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Bioshock

 
  

Page: 123(4)

 
 
akira
21:55 / 11.09.07
I took him down first go on normal difficulty, I think you just didn't want to complete it because you were enjoying playing it so much.
 
 
nedrichards is confused
11:23 / 20.09.07
Only one thing made me sad about the ending.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS





I started the game saving the first little sister. Then my greed got the better of me, oh so much better and I killed them all, all of them right up until AN IMPORTANT STORY MOMENT that was as Wow a Wow moment as I've felt in a while. After this I craved redemption and saved them all, even now I remember their faces under my hands... Their faces...

In the end it wasn't enough, there was no redemption for me, a world destroying, splicer commanding bastard am I. And thinking about it, it's right, society does seem to have a view on people who kill little girls for their own advantage. It's not a nice view.

END SPOILER





But still, sadder than that, the fact that you can't really get through the game without killing the Big Daddies.
 
 
EvskiG
21:19 / 20.09.07
I've seen people in similar situations on message boards, whining "I saved ALMOST all of the Little Sisters, why did I get the evil ending?"

Maybe because you MURDERED LITTLE GIRLS.
 
 
nedrichards is confused
09:23 / 21.09.07
Exactly, I'm a repentant murderer, but a murderer nonetheless. It would have been nice to have a slightly different ending than cackling Dr Evil but it should still have been a 'bad' ending.
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
15:13 / 25.09.07
So, now that this has been out awhile - anyone got any further thoughts on it? What grabbed you about it? What didn't work? Will you play it again?
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
15:20 / 25.09.07
I'm thinking this has major promise when you, is the term meta-game? I dunno. When you set yourself tasks that arn't forced by the game but by yourself - I'm trying to complete it using only the wrench and any hacked devices - no deaths caused by you, except for with the wrench. Just using security bots so far, but now I've got that dummy plasmid, setting it up so that splicers run into turrets fields of fire is fun. I'd like to try it next by just using plasmids, but I haven't worked out many strategies bar water+electrobolt. It's hard, but fun because it's hard.
 
 
Happy Dave Has Left
15:41 / 25.09.07
I think you'll find that's known as Emergent gameplay. Which, I do believe, is going to be the basis of my next thread.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
16:09 / 25.09.07
Do it, Hap- I was thinking of starting one on speed-gaming (similar sort of thing- like the video of the guy doing Half-Life in 45 minutes) but didn't really have much experience or knowledge about it.
 
 
nedrichards is confused
05:45 / 05.10.07
More on the ending from Ken Levine:

"honestly, it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me. It was a reasonable request because I think people want to just have a sense of the different consequences from doing that path.

But you notice, whenever I do my interviews about the game, I never want to talk about the good and the evil choice. When we were developing the game, originally the icons about harvest and save had a neat little angel and a little devil, and I cut that out because I didn't want that to be clear to the player when he did it in the sequence where Atlas and Tenenbaum are telling the player very different but equally compelling things. And it wasn't clear what the morally right thing to do was.

I wanted to leave it more ambiguous. But I'm not sure if that would have been the right thing. At the end of the day, there are [aspects of games] that you collaborate on and agree upon.

One of the reasons I was opposed to multiple endings is I never want to do things that have multiple digital outcomes, versus analog outcomes. I want to do it like the weapons system in the combat in BioShock. There are a million different things you can do in every combat; you can play it a million different ways. Looking into the future for the franchise, that's something I want to [figure out], that by the time you get to the ending of that choice path, you have a sense of your impact on the world through lots of little permutations rather than like a giant ending piece, if you follow my meaning.

And I think we did a reasonably good job with [the endings], but there are just two of them. And this is not a game about A and B. This is a game about one through 1 million, and all those permutations of choice. And as I think about the future of the franchise, that's where I want to take that."

Which is sort of fascinating really and reminds you again that art does not exist in a vacuum, especially when it has to sell a couple of million copies at £45 a throw.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:36 / 05.10.07
Much as I hate to think of great stories and games as a "franchise", that phrase about its future set my heart racing a little...

That said, I'm not sure who exactly would have had problems telling which was the "good" or "evil" choice out of killing a kid or not killing them, despite what you're being told...
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
15:17 / 05.10.07
From Atlas' point of view during the first sequence they AREN'T little children though, more like kid shaped vampires.

I think the choice would have been an actual choice if saving them didn't net you nice little care packages. I feel like I am saving them for the reward, not because it is right.

Anyway, is it any better to remove a child's invulnerability in a place like Rapture then it is to kill them, like you do the other residents by the thousands?
 
