linearity?
I don’t understand the arguement with it, surely that was the point the game was making and is very well done.
I always felt that people complain more about the last third of the game when you don’t have as many set objectives as a bit odd. That’s when the ties have been broken so you’re made to feel less forward motion in the game.
But isn’t that the point?
06/12/2007 at 16:25 Piratepete says:
I think, Bonus, they are saying that becuase the objectives where removed it became a bit more of a ‘corridor shooter’, it may have been done to keep the player focussed. As a way to compensate for the lack of objective tasks.
Nope I have firmly decided I am undecided and will have to play it again.
06/12/2007 at 16:26 Darius K. says:
Kieron, did you see Jon Blow’s Montreal International Game Summit keynote, particularly the part where he was critiquing BioShock? I think it was pretty well-reasoned. Here’s the slides and the audio for the talk, if you’re interested.
06/12/2007 at 16:27 drunkymonkey says:
Good point, Jim. Aside from the introductory sequence, when Rapture was first introduced, I can’t say I got the impression that Rapture was much like a city at all. Even the poisoned park segment felt cramped. If there were more long streets completed with neon-lit buildings, and if the game let us get to surface level to fight between buildings…that could have been really good, and if done right superbly atmospheric too.
Bioshock was always pushing you forward, and never letting you track back to previous areas (not entirely true of course, you had to backtrack for objectives a lot, but that’s not the kind of free-roaming structure I’m getting at). And the difference between this and City 17 is that with Half Life 2 you expected it to be linear, because in that game you didn’t have narrative choice in the slightest, and there were absolutely no RPG elements to it, and this had been the same of the original as well. Bioshock, on the other hand, was taking inspiration from System Shock 2, which did provide free-roaming, and along with the choices presented to you regarding whether or not you were a mean little bastard killing the Little Sisters, you sort of got the idea that the game would have benefited from being more free-roaming.
06/12/2007 at 16:29 Pidesco says:
I’m saying that the problem is that the game remained linear and optionless during the last third.
06/12/2007 at 16:36 Jim Rossignol says:
Absolutely, and intentionally. It’s a superb reveal, one of the best any game has managed. But the amount of criticism the game has received means that the joke wasn’t funny enough. Remove that and re-tell System Shock in an underwater city and you lose one of gaming’s finest conceits, but would you have a got a game we all felt happier about?
06/12/2007 at 16:40 Theory says:
Dumbing down includes removing thematic choices in my book. But if you’re coming at it strictly from a gameplay perspective then yeah, no difference.
06/12/2007 at 16:43 Jim Rossignol says:
Also, an argument I’d use in defence of Bioshock would be that to allow it to be thoroughly assassinated means we’re less likely to get games of any kind (linear shooters or otherwise) set in an Art Deco underwater city, or any equally esoteric equivalent thereof.
Bioshock is a brilliant piece of architectural and environmental design, and it diminishes the efforts of almost any other game in that regard. In terms of interesting visual design it laughs almost any other game in the past decade into the next room – not to mention the astounding delivery of certain areas, such as Fort Frolic. We need More Of This Sort Of Thing, leaving Bioshock under attack means people will be less inclined to try to move boundaries.
06/12/2007 at 16:44 gaijin says:
isn’t part of the problem with the latter part of the game that, after the reveal, the objectives DO remain in place? I mean, it’s quite understandable from a gameplay point of view that they do – it would be a lot of work for dev and player to suddenly switch to a sandbox mentality at that point. But if part of the message is “look, this is how we play games, mindlessly following objectives and commiting acts of violence without questioning the moral implications, like we’ve been brainwashed – but guess what, in this case you really HAVE been brainwashed!” then after that – if you extend that logic – you should now be free to resolve the situation as you like. Instead you have another set of externally imposed objectives – ok, needed to break the mind control, so fair enough. But even once you’re ‘free’, you can’t bugger off to the surface letting rapture go to the dogs (sharks), you have to go through another 3 go find the x to do y steps, an escort mission and a boss fight… That’s where the linearity thing began to be a bind from my p.o.v…
06/12/2007 at 16:45 Andrew says:
The linearity of the game as a design choice to reinforce the message doesn’t hold water for me. You can, at any point in the game, choose to return to areas you’ve already visited in Rapture and ignore what Atlas is telling you, using the bathyspheres. There’s just no reason whatsoever to do so because once you’ve been through each section once there’s nothing in it to do ever again.
The linearity isn’t a problem. It’s the feeling of the world being there but undeveloped. I’d have preferred true linearity to the halfway house we got in the final product.
Because linearity is awesome.
06/12/2007 at 16:46 Piratepete says:
I have to say that the Ryan reveal is one of the best moments in gaming, if the final level had worked with the panache and style of that sequence a lot more of the critics would have been silenced I feel. It was a hell of a lot to live up to tho, the way it meshed with the game mechanics, the bloody wall in the room before, brilliant. The fact I stood and looked at that wall for a good amount of time with something ticking away in my brain, going “eh?” my feeble, wine addled mind, grasping at the relevance, before the reveal happened made it all the better. Maybe the moment was too good and the rest of the game couldn’t live up to it?
Did anyone else spot the Patrick and Moira poster well before the Fontaine reveal? I stood and pondered that for a bit as well.
06/12/2007 at 16:47 Pidesco says:
But Bioshock didn’t move forward where it really mattered, and the great artistic design just makes the lackluster gameplay stand out like a sore thumb.
06/12/2007 at 17:06 Alec Meer says:
Bioshock’s easily one of my favourite games of the year. But that’s tempered by finding the near-uniform defence of its flaws and concessions, which honestly trouble a lot of perfectly intelligent people, just as objectionable as its stauncher advocates find the excessive criticism.
While it’s safer for all concerned that I never discuss particular parts of Kieron’s argument with him, I most certainly agree in as much as I’d feel more fondly about the game if all this binary shouting hadn’t gone on over these longs months. That EG thread (and some of the stuff said here, IN OUR VERY HOME) makes me want to burn every copy of Bioshock in existence, so neither crazily absolute camp can ever discuss it again.
06/12/2007 at 17:08 Jim Rossignol says:
Man, I *love* those new Sam & Max episodes.
06/12/2007 at 17:17 gaijin says:
seriously though, was there not just the *teensiest* bit of troll-baiting in the EG article, in the subhead at very least?
