Alexandro, my problem with that article (and its arguments) are:
1.) It assumes that the point of the Bioshock narrative is to "vanish" into the role of the protagonist. It's not, anymore than we're supposed to be Solid Snake. The Metal Gear Solids are good examples of what Bioshock is trying to transform about games: MGS 1-3 are essentially films, with game-elements thrown in as the price of admission to "buy" the next scene. It would sell quite poorly, but you could replace the whole game with variations on the torture mini-game from MGS1 and be done with it. Bioshock takes a classic game convention:
-that you can't really choose to "not play" the game- and gives a narrative reason for it. Ryan believes that humans have a "choice"; that the game ultimately doesn't share this view is the POINT OF THE GAME/STORY, not a failure of the story. Whether this is mocking the player or not, is up in the air. I can see that argument, although I think it's more likely that the game is mocking the idea that such a game would ever be possible.
2.) The assumption that you have to help Atlas. I felt the start of the game was an excellent use of in media res. It feels like your character stumbles into Rapture on page 575 of a novel (maybe even the epilogue). You character doesn't speak after the opening cinematic, he could have any number of reasons for what he's doing. Indeed:
For much of the game, I thought that the protagonists goal was to go after Atlas, not Ryan. He never says he'll help Atlas, he just follows directions to "meet up with him". I thought the part about not being able to see your character in the sub control room was leading to some revelation about Atlas being the played, not the player. I was wrong, obviously.
Anyway, based upon the fact that we're having a discussion like this about a game, how can it not win? Bioshock, best campaign. Easily the most literate console game ever made.
I don't know how you can complain about Alyx tagging along.
Seriously. I can't believe we're splitting hairs on AI partners like Alyx. I mean there are some distinct categories here:
1. Downright Gamebreaking awesome - Big Daddies
2. Completely non-intrusive and cool - Alyx and Arbiter. Here, you have Alyx coming out with her nebulous semi-invincibility. OTOH, you have the Arbiter Kipping up off the ground and Guile kicking Brutes out of their Prowlers.
3. So so - Sargeant Johnson, Halo marines that drive, Half Life 2 squad
4. Retards - Dom, Dead Rising
I don't know how you can complain about Alyx tagging along.
Seriously. I can't believe we're splitting hairs on AI partners like Alyx. I mean there are some distinct categories here:
1. Downright Gamebreaking awesome - Big Daddies
2. Completely non-intrusive and cool - Alyx and Arbiter. Here, you have Alyx coming out with her nebulous semi-invincibility. OTOH, you have the Arbiter Kipping up off the ground and Guile kicking Brutes out of their Prowlers.
3. So so - Sargeant Johnson, Halo marines that drive, Half Life 2 squad
4. Retards - Dom, Dead Rising
Well, after looking into it more, it looks like there may not be. Which is sad.
Fuck you everyone who didn't buy/play that game.
Yeah I didn't think so. I don't think Lucasarts has the awesome to give us Imperial Commando. Just Jedi games for the next decade probably.
I'd rather have a direct sequel to Republic Commando anyway.
I got rather attached to my clone buddies and there is plenty they could still do with the Clone Wars. They didn't end in four days or anything. Moving the games into the period of the Galactic Civil War would cut off the characters from the first game as all the clones were destroyed after the formation of the Galactic Empire.
Yeah, I'd take a fucking expansion pack with just new levels.
The only thing I think was missing was I want the last level to take place when Order 66 comes down. Me and Delta Squad would fuck some Jedi up good. That would be an epic battle.
Well, after looking into it more, it looks like there may not be. Which is sad.
Fuck you everyone who didn't buy/play that game.
Yeah I didn't think so. I don't think Lucasarts has the awesome to give us Imperial Commando. Just Jedi games for the next decade probably.
I'd rather have a direct sequel to Republic Commando anyway.
I got rather attached to my clone buddies and there is plenty they could still do with the Clone Wars. They didn't end in four days or anything. Moving the games into the period of the Galactic Civil War would cut off the characters from the first game as all the clones were destroyed after the formation of the Galactic Empire.
