Bioshock Revisited - Story Spoilers!
You know a game is old when you genuinely cannot remember the last time you played it. A safe bet would have been before Bioshock 2 came out which puts it close to 12 years ago but I’m not sure I actually replayed it before the sequel came out. I don’t know if it’s just the pace that life moves at in this day and age but I still consider Bioshock to be a somewhat recent release. Which makes very little sense because you could measure that time frame in console generations. That feeling is one I often find you experience when a game still feels like it holds its place even when playing it several years later. You think to yourself; “really, this game came out that long ago?” and in Bioshock’s case I certainly felt that both while playing it and once the credits rolled. It’s a game that certainly has a huge reputation and it did not disappoint upon revisiting. If anything I would say time has only benefited this game.
The star of Bioshock for me has always been the setting, Rapture is one of the most well realised worlds I can think of, you really get a sense that this was home to a lot of people. That’s something that isn’t always the case with a game that has a really awesome environment for you to explore. Rapture feels built, earned and I found myself constantly exploring every little part of it even though I have already done that several times on previous playthroughs. Everywhere you go there could be tiny little details in a message scrawled on a wall or in an audio log. The way the plasmids and vending machines are advertised throughout the city does very well in painting a picture of how life was before everything went to hell. It’s easy to imagine little things such as lighting a cigarette with your finger while on a date or using the cold blast to chill your beer. You can imagine quite easily how the enhancements would have started out and then how quickly they would have turned people into the crazed lunatics you encounter. I’m not sure what the practical application is for summoning a swarm of hostile bees or a miniature cyclone is but Bioshock is still a video game after all.
As I mentioned at the start, Bioshock is fairly old at this point so I am going to discuss the story very liberally. The opening reminded quite a bit of the opening of Dead Space funnily enough, swap the plane crash and spaceship crash and they feel very similar. The silent protagonist is something you rarely see in big games nowadays and I had forgotten about that aspect in Bioshock. There is a very brief intro by the character you play as and I mean brief as in two lines of dialogue but then you never hear him speak for the rest of the game. It’s one of those things that has certainly become looked down on but I still think there is a case to be made for it. Sometimes a game crafts such a well realised world and story it’s better to feel like you’re experiencing that yourself through playing the game. I don’t think Bioshock would be the same if you had a Dead Space 2 style Issac instead of the silent one from the first game. I feel like I am exploring Rapture and that does a lot in making the world feel as real as it does. Which is quite the feat considering it’s a city built at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in the 1940s.
It's not an uncommon thing to notice things on repeat playthroughs that passed you by on a first run and listening to the audio diaries in the game sheds a lot of light on previous events and the downfall of Rapture. The scene in which you kill Andrew Ryan shows one moment in particular that I had either forgotten about or didn’t notice on my initial playthrough back in 2007. The gift tag on the present Jack has on the plane reads “would you kindly not open until…” and then this is later revealed to be coordinates and the parcel contains a gun. I dare say it isn’t on screen long enough to actually clearly show it but maybe that is the point. Upon seeing this it made all the planning on Fontaine’s part click into place, I wish I could remember my thoughts on this back when I originally played it but that review is unfortunately lost. If you haven’t played Bioshock and have made it this far then the biggest reveal in the game has been spoiled for you but there are a lot more story beats that hit their mark and not just the “would you kindly” reveal. There is a lot to be found while listening to the audio diaries throughout the game and it really encourages you to explore.
One aspect of Bioshock that hasn’t aged too well is the good old morality choice system and in true to video game fashion it takes form in the most binary of ways. The little sisters you save after taking care of the Big Daddy will give you Adam, which is basically another form of currency that is only for your plasmid upgrades. You can rescue them for a little Adam and a huge payout later or harvest them which will give you more in the short term. It doesn’t take long to figure out that rescuing them gives you significantly better rewards so even if you want to take the evil path there isn’t any incentive to do so from a gameplay perspective. It would have been great if there was some big alteration during the game if you took the evil path, for instance if you harvest enough then future encounters with Big Daddy’s could be more difficult. What if little sisters started showing up with multiple Big Daddy’s protecting them? On the higher difficulties this would certainly make you think twice about engaging them depending on the situation. It’s a minor issue going back and it’s not something that isn’t common when these kinds of systems are in place.