06/12/2007 at 17:27 Nick says:
Never! They barely came close to the excellence of “what happened in the mess hall” and the lone man shooting himself.
Bioshock was decent, but the combat got very boring for me and I found it was nowhere near as good as people were harping on about. Especially after playing SS and SS2 both of which are seriously superior games despite their age.
06/12/2007 at 17:30 etho says:
I agree almost ocmpletely with the article. In fact I might even agree with it entirely. I adore Bioshock and think it is one of the greatest games of the year. I think it serves as a signpost pointing us towards what games need to become.
But it’s not perfect. I think the last third of the game is slightly less interesting than the first two thirds, and I also wonder if it was wise to just make the player start taking orders from another mysterious character. The message of the game is quite powerful, but it is diminished slightly with that particular storytelling turn. On the other hand, I can’t really think of a way to make it go any smoother, so I can accept it as being necessary. I still like the last third, it just became a little less emotionally involving.
But my biggest problem wth the game was something else. Basically it needed another ending. Not the third ending most people imagine, where you’ve killed some girls and saved others. Those two endings work just fine, and I absolutely agree that killing just one girl is plenty nasty enough to net you the bad ending. No, I think there should have been a potential ending just after you killed Ryan and Rapture is set to self destruct. It would have fit brilliantly with the cutscene preceding it, it would have allowed you to prove yourself to be a man rather than a slave. Of course you would still have the option to follow Fontaines orders and continue the game normally. Given instructions that basically consist of “to continue the game, do the following,” I suspect most gamers would not even consider that there could be another option. I wouldn’t have if there hadn’t just been a long cutscene about choice and free will. As the game is now, there is no other option, but I think it would be greatly improved if there had been.
06/12/2007 at 17:37 dhex says:
one of the things that creeped me out about the reaction to bioshock* was the reaction of some folk that seemed to boil down to “man this moral choice was crap – why can’t i kill little girls?” this may be the racism talking but holy fucking shit put down the anime and burn your local barnes and noble cause damn man the pedo monster done crawled up from japan and ate your fucking brain.
the moral choice was shit but it’s like with assassin’s creed not handling the ismaelis like one might want them to (were they a religion nerd like me). it ignores the more salient question of “who wants to get timothy van gogh’d over a fucking video game?” fuck that noise!
*i liked it but i didn’t have high expectations so i had a really good time playing it until the very last boss battle; i also cheered at the beginning with the NO IT BELONGS TO THE POOR speech and the story about burning down the forest rather than hand it over to the government, so keep this in mind. it is not very often that i hear anything in a game that isn’t either hyperactive homoerotic militarism (nothing wrong with that) or mystical egalitarian eco-sludge (some stuff wrong with that) so anything even remotely minarchist in nature gives me a fucking intelli-boner, even if uttered by walt disney’s egoist cousin.
06/12/2007 at 17:40 Xagarath says:
Bioshock is worse than System Shock 2 because, unlike SS2, it will not run on my computer.
Hah.
06/12/2007 at 17:45 drunkymonkey says:
dhex: the whole “holy shit, why would you want to do that?” argument only really works if you also say that about killing hordes of enemies in any other game though. Games allow you to do things in real life, and this applies to things that you wouldn’t exactly be comfortable with, even in a videogame.
06/12/2007 at 17:46 JP says:
Well, I worked on it and you didn’t alienate me.
Few games have been blessed with the depth and breadth of criticism Bioshock has had. Seriously, we are among the harshest critics of the game – we have to be – and all the substantive points, even the ones from some folks with a heavily trollish tone, are incredibly valuable. Thank you for such an incisive and heartfelt defense Kieron, and thank you dissenters for continuing to hold everyone to the highest possible standard. This is exactly how our medium improves over the years.
06/12/2007 at 17:47 Monkfish says:
So, first there was the backlash against Bioshock. Today we have Kieron’s backlash against the backlash. And now, we have a backlash against the backlash against the original backlash.
I’m so confused.
Anyway, BioShock was the last game that had me shouting at my monitor in despair – but only when I read through threads about it on gaming forums.
I think the original backlash kicked off very early indeed, even after sidestepping all the vitriol regarding the DRM, and I was finding myself getting wound up with people complaining about “Consolisation”, “dumbing down”, “linearity” and general “Meh-ness”. I admit that I didn’t jump to BioShock’s defense – I felt that any attempt would have fallen on deaf ears at the time. I just stopped visiting said forums for a while – at least until I’d finished BioShock. It just irked me that so many people didn’t see it in the same light as myself. Of course, it was silly to let other people’s personal opinions get to me – I mean, I’m enjoying the game, at least.
ConsoleVania’s review (in their “Black Episode”, if you can find it) probably explains BioShock’s qualities best. It mocked the rabid, panting, “it’s the second coming” sentiment that so many reviews had already spun, and quite rightly. Alarmingly, the review starts negatively when the reviewer said how halfway through the game they were “bored out of their nut”. But then they turn the whole thing around and went on to hit on exactly what made BioShock so great for me: if you play it creatively and with a bit of imagination, you escape the boredom and repetition and gain so much more enjoyment out of it.
06/12/2007 at 17:49 Nick says:
I’d also like to add that the level with the creepy paper mache guys was one of my favourite levels of any game I have ever played.
06/12/2007 at 17:59 dhex says:
dhex: the whole “holy shit, why would you want to do that?” argument only really works if you also say that about killing hordes of enemies in any other game though. Games allow you to do things in real life, and this applies to things that you wouldn’t exactly be comfortable with, even in a videogame.
this is a completely reasonable point. however, killing children is a step above killing adults, to be sure. the culture believes it, i would think most of us believe it (in some way) and for good reason (it’s part of the monkey). it is probably not perfectly fair, but such is life.
all of gaming is part fantasy, to be sure, but…my weighting takes into consideration the influence (some might call it a rotting sewer of filth) that the japanese misogyny/pedo/virulently virginal sexual violence/dating sim current/cohort/sign of the apocalypse influences have had on games and the folks who play them. so seeing this same memeplex basically express anger over not being able to murder children – female children no less – and the overtones of frustrated (strangulated?) sexual violence are not hard to see (imagine?)
06/12/2007 at 18:05 Pidesco says:
It’s always good to know we’re being listened to.
