A story of a society gone mad - Ryan wanted to build a utopia of ultimate freedom, but without any proper restraints it fell prey to amoral capitalists, ideological cult leaders, deepening paranoia and inequality, and the worst of human impulses, given free reign.
I cannot say what is the perfect form of government; democracy certainly isn’t it, but neither is anything the great hypocrite Ayn Rand suggested, nor what Ryan accomplished. The original Bioshock stories are deeply critical of the ideas of objectivism by portraying the logical apocalyptic conclusion of human selfishness run rampant.
But it’s also weirdly centrist. Bioshock games offer no alternatives to their broken societies. Bioshock Infinite famously equated the horrors of slavery and the revolt of the slaves, the most disgusting Bioshock has been, but even in Bioshock 2 your main opponent is the only person in Rapture talking about cooperation between the disenfranchised, social welfare to take care of the less lucky, and countering the power of the elite who are shown very willing to abuse it while breaking their own rules of freedom. That she also turns out to be mad and selfish is just what videogame villains are wont to do, whether they want it or not.
It’s a weird experience though, playing a game like that - you walk through the decaying walls of a failed idea, fighting some socialist-cultists, and following the lead of an unknown girl calling you father and the words of an extreme capitalist who in his previous life exploited and abused without regret and who even still encourages you to kill children for a small boost in power; that his story arc is supposed to be the one to make you cry is asking a lot (and I have to give it to the actor that he almost convinced me, despite my utter despise of this character).
Yet that’s also what makes the (better) Bioshock games more interesting than your usual run and gun. They might not be as smart as they think they are, but they are trying to grapple with some serious ideas. That they don’t offer any answers (besides “it’s all fucked”), might not even be as big a problem as I make it out to be, as long as they offer some motivation for thought.
Oh, and just playing it, the shooting and plasming and so on, is really quite fun. Playing on the hardest difficulty does sometimes feel like you’re trying to undermine your own experience of a fun run’n’gun, but it’s never challenging enough to be annoying and the game offers you such a variety of fun and interesting tools to tackle its challenges that it takes a long time for the enthusiasm for the mechanics to run its course.
I was however done with the game earlier than it ended. The last few levels I was ignoring most of the world and exploring little, just going where I was supposed to in order to move the story towards the end. It’s not a long game, but I felt it exhausted its mechanics some considerable time before the ending. For the last part, I was even running around with only the drill, having little interest left in the shooting that I had already been doing for such a long time.
The world itself is deliciously evocative, and I especially appreciated the occasional horror vibe. Rapture is a cool place to explore, much cooler imo than whatever the place in Bioshock Infinite is called (and I don’t even like games with water).
If it had been a bit shorter, and if the ending hadn’t been quite as meh, I would have probably considered it my favourite Bioshock game. As it is now, that’s probably Minerva’s Den. But hey, this one’s pretty good too.
I cannot say what is the perfect form of government; democracy certainly isn’t it, but neither is anything the great hypocrite Ayn Rand suggested, nor what Ryan accomplished. The original Bioshock stories are deeply critical of the ideas of objectivism by portraying the logical apocalyptic conclusion of human selfishness run rampant.
But it’s also weirdly centrist. Bioshock games offer no alternatives to their broken societies. Bioshock Infinite famously equated the horrors of slavery and the revolt of the slaves, the most disgusting Bioshock has been, but even in Bioshock 2 your main opponent is the only person in Rapture talking about cooperation between the disenfranchised, social welfare to take care of the less lucky, and countering the power of the elite who are shown very willing to abuse it while breaking their own rules of freedom. That she also turns out to be mad and selfish is just what videogame villains are wont to do, whether they want it or not.
It’s a weird experience though, playing a game like that - you walk through the decaying walls of a failed idea, fighting some socialist-cultists, and following the lead of an unknown girl calling you father and the words of an extreme capitalist who in his previous life exploited and abused without regret and who even still encourages you to kill children for a small boost in power; that his story arc is supposed to be the one to make you cry is asking a lot (and I have to give it to the actor that he almost convinced me, despite my utter despise of this character).
Yet that’s also what makes the (better) Bioshock games more interesting than your usual run and gun. They might not be as smart as they think they are, but they are trying to grapple with some serious ideas. That they don’t offer any answers (besides “it’s all fucked”), might not even be as big a problem as I make it out to be, as long as they offer some motivation for thought.
Oh, and just playing it, the shooting and plasming and so on, is really quite fun. Playing on the hardest difficulty does sometimes feel like you’re trying to undermine your own experience of a fun run’n’gun, but it’s never challenging enough to be annoying and the game offers you such a variety of fun and interesting tools to tackle its challenges that it takes a long time for the enthusiasm for the mechanics to run its course.
I was however done with the game earlier than it ended. The last few levels I was ignoring most of the world and exploring little, just going where I was supposed to in order to move the story towards the end. It’s not a long game, but I felt it exhausted its mechanics some considerable time before the ending. For the last part, I was even running around with only the drill, having little interest left in the shooting that I had already been doing for such a long time.
The world itself is deliciously evocative, and I especially appreciated the occasional horror vibe. Rapture is a cool place to explore, much cooler imo than whatever the place in Bioshock Infinite is called (and I don’t even like games with water).
If it had been a bit shorter, and if the ending hadn’t been quite as meh, I would have probably considered it my favourite Bioshock game. As it is now, that’s probably Minerva’s Den. But hey, this one’s pretty good too.