Gameplay wise there isn’t much to go over either, as I said I didn’t enjoy Bioshock because it was a Doom Eternal level shooter experience. It might be surprising to some that the shooter formula wasn’t quite so locked down when Bioshock came out. That said though once you get a few weapons and plasmids you can have some real fun utilising plasmid cancels and quick shooting with weapons such as the shotgun or crossbow. I guess one critique I could say is that if you are rescuing little sisters and exploring a lot then you become pretty over powered when you’re around the halfway point. I don’t see it as a huge issue though as the atmosphere in Bioshock is what I’m there for and this is far less of an issue on the higher difficulty modes.
Speaking of atmosphere I cannot write a piece about Bioshock without talking about my favourite location and that is Fort Frolic. This place is Raptures equivalent to a mall and just walking around you can imagine how this place would have been before the city went to ruin. Bioshock is set in the 1960’s so there is definitely an old-school vibe in particular when in Fort Frolic. It’s just a world where it’s fun to explore and look at things and take it all in. Even at the time of its release Bioshock wasn’t a technical showpiece but it’s a fine example of really strong art direction that can keep a game feeling current. Sure newer games have way more polygons in them but I can’t think of an environment as fun to just look at as Fort Frolic is off the top of my head from a recent game.
Speaking of atmosphere let’s talk about the splicers for a minute. These are the main enemy you face throughout the game and they have been indulging in a little too much Adam and plasmids and it has sent them crazy. The little things they say and their general manic attitude still make them very fun to fight, I do miss the days when enemies in shooters actually moved around. The splicers take several forms, some can climb on walls, some can teleport, some have guns and some will just rush you with a pipe or a crowbar. It keeps the encounters varied and this is the first game since the Last of us 2 where you actually come across an even mix of both male and female enemies. Which when you think about it makes a lot of sense considering Rapture is still a city at its core.
The splicers reminded me a lot of the hunters in Manhunt, they’re just going about their regular business; which granted is not at all actually regular and when they see you their behaviour completely changes. I think some of the stuff they say is intended to be funny in a very dark way but some of it is really unsettling. Bioshock would be a completely different experience if the splicers never talked as would Manhunt so it’s something that is easy to overlook but their dialogue adds a lot to the experience. I also couldn’t help but feel bad for them at certain points as well, there are some audio diaries that fill in some back story on the slow nature of their downfall. It says a lot that even though there’s literally over one hundred audio logs in Bioshock I would happily listen to more.
I want to get a tad more serious now when it comes to the story and setting of Bioshock. It’s a game that is old enough now that it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody didn’t want to play it solely based on that. That point is why I like going back to older art to see how I feel about it years later, even if it’s something I have already experienced. The core of what makes Bioshock work does require you to think a little outside the parameters of the game and the story that it tells. Consider for a moment the main cause of the unrest in Rapture which is the discovery of Adam, its use by the inhabitants could be likened to alcohol in the prohibition era of the US. This is what caused Fontaine to gain the power he did and ultimately overthrow the city’s founder, Andrew Ryan. Rapture was a city that was intended to encourage and reward the most dedicated of people in their respective craft, the only limitation was that person's creativity or capacity for work. Ryan’s downfall was ironically caused by someone doing exactly what he ostensibly wanted everyone in Rapture to do. Fontaine was entitled to the sweat of his brow you might say.
For all the measures Andrew Ryan took to create this paradise I can’t help but think of a line that is actually from the sequel but has always stuck with me from an audio log which is: “Utopia is not a place but a people, it will exist the moment we are fit to occupy it”. It’s pretty easy to discern what this means and for all the work and planning that would have been required to make the city of Rapture a reality, Andrew Ryan failed to take into account one thing; human nature. Rapture was thriving until something was introduced to the population that brought out their more primal and selfish needs. Ryan’s vision was for a city where nobody would be hindered by law or morality and was ultimately undone by a forbidden fruit. He succeeded in creating paradise, but ultimately the undoing was that people wanted paradise and more. It’s something that I certainly didn’t think of when I played this game all those years ago.
