It's not that the Bioshock story is amazing, but I found the analysis on Gamefaqs pretty fascinating, since I had no prior knowledge of Ayn Rand and objectivism. I imagine it's pretty damn cool if you're familiar with that stuff.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
I thought the story was pretty mediocre yeah. The real selling point of Bioshock is the atmosphere and environment. Everything else is, to me, pretty meh.
Gunplay is pretty bad actually and combat is sometimes even dull and starts feeling repetitive towards the end. The story was at best interesting at times and tedious and predictable otherwise.
To me, the atmosphere of Bioshock (and small snippets of greatness, like with the golfclub) made the entire game what it is. And it is a good game because of it.
Though the ending is awful in just about every way.
And now to the gameplay. First, about the weapons and plasmids - It's extremely clunky. Quickly switching to a different plasmid is a chore, seeing as how the swap buttons are all the way up in the "F" keys at the top of the keyboard. That means that if you, say, wanted to zap a nearby Alarm with the Electric Bolt plasmid, then set the insane guy with hooks for arms standing next to him on fire with the Incinerate plasmid, you'd have to reach your finger all the way up to an F key to do make the swap. Swapping ammo, too, is a chore, and tough to manage.
Yay, My 360 controller beat out a keyboard for once!
Super fast and easy to switch weapons, plasmids and ammo with the controller.
If the controls were uncomfortable for you, couldn't you just re-map them to your liking since you were playing on PC?
Skull2185 on
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
0
MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
(Honestly, it annoys me that I had to play through so many hours just to get to that plot development. Sigh. But still.)
Frank Fontaine is a bitch. I liked Atlas, but fuck that guy.
Also, I knew that saving the little sisters would come in handy. I guess that Tenebaum chick doesn't help you out if you slaughter all her innocent little girls?
No, she still does.
Don't really know why.
That's the biggest disappointment of the game. I don't know this for a fact, but I believe they didn't even record different lines. C'mon, Levine, do that at least!
So, now that the plot twist has past -
Is it possible to NOT put the little card in the machine in Ryan's office, stopping the self-destruction mechanism? Is it possible to resist Fontaine's command and then have the game end?
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
i think you need a little more unnecessary bold lettering
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I don't know how you can not know at least 3 of those names, unless you just did not pay attention at all.
After looking up the Steinman guy, I, of course, remember him. I just didn't remember his name. Can't say I remember the Diane Mcclintock person. Those "journals" really aren't all effective at telling a story, I must say, considering all the mayhem everywhere. (It's hard to hear it over the buzzers and bullets and explosions.)
I found Bioshock's story fascinating, plenty of good characters and atmosphere.
Also the way you pieced together what happened via the audio tapes was great.
EDIT:
Dianne was Ryan's girlfriend if i remeber correctly.
Her first audio tape is at the New Years Eve party - where rebels attack. Then in various other places (Dr Steinmann's surgery being one of them) and finally in a Fontainne Home for the poor, where she accidentaly walks in on 'Atlas' out of character).
EDIT EDIT: Changing your audio levels would solve that porblem melk
101 on
0
augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
Or you know sitting still long enough to listen to them.
Or you know sitting still long enough to listen to them.
There are quite a few times where you're walking down empty corrdiors as well, I usually re-listened to a couple then.
Yesh, Melkster, you know you could go into the menu and replay them, right?
It sounds from your comments you came in expecting an FPS and treated it as such. When you do that, you will miss all the little details. Similar to Fallout, you have to look for the story which I like.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
bioshock is not a book. it works only as a game. hence the ability to listen to these little character snippets while playing: in a book i guess that would be like... reading a page overlapped with another page?
hell, the twist itself is about games.
you're a slave to the game's orders. you can't disobey them and you didn't really try, either. imagine if that cutscene was written down in a book, or, more likely, shown in a movie- it would lose all its meaning, because games are interactive. that's what the scene means, and that's why bioshock's story is so effective.
once again- when people say "bioshock's story was so good" they don't mean "remember in bioshock when that path was blocked off and i had to go the long way round? the story they gave for that blockage was so good!"
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
bioshock is not a book. it works only as a game. hence the ability to listen to these little character snippets while playing: in a book i guess that would be like... reading a page overlapped with another page?
hell, the twist itself is about games.
you're a slave to the game's orders. you can't disobey them and you didn't really try, either. imagine if that cutscene was written down in a book, or, more likely, shown in a movie- it would lose all its meaning, because games are interactive. that's what the scene means, and that's why bioshock's story is so effective.
once again- when people say "bioshock's story was so good" they don't mean "remember in bioshock when that path was blocked off and i had to go the long way round? the story they gave for that blockage was so good!"
The twist was cool, I will concede that.
So, you've defined what people don't mean when they say "Bioshock's story was so good." So what do they mean, then, exactly?
Or you know sitting still long enough to listen to them.
There are quite a few times where you're walking down empty corrdiors as well, I usually re-listened to a couple then.
Yesh, Melkster, you know you could go into the menu and replay them, right?
It sounds from your comments you came in expecting an FPS and treated it as such. When you do that, you will miss all the little details. Similar to Fallout, you have to look for the story which I like.
I was expecting a solid, compelling story and fun shooter. I was looking for both, equally. I found the shooter component to be frustrating and clunky, and the story rather superficial and awkwardly told (with the tapes and whatnot), and constantly interrupted by "Go Fetch This" quests, which made up 80% of the game.
