This is a great discussion about one of the deepest, most immersive games to be developed in the last decade. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news regarding the sequel, but they obviously put the same amount of effort into hyping the game as they do in writing it. They posted on their website that something was going to happen at a certain spot on a certain beach in the US at a certain time. People showed up and bottles filled with notes started washing up on the shore! That’s awesome writing.

I just started reading your blog and I’m enjoying it immensely. I think you’ll enjoy mine as well.

http://ruleroftheinterwebs.blogspot.com

I tend to like mini-game in my bigger games as they provide some distraction. I didn’t mind the “hacking” mini game in Bioshock as much as everyone seems to, at least as long as skill was more required than luck. However, by the second half of the game, puzzles become small and full of traps, and I was frequently presented with impossible configurations (like a line of traps from left to right when I need to go from bottom to top) despite having some hacking gene tonics. This was very bothering.

About splicers, didn’t you notice some sort of … lack of variety ? I think there’s only 5 or 6 types and since you fight them repeatedly thanks to respawning, it soon becomes boring. I agree with you, the first time you see them introduced in their scripted event, they’re great, but after killing hundreds of them, meh. With all the different plasmids available to people of Rapture, I think there could have been a lot more difference in the results.

I don’t know why, but I can’t see Ryan as a bad guy in this game. All he did made sense (apart from the “kill me” sequence) as he was reacting to Fontaine’s attempts to take over the city. It seemed obvious that given the incredible level of technology it had attained, letting the city open up to the world and trade its knowledge would lead to chaos. Soon enough various countries would try to take it over (international waters means it’s free for the taking) and abuse its technology for war or other purposes. Ryan could try and defend his city but his resources are very limited and he would have no choice but die or surrender against a real nation. Not only that, but Rapture would probably become a battlefield for various powers to fight for, as everyone would want the whole cake for themselves and share it with noone else.

I think Ryan truly believed in his objectivist ideals, but soon realized his people didn’t. They were too greedy for power and started messing up way too much with genetic alterations, thus ADAM became scarcer and scarcer and people started fighting over it. When presented with the only rule the city had – do not contact the outside world – they could not resist. Upon seeing this, Ryan’s turn toward totalitarianism to try and impose his views on his people makes sense as he’s slowly watching his utopia going completely wrong and spoiled. When I was forced to kill him, it felt really wrong.

I agree, the game has depth. Too bad it’s in the backstory of the setting, and not in the story itself.

The actaul wiki statement is “Angrier in tone.”

Come the fuck on, Take Two CEO’s. This is what happens when you push ideas into a game at a late cycle and impose a moral choice system that was never meant to be included in the first place.

@ Mackattack:

Yeah, I didn’t do enough research. Still, the minigame is annoying whether you can level up or not. For example, in Oblivion I got the skeleton key as soon as I could to bypass lock picking game. But the existence of the key doesn’t make the minigame any less lame.

Noted about the ending. :)

@ Steve:

There are actually 3 endings. Good, Neutral and Evil. The evil one requires you to harvest all the sisters. Sadly it is almost identical to the neutral one – it uses the same footage and only the voice over is a bit different in tone.

I had the same issues as you. Eventually, I got tired of the game and I don’t think I even finished. It just sits there on my HD taking up space.

As for the little sisters – you can experience both endings by not harvesting them for Adam, except for the last few. That is, save before you start harvesting them, then once you complete the same one way, go back and start harvesting the last few – that way you can see the different ending.

I can only nod towards my previous comment.. the minigame can be knocked out halfway through with research camera, and the multiple endings came from higher up the chain