I just checked Bioshock’s credits for any JPs, and I was wondering: Are you Justin Pappas?
06/12/2007 at 18:06 JP says:
Nope. I’m a designer.
06/12/2007 at 18:11 Pidesco says:
Aha!
I missed you the first time. You are the one with the French name.
06/12/2007 at 18:14 I_still_love_Okami says:
I think the biggest beef I’ve got with Bioshock is that saving Little Sisters is actually more benefitical to you in gameplay terms, than harvesting them. Aside from that: One of the best games I’ve played in years. Thanks JP and the rest of Irrational for making such a great game and thanks to Kieron for rising to it’s defense without resorting to fanboyism.
06/12/2007 at 18:30 Theory says:
They weren’t paper mache…
06/12/2007 at 18:32 CrashT says:
I really enjoyed BioShock (I’ve enjoyed every game Irrational Games ever made), but I get equally irritated listening to it’s rabid fans as I do it’s detractors.
I’m pretty much with Alec Meer on this one.
06/12/2007 at 18:58 simonkaye says:
At comment number 81, I’d like to say that all I really want to do right now is dive back in. Bioshocl was immersive, it was intelligent, and it was, unequivocally, art. God bless Mr. Gillen for standing up for it.
06/12/2007 at 19:03 Andrew says:
I should have clarified that. The visuals for the ghost sequences were better than in SS2. Somewhat unsurprisingly, but it really stood out. On replaying System Shock 2 (and mostly being astounded by just how much of a carbon copy Bioshock’s story was), one of the few elements that didn’t work for me as well as it did in Bioshock was the ghost-visions. Yeah, they’ve got more story-basis (your character’s got latent psi powers) but the blocky Dark Engine graphics stripped them of their power for me. Same with the organic Many that’s glimpsed throughout the game (not at the end, but while on the Von Braun and having flashes to it). It just looks faintly laughable by today’s standards. The rest of the game worked fine graphically, though.
06/12/2007 at 19:16 etho says:
Man, now I really want to play SS2, but I’ve never been able to find a copy and get it to work on my computer. *sad*
06/12/2007 at 19:18 Jachap says:
“Finally, can folks please not call anyone a c***, under any circumstances. It’s unacceptable. Thanks!”
Erk. Sorry. That was me, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean it at all personally to anyone who did that. Having harvested my own wodge of children, I’d be damning myself.
I sort of meant, in the context of the game, to continue harvesting after the nursery, you really were the unpleasant bastard Tenebaum had feared and she would have had as much reason to set her kindergarten cops on you as Fontaine.
06/12/2007 at 19:21 Andrew says:
As an addendum – the ghosts in Thief 2 worked fine for me on replay. Must be the lighting conditions, and the Von Braun being generally brighter than darkened clockpunk libraries.
06/12/2007 at 19:22 Hobbes says:
“To be honest, Dracko, I stopped reading when you used the word “Pretentious”. It’s one of my off switches.”
Missed a perfect opportunity to roll out the ol’ “Pretentious, Moi?” gag there. Shame on you.
06/12/2007 at 19:27 mrkstphnsn says:
I dunno! Bioshock when all is said and done just bored me to tears. I’ll certainly never replay it again unlike the Thieves which all get an outing at least once a year. I don’t even know whether I’m allowed to install it again anymore. It took me three installs to get working and I seem to recall I only had 5 shots at goal in the first place. It was Black and White all over again. Pant wetting excitment for six months prior to release and then … meh! Sure mediocracy is nothing to aspire to and Bioshock aspired to something … I just wish it hadn’t aspired to be a Book Reading Club somewhere exciting like Milton Keynes. It wasn’t good! It wasn’t crap! It was average! IMHO Natch!
06/12/2007 at 20:17 Tom says:
i just think there’s a lot of annoying, unimaginative people playing games out there. The real problem with Bioshock is that you have to open your eyes and mind to get the most out of it. This is my argument with Deus Ex IW, which i still say is more compelling than the origonal.
Also, calling it System Shock 2.5 isn’t really an insult. IMO SS2 is one of the finest games ever. The thing that disappointed for me was the fact i was looking forward to playing through SS2.5 (as i knew, and hoped it would be) but with the added bonus of “AI cultures”, as Ken described it, and then demo’d in the Big Daddy and Little Sister video. The disappointment was that the Big D and Little S were the only example, and barely one at that.
I thought it was going to be something that ran throughout all the enemies/NPCs… or maybe my imagination/hopes ran away with me, and i saw more in that video than was really there.
Think I’m just growing out of games tbh.
I’m starting to think that the things that would make a computer game interesting for me, now I’m older and ever-so-slightly wiser, may never appear.
06/12/2007 at 21:33 Duncan says:
Liked the article (and Bioshock, for that matter), but singling out “why does Ryan use American dollars” to defend the game against plot holes is really weak — it’s already a transparently absurd criticism that’s not nearly as valid as, say, the entire submarine plot and why you can’t use a rescued Little Sister to open that door for you. The article doesn’t address the plot hole critique, rather it redresses the issue as “you’re not smart enough to get it.”
And after this I promise to stop talking about Bioshock since the hyperbolic back-and-forth annoys me too.
06/12/2007 at 22:25 Lucky says:
Great read, absolutely. I’m not going to say anything else, since I kind of suspect that I can’t really add anything that hasn’t been already said over the span of over 90 comments.
06/12/2007 at 22:39 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Hi Kieron – Don’t want to sound like im LICKING yoUR GOD DAMN ASS but yes I did enjoy that read, made me (ironically?) reinstall SS2 (I literally only finished Bioshock a few weeks back) and try and get further in it. I never got very far because, to be frank, it’s too scary. But I am doing better than usual this time, so I’m ploughing on.
The comments thread following is absolutely horrendous, probably the worst I have seen in several years of reading EG, and as you probably know, that’s saying a lot. My favourite was when someone accused you of never playing SS2 but just “reading about it”. I pointed them towards your original review (which, SPOOKILY, i was reading last night – I tend to pick a random retro PCG off the shelf to read when I go to bed. What?).
06/12/2007 at 23:07 Monkfish says:
Let’s not get ourselves all BioShocked out, as I suspect there’s a chance to revisit this discussion pending…
I mean, it’s bound to be lurking, splicer-like, behind one of the doors of the RPS Advent Game-o-Calendar (accompanied by Fairtrade chocolate, I’ll wager).