And, uh, no I didn't realize that I could go into the menu and replay them. I'll remember that if I ever decide to give the game another try.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
i think you need a little more unnecessary bold lettering
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I have many many problems with BioShock, but "the story is objectively bad" is not one of them. Hell, I'd argue that its story is infinitely deeper and better-told than pretty much every other FPS out there that isn't made by Valve both from the standpoint of literary analysis and in terms of its use of the medium. You can't say "if BioShock was a book, it would suck", because it's not a book. It's a video game. An interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by allowing the player to discover the various story snippets at his own pace.
And yes, there are lots of little threads of plot that at a first glance seem unrelated, but that's only if you view the Jack storyline as the "story" of the piece. BioShock is the story of Rapture and its fall, not just the story of that one dude whose plane crashed. And if you can't see how those two are related, then you need to pay a little more attention.
Simplifying the plot down to five sentences is complete and utter bullshit. You can do that with any story ever written, and it will come out sounding stupid. As a playwright I would argue that the nuts and bolts of the story itself are inconsequential, what matters is the execution (see: the millions of stories that fit the Campbellian hero's journey while still managing to feel distinctly different).
Lets be honest: Bioshock's story is nowhere near original. For starters, 90% of it is straight out of System Shock 2.
What makes it work is the strong thematic presence throughout: it's a piece about the dichotomy between man and slave and the paradox of choice. The plot twist, although incredibly stupid-sounding on paper, works brilliantly because it manages to cast a new light on all of the previous events of the game and, in fact, video game tropes in general. The entire time you've been operating under the pretense that you've been acting of your own accord (you're a "man"), but it turns out that you were being controlled the whole time (you're actually a "slave"). I agree that it would suck as a book, because its success hinges completely on the interactivity. Without you the player feeling like you have been making choices over the course of the game, the plot twist falls flat on its face. I would agree that at times there could have been stronger integration between the gameplay and the story, but that is a very different argument from most of what you're saying.
For the record, I do personally feel that the game falls apart completely after the plot twist. I think this guy is spot-on with his hypothetical replacement ending.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
i think you need a little more unnecessary bold lettering
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I have many many problems with BioShock, but "the story is objectively bad" is not one of them. Hell, I'd argue that its story is infinitely deeper and better-told than pretty much any other FPS out there that isn't made by Valve. You can't say "if BioShock was a book, it would suck", because it's not a book. It's a video game. An interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by allowing the player to discover the various story snippets at his own pace.
And yes, there are lots of little threads of plot that at a first glance seem unrelated, but that's only if you view the Jack storyline as the "story" of the piece. BioShock is the story of Rapture and its fall, not just the story of that one dude whose plane crashed. And if you can't see how those two are related, then you need to pay a little more attention.
Simplifying the plot down to five sentences is complete and utter bullshit. You can do that with any story ever written, and it will come out sounding stupid. As a playwright I would argue that the nuts and bolts of the story itself are inconsequential, what matters is the execution (see: the millions of stories that fit the Campbellian hero's journey while still managing to feel distinctly different).
Lets be honest: Bioshock's story is nowhere near original. For starters, 90% of it is straight out of System Shock 2.
What makes it work is the strong thematic presence throughout: it's a piece about the dichotomy between man and slave and the paradox of choice. The plot twist, although incredibly stupid-sounding on paper, works brilliantly because it manages to cast a new light on all of the previous events of the game and, in fact, video game tropes in general. The entire time you've been operating under the pretense that you've been acting of your own accord (you're a "man"), but it turns out that you were being controlled the whole time (you're actually a "slave"). I agree that it would suck as a book, because its success hinges completely on the interactivity. Without you the player feeling like you have been making choices over the course of the game, the plot twist falls flat on its face. I would agree that at times there could have been stronger integration between the gameplay and the story, but that is a very different argument from most of what you're saying.
For the record, I do personally feel that the game falls apart completely after the plot twist. I think this guy is spot-on with his hypothetical replacement ending.
The twist was cool, as I've said. But, like you said, the game is "interactive" in as much as you can decide to get to an Important Item through door A or door B. I never felt like that meant there was any kind of real choice, ever. I never felt like I made any choices in the game at all, and neither should any player playing through the section of the game before the big reveal in Ryan's office. You are compelled to go on the ridiculous little side-quests, and it was frustrating. Of course, the fact that the game capitalized on my frustration to a plot twist was interesting.
You said that "an interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling," and I totally agree, completely. However, the storytelling method in this game was clunky. If you're saying that the "Story Of Rapture Before Jack Got There" was the real story of Bioshock, then I'd say there are 3 primary ways that story was relayed:
#1: The story was primarily relayed in those Journals. An interactive game primary conveyed The Story Of Rapture through Audio Sound Bites. Audio Sound bites are not interactive. They're clunky, mis-matched, and encountered out of order (and not cleverly out of order like a Quentin Tarantino movie) and distract from the actual playing of the game. A forummer even suggested that the player ought to just stop playing the game for a moment to listen to those journal sound bites. You can't really interact with an audio recording. You don't really "experience" it, and you certainly don't play through it.
#2: The setting. The corridors and rooms where all these horrible things happened do tell you a bit about what happened there, sure, and I can't really offer much criticism of that. Is it interactive? Sure. You get to walk around these rooms, look at all the stuff, and try and piece together what's going on. I'll give you that one.