I was playing HL2, the part where you're ambushed by combine and hunters in the big house of that small township. Near the end of the battle, I'm upstairs, Alyx is downstairs. I charge down the stairs right in front of Combine with a submachina pointed at my face.
He went down before getting off a shot, and there stood Alyx, with her exclamation, "Got one!".
Damn youse Alyx haters. Goddamn youse all to hell!
MidVicious on
"When you're in the type of business we're in, you don't get a criminal lawyer, you get a criminal lawyer!" -- Jesse, Breaking Bad
Alexandro, my problem with that article (and its arguments) are:
1.) It assumes that the point of the Bioshock narrative is to "vanish" into the role of the protagonist. It's not, anymore than we're supposed to be Solid Snake. The Metal Gear Solids are good examples of what Bioshock is trying to transform about games: MGS 1-3 are essentially films, with game-elements thrown in as the price of admission to "buy" the next scene. It would sell quite poorly, but you could replace the whole game with variations on the torture mini-game from MGS1 and be done with it. Bioshock takes a classic game convention:
-that you can't really choose to "not play" the game- and gives a narrative reason for it. Ryan believes that humans have a "choice"; that the game ultimately doesn't share this view is the POINT OF THE GAME/STORY, not a failure of the story. Whether this is mocking the player or not, is up in the air. I can see that argument, although I think it's more likely that the game is mocking the idea that such a game would ever be possible.
2.) The assumption that you have to help Atlas. I felt the start of the game was an excellent use of in media res. It feels like your character stumbles into Rapture on page 575 of a novel (maybe even the epilogue). You character doesn't speak after the opening cinematic, he could have any number of reasons for what he's doing. Indeed:
For much of the game, I thought that the protagonists goal was to go after Atlas, not Ryan. He never says he'll help Atlas, he just follows directions to "meet up with him". I thought the part about not being able to see your character in the sub control room was leading to some revelation about Atlas being the played, not the player. I was wrong, obviously.
Anyway, based upon the fact that we're having a discussion like this about a game, how can it not win? Bioshock, best campaign. Easily the most literate console game ever made.
I admit, I am glad that Bioshock is advanced enough that we can have this discussion. I'm also glad that we can have it civilly.
I mention civility because I'm gonna have to disagree with you. :P
1) The point *is* for the player to disappear into the role of the protagonist, as evidenced by the gaming conventions that Bioshock embraces but Metal Gear Solid does not. Bioshock is a first-person shooter, with the player adopting the exact perspective of a mostly-mute (he speaks in the intro, right?) protagonist, a la Gordon Freeman. The one-way radio conversations reinforce the fact that the NPCs are conversing with us, the player, not with our separate character.
Furthermore, Bioshock is ostensibly an RPG, which, by its literal definition, is a game in which we play a role. Yes, I know, weak example, especially since the "RPG" term itself is open to interpretation, but I think it's viable here.
As for MGS, it's a third-person action game with a great many vocal characters, Solid Snake not the least. It's up to the player himself whether he can mentally immerse himself as Solid Snake while playing the game, but Solid Snake himself is an utterly distinct character.
2) As for helping Atlas, from a gameplay perspective, you were well in your right to think that you might not want to help him. I personally didn't feel that way, but whatev. (Having heard bits and pieces of the System Shock history, I was suspicious of him from the get-go.) However, from a STORY perspective, your character that YOU inhabit (as I argue above) has NO CHOICE but to do as Atlas says, thanks to the WYK cues. This is the single biggest dichotomy that the article mentions and that I felt aggravated by while playing the game.
Again, these are my arguments with story versus gameplay choices or lack thereof. I think Bioshock is great for trying this hard, but I feel compelled to point out where (in my opinion) it failed. Bioshock does so much right, it'd be a hard shame to embrace its mistakes as readily as we embrace its selling points.
As for the combat... well, so many people love the game, I don't feel the need to shit on the parade, especially since the discussion is about the story.