06/12/2007 at 23:25 Thelps says:
For me, BioShock took games narrative further than any other game I’ve played. I like narratively-structured games. I liked BioShock. More of this please.
(Also SS2 ruled. Though oddly a couple of my friends just didn’t get it and all its kind stood for).
06/12/2007 at 23:38 Alexx Kay says:
I’m another BioShock designer, and I’d just like to echo JP’s sentiments above. We take no offense at this sort of thing. The fact that our game has inspired such passion (and verbiage) is an enormous compliment. And inspiration to try and top it next time :-)
06/12/2007 at 23:52 Nick says:
“They weren’t paper mache…”
They were covered in what looked a lot like paper mache. I didn’t think they were actually made of it.
06/12/2007 at 23:57 Matt says:
I’d just quickly, if I can make it quick, like to say much thanks to Mr. Gillen for this. I loved certain parts of this game, but there were a few things that I didn’t like, and I’m realising now after reading your piece that I may have just not understood them. Things like the reference to Ayn Rand’s novel; and all the historical and political things connecting Andrew Ryan and Rapture. I just couldn’t get my head round a few things. At least now you’ve made me look deeper into it, and this has made me want to go back and play it again, which I will do quite soon.
06/12/2007 at 23:57 Chis says:
I’m with Yahtzee on this one.
WRT System Shock 2, I’ve found this tool worked for playing it under Windows 2000:
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,392
Use this on a fresh install of SS2. I had no crashes or odd behaviour, worked perfectly with the original game, and Christine’s excellent mods. Haven’t tried it under XP though.
07/12/2007 at 00:02 malkav11 says:
I’m one of those people who’s entirely in tune with criticizing Bioshock (it’s definitely got its flaws, both gameplay and storyline, and its lofty ambitions not quite reached), but I still get upset when the people doing the criticizing treat it as, essentially, something the dog left on the carpet. It’s not the second coming of Jesus, fair enough. But it’s still a hugely brilliant game. The setting alone (which is nearly perfectly realized) would be enough for me to set it on a very high pedestal – even the other most brilliant shooter I’ve played this year (CoD 4) has a setting that’s mostly only striking because the series has been lost in the muck of WWII for three games. STALKER’s ghostly Chernobyl exclusion zone is, of course, nearly as awesome – but I haven’t played it yet and it’s still not an Art Deco Randian underwater dystopia. I mean, you just can’t go wrong with that.
07/12/2007 at 00:08 Leeks! says:
I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t come off as gushing nonsense. I love you, Kieron Gillen.
Oh balls, there it is anyway.
07/12/2007 at 00:21 Dracko says:
Jim Rossignol: Late back in the game, but nonetheless; yes, my problem with RPG elements in an FPS is the implementation of their mechanics. This was a flaw in System Shock 2 as well as in Deus Ex, games which I otherwise consider either important or just outright a joy to play. I have absolutely nothing against world-building or options (even pacifist ones: Imagine how great it would be if Deus Ex 3 would allow you to talk your way through everything, not even having to resort to tranquillising, like either a manipulator or a charmer, or how much in atmosphere BioShock would have gained if ‘crazy’ didn’t automatically mean ‘hostile’ towards the player), and Levine has done this before with the Thief series, the second one in particular. What BioShock offers is little more than expanded corridors with a few odd alcoves for either objects or, perchance, an intriguing piece of setting or plot detail. Hell, the only part which went against this somewhat, and not without irony, were the apartments, which allowed you to dig up all the neat info you wanted if you cared to. Shame it was otherwise unremarkable. I believe I’ve brought up the issue of the map beforehand, and how the bathysphere transport, i.e. the 90s loading screens, sabotage any sense of place you could get.
I think on the whole, you could sum up BioShock‘s problem as it’s a 90s game, which doesn’t deliver on its ambitions or even fully on even its most blatant influences. That a new audience get to discover a Shock-like is all well and good, but it still feels utterly outdated to me, and not very enjoyable either.
07/12/2007 at 02:14 Alastair says:
Bioshock: Strangely About Fate
pre-backlash article I wrote (in fact it was about a week after it came out — I killed myself writing it). sadly I don’t think anyone ever read it
07/12/2007 at 03:36 Muzman says:
Someone else might have mentioned this, but that angle of “we must defend games like this or no one will make any more!” and couch every criticism in words about what the game does right really bugs me. If we don’t criticise it then surely we’ll get more truncated, constrained games that don’t follow through on their own set up and fall back on slathering on gimmicks and prettiness.
This is when the pro reviewers say “Dude, every game is like that already” (well, maybe not “Dude”). Ok fine it’s true and thanks for steering me away from 90 percent of them.
But Bioshock set itself up as the grand saviour of shooters. And I don’t mean in the publicity at all. I mean in the game itself. It took the recognised problem of getting people into the game and handled it beautifully, gradually expanding gameplay and narrative right up until, you know… that bit. And then shortly after, you the player shrug off your previous limitations and controls. Kieron has, perhaps inadvertently, brought this up with all his talk of subtexts and meta narratives and gamplay & narrative working together (pretty much all of which I agree with btw). It is obvious what the game has to do next, after you are freed, and that’s make you free in Rapture. Here it becomes a bit more like Systemshock in that you wander around and figure out things for yourself, maybe Tennenbaum and Fontaine still bark at you but not in the same goal structured way.
The game sets this up perfectly. And I, naively perhaps, believe it would also have prepared players for it gameplay wise as well. But it doesn’t do it. Its failure to follow through on this masterful set up is always going to hurt it. Even if its micro level gameplay wasn’t greatly altered, I think, had they managed this (and its probably not easy) those niggles would be more forgivable. It’d be like a potted history of the FPS in a single game, dragging mainstream gamers into a present the hard core have known about for 13 years.
Bioshock baulked at the hurdle it made for itself. We know this. We can sit there and counterpoint every criticism by pointing at its depth or subtext all day long. Had it made good on the narrative and structural ambitions we can clearly see in the game, though, we wouldn’t really have to.