 
Mug Chum
20:38 / 05.10.07
And it wasn't clear what the morally right thing to do was.

(says man carrying 9 weapons after killing 8760 people):
- "I got to *iirk* g-g-grab and k-k-kill little girls to make myself Adam--*garkgh* MAKE MYSELF ADAM!! They're zombie frankensteins that have e-e-eeevil inside them! I'll get my power and *urgh* light from inside them, like I do when I smoke my cigarettes, *gaaah*. Their daddies are stronger than *grrawwrk* and smarter than Einstein, I'm ‘as good as their daddies, mister’!!! *Gawwk* Big Daddy *iiiiwwrk*!!!"

What is the moral ambiguity in here, exactly? "I didn't wanted to make it clear and obvious so, you know, I didn't put the little devil icon in 'choice B' when you do the vampire-pedo-killer thing so there are more nuanced, dark and adult discussions of morality; like the bits where the people that try to go beyond simple stagnated morals of a conservative time go apeshit nazi Dr Frankenstein sociopathic monsters"? This game managed to unintentionally make itself far more creepier than intended (and -- really -- really dumb from Ryan’s first slideshow) -- I'm still so baffled by their choice of animation when you make the "good guy" choice that I’m anxious to load an old game just to see the evil one.

There are a million different things you can do in every combat; you can play it a million different ways. Looking into the future for the franchise, that's something I want to [figure out], that by the time you get to the ending of that choice path, you have a sense of your impact on the world through lots of little permutations rather than like a giant ending piece, if you follow my meaning.

Although this statement really makes me think his future games are truly worth keeping an eye on. He makes a good point on the "two endings" 'failure'.

I gave this game a try in its entirety for PC. Didn't ended so far, but

SPOILERS

Isn't the revelation about your true nature the most cliche storyline in games ever already at the time of Hitman 1? Was anyone surprised? And Atlas' reveal as well... Not only that it's a cliche, or just flat out predictable from the get go, but was I ever intended to actually trust the talking card in the manner he was put to us in the beginning, or form any relation to him whatsoever?

All of my complains earlier in the thread still remain, but stronger. Seriously, exposition 101, c'mon...

But it's a generally good FPS game. The action bits -- guns and powers -- are really fun. The game gets quite moody and startling in parts (and gets even better if you manage to make the soundtrack from jukeboxes to play throughout the whole game -- I'm a sucker for Darin’s "Beyond the Sea"). The camera was a great addition. Also unbelievably great were the fake dead bodies(!), the lighting, the statues (I think I had a minor heart stroke in a bathroom with those statues with blinking lights – and they weren’t even the fake statues). The hesitation in coming closer to a dead body (and not remembering if it was one you yourself killed) and not wanting to waste bullets was really something outstanding. And the design is just fantastic (adding the graphic and texture qualities to it, it became just amazing -- looking at a painting you could see the brush strokes perfectly).

One thing that surprised me, for good or worse, was that we don't become a Big Daddy ourselves by the end (I thought it'd be either an ironic poetic justice-punishment or/and an ironic continuation of my protective role). But I did liked that my actions didn't influenced only at the very end (usually in games just the very last cut scene) and I’m curious to see what happens after Ryan’s scene if I'd gone the evil road.

(and I thought the water thing was quite overrated. And why there isn't a single moment where we're submersed? It felt, well, console-ish simple. Too simplified even in areas that are already simple to begin with)
 
 
Poke it with a stick
19:57 / 10.04.09
First gameplay video for Bioshock 2 and it's looking very nice.
 
 
wicker woman
16:23 / 31.08.09
Just started playing the original last week. Fun game, definitely, and as far as scathing criticisms of an ill thought out psuedo-religion go, the story definitely isn't bad. I won't lie and say I necessarily would've seen the twist with Atlas coming, but as I had it spoiled for me beforehand, I'll never know.

One of my major complaints would be the hacking system. You can start a hack and have it be so piss-easy that you have to wonder what the point was, or so damn near impossible that if you didn't get around to switching out the very first piece before the flow started, you're screwed. Or, for that matter, just impossible, as when the game kindly blocks off the exit pipe entirely with alarm and short circuit tiles.

Another would be the morality system. While I fully realize that programming a completely fleshed-out, occasionally morally ambiguous set of choices would be impossible given current technology restraints... as Yahtzee put it in his Zero Punctuation review, it would have been nice to have a choice somewhere between Mother Theresa and baby eating.