Posts
WOAH WOAH WHAT NOW
1.) It assumes that the point of the Bioshock narrative is to "vanish" into the role of the protagonist. It's not, anymore than we're supposed to be Solid Snake. The Metal Gear Solids are good examples of what Bioshock is trying to transform about games: MGS 1-3 are essentially films, with game-elements thrown in as the price of admission to "buy" the next scene. It would sell quite poorly, but you could replace the whole game with variations on the torture mini-game from MGS1 and be done with it. Bioshock takes a classic game convention:
2.) The assumption that you have to help Atlas. I felt the start of the game was an excellent use of in media res. It feels like your character stumbles into Rapture on page 575 of a novel (maybe even the epilogue). You character doesn't speak after the opening cinematic, he could have any number of reasons for what he's doing. Indeed:
Anyway, based upon the fact that we're having a discussion like this about a game, how can it not win? Bioshock, best campaign. Easily the most literate console game ever made.
Seriously. I can't believe we're splitting hairs on AI partners like Alyx. I mean there are some distinct categories here:
1. Downright Gamebreaking awesome - Big Daddies
2. Completely non-intrusive and cool - Alyx and Arbiter. Here, you have Alyx coming out with her nebulous semi-invincibility. OTOH, you have the Arbiter Kipping up off the ground and Guile kicking Brutes out of their Prowlers.
3. So so - Sargeant Johnson, Halo marines that drive, Half Life 2 squad
4. Retards - Dom, Dead Rising
Fuck you everyone who didn't buy/play that game.
Yeah I didn't think so. I don't think Lucasarts has the awesome to give us Imperial Commando. Just Jedi games for the next decade probably.
Where's Ashley in this?
:shock:
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
edit: i then read the posts after. I hate you guys.
I'd rather have a direct sequel to Republic Commando anyway.
I got rather attached to my clone buddies and there is plenty they could still do with the Clone Wars. They didn't end in four days or anything. Moving the games into the period of the Galactic Civil War would cut off the characters from the first game as all the clones were destroyed after the formation of the Galactic Empire.
The only thing I think was missing was I want the last level to take place when Order 66 comes down. Me and Delta Squad would fuck some Jedi up good. That would be an epic battle.
Oh god.
Ashley is in another castle. Made out of excrement. That cries blood.
I just want to kill Rebel scum is all.
He went down before getting off a shot, and there stood Alyx, with her exclamation, "Got one!".
Damn youse Alyx haters. Goddamn youse all to hell!
-- Jesse, Breaking Bad
Flashlight on: Alyx kicks total ass.
I admit, I am glad that Bioshock is advanced enough that we can have this discussion. I'm also glad that we can have it civilly.
I mention civility because I'm gonna have to disagree with you. :P
1) The point *is* for the player to disappear into the role of the protagonist, as evidenced by the gaming conventions that Bioshock embraces but Metal Gear Solid does not. Bioshock is a first-person shooter, with the player adopting the exact perspective of a mostly-mute (he speaks in the intro, right?) protagonist, a la Gordon Freeman. The one-way radio conversations reinforce the fact that the NPCs are conversing with us, the player, not with our separate character.
Furthermore, Bioshock is ostensibly an RPG, which, by its literal definition, is a game in which we play a role. Yes, I know, weak example, especially since the "RPG" term itself is open to interpretation, but I think it's viable here.
As for MGS, it's a third-person action game with a great many vocal characters, Solid Snake not the least. It's up to the player himself whether he can mentally immerse himself as Solid Snake while playing the game, but Solid Snake himself is an utterly distinct character.
2) As for helping Atlas, from a gameplay perspective, you were well in your right to think that you might not want to help him. I personally didn't feel that way, but whatev. (Having heard bits and pieces of the System Shock history, I was suspicious of him from the get-go.) However, from a STORY perspective, your character that YOU inhabit (as I argue above) has NO CHOICE but to do as Atlas says, thanks to the WYK cues. This is the single biggest dichotomy that the article mentions and that I felt aggravated by while playing the game.
Again, these are my arguments with story versus gameplay choices or lack thereof. I think Bioshock is great for trying this hard, but I feel compelled to point out where (in my opinion) it failed. Bioshock does so much right, it'd be a hard shame to embrace its mistakes as readily as we embrace its selling points.
As for the combat... well, so many people love the game, I don't feel the need to shit on the parade, especially since the discussion is about the story.
But...
I liked Ashley.