07/12/2007 at 04:58 3 Stacked Midgets says:
Bioshock might have been a better game if it had not attempted to cludge its plot with System Shock 2′s. The little sisters were blatantly emotionally exploitive while having no reasonable narrative justification for existing. It really, really didn’t fit. Are the splicers supposed to represent the dangers of stem cell research and steroid use, or something? They were not compelling enemies from a plot standpoint, and the art and sound teams were not able to make them interesting. The Objectivist cult is a gold mine for horror material, but the narrative was spread too thin.
Abused Creepy Little Girls are used far too often in games. You’ve got one in F.E.A.R, Dreamfall and now Bioshock. We get it already. Find a new metaphor, you fucking hacks.
07/12/2007 at 06:42 Garth says:
I agree with the two posts above me, in terms of setting up a hurdle and failing to surmount it.
Bioshock made claims (whether directly or via in-game focus) that this was going to be a return to the System Shocks and Deus Ex’s of yore. That we were going to have compelling gameplay with a great story and narration.
What we ended up with was a half-completed story, characters that didn’t fit (I still cannot understand what the splicers are, exactly. Are they normal citizens? Are they a cult? Why don’t they kill EACHOTHER? What about the little sisters? How the hell are abused little girls the best solution to gathering Adam they could think of?), and so on.
In the end, it’s a mostly forgettable game. Other than the Big Daddies, which were fantastic enemies, there is pretty much no aspect of that game that sticks out in my mind.
When I finished it, I felt like I’d just completed the tutorial for a larger game.
07/12/2007 at 07:08 Garth says:
I also wanted to comment on certain parts of the Defense, but obviously that would take forever. Basically, I think a lot of your Defenses fall apart because you pick at extreme comments, and say “See, the naysayers are wrong/crazy/asking too much.” The problem is, most people haven’t used a single one of the blanket statements you’re defending against.
For example, the ‘dumbed down’ comments are something I haven’t heard a tonne of. I HAVE heard lots of people say that the enemies, while not exactly tactical geniuses, are at least semi self-preservation centric. See: running to heal themselves are health dealies.
Your “IT’S JUST SYSTEM SHOCK 2.5.” comment really confused me – I thought people were enraged that anyone would even compare Bioshock and System Shock/Deus Ex?
Most of the negative comments are towards the story falling apart a bit, the fact that the gameplay itself isn’t great, and that it starts to do something interesting, and then fails to do so. Or, not so much fails, but shies away from going the distance.
I’ll stop here, but this kind of reads like a strawman defense – you’re telling us why Bioshock is good, and giving us random extremes (that are wrong), and prove those wrong.
07/12/2007 at 07:48 Leeks! says:
I was really trying to avoid seriously commenting on this, but it’s late and I’m all hopped up on goofballs, so what the hell?
Just a bit of a minor thing, anyway– What’s really confusing me about the “Bioshock sucks” arguments is their inevitable fallback on a blanket statement of “the gameplay was average,” which is almost always thrown in as an afterthought. Hang on.
Ivory Tower (and honestly, utterly masturbatory) discussion about the game’s meta-narrative and philosophical significance aside, am I the only one who had a total blast playing Bioshock? Sure, there wasn’t a lot of variation in the enemy types, but (as Kieron points out) there was enough variation in the ways you could dispatch them to make up for this, I thought. My first Big Daddy fight will stick with me for years as one of the most intense, visceral battles-of-will that I’ve ever undertaken in a digital world.
And, as a bit of a side note, I thought the idea of men driven mad by Genetic-modification-as-drug-addiction was a villian concept a whole hell of a lot more compelling than Nazis, Ex-KGB agents, orcs or–say–dead horses. And did no one else feel a pang of sympathy for them when you realized why they were wearing masks? For me, at least, I nearly rang my mom to tell her I was playing a videogame where the faceless villians actually had some *depth.* She really wouldn’t have cared, but still.
Anyway, I’m sorry, I realize this basically turned into a fanboy rant. I’m not convincing anyone who’s set on hating the thing, and those of you who love it probably love it for the same reasons I do. I’m just saying… It really was *fun,* wasn’t it? I mean, I really hope it wasn’t just hype and good reviews that had me playing for two solid days. I’m not sure what that would say about me.
07/12/2007 at 07:59 MaW says:
I’m very ‘meh’ at the moment about BioShock. I’ve waited since release day for a patch which could make it playable (after spending ages trying to get it to work), which rather took the edge off my enthusiasm, and now even with the patch it’s incredibly difficult to play (on easy) because the controls have a nasty habit of lagging by up to five seconds. I’m also finding the story rather dull and uninteresting. There’s a lot going for the setting but it’s just not grabbing me as a gameplay experience.
I think I’m going to just write it off, delete the local content from Steam and go back to playing Super Mario Galaxy. Perhaps if the game had worked when it first came out I would have cared.
07/12/2007 at 08:41 roBurky says:
Leeks: I think the people who enjoyed the combat were those of us who were creative with the weapons provided, and were always trying to find new ways of fighting. Those who thought it was awful were those who noticed that whatever attack they tried first would work on everything, and just used that.
Which I think is something Kieron talks about in the article.
07/12/2007 at 09:16 The Sombrero Kid says:
you didn’t tackle the most important issue level design & that’s the only beef i had with bioshock & i mostly agree with you on all of these issues in your article.
but & i know this isn’t going to be popular, the level design in blacksite shows that in DX & System shock which inspired SS2 was down to Harvey Smith, yes theres a lot wrong with blacksite bt i think the main thing you see with it is a missed opertunity & this is why so many people were quite passionate about not liking it. the utilitarian nature of his levels combined with generating a space for the player to what he’s got to do is what makes Harvey Smith a good level designer & what broke the Immersion for me in Bioshock
07/12/2007 at 09:33 Freelancepolice says:
Fort frolic is easily one of the greatest levels in recent times
07/12/2007 at 10:40 LaKriz says:
Can I interest anyone in buying my collectors edition (with Big Daddy figurine and a music CD) of Bioshock? Anyone?
07/12/2007 at 10:51 3 Stacked Midgets says:
The funny thing is that SS2 and Deus Ex were mostly terrible from a combat mechanics perspective. Like Bioshock, most of the weapons were not worth using.
SS2 had the crystal shard, and the pistol was good enough to kill anything with special ammo. The invisibility psi power trivializes practically the entire game.