Also, while a number of plasmids really are fun, I've found that I end up relying on only two or three of them. Most fights with splicers end up breaking down into shock-shoot, or flame-shoot for the ones that are immune to shock, and the Big Daddy battles end up being either shock-or-freeze then blow the ever-loving shit out of with grenades. The only time I've found myself really making effective use out of any other powers is when the game makes it obvious that a big battle is coming my way, and I'll set up a load of cyclone traps beforehand.

I've heard a lot of people complaining about the vita-chambers, but in the age of quick saves and quick loads, isn't that a bit irrelevant? Granted, you have the choice whether or not to use the save feature, and vita-chambers remove that choice, but it seems like the sort of masochism that leads a person to want to replay an entire level thanks to a solitary screw up at the end would've been bred out of people by now.

So yeah. Fun game, not earth shattering, neat story. I think I'm anticipating Batman: Arkham Asylum more.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:57 / 04.09.09
The vita chambers aren't like a quicksave, though - they return you to life with the world as it was when you died, which means that any enemies that you were fighting are still injured. Which in turn means that you can keep on running up to them, hitting them once, getting killed, and eventually, after any number of your own deaths, they'll drop.

It destroys any sense of either challenge or internal consistency. It also destroys the fiction - if the vita chambers can do this, then why didn't Rapture's now-dead inhabitants apparently ever use them?

It's a decent game world, but as with many, it's a decent world with too little thought put into the other details: the gameplay, the people living within it. The few people left in Rapture say exactly the same things as each other, in exactly the same voices, to an extent that's even worse than Oblivion's notorious dialogue. The designers could get away with this in System Shock, because the bad guys were basically zombies that shared a hive mind, but it pulls the entire reality of the world apart in Bioshock.
 
 
Janean Patience
18:56 / 04.09.09
The vita chambers aren't like a quicksave, though - they return you to life with the world as it was when you died, which means that any enemies that you were fighting are still injured.

I kind of admired the refreshing candour of the vita-chambers; the game knows that you'll come back from the dead when you're killed, so rather than keep up the pretence that you won't it just goes ahead and builds that into the world. Yeah, it means you can wear Big Daddies down bit by bit if you want to, but how's that any more of a cheat than continually repeating the same sequence and eliminating your mistakes? Beside which, I imagine a lot of players won't have done that. I did a couple of times early in the game, when to return to a save would have been irritating rather than challenging, but 98 per cent of the time I went back to my save game because that's what I'm used to and that's how I like to play.

There is a gameplay reason why the splicers can't use the chambers, BTW. They're keyed to Ryan's DNA, like the bathyspheres, which is why you can use them. Not a great reason, but they bother to explain it.

I enjoyed this enough to play it twice, an honour previously only granted to Dead Rising on the 360. I was immersed in Rapture, rapt by the atmosphere and internal consistencies of the world I was exploring. It was too easy by the second half - the first time through I hadn't fired a heat-seeking missile in anger until the climax boss because I was saving them for real threats - but the world was interesting and flowed logically, the plot worked and the combat was fantastic. Using all the different tricks at your disposal to dispatch mobs of splicers was tons of fun. The second time through I leant heavily on Enrage and watched my enemies beat each other to death with pipes for fun. Both times I used a whole load of trap bolts, both times I liked to set splicers aflame and watch them light each other up, both times I laid elaborate traps for Big Daddies that frequently failed. I had a blast.

The moral aspect wasn't up to much. The first time through I saved all the girls. The second time through I didn't save a one. It wasn't noticeably different as a game either way; I wasn't any less ludicrously overpowered by the close.
 
 
wicker woman
04:24 / 08.09.09
The ending was a bit of a disappointment as well, considering all the effort gone through to save all the Sisters. Also, I'm not sure whether this makes me a bad person or not, but despite having made the effort to save them all up to the end, I desperately wanted to beat to death the one during the escort mission. Oh gods did I ever.

It could just be that, with the exception of ICO, I hate escort missions with a passion.

The second time through I leant heavily on Enrage and watched my enemies beat each other to death with pipes for fun.

See, I was messing about with Enrage too, until I accidentally hit a Big Daddy with it. That was unpleasant.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
15:01 / 08.05.10
Just finished the original.

And I can't believe how many of you guys killed the Little Sister, just for personal gain. And that's all it was, wasn't it. You knew it was wrong - god (who I suspect is absent in many of your lives) only knows it was telegraphed enough.

And just because I played it on 'easy' doesn't mean I'm abandoning the moral high.

If Ian Huntley has acces to Bioshock, there in his quiet room, he'll do what you guys did
 
  

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