#3: Ghosts? They were pretty rare, and usually quite confusing, at least for me.
I mean, Journals are not interactive, and that is the primary way the story is conveyed.
Edit: I guess I generally view the backstory as just that: Backstory. It's the same in books as in movies as in RPGs as in First Person Shooters. The backstory informs the setting, which informs the story that you're trying tell, but I normally wouldn't say that the "Story" of a certain piece of media was primarily it's backstory. If you're trying to make the argument that the backstory of Bioshock is robust, then sure, I'd agree with you. But I stand by my assessment that the actual story that you play in the interactive game is very superficial and simple, and the backstory is told in a very clunky, non-interactive manner.
And you'll be doing alot of combat. You kill guys over and over and over and over and over and over again. It never ends. The solution to almost every situation is to kill the other guy. Every single time.
This part made me chuckle.
"I have to shoot things in this first-person shooter!"
And you'll be doing alot of combat. You kill guys over and over and over and over and over and over again. It never ends. The solution to almost every situation is to kill the other guy. Every single time.
This part made me chuckle.
"I have to shoot things in this first-person shooter!"
Meh, would have been nice to shake things up with a puzzle or friendly "town" or something. Like Half Life 2's physics puzzles, which I quite enjoyed, along with it's friendly towns where I could sit down and have a chat with someone for a bit, or play catch with a robot. There were no moments like that in the game, save the Pipe Dream puzzles and the place after the twist.
I like first person shooters and I like combat. I like killing things. But it would be nice to break it up a little, with stealth or puzzles or something other than just slaying over and over again. Even games like Call of Duty have stealth levels and such.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
i think you need a little more unnecessary bold lettering
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I have many many problems with BioShock, but "the story is objectively bad" is not one of them. Hell, I'd argue that its story is infinitely deeper and better-told than pretty much any other FPS out there that isn't made by Valve. You can't say "if BioShock was a book, it would suck", because it's not a book. It's a video game. An interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by allowing the player to discover the various story snippets at his own pace.
And yes, there are lots of little threads of plot that at a first glance seem unrelated, but that's only if you view the Jack storyline as the "story" of the piece. BioShock is the story of Rapture and its fall, not just the story of that one dude whose plane crashed. And if you can't see how those two are related, then you need to pay a little more attention.
Simplifying the plot down to five sentences is complete and utter bullshit. You can do that with any story ever written, and it will come out sounding stupid. As a playwright I would argue that the nuts and bolts of the story itself are inconsequential, what matters is the execution (see: the millions of stories that fit the Campbellian hero's journey while still managing to feel distinctly different).
Lets be honest: Bioshock's story is nowhere near original. For starters, 90% of it is straight out of System Shock 2.
What makes it work is the strong thematic presence throughout: it's a piece about the dichotomy between man and slave and the paradox of choice. The plot twist, although incredibly stupid-sounding on paper, works brilliantly because it manages to cast a new light on all of the previous events of the game and, in fact, video game tropes in general. The entire time you've been operating under the pretense that you've been acting of your own accord (you're a "man"), but it turns out that you were being controlled the whole time (you're actually a "slave"). I agree that it would suck as a book, because its success hinges completely on the interactivity. Without you the player feeling like you have been making choices over the course of the game, the plot twist falls flat on its face. I would agree that at times there could have been stronger integration between the gameplay and the story, but that is a very different argument from most of what you're saying.
For the record, I do personally feel that the game falls apart completely after the plot twist. I think this guy is spot-on with his hypothetical replacement ending.
The twist was cool, as I've said. But, like you said, the game is "interactive" in as much as you can decide to get to an Important Item through door A or door B. I never felt like that meant there was any kind of real choice, ever. I never felt like I made any choices in the game at all, and neither should any player playing through the section of the game before the big reveal in Ryan's office. You are compelled to go on the ridiculous little side-quests, and it was frustrating. Of course, the fact that the game capitalized on my frustration to a plot twist was interesting.
You said that "an interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling," and I totally agree, completely. However, the storytelling method in this game was clunky. If you're saying that the "Story Of Rapture Before Jack Got There" was the real story of Bioshock, then I'd say there are 3 primary ways that story was relayed:
#1: The story was primarily relayed in those Journals. An interactive game primary conveyed The Story Of Rapture through Audio Sound Bites. Audio Sound bites are not interactive. They're clunky, mis-matched, and encountered out of order (and not cleverly out of order like a Quentin Tarantino movie) and distract from the actual playing of the game. A forummer even suggested that the player ought to just stop playing the game for a moment to listen to those journal sound bites. You can't really interact with an audio recording. You don't really "experience" it, and you certainly don't play through it.
#2: The setting. The corridors and rooms where all these horrible things happened do tell you a bit about what happened there, sure, and I can't really offer much criticism of that. Is it interactive? Sure. You get to walk around these rooms, look at all the stuff, and try and piece together what's going on. I'll give you that one.
#3: Ghosts? They were pretty rare, and usually quite confusing, at least for me.
I mean, Journals are not interactive, and that is the primary way the story is conveyed.