Deus Ex has the sniper rifle, the GEP and the Dragon Tooth Sword overshadowing everything, with other weapons being situationally useful.
Bioshock has the wrench (powered up with tonics) and TK, which kills any splicer for practically 10% of the EVE of any other power. The weapons are only really worth using on the Daddies.
All three games really get by on the merits of the narrative and the atmosphere. Complaining that the weapons and powers are horribly balanced is a legitimate complaint. Chess is an enduring game because there are myriad viable strategies, and very few dominant ones. When an RTS has a dominant strategy, it’s generally considered a major flaw and the developers work to fix it immediately, or it destroys the integrity of the game. Granted, the stakes aren’t so high in a single player game, but it’s silly to blame the users for discovering the weaknesses in the game design. It’s still a problem. The game would have appealed to me more if they had approached the gameplay design from the perspective of making it actually fun, challenging and balanced rather than just making it look cool. People forgive SS2/DX1 of their substantial gameplay flaws because everything else about them rocks so hard.
07/12/2007 at 11:23 Dracko says:
roBurky: As I’ve said, the players shouldn’t be to blame for being efficient. Ever.
Not really. It’s not like they came off as anything other than cannon fodder. What I noted was that the very, very vast majority of (randomly and non-sensically placed) audio logs came from people I wouldn’t meet face to face. Yes, you have the boss characters being built up at times, who are still nothing more than Dick Tracy villains gone wild, but what about the minor ones? The people you come across while you wander? They all look the same either way.
And unfortunately, the depth was not as convincing. There’s never a real sense of truly character-motivated actions: Even Andrew Ryan and Fontaine are clearly written to portray a particular ideal.
Then again, this is also a (laughably obvious) flaw in Ayn Rand’s writing, and maybe that’s the point.
07/12/2007 at 11:54 kuddles says:
Thanks for this, KG. I won’t ramble on after over 100 comments have been added, but I’ve agreed with you for a long time about this kind of thing. Personally, I liked having the arrow on BioShock, because I always knew when I was exploring and when I was progressing the main quest, and it meant I was spending all my time actually playing the game than looking at that confusing map on a constant basis.
Tons of people also had a fit with Oblivion for similar silly things, like having a compass, because they feel that “consolizes” things by not forcing you to wander around with no idea where to go for an hour.
This stuff never ends with the hardcore crowd though. I remember tons of gamers up in arms at Lucasarts back in the day because they thought an adventure game that didn’t contain dead ends was “dumbing down” the genre. Laughable when you think about it now.
07/12/2007 at 12:21 Kieron Gillen says:
Dracko: I think you’re confusing blaming the player and making a note about human gaming psychology. It’s hard to make it not sound pejorative, much in the same way it sounds perjorative to note that MMO players like doing simple repetitive tasks to slowly increase the numbers. The players would rather the numbers go up faster than have fun.
(Over on Qt3, I was watching some MMO designers talking recently – I almost mentioned it in the piece. They talked about how on one – Dark Age of Camelot, I think – there were many quests with decent AI and scripting and whatever, but the players all gravitated to the one which they could grind quicker, and then spent all the time on the boards complaining that there was no decent scripting or AI.)
This isn’t really blaming the player. This is discussing the way we’re wired or not.
Oh – that I actually DID stop reading on the word pretentious, I didn’t notice the words aftwards. While you can disagree with me as violently as you like, you don’t get to call me a cunt on RPS and carry on posting in the thread. You can apologise, or you can have all your posts deleted. Which would be a shame, as you say smart things.
We need a level of civil discourse, and since I can’t insult you back, I can’t let you get away with it. Disagree as violently as you like, but please stop short of insults.
On the topic of the Escapist… you know, when they put out such a random variety of stuff. Walker’s comedy wizard thing? ZeroPunc? Big name designers writing design-lead features about the way they think? The Escapist puts out a LOT of content every week, and grouping it together in a multch is just unfair.
Oh – Garth: “Your “IT’S JUST SYSTEM SHOCK 2.5.” comment really confused me – I thought people were enraged that anyone would even compare Bioshock and System Shock/Deus Ex? ”
If you look at Dracko’s arguments, he’s mainly annoyed it seems like a late 90s game – in fact that’s his actual phrasing. Lots of people make it. And, as I said, it’s a smarter one than the Dumbed Down Shock argument.
KG
07/12/2007 at 12:25 Matt says:
I feel that this whole talk of a backlash is unfair.
I was not impressed by the game from the start and really didn’t feel it deserved the perfect scores it got at all.
I haven’t even noticed that big of a backlash apart from a discrepancy between the review scores given and the players for the most part. Most of the people I know and spoke to about the game when it came out thought it was ok, not great.
I don’t mind at all that the game was quite easy, I tend to turn difficulty settings down on many games as I am not a twitch player and am usually looking for other things in a game.
I was going to write a big counter argument to Keiron’s but I decided not to, there seem plenty of counter-arguments already I doubt I could bring anything new to the argument. Despite the fact I have some problems with it seemingly assuming some kind of intellectual failing on the part of the gaming community, which is frankly wrong.
Essentially I think the problem is the game was given perfect scores by critics and clearly the game is not perfect. The game promised something it did not deliver and people’s expectations were high. It had some nice things going for it but really it was just an above average game in terms of presentation with fairly average game-play underneath. Its themes were often a bit obvious and clumsily presented, though I guess it gets credit for having themes, and the plot was convoluted and used a simple mechanic of withholding information about the main character to keep you playing.
I just don’t like the term “backlash” myself. It suggests people liked the game then suddenly changed because of some internet movement to be cynical about it. And for me at least that was never the case. My criticisms of the game have been directly related to the game and my experience with it, not because of some popular cynicism.
07/12/2007 at 14:31 Matt says:
I just re-read my previous post I don’t think I worded it well. The point about the intellectual failing; what I mean is that the fact some of the things you felt were great in the game, that perhaps others haven’t focused on, are not in my opinion the reason there is a strong criticisms being made about the game. I concede that some of the things mentioned in the article as reasons to rate the game highly, might have been missed by many.
The tone of the original article comes across as more condescending than was intended I expect, which probably accounts for the aggressive nature of some of the counter arguments posted.