I wouldn’t say Bioshock is a game I was worried about going back to and replaying for fear of it aging badly but it’s definitely one I thought might lose a little of its magic over time. Thankfully that isn’t the case at all and the mechanics of the game held up surprisingly well too. I think after a decade of “only two guns” in our shooters when you actually get to have a full arsenal it goes a long way even if the gunplay isn’t top notch. A good story and quality writing are always things that age well and Bioshock is no exception and like most forms of art my thoughts and interpretations aren’t quite the same on it now as they once were.
Thanks for reading and take care :)
JTB.
The star of Bioshock for me has always been the setting, Rapture is one of the most well realised worlds I can think of, you really get a sense that this was home to a lot of people. That’s something that isn’t always the case with a game that has a really awesome environment for you to explore. Rapture feels built, earned and I found myself constantly exploring every little part of it even though I have already done that several times on previous playthroughs. Everywhere you go there could be tiny little details in a message scrawled on a wall or in an audio log. The way the plasmids and vending machines are advertised throughout the city does very well in painting a picture of how life was before everything went to hell. It’s easy to imagine little things such as lighting a cigarette with your finger while on a date or using the cold blast to chill your beer. You can imagine quite easily how the enhancements would have started out and then how quickly they would have turned people into the crazed lunatics you encounter. I’m not sure what the practical application is for summoning a swarm of hostile bees or a miniature cyclone is but Bioshock is still a video game after all.
As I mentioned at the start, Bioshock is fairly old at this point so I am going to discuss the story very liberally. The opening reminded quite a bit of the opening of Dead Space funnily enough, swap the plane crash and spaceship crash and they feel very similar. The silent protagonist is something you rarely see in big games nowadays and I had forgotten about that aspect in Bioshock. There is a very brief intro by the character you play as and I mean brief as in two lines of dialogue but then you never hear him speak for the rest of the game. It’s one of those things that has certainly become looked down on but I still think there is a case to be made for it. Sometimes a game crafts such a well realised world and story it’s better to feel like you’re experiencing that yourself through playing the game. I don’t think Bioshock would be the same if you had a Dead Space 2 style Issac instead of the silent one from the first game. I feel like I am exploring Rapture and that does a lot in making the world feel as real as it does. Which is quite the feat considering it’s a city built at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in the 1940s.
It's not an uncommon thing to notice things on repeat playthroughs that passed you by on a first run and listening to the audio diaries in the game sheds a lot of light on previous events and the downfall of Rapture. The scene in which you kill Andrew Ryan shows one moment in particular that I had either forgotten about or didn’t notice on my initial playthrough back in 2007. The gift tag on the present Jack has on the plane reads “would you kindly not open until…” and then this is later revealed to be coordinates and the parcel contains a gun. I dare say it isn’t on screen long enough to actually clearly show it but maybe that is the point. Upon seeing this it made all the planning on Fontaine’s part click into place, I wish I could remember my thoughts on this back when I originally played it but that review is unfortunately lost. If you haven’t played Bioshock and have made it this far then the biggest reveal in the game has been spoiled for you but there are a lot more story beats that hit their mark and not just the “would you kindly” reveal. There is a lot to be found while listening to the audio diaries throughout the game and it really encourages you to explore.
One aspect of Bioshock that hasn’t aged too well is the good old morality choice system and in true to video game fashion it takes form in the most binary of ways. The little sisters you save after taking care of the Big Daddy will give you Adam, which is basically another form of currency that is only for your plasmid upgrades. You can rescue them for a little Adam and a huge payout later or harvest them which will give you more in the short term. It doesn’t take long to figure out that rescuing them gives you significantly better rewards so even if you want to take the evil path there isn’t any incentive to do so from a gameplay perspective. It would have been great if there was some big alteration during the game if you took the evil path, for instance if you harvest enough then future encounters with Big Daddy’s could be more difficult. What if little sisters started showing up with multiple Big Daddy’s protecting them? On the higher difficulties this would certainly make you think twice about engaging them depending on the situation. It’s a minor issue going back and it’s not something that isn’t common when these kinds of systems are in place.
Gameplay wise there isn’t much to go over either, as I said I didn’t enjoy Bioshock because it was a Doom Eternal level shooter experience. It might be surprising to some that the shooter formula wasn’t quite so locked down when Bioshock came out. That said though once you get a few weapons and plasmids you can have some real fun utilising plasmid cancels and quick shooting with weapons such as the shotgun or crossbow. I guess one critique I could say is that if you are rescuing little sisters and exploring a lot then you become pretty over powered when you’re around the halfway point. I don’t see it as a huge issue though as the atmosphere in Bioshock is what I’m there for and this is far less of an issue on the higher difficulty modes.