Edit: I guess I generally view the backstory as just that: Backstory. It's the same in books as in movies as in RPGs as in First Person Shooters. The backstory informs the setting, which informs the story that you're trying tell, but I normally wouldn't say that the "Story" of a certain piece of media was primarily it's backstory. If you're trying to make the argument that the backstory of Bioshock is robust, then sure, I'd agree with you. But I stand by my assessment that the actual story that you play in the interactive game is very superficial and simple, and the backstory is told in a very clunky, non-interactive manner.
That's because you're trying to say that the story is about Jack, when really the story is about Rapture. It's like, for a random example off the top of my head, The Great Gatsby isn't about Nick, even though the story's told form his perspective.
The setting. Was interesting. The game is incredibly "pretty," especially all the water effects. It looks extremely realistic, and ran great on my mid-range machine. And the setting of the game is pretty interesting, too, if quite a bit unbelievable. The game really did creep me out, and it did it through the tons of really weird little scenes - all variations on being able to see some murderous psychopath going about his murderous psychopathy. I have to say, that psychopathy got pretty old after a while. I would have loved to see an actual little friendly town or two with actual sane human beings in it.
Apparently most gamers would disagree, but creepy settings really aren't that fun for me, at least. It gets a bit old.Everything is dark. Everything is foreboding. Everyone is a raving psychopath, save one. The game feels lonely. It is lonely. The game feels desolate and creepy and foreboding - and that's the entire feeling I get from the game all the time. No triumph. No feelings of accomplishment. No feelings like I helped someone, even when I really did help someone. No real attachment to any of the characters. No real choices in the game, ever. The reviews said the game felt alive, and I totally disagree. The game felt totally dead. It was like I was playing a bad monster horror movie, but with less sex.
This, I just don't get. Feeling completely alone is the point. You want to find a sane human, someone else to connect to, but that never happens. The closest you have is Atlas, whom you never 'meet' face to face. Did you really forge no attachment to him? At the outset, he was your only 'friend' in Rapture, and I sincerely thought I would meet him on-screen and was excited that I might, that there might be a friendly face to accompany throughout Rapture, if only for a short amount of time (I did not think that Jack and Atlas would be together for any length of time, I thought he would die). When I realized that I would not at that time, and that if I ever did, he would be in possession of a different, unappealing character, I felt disappointment. Not in the game design, but disappointment in the way Jack would have felt it. You really were alone ... and that was the point!
But perhaps it really is because you aren't a fan of oppressive environments. I thought that solitude was perfectly placed, and every hope you had of meeting a fellow comrade was dashed to purposeful disappointment.
Or you know sitting still long enough to listen to them.
There are quite a few times where you're walking down empty corrdiors as well, I usually re-listened to a couple then.
Yesh, Melkster, you know you could go into the menu and replay them, right?
It sounds from your comments you came in expecting an FPS and treated it as such. When you do that, you will miss all the little details. Similar to Fallout, you have to look for the story which I like.
I assume you're talking about FO3, in which case, I clearly completely missed what you were talking about. Since there was more story in Tactics than FO3.
Spoit on
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
Or you know sitting still long enough to listen to them.
There are quite a few times where you're walking down empty corrdiors as well, I usually re-listened to a couple then.
Yesh, Melkster, you know you could go into the menu and replay them, right?
It sounds from your comments you came in expecting an FPS and treated it as such. When you do that, you will miss all the little details. Similar to Fallout, you have to look for the story which I like.
I assume you're talking about FO3, in which case, I clearly completely missed what you were talking about. Since there was more story in Tactics than FO3.
Yeah, FO3. I guess not so much story, but 'moments.' Details added to the environment that can be missed without effecting the game. The flotsam & jetsam like the emergency radio beacons, or the Dunwich Building.
I forget, did the suits force the developers to create a moral choice system period or just two different endings (resulting in the hyper-lame ones we got)?
Not to side-step the story discussion, but yes, Rust, I seem to remember hearing something similar. I'll try to dig up a link, but I believe that originally... err, better spoiler I guess...
Anyway originally there was supposed to be NO moral choice at all, the plot merely happened. After all, that's the whole point behind "Would you kindly...?" At some point the suits decided it would be better to have some kind of happier ending and choices possible.
And you'll be doing alot of combat. You kill guys over and over and over and over and over and over again. It never ends. The solution to almost every situation is to kill the other guy. Every single time.
This part made me chuckle.
"I have to shoot things in this first-person shooter!"
Meh, would have been nice to shake things up with a puzzle or friendly "town" or something. Like Half Life 2's physics puzzles, which I quite enjoyed, along with it's friendly towns where I could sit down and have a chat with someone for a bit, or play catch with a robot. There were no moments like that in the game, save the Pipe Dream puzzles and the place after the twist.
I like first person shooters and I like combat. I like killing things. But it would be nice to break it up a little, with stealth or puzzles or something other than just slaying over and over again. Even games like Call of Duty have stealth levels and such.
you are aware that this is also a game that attempts to be scary (your mileage may vary, i understand, let's not get into that). having a place to play catch with alyx and dog in the middle of silent hill would be dumb
the last thing games need is arbitrary stealth levels to mix it up. bioshock's basic combat wasn't the best around, so if it was more engaging maybe you might not have been wanting for a mix-up.