Also I don’t mean to say critics are to blame for the supposed “backlash” because they were wrong, just that, the reviews gave people very high expectations. Also the talk in reviews as I recall focused on certain features of the game, which ultimately were not as impressive as they were described in my opinion.
My problem with the game in regard to the thematic aspects of it is that for every smart thing it tries to do, it does a dumb thing that undermines any sense of intelligence the game had. It approaches some idea or concept in a simplistic way and then shows a distinct lack of understanding, or at least a very blinkered form of it, in other respects. If that makes any sense.
07/12/2007 at 14:33 AbyssUK says:
Right, I liked Bioshock.. so much so I bought it, brilliant storylines and brilliant visuals and side plots an artistic piece of brilliance. Would have made a brilliant film!
But as a game, it was average. For a game with so many upgrades, weapons and ‘choices’ it was surprisingly linear. There wasn’t much variation of bad guys and/or missions/objectives although oddly there was plenty of stories and so much opportunity to add in more characters and big boss battles.
I was disappointed every time I finally made it to one of the more main characters only to find they looked just like everybody else.. I wanted a doctor who’d graphed on extra limbs, or the theatre guy who would attack me with soundwaves, or the gardener who had mastered the control of the trees or something.. but each time disappointedly it was just a normal splicer again who i just needed to hit more times with my wrench. I did BTW actually complete most of the game with my wrench (fully spec’d out to hurt people with it) and the electrobolt.
I think to have truly made this game one of the best ever it needed just that little bit more variety… oh and some fish men…. and damn it I wanted to shoot the whale at least once is that too much to ask..
07/12/2007 at 16:24 The Sombrero Kid says:
i actually think there should less variation in the number of enemies in most games tbh i think it breaks immersion to have invented chaingun grafted super soldiers when functionally it rarely fits
most people who you kill should probably be random guy with a gun but he should also look like a random guy
i think Bioshock done well to bring “Enemy Types” down to the ground a little
07/12/2007 at 16:43 Pidesco says:
Yeah, but varied enemies would be have been so easy to add to Bioshock. Imagine fighting enemies that have access to the same variety of plasmids as you do. Where are the telekinesis splicers? Or cyclone trap splicers? Or splicers that incinerate you with a snap of their fingers?
07/12/2007 at 18:02 Dracko says:
Apologies then, Kieron. The article hit a very sour nerve, quite frankly.
07/12/2007 at 18:21 Kieron Gillen says:
Accepted, man. I could tell it had got your goat, but insults are insults.
KG
07/12/2007 at 18:26 JP says:
Muzman, you pretty much nailed it. Problem being, to really pay off “You’re Free Now” thematically would have required at least one extra year of development and we’d still be sleeping under our desks. Alternately, the story could have been reworked so the act 2 climax came at the end of the game, as a setup for a sequel.
Either way, highly non-trivial but probably worth it (to me at least) because theme and gameplay and fiction all being on the same page is what many of the best games ever have in common. Sadly we are always faced with some or other resource limitation.
07/12/2007 at 19:00 Dracko says:
You keep my goat out of this, or I’m calling Jeff Minter! (Poor Jeff…)
08/12/2007 at 00:30 Mike says:
I can’t think of a lonelier place than past Comment #100 on a gaming blog. Still.
I’ve actually just written a piece about the piece about the game. Partly because, one the one hand, I think you’re wrong to defend it so strongly. A game with a Metacritic score of – and it makes me disbelieving every time I see it – 96 seems like it should be able to stand up for itself.
And the problem is just that – the score is so overwhelmingly positive, that I worry what signals that sends out to other development companies. It says that we’re willing to accept very vaguely innovative ideas, as long as it’s graphically beautiful and has at least three talking points.
For me, Bioshock was a shooter that failed at as much as it succeeded in. And, I don’t know, maybe that does deserve credit. I do know this, though – gaming, as an industry, tears apart games that attempt just as much and succeed in more obvious areas.
Invisible War is, for me, to Deus Ex what Bioshock is to System Shock 2. A solid gameplay base, tacked onto what should have been a brilliant progression of a great concept, but what ended up being a slightly clumsy repainting of it, with fewer colours and a slightly dog-eared brush. We hated Invisible War, despite my protests. Now we love Bioshock, despite my protests.
Life goes on, though. The hyperbole for this was nothing compared to Super Mario Galaxy.
08/12/2007 at 01:46 Will Tomas says:
I think it depends what we want from games, now, doesn’t it?
On the one hand the initial, positive, critical reaction to Bioshock was much like that line in Life of Brian, “I say you’re the Messiah, Lord, and I should know, I’ve followed a few!” But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some very good things to say.
Essentially, what the Bioshock debate seems to me to say is that we, as gamers and critics, seem to want from gaming in general, a mechanics-free, totally immersive world in which we are told a deep and complex story well, that evolves around the player’s actions, where the setting is a believable world, and where we can’t see the maths behind the action or the design that’s making us feel so immersed. Also, some of us, would quite like to have fun. People got annoyed because Bioshock didn’t do a), and some people didn’t have b), and they were expecting rafts of both.
When someone commented that they would quite like RPG mechanics in Bioshock’s FPS world, I would hazard a guess that what’s behind that idea is the desire to feel, in any game, a sense of control over yourself in the game, as opposed to a desire to see mechanics transposed across.
It’s mainly about feel.
Personally, I think computer game genres are woeful things, because most of the best games break those boundaries. Or try to do away with convention. Deus Ex gets called an FPS/RPG, but really, it wasn’t either of them properly. It was a game which was trying to break the conventions of the time because it could, since games cost less then, and it was seen as less of a risk. Half-Life broke the FPS conventions by trying to have more of a story, more of a world. Mario 64 broke platforming conventions (and created a whole raft of new ones) by breaking the 2D wall.
What I find personally disappointing is that the genre-pushing of the great few of the late 90s/early 00s (HL, Deus Ex, etc.) seems to be less common. Or at least when it takes place, it happens like Stalker – not in a particularly broad way, good though it was.
Ironically, I think the perfect game of our time is Mario Galaxy. It emphatically does not revolutionise the platformer, but it does show how limited the boundaries are – in this case, the boundary of gravity. And the boundary of staying in three dimensions. Crysis points out the limitations of non-destructable trees, and non-flingable chickens. What’s going on now seems to be to be fervent evolution, not revolution. Half-Life, Deus Ex, SS2, were at the time revolutionary, which is why they get talked about in such awestruck tones. But as I said in the Deus Ex 3 post, I’m not interested in Deus Ex 3, because it will only be at best more Deus Ex. What I would rather see – and what Bioshock was hyped by some people to be – is the next revolution.