Speaking of atmosphere I cannot write a piece about Bioshock without talking about my favourite location and that is Fort Frolic. This place is Raptures equivalent to a mall and just walking around you can imagine how this place would have been before the city went to ruin. Bioshock is set in the 1960’s so there is definitely an old-school vibe in particular when in Fort Frolic. It’s just a world where it’s fun to explore and look at things and take it all in. Even at the time of its release Bioshock wasn’t a technical showpiece but it’s a fine example of really strong art direction that can keep a game feeling current. Sure newer games have way more polygons in them but I can’t think of an environment as fun to just look at as Fort Frolic is off the top of my head from a recent game.
Speaking of atmosphere let’s talk about the splicers for a minute. These are the main enemy you face throughout the game and they have been indulging in a little too much Adam and plasmids and it has sent them crazy. The little things they say and their general manic attitude still make them very fun to fight, I do miss the days when enemies in shooters actually moved around. The splicers take several forms, some can climb on walls, some can teleport, some have guns and some will just rush you with a pipe or a crowbar. It keeps the encounters varied and this is the first game since the Last of us 2 where you actually come across an even mix of both male and female enemies. Which when you think about it makes a lot of sense considering Rapture is still a city at its core.
The splicers reminded me a lot of the hunters in Manhunt, they’re just going about their regular business; which granted is not at all actually regular and when they see you their behaviour completely changes. I think some of the stuff they say is intended to be funny in a very dark way but some of it is really unsettling. Bioshock would be a completely different experience if the splicers never talked as would Manhunt so it’s something that is easy to overlook but their dialogue adds a lot to the experience. I also couldn’t help but feel bad for them at certain points as well, there are some audio diaries that fill in some back story on the slow nature of their downfall. It says a lot that even though there’s literally over one hundred audio logs in Bioshock I would happily listen to more.
I want to get a tad more serious now when it comes to the story and setting of Bioshock. It’s a game that is old enough now that it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody didn’t want to play it solely based on that. That point is why I like going back to older art to see how I feel about it years later, even if it’s something I have already experienced. The core of what makes Bioshock work does require you to think a little outside the parameters of the game and the story that it tells. Consider for a moment the main cause of the unrest in Rapture which is the discovery of Adam, its use by the inhabitants could be likened to alcohol in the prohibition era of the US. This is what caused Fontaine to gain the power he did and ultimately overthrow the city’s founder, Andrew Ryan. Rapture was a city that was intended to encourage and reward the most dedicated of people in their respective craft, the only limitation was that person's creativity or capacity for work. Ryan’s downfall was ironically caused by someone doing exactly what he ostensibly wanted everyone in Rapture to do. Fontaine was entitled to the sweat of his brow you might say.
For all the measures Andrew Ryan took to create this paradise I can’t help but think of a line that is actually from the sequel but has always stuck with me from an audio log which is: “Utopia is not a place but a people, it will exist the moment we are fit to occupy it”. It’s pretty easy to discern what this means and for all the work and planning that would have been required to make the city of Rapture a reality, Andrew Ryan failed to take into account one thing; human nature. Rapture was thriving until something was introduced to the population that brought out their more primal and selfish needs. Ryan’s vision was for a city where nobody would be hindered by law or morality and was ultimately undone by a forbidden fruit. He succeeded in creating paradise, but ultimately the undoing was that people wanted paradise and more. It’s something that I certainly didn’t think of when I played this game all those years ago.
I wouldn’t say Bioshock is a game I was worried about going back to and replaying for fear of it aging badly but it’s definitely one I thought might lose a little of its magic over time. Thankfully that isn’t the case at all and the mechanics of the game held up surprisingly well too. I think after a decade of “only two guns” in our shooters when you actually get to have a full arsenal it goes a long way even if the gunplay isn’t top notch. A good story and quality writing are always things that age well and Bioshock is no exception and like most forms of art my thoughts and interpretations aren’t quite the same on it now as they once were.
Thanks for reading and take care :)
JTB.
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