Which is true. That's definitely true. For a shooter, the story really isn't that bad. But let's be honest. The story isn't great. The setting is unique and interesting and extremely well-executed, definitely. The characters are lively, to be certain, but let's be serious - the story is extremely shallow, objectively speaking. In fact, I could probably accurately sum up the entirety of the story in about 5 sentences (Major Spoilers):
After your trans-Atlantic flight crashes you find yourself on a strange platform, upon which you descend into a steampunk city of insane murderous ravagers, ruled by the sinister Andrew Ryan. A man named Atlas guides you through the city with the goal of rescuing his family and yourself, but after Ryan kills Atlas' family, Atlas urges you take revenge. Upon reaching Ryan, however, you discover that you have been mind controlled all along - indeed, throughout your entire life - upon which Atlas reveals himself as Frank Fontaine. You're pissed, so you go get revenge on him too. Thanks to your kind/unkind actions in pursuit of murderous revenge, you then proceed to liberate the surviving innocents of the city and die happy/you then take over the city and become it's ruler.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you got what "the twist" was getting at, right? slave obeys, etc?
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
Not gonna lie, I recognize only two names out of all of those, and I'm not sure about the other ones. I was paying attention. I played the game through, and did my best to play every journal entry that came my way, even oftentimes it was tough to really listen to one while shooting people.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
i think you need a little more unnecessary bold lettering
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I have many many problems with BioShock, but "the story is objectively bad" is not one of them. Hell, I'd argue that its story is infinitely deeper and better-told than pretty much any other FPS out there that isn't made by Valve. You can't say "if BioShock was a book, it would suck", because it's not a book. It's a video game. An interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by allowing the player to discover the various story snippets at his own pace.
And yes, there are lots of little threads of plot that at a first glance seem unrelated, but that's only if you view the Jack storyline as the "story" of the piece. BioShock is the story of Rapture and its fall, not just the story of that one dude whose plane crashed. And if you can't see how those two are related, then you need to pay a little more attention.
Simplifying the plot down to five sentences is complete and utter bullshit. You can do that with any story ever written, and it will come out sounding stupid. As a playwright I would argue that the nuts and bolts of the story itself are inconsequential, what matters is the execution (see: the millions of stories that fit the Campbellian hero's journey while still managing to feel distinctly different).
Lets be honest: Bioshock's story is nowhere near original. For starters, 90% of it is straight out of System Shock 2.
What makes it work is the strong thematic presence throughout: it's a piece about the dichotomy between man and slave and the paradox of choice. The plot twist, although incredibly stupid-sounding on paper, works brilliantly because it manages to cast a new light on all of the previous events of the game and, in fact, video game tropes in general. The entire time you've been operating under the pretense that you've been acting of your own accord (you're a "man"), but it turns out that you were being controlled the whole time (you're actually a "slave"). I agree that it would suck as a book, because its success hinges completely on the interactivity. Without you the player feeling like you have been making choices over the course of the game, the plot twist falls flat on its face. I would agree that at times there could have been stronger integration between the gameplay and the story, but that is a very different argument from most of what you're saying.
For the record, I do personally feel that the game falls apart completely after the plot twist. I think this guy is spot-on with his hypothetical replacement ending.
I never felt like I made any choices in the game at all
You said that "an interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling," and I totally agree, completely. However, the storytelling method in this game was clunky. If you're saying that the "Story Of Rapture Before Jack Got There" was the real story of Bioshock, then I'd say there are 3 primary ways that story was relayed:
#1: The story was primarily relayed in those Journals. An interactive game primary conveyed The Story Of Rapture through Audio Sound Bites. Audio Sound bites are not interactive. They're clunky, mis-matched, and encountered out of order (and not cleverly out of order like a Quentin Tarantino movie) and distract from the actual playing of the game. A forummer even suggested that the player ought to just stop playing the game for a moment to listen to those journal sound bites. You can't really interact with an audio recording. You don't really "experience" it, and you certainly don't play through it.
they are not out of order. they were put that way by the developer. it's a linear videogame man, you experience them more or less one at a time with each character.
actually, now that i think about it, i can't think of any of the tapes being out of order!
it's not the most interactive way of presenting the story, but it beats the hell out of putting a paragraph of scrolling text at the bottom. and i think to be honest if it was done a different way you would lose a lot of detail.
Edit: I guess I generally view the backstory as just that: Backstory. It's the same in books as in movies as in RPGs as in First Person Shooters. The backstory informs the setting, which informs the story that you're trying tell, but I normally wouldn't say that the "Story" of a certain piece of media was primarily it's backstory. If you're trying to make the argument that the backstory of Bioshock is robust, then sure, I'd agree with you. But I stand by my assessment that the actual story that you play in the interactive game is very superficial and simple, and the backstory is told in a very clunky, non-interactive manner.
that's perhaps harsher than i would have said, but i understand what your criticisms are. did you not find the atmosphere of the game engaging, then? it might just have been Not For You.
After looking up the Steinman guy, I, of course, remember him. I just didn't remember his name. Can't say I remember the Diane Mcclintock person. Those "journals" really aren't all effective at telling a story, I must say, considering all the mayhem everywhere. (It's hard to hear it over the buzzers and bullets and explosions.)
The audio journals serve their purpose very effectively, which is to help illustrate the story of Rapture via personal stories that provide multiple perspectives on the events you find yourself a part of. Diane Maclintock's story (which basically is the story of Rapture), Steinman's descent into madness, and Sander Cohen's poetry are all well crafted that combine with Jack's story to make for a great narrative.
