Feet says:

Well it’s certainly a provocative article… :P

Also, don’t read the EG comments thread, you’ll only die inside. Again.

December 6th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

cullnean says:

woot need more watchmen quotes

December 6th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Theory says:

For example, pre-patch PC fans were angry there was no option to walk on the PC. But - y’know - walking is about allowing you to move quietly. You can move quietly through the crouch, signifying creeping. In terms of the tactics allowed by your player, you can do the same.

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:02 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

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*

December 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

Matthew Gallant says:

I probably saw him at the time, he just dropped out of my memory like my math skills after a final.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

Dracko says:

Oh, and Dot, the last thing FPS games need are RPG mechanics. Talk about a lack of self-assurance in game design.

December 6th, 2007 at 2:40 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

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?

December 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

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)

December 6th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

Pidesco says:

See Kieron, Jim here agrees with me about bioshock’s linearity.

It means I must be right!!!11!!”!!!

December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 4:45 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

Nick says:

5. The ghosts - better than SS2’s

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 5:37 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

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?)

December 6th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

JP says:

Nope. I’m a designer.

December 6th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

Andrew says:

Never! They barely came close to the excellence of “what happened in the mess hall” and the lone man shooting himself.

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

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.

December 6th, 2007 at 7:18 pm