So, don’t worry about those ones. Plenty of other stuff to worry about.

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=9ae60dfd56af03df89441f3d80b78b76&t=30111

Looks like they’ve jumped off the deep end. I’m particularly amused by the inclusion of underwater puzzles. As much as they are overused in other games, I thought it took tremendous restraint by the developers not to have any in Bioshock 1.

Stick to the rules, and you’ll wind up with convention, contrivance and the commonplace.

You are standing in a field.
>i
You have:
100 million dollars.
A development team.
Three years.

What are you going to do?

You guys talk like art has rules. Yea, art has rules. And Is good to know the rules… just before you break the rules. Is ok to break the rules and do the imposible with whatever you have.
IMHO, valve did a great work creating “playable” cutscenes. You don’t feel forced, is smooth and work.
That thing “theres only 7 storys”, I say Meh. *THAT* is another rule you can break.

The problem is that, as in every other videogame, the player’s freedom is obviously restricted, and so we were never under any illusion who was pulling the strings. For Bioshock to work, it needs to promise freedom and deliver slavery.

Anyway, your point, as I gather it, emphasizes that the story is created by the person playing the game, and that the elements (which you call “plot”) the designer throws in there are the raw materials for constructing the story’s existence. I’d wholeheartedly agree. Narratives aren’t imposed; they’re developed by the player with the collaboration of the game creators. Mr. Levine expressed his dismay at how many players just ignored the story (even the recordings) and ran around like rats in a maze. I followed the story and still ran around like a rat in a maze.

As an aside, that’s why the notion of “sandbox” appeals to us for the freedom it implies, even when “themed amusement park” is a more accurate description.

‘Bioshock’s story is pretty much disposable.’

If we’re jus going to handwave away the text, dialogue, recordings & cutscenes and all that, in videogames that still just plot. Not story.

The main part where storytelling ahppens in videogames is in the context. What character you control, what world he inhabits and all the millions upon millions of story elements there.

And what the player can and can’t do of course. The player actions the game allows are a huge element of story. And I don’t mean plot choices like a Bioware game. But wether you can talk at all or just shoot. Or where you don’t kill at all but where the gameplay challenge is in navigating the enviroment, that sort of stuff.

Just compare Doom 1 and Half Life 1.

Same plot: science experiment goes wrong, dimensional drift opens, monsters, shooting.

Totally diffirent context and one is lauded for it’s story while the other’s story is viewed as camp.

Drop a massivly convoluted plot on top of a bold spacemarine for a player character and it’ll still be a struggle to get a good story.

Take a cliche plot but change the context away from bald spacemarines and your halfway there to make something a little more fascinating.

Other media have figured this out forever ago. How old is the saying in literature that there’s only 7 diffirent stories? It’s the millions of diffirent ways to tell them that matters.

It’s Storytellers, not Storymakers after all.