kinda difficult to parse...oftentimes literally (busy artstyle and cacophonous sound design made things unpleasant more often then id appreciate) but also just a strange compromised vision that was perhaps lucky enough to land on some extremely striking decisions in the concept stage. even more lucky is how much i value Being In A Place in video games, perhaps more then anything else in the medium...if nothing else, rapture is an enduring Video Game Place, its garish advertisements are fun to navigate by, and just about every level is a well defined and satisfying Enough contained exploration box. the game plays all its cards on making sure u know How It Feels To Exist In Rapture, and the imprint is strong...definitely something i will be able to recall well into the future. randian aesthetics always make for great visual maximalism as huge egos splatter their wills all over the canvas of the world. the whale-like gurgles of the big daddies and their animal-like patterns of behavior are mesmerizing to be in the presence of. the environmental storytelling cracked open the brains of a bunch of teenagers in 2007 who didnt even know u could Do stuff like this in games. and water is so pretty!
everything else i am mixed or conflicted on. the actual play experience is fairly exhausting, yet weirdly frictionless...extreme player fragility even up to the end of the game intersects with effectively consequenceless death, and the resulting chemistry robs the game of some of its potential color. there are many tools by which to strategize, many resources to manage, but the economy is deceptively forgiving (often swinging wildly between loaded and starved and back again in the matter of a half hour) and effort towards strategy effectively only buys you some saved time from running back from a vita chamber and throwing yourself at the same enemy over and over in a battle of attrition. i can like this sort of messy systems design, and its not like theres no logic to it, but i kept wishing for either a more refined high octane action game or a slower more strategic survival horror thing...system shock 2 may still have the best rhythm for this particular vision. the gloppy soup here of not quite action, not quite survival horror, not quite immersive sim is a real bummer for me considering i usually go for this kinda weird spicy Not Totally Functional Stuff...often i think it just lacks texture
the narrative stuff is a lot more focused, but it also leaves me a little cold. i think if the game manages at least one salient critique of its randian society its that andrew ryan replicates all the bureaucracy and state sanctioned violence of the world he claims to reject , under the guise of privatization. it jabs right at the heart of what is so unworkable about hypercapitalism that posits itself as "anti status quo"...it is still creating and enabling and Requiring all of the same behaviors that lead to statism or "corporatism" or whatever the boogeyman is. this is also potentially resonant with the big cheeky flashy metacommentary on lack of player agency in games...the unquestioned illusion of freedom , but entirely within man-made confines. whether this parallel is exactly Meaningful i dont rly know, but its at least a resonance
this does all, of course, run up against the games actual desire to get lost in the illusion, to have freedom and player choice as earnest back-of-the-box features. its debatable whether it succeeds, but it is an intended directive...i suppose that also brings up the fact that u are playing thru a cartoonishly anarchic rapture, where the actual hypercapitalist moment of everything being authoritatively controlled by those who can afford to control it has relatively passed and now everyone is Running Loose and Killing Eachother and Taking The Crazy Drugs That Make U Crazy Wooooo Spooky!!! as someone Fond Of Anarchism i have my own objections to this, but i guess it drives home how in its basest elements, bioshock cant quite achieve full aesthetic unity, at least in my eyes. youre supposed to be helplessly strung along by higher powers without ur knowledge, but also play in a freeform way that is unique to you. ur supposed to be horrified at the sins of rapture, but also bask in the looting and shooting and consequence-free chaos its ruins allow. ur supposed to rescue all the little sisters to demonstrate ur selflessness, but it ends up better for you personally in the long run. ur supposed to think about faults in our current society, but also critique rapture exclusively in relation to our current society, as ryan's foolish hubris leads him to believe he could escape the world
i love a good contradiction, the resulting sparks of the clash can be rly vivid to me. but theres not rly a mystery here or any questions to ponder deeply. the gameplay is incoherent because its at the behest of what a AAA game in 2007 was expected to do to sell, and the politics are incoherent because for ken levine imagining a world unlike our own is a strictly fictional exercise, one to warn us about extremism in any direction (a thread in all of his shock games). rapture matters as nothing more then it matters as a Cool Place To Shoot Things In. the illusion of freedom, of choice, of critique, is more comforting and sellable to a mainstream audience then any truth of those things. i suppose all that matters is that the self-deception is a conscious choice by the individual. andrew ryan would approve.
everything else i am mixed or conflicted on. the actual play experience is fairly exhausting, yet weirdly frictionless...extreme player fragility even up to the end of the game intersects with effectively consequenceless death, and the resulting chemistry robs the game of some of its potential color. there are many tools by which to strategize, many resources to manage, but the economy is deceptively forgiving (often swinging wildly between loaded and starved and back again in the matter of a half hour) and effort towards strategy effectively only buys you some saved time from running back from a vita chamber and throwing yourself at the same enemy over and over in a battle of attrition. i can like this sort of messy systems design, and its not like theres no logic to it, but i kept wishing for either a more refined high octane action game or a slower more strategic survival horror thing...system shock 2 may still have the best rhythm for this particular vision. the gloppy soup here of not quite action, not quite survival horror, not quite immersive sim is a real bummer for me considering i usually go for this kinda weird spicy Not Totally Functional Stuff...often i think it just lacks texture
the narrative stuff is a lot more focused, but it also leaves me a little cold. i think if the game manages at least one salient critique of its randian society its that andrew ryan replicates all the bureaucracy and state sanctioned violence of the world he claims to reject , under the guise of privatization. it jabs right at the heart of what is so unworkable about hypercapitalism that posits itself as "anti status quo"...it is still creating and enabling and Requiring all of the same behaviors that lead to statism or "corporatism" or whatever the boogeyman is. this is also potentially resonant with the big cheeky flashy metacommentary on lack of player agency in games...the unquestioned illusion of freedom , but entirely within man-made confines. whether this parallel is exactly Meaningful i dont rly know, but its at least a resonance
this does all, of course, run up against the games actual desire to get lost in the illusion, to have freedom and player choice as earnest back-of-the-box features. its debatable whether it succeeds, but it is an intended directive...i suppose that also brings up the fact that u are playing thru a cartoonishly anarchic rapture, where the actual hypercapitalist moment of everything being authoritatively controlled by those who can afford to control it has relatively passed and now everyone is Running Loose and Killing Eachother and Taking The Crazy Drugs That Make U Crazy Wooooo Spooky!!! as someone Fond Of Anarchism i have my own objections to this, but i guess it drives home how in its basest elements, bioshock cant quite achieve full aesthetic unity, at least in my eyes. youre supposed to be helplessly strung along by higher powers without ur knowledge, but also play in a freeform way that is unique to you. ur supposed to be horrified at the sins of rapture, but also bask in the looting and shooting and consequence-free chaos its ruins allow. ur supposed to rescue all the little sisters to demonstrate ur selflessness, but it ends up better for you personally in the long run. ur supposed to think about faults in our current society, but also critique rapture exclusively in relation to our current society, as ryan's foolish hubris leads him to believe he could escape the world
i love a good contradiction, the resulting sparks of the clash can be rly vivid to me. but theres not rly a mystery here or any questions to ponder deeply. the gameplay is incoherent because its at the behest of what a AAA game in 2007 was expected to do to sell, and the politics are incoherent because for ken levine imagining a world unlike our own is a strictly fictional exercise, one to warn us about extremism in any direction (a thread in all of his shock games). rapture matters as nothing more then it matters as a Cool Place To Shoot Things In. the illusion of freedom, of choice, of critique, is more comforting and sellable to a mainstream audience then any truth of those things. i suppose all that matters is that the self-deception is a conscious choice by the individual. andrew ryan would approve.