Saying that the journals are hard to hear just means you aren't trying to listen to them. There is plenty of time between combats where you are either exploring or looking for something which you use to listen to audio logs. If you get interrupted you just hit the button again after the combat ends.
The story is great, and not just 'for a video game', you just weren't paying attention to it.
Edit: To address your idea that backstory isn't part of the narrative, this would be true if you experienced it statically, but the method of delivery functions as a parallel advancement of time. Each log you find progresses a timeline, from the brewing rebellion and Ryan's vision, to the eventual collapse of society and the death of some characters you've been following from the start. This is not back story, this is a parallel narrative that is just as much the story of the game as what Jack does personally.
Exarch on
No gods or kings, only man.
LoL: BunyipAristocrat
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GreenStick around.I'm full of bad ideas.Registered Userregular
After looking up the Steinman guy, I, of course, remember him. I just didn't remember his name. Can't say I remember the Diane Mcclintock person. Those "journals" really aren't all effective at telling a story, I must say, considering all the mayhem everywhere. (It's hard to hear it over the buzzers and bullets and explosions.)
The audio journals serve their purpose very effectively, which is to help illustrate the story of Rapture via personal stories that provide multiple perspectives on the events you find yourself a part of. Diane Maclintock's story (which basically is the story of Rapture), Steinman's descent into madness, and Sander Cohen's poetry are all well crafted that combine with Jack's story to make for a great narrative.
Saying that the journals are hard to hear just means you aren't trying to listen to them. There is plenty of time between combats where you are either exploring or looking for something which you use to listen to audio logs. If you get interrupted you just hit the button again after the combat ends.
The story is great, and not just 'for a video game', you just weren't paying attention to it.
Edit: To address your idea that backstory isn't part of the narrative, this would be true if you experienced it statically, but the method of delivery functions as a parallel advancement of time. Each log you find progresses a timeline, from the brewing rebellion and Ryan's vision, to the eventual collapse of society and the death of some characters you've been following from the start. This is not back story, this is a parallel narrative that is just as much the story of the game as what Jack does personally.
Well, we can agree on me not paying attention to it that much... But can you blame me? I'm out to play the game. I even oftentimes played the journals twice, but I didn't sit back and stop what I was doing to listen to it. It's certainly tough to explore while listening to a journal, seeing as how enemies constantly respawn and things like alarms and such are around every unexplored corner. I also had trouble really listening to the story while doing a pipe dream hack. So pretty much, in order to listen to one and really pay attention to it, you'd have to stop what you're doing and just listen.
The journals really aren't an effective story-telling device, at least from my perspective.
that's perhaps harsher than i would have said, but i understand what your criticisms are. did you not find the atmosphere of the game engaging, then? it might just have been Not For You.
No, I did not find the atmosphere engaging or entertaining. The setting really isn't for me. Desolation and loneliness are things I tend to avoid in life, and I don't find them entertaining in a video game. And I don't really think I feel the need to be apologetic on that point. I suppose I'll just acknowledge the fact that for whatever reason, other people get off on that. I don't understand it.
yeah, no, it's not the game for you. it sounds like a lot of survival horror-ey games would be similar for you as well.
Nuzak on
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GreenStick around.I'm full of bad ideas.Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Spent the day powering through Fort Frolic, because fuuuuck playing that section at night
It wasn't as nerve-wracking as the first time I played it though, I guess because I knew what to expect and I'm not rushing through it as a rental this time (also because the chemical thrower is awesome)
Spent the day powering through Fort Frolic, because fuuuuck playing that section at night
It wasn't as nerve-wracking as the first time I played it though, I guess because I knew what to expect and I'm not rushing through it as a rental this time (also because the chemical thrower is awesome)
Posts
I think if I do pick up Bioshock 2, it will be for the consoles. The PC version of the first one had some annoying DRM.
Fixed.
Oh, it was just to help guide the readers who didn't really feel like reading the whole thing. They could get the jist quicker.
that's not really what people mean when they say "bioshock's story is really good".
yeah if you want to say bioshock's story was about jack going underwater then coming back up again after a bit then yeah that's a shitty story
you didn't find the story of diane mcclintock, dr. steinman, sander cohen, or andrew ryan at all very engaging?
It's awfully hard on the eyes. You get an F. Have a good day sir!
Gunplay is pretty bad actually and combat is sometimes even dull and starts feeling repetitive towards the end. The story was at best interesting at times and tedious and predictable otherwise.
To me, the atmosphere of Bioshock (and small snippets of greatness, like with the golfclub) made the entire game what it is. And it is a good game because of it.
Though the ending is awful in just about every way.
Yay, My 360 controller beat out a keyboard for once!
Super fast and easy to switch weapons, plasmids and ammo with the controller.
If the controls were uncomfortable for you, couldn't you just re-map them to your liking since you were playing on PC?
Then a Big Daddy comes and rapes you.
And yeah, the Andrew Ryan character was interesting. Sure. But.. When you look at the story objectively, it's basically the one main plot with these totally superfluous sub-"plots," frequently with some insane psychopath with some kind of weird psychopathic fetish going on. If it were a book, and 80% of the book was made up of random superfluous sub-plots that had no impact on the protagonist or his friends (what friends?) that served merely as distractions for the central plot - I think we'd call that a rather weak, meandering story. And that's my primary point.
