- Post
- #433348
- Topic
- BioShock!!! (1, 2 and Infinite and SPOILERS)
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/433348/action/topic#433348
- Time
C3PX said:
I actually really like this subject, and will give a more lengthy response when I have the time.
YOU HAD BETTER!
I think the first game was definitely just trying to say outright that Objectivism is bad and a society based on Objectivism like Rapture, is doomed for failure.
I get a similar sense, but it brings me back to this question: Why would Ken Levine or other people spend so much of their time lovingly crafting an Objectivist paradise if their opinion of it was that it was bad and doomed for failure. Therefore, my conclusion is somewhat nearer the one I make for Harrison Ford's character Allie Fox in Peter Weir's (and Paul Theroux's) Mosquito Coast. Mosquito Coast is a movie that breaks my heart because I believe and think like Fox does to certain degree. And I sometimes fantasize about trying what he tries... but I realize that there's truthfully about zero practicality to it. To return to Rapture- it seems to me that Levine wouldn't have bothered with Objectivism if he wasn't an admirer, but that he believes that an attempt to set it up would only be met with disaster.
Being a bit of an idealistic fan of Objectivism, I don't exactly agree with that message, but I concede that it would be extremely hard to create such a society with any sort of success, and that in such a society excluded from the outside world like that, perhaps Rapture isn't too far off the mark.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say just above.
This is the sort of discussion I wanted to have after first playing the game, but never found anyone who had played it that really cared to take much time to consider the social and political aspects of the game's story,
I bought and sent a copy of the game to a friend of mine with whom I have these conversations occaisonaly. That was 2 years ago... he still hasn't killed Dr. Steinman. So I've given up waiting for him. I tried to get my wife to play it, but she can't get past the gore... though she would love the philosophy. And then I popped over to the 2K forums (from the Cult of Rapture website) after posting what I posted here a month ago... and it seems all of those guys have already had these conversations, and they don't want to have them again... So I came back here.
rather the deepest they could get was "Holy crap! That "a man acts, a slave obeys" and "would you kindly" stuff was really deep!".
Yes, some of the blokes at the 2K forum thought that Rapture was a socialist experiment. Where're Frink's facepalming GIFs when you need them.
I found it both strange and cool that the sequel took the opposite direction with the altruistic (almost communist) cult. I will give more indepth thoughts on all of this later.
Excellent!
Still not done with the second game, but I have been making progress over the last few days, as you saw for yourself. I am realizing that it is a whole lot more diffucult than the first.
Nothing was as hard for me as the finale to BS1. I actually really appreciated the free flow of the "reaping" segments of the game. You could really plan those out and set up traps and strategy ahead of time. The first game had "boss battles" but I felt that the reaping mechanic in this game was really its own thing. Your abilities and the situations of the reaping change so much over the course of the game, that I never felt that they were too repetitive. Though, I do remember counting them down near the end of the game.
Funny that my old methods from the first game for effortlessly felling Big Daddies still works flawlessly,
Do tell!
but when I find myself fighting two or more splicers at a time I find my med packs disappearing one after the other.
Hmm... I can't say I remember having particular trouble with splicers. I favored the rivet gun and the shotgun, and the ice and electrical plasmids But I did let roving turrets do a lot of my dirty work.
And yeah, Ryan Amusments was extremely cool. I spent a while admiring the anamatronic Andrew Ryan, then moved on and actually missed the 9-Irony achievement. So I have to start a new game and go back and snag that one sometime. :(
Luckily I had a save I was able to load on that level. I did appreciate that the club was there near his desk on my first play through... I just didn't think to pick it up and club him with it.
Speaking of which, I missed the ability to backtrack, but I understand they couldn't do that AND the flooding mechanic and that it works better for this game to be more linear like that... but I still missed it.
I liked the morality of being able to execute some of the NPCs for their alleged crimes against humanity, Rapture, or yourself... but didn't need to repeat the "save or harvest" mechanic from the first game.
I think the "morality" in my imaginary BioShock 0 Detective game would be more along the lines of getting to say what you really feel about the Objectivist society. Not that it necessarily changes much... but as opposed to "do you want to be good or bad?" the game would say "do you think this idea is a good one or a bad one" and let the player speak his own mind.