But – and here’s the rub – maybe it isn’t coming. Maybe there’s been too many games; graphics have evolved to a peak, but the way we physically play games hasn’t changed at all; that actually evolution, rather than revolution, is the way forward. It’s slower, but maybe in a crowded, expensive-to-produce market, more necessary.
We’re getting there. I hope. A piece at a time.
08/12/2007 at 09:52 malkav11 says:
Pretty much everyone I heard from in the first week or two of release was blown away by Bioshock. It was only after it’d been out a few weeks and I’d actually beaten it that I started seeing much in the way of negative talk about it. And even then, early on, it was more “I really loved Bioshock, but here’s a few things that bothered me”. It was longer still before I saw the “oh, this was terribly overhyped” or “this game sucked”, the stuff I really don’t understand or empathize with.
So I do feel there’s been a backlash. Part of it really does seem to be the usual internet contrarianism, but I think part of it may also be that more time meant more people getting past the really shiny early-to-mid-game and hitting the less successful later chapters. Which seem to have soured some people on the game entirely. (Again, I don’t really get that – I liked all of it except the final boss fight, which was trivial and rather silly, even if much of the late game wasn’t *as* brilliant.)
08/12/2007 at 14:41 Garth says:
“Oh – Garth:…
If you look at Dracko’s arguments, he’s mainly annoyed it seems like a late 90s game – in fact that’s his actual phrasing. Lots of people make it. And, as I said, it’s a smarter one than the Dumbed Down Shock argument.”
I read above and did indeed find his comment, but again he says it’s a late 90′s style game. Other people may have said System Shock 2.5 (there are obviously more comments here than I’d like to go over, heh,) but in my experience the most common outcries would become much louder, and more of a screech if one compared Bioshock to System Shock.
System Shocks main problem is that, unlike Deus Ex, it’s problems aren’t balanced by a particularly well done aspect of the game. Every part of it is, at best, ‘good,’ and I have absolutely no drive to play it again.
Consider things that completely remove you from any immersion possible – you disable two turrets and a camera, run up, and in the nick of time… play a puzzle. Then, just as you beat it, you get to the second turret just in time to… play a puzzle. There’s also problems like: if I’ve been here 10 minutes, and I can take 4-5 of these people who’s entire lives have been dedicated to making themselves stronger through their Adam use… what exactly am I doing that they aren’t? Deus Ex made you out to be a pseudo God-soldier. In this game, if anything, they’re the God-soldiers, although they sure as hell don’t act like it.
There’s also the fight over who gets to control Rapture… only there’s nothing left to control. Why the hell is there a huge war between these two people? And hell, who is even reading the propaganda put up everywhere? The citizens are veritable zombies, yet so much of the game is focussed around Rapture as some kind of, at least partially, functioning society.
I found that, on the whole, my biggest problem was that I could never accept what was going on. It was mostly a ‘wait, how did they get from A to B if they…’ mindset. The backstory and the current story don’t seem to link up.
I do agree on your point that people are being over-critical, but a lot of that is because, on the opposite side of things, people are being too lenient. This game was literally hailed as a FPS rejuvenation, something that would forever change the way FPS’s would be made. In the end, it was basically a bunch of interesting ideas tossed together, without being finished.
While I did enjoy much of it on the play-through, I have no intention on beating the game twice, as I feel I’ve seen all that I need to.
08/12/2007 at 14:42 Garth says:
Err, when I said “System Shocks main problem is that…” I meant Bioshock. Whoopsydoodle.
13/12/2007 at 03:19 JohnMid says:
The vita chamber issue isn’t a plot hole, by the way.
The story explained that Ryan set all the vita chambers to be coded only to his genetic signature. A signature that you, as his direct offspring, share. The lack of ability to use the vita chambers was referenced in the logs and story.
07/06/2008 at 02:12 Jonathan says:
Reply to Garth
“There’s also the fight over who gets to control Rapture… only there’s nothing left to control. Why the hell is there a huge war between these two people?”
Better to rule in hell.
“And hell, who is even reading the propaganda put up everywhere? The citizens are veritable zombies, yet so much of the game is focussed around Rapture as some kind of, at least partially, functioning society.”
It’s automated. Just like the vending machines laugh the same propaganda reel has been repeating since the new years riot. Whilst the posters have become torn and overgrown.
“I found that, on the whole, my biggest problem was that I could never accept what was going on. It was mostly a ‘wait, how did they get from A to B if they…’ mindset. The backstory and the current story don’t seem to link up.”
You’re going to need an example to back that up.
“There’s also problems like: if I’ve been here 10 minutes, and I can take 4-5 of these people who’s entire lives have been dedicated to making themselves stronger through their Adam use… what exactly am I doing that they aren’t? Deus Ex made you out to be a pseudo God-soldier. In this game, if anything, they’re the God-soldiers, although they sure as hell don’t act like it.”
You’re built from the ground up to take advantage of your surroundings. Who knows what Fontaine, Suchong and Tenebaum added to you in your accelerated adolescence. You’re certainly faster, stronger and possibly smarter than anything else. Also think in terms of a new disease added to an ecosystem which has balanced itself out.
I’m not saying its perfect, the Fontaine/Atlas twist seems pointless and the normal difficulty setting is a tad too easy, but with fifty or so varied weapons, chunky combat and a story rich with foreshadowing and side plots it richly deserves the rewards it got.
17/08/2008 at 13:10 Psychopomp says:
“The vita chamber issue isn’t a plot hole, by the way.
The story explained that Ryan set all the vita chambers to be coded only to his genetic signature. A signature that you, as his direct offspring, share.”
It just became one for me…
What was the point in killing Ryan, if the Vita-Chambers were just going to revive him?
This may or may not have been covered in the 2 audio-logs I can’t seem to find…
16/01/2009 at 13:18 rubudsveta says:
какие праздники вам нравятся отмечать?
08/05/2009 at 20:18 Bhazor says:
Reply to Psychopomp
So Atlas/Fontaine could nab his genetic key and take over Rapture’s computer system.