Ah well, sorry about that. It looks fine to me, but it's hard to be objective.
I don't know how you can not know at least 3 of those names, unless you just did not pay attention at all.
After looking up the Steinman guy, I, of course, remember him. I just didn't remember his name. Can't say I remember the Diane Mcclintock person. Those "journals" really aren't all effective at telling a story, I must say, considering all the mayhem everywhere. (It's hard to hear it over the buzzers and bullets and explosions.)
Also the way you pieced together what happened via the audio tapes was great.
EDIT:
Her first audio tape is at the New Years Eve party - where rebels attack. Then in various other places (Dr Steinmann's surgery being one of them) and finally in a Fontainne Home for the poor, where she accidentaly walks in on 'Atlas' out of character).
EDIT EDIT: Changing your audio levels would solve that porblem melk
There are quite a few times where you're walking down empty corrdiors as well, I usually re-listened to a couple then.
Yesh, Melkster, you know you could go into the menu and replay them, right?
It sounds from your comments you came in expecting an FPS and treated it as such. When you do that, you will miss all the little details. Similar to Fallout, you have to look for the story which I like.
bioshock is not a book. it works only as a game. hence the ability to listen to these little character snippets while playing: in a book i guess that would be like... reading a page overlapped with another page?
hell, the twist itself is about games.
once again- when people say "bioshock's story was so good" they don't mean "remember in bioshock when that path was blocked off and i had to go the long way round? the story they gave for that blockage was so good!"
The twist was cool, I will concede that.
So, you've defined what people don't mean when they say "Bioshock's story was so good." So what do they mean, then, exactly?
I was expecting a solid, compelling story and fun shooter. I was looking for both, equally. I found the shooter component to be frustrating and clunky, and the story rather superficial and awkwardly told (with the tapes and whatnot), and constantly interrupted by "Go Fetch This" quests, which made up 80% of the game.
And, uh, no I didn't realize that I could go into the menu and replay them. I'll remember that if I ever decide to give the game another try.
I have many many problems with BioShock, but "the story is objectively bad" is not one of them. Hell, I'd argue that its story is infinitely deeper and better-told than pretty much every other FPS out there that isn't made by Valve both from the standpoint of literary analysis and in terms of its use of the medium. You can't say "if BioShock was a book, it would suck", because it's not a book. It's a video game. An interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by allowing the player to discover the various story snippets at his own pace.
And yes, there are lots of little threads of plot that at a first glance seem unrelated, but that's only if you view the Jack storyline as the "story" of the piece. BioShock is the story of Rapture and its fall, not just the story of that one dude whose plane crashed. And if you can't see how those two are related, then you need to pay a little more attention.
Simplifying the plot down to five sentences is complete and utter bullshit. You can do that with any story ever written, and it will come out sounding stupid. As a playwright I would argue that the nuts and bolts of the story itself are inconsequential, what matters is the execution (see: the millions of stories that fit the Campbellian hero's journey while still managing to feel distinctly different).
What makes it work is the strong thematic presence throughout: it's a piece about the dichotomy between man and slave and the paradox of choice. The plot twist, although incredibly stupid-sounding on paper, works brilliantly because it manages to cast a new light on all of the previous events of the game and, in fact, video game tropes in general. The entire time you've been operating under the pretense that you've been acting of your own accord (you're a "man"), but it turns out that you were being controlled the whole time (you're actually a "slave"). I agree that it would suck as a book, because its success hinges completely on the interactivity. Without you the player feeling like you have been making choices over the course of the game, the plot twist falls flat on its face. I would agree that at times there could have been stronger integration between the gameplay and the story, but that is a very different argument from most of what you're saying.
For the record, I do personally feel that the game falls apart completely after the plot twist. I think this guy is spot-on with his hypothetical replacement ending.
You said that "an interactive medium requires a more interactive method of storytelling," and I totally agree, completely. However, the storytelling method in this game was clunky. If you're saying that the "Story Of Rapture Before Jack Got There" was the real story of Bioshock, then I'd say there are 3 primary ways that story was relayed:
#1: The story was primarily relayed in those Journals. An interactive game primary conveyed The Story Of Rapture through Audio Sound Bites. Audio Sound bites are not interactive. They're clunky, mis-matched, and encountered out of order (and not cleverly out of order like a Quentin Tarantino movie) and distract from the actual playing of the game. A forummer even suggested that the player ought to just stop playing the game for a moment to listen to those journal sound bites. You can't really interact with an audio recording. You don't really "experience" it, and you certainly don't play through it.
#2: The setting. The corridors and rooms where all these horrible things happened do tell you a bit about what happened there, sure, and I can't really offer much criticism of that. Is it interactive? Sure. You get to walk around these rooms, look at all the stuff, and try and piece together what's going on. I'll give you that one.
#3: Ghosts? They were pretty rare, and usually quite confusing, at least for me.
I mean, Journals are not interactive, and that is the primary way the story is conveyed.
Edit: I guess I generally view the backstory as just that: Backstory. It's the same in books as in movies as in RPGs as in First Person Shooters. The backstory informs the setting, which informs the story that you're trying tell, but I normally wouldn't say that the "Story" of a certain piece of media was primarily it's backstory. If you're trying to make the argument that the backstory of Bioshock is robust, then sure, I'd agree with you. But I stand by my assessment that the actual story that you play in the interactive game is very superficial and simple, and the backstory is told in a very clunky, non-interactive manner.
This part made me chuckle.
"I have to shoot things in this first-person shooter!"
"Go to place. Kill."
Meh, would have been nice to shake things up with a puzzle or friendly "town" or something. Like Half Life 2's physics puzzles, which I quite enjoyed, along with it's friendly towns where I could sit down and have a chat with someone for a bit, or play catch with a robot. There were no moments like that in the game, save the Pipe Dream puzzles and the place after the twist.
I like first person shooters and I like combat. I like killing things. But it would be nice to break it up a little, with stealth or puzzles or something other than just slaying over and over again. Even games like Call of Duty have stealth levels and such.
I personally found the story of Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight and Half Life 2 to be quite compelling - far more compelling than this game.
I'd say Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's story was somewhere on the same level as Bioshock.
That's because you're trying to say that the story is about Jack, when really the story is about Rapture. It's like, for a random example off the top of my head, The Great Gatsby isn't about Nick, even though the story's told form his perspective.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
This, I just don't get. Feeling completely alone is the point. You want to find a sane human, someone else to connect to, but that never happens. The closest you have is Atlas, whom you never 'meet' face to face. Did you really forge no attachment to him? At the outset, he was your only 'friend' in Rapture, and I sincerely thought I would meet him on-screen and was excited that I might, that there might be a friendly face to accompany throughout Rapture, if only for a short amount of time (I did not think that Jack and Atlas would be together for any length of time, I thought he would die). When I realized that I would not at that time, and that if I ever did, he would be in possession of a different, unappealing character, I felt disappointment. Not in the game design, but disappointment in the way Jack would have felt it. You really were alone ... and that was the point!
But perhaps it really is because you aren't a fan of oppressive environments. I thought that solitude was perfectly placed, and every hope you had of meeting a fellow comrade was dashed to purposeful disappointment.
I assume you're talking about FO3, in which case, I clearly completely missed what you were talking about. Since there was more story in Tactics than FO3.
Yeah, FO3. I guess not so much story, but 'moments.' Details added to the environment that can be missed without effecting the game. The flotsam & jetsam like the emergency radio beacons, or the Dunwich Building.
Not to side-step the story discussion, but yes, Rust, I seem to remember hearing something similar. I'll try to dig up a link, but I believe that originally... err, better spoiler I guess...
you are aware that this is also a game that attempts to be scary (your mileage may vary, i understand, let's not get into that). having a place to play catch with alyx and dog in the middle of silent hill would be dumb
the last thing games need is arbitrary stealth levels to mix it up. bioshock's basic combat wasn't the best around, so if it was more engaging maybe you might not have been wanting for a mix-up.
this is the point
they are not out of order. they were put that way by the developer. it's a linear videogame man, you experience them more or less one at a time with each character.
actually, now that i think about it, i can't think of any of the tapes being out of order!
it's not the most interactive way of presenting the story, but it beats the hell out of putting a paragraph of scrolling text at the bottom. and i think to be honest if it was done a different way you would lose a lot of detail.
that's perhaps harsher than i would have said, but i understand what your criticisms are. did you not find the atmosphere of the game engaging, then? it might just have been Not For You.
The audio journals serve their purpose very effectively, which is to help illustrate the story of Rapture via personal stories that provide multiple perspectives on the events you find yourself a part of. Diane Maclintock's story (which basically is the story of Rapture), Steinman's descent into madness, and Sander Cohen's poetry are all well crafted that combine with Jack's story to make for a great narrative.
Saying that the journals are hard to hear just means you aren't trying to listen to them. There is plenty of time between combats where you are either exploring or looking for something which you use to listen to audio logs. If you get interrupted you just hit the button again after the combat ends.
The story is great, and not just 'for a video game', you just weren't paying attention to it.
Edit: To address your idea that backstory isn't part of the narrative, this would be true if you experienced it statically, but the method of delivery functions as a parallel advancement of time. Each log you find progresses a timeline, from the brewing rebellion and Ryan's vision, to the eventual collapse of society and the death of some characters you've been following from the start. This is not back story, this is a parallel narrative that is just as much the story of the game as what Jack does personally.
LoL: BunyipAristocrat
Don't you find more recordings by Suchong after finding the one where he's killed?
Well, we can agree on me not paying attention to it that much... But can you blame me? I'm out to play the game. I even oftentimes played the journals twice, but I didn't sit back and stop what I was doing to listen to it. It's certainly tough to explore while listening to a journal, seeing as how enemies constantly respawn and things like alarms and such are around every unexplored corner. I also had trouble really listening to the story while doing a pipe dream hack. So pretty much, in order to listen to one and really pay attention to it, you'd have to stop what you're doing and just listen.
The journals really aren't an effective story-telling device, at least from my perspective.
No, I did not find the atmosphere engaging or entertaining. The setting really isn't for me. Desolation and loneliness are things I tend to avoid in life, and I don't find them entertaining in a video game. And I don't really think I feel the need to be apologetic on that point. I suppose I'll just acknowledge the fact that for whatever reason, other people get off on that. I don't understand it.
It wasn't as nerve-wracking as the first time I played it though, I guess because I knew what to expect and I'm not rushing through it as a rental this time (also because the chemical thrower is awesome)
especially that flooded out basement