This article originally ran under a different banner/website in December of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! The industry refuses to yield. Just when I think the games industry has dealt its final blow upon my weary body, it just keeps punching. It has been nothing but disheartening to watch popular franchises have the teeth of their vampiric publishers sunk into them. I can only look on in horror as the older beloved titles drag me off to safety. However, when my beloved Bioshock trips and a pack of 2K Games wolves start circling, I cannot stand idle. I shrug off Doom’s attempt to hold me back and jump into the fight; gun and plasmid in hand. Prior to my trip to Rapture, I had only really played games like Guitar Hero/Rock Band and a handful of titles at friends. It wasn’t until I loaded up a borrowed copy of Bioshock into the family Xbox 360, that I learned the power of video game storytelling. Harrowing stories. Stories that can’t be reproduced in books or films. Stories that publishers, like 2K Games, have zero interest in retelling. MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! Today, we are going to do something a bit different. The first act of this tale of sorrow will cover why Bioshock is my favorite game of all time, and in the second act, I will discuss the betrayal I feel with 2K Games’ announcement of a Bioshock 4 in production.
So what is Bioshock? What separates this video game from the rest in the eyes of this old doomsayer? Let’s take a look at the opening of Bioshock to really answer that question. The year is 1960, you play as Jack as his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. Before you drown, you spot a lighthouse and swim towards it. You venture into the abandoned lighthouse. Lights snap on as you make your way to a bathysphere. Inside you discover a lever that sends the bathysphere in motion.
As the bathysphere drives into the ocean, we are introduced to one of the strengths of Bioshock: its characters. An old projector video introduces us to our antagonist, Andrew Ryan. With a simple question, we see into the mindset of villain: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? Having become fed up with parasites like the US government and the Catholic Church claiming ownership over this sweat, Ryan made the choice to create his libertarian utopia free from morals and regulations. Ryan comes off as a dangerous intelligent man with ironclad beliefs. While we are only introduced to Ryan, he is at the center of this web of characters the game introduces along our journey. From mad scientists to eccentric artists, we learn they are just as defined as Ryan himself.
However, the most defined character of them all is the city of Rapture itself. As Ryan explains he needed to create a world where the great would not fear the small, the projector screen is pulled back to revive the colorful city known as Rapture. As a squid swims past the bathysphere, you see the grand towers erect from the ocean floor. Fifties-inspired neon lights painted onto the side of buildings. Retro-styled advertisements plastered on various walls. Towering statues holding up buildings like Greek monuments. A whale weaving in-between buildings as if the city was naturally part of the ocean floor. Even for a moment, you get a glance at the monstrosities known as Big Daddies.
As you contemplate what wonders behold this sunken 50’s-inspired utopia, you quickly learn all is not as it seems. The bathysphere stops at a dark desolate dock. You helplessly watch as a shadow of a woman slashes the throat of an innocent bystander. She senses you in the bathysphere and immediately attempts to shred it with her hook-like hands. Unsuccessful she scurries off into the shadows. The friendly utopia you hoped you stumbled into, is actually a nightmare. A friendly voice comes over the radio and guides you past the monster.
The friendly voice belongs to Atlas, a revolutionary working to overthrow Ryan’s control over Rapture. Unfortunately, the revolution plunged the city into darkness and chaos. Scientists within Rapture had discovered a chemical substance that could rewrite one’s genetic code called Adam. It gave the user speed, strength, and numerous fantastical powers like telekinesis. It sparked an arms race that led to a civil war that tore the city apart. Thousands of people were murdered, and the survivors became addicted to Adam. Their need for more Adam drove them to become twisted crazed individuals referred to as splicers. These broken humans can be found wandering the halls of Rapture scavenging any food or Adam they can find, including you. Unsettling yes, but not as terrifying as the hulking Big Daddies.
After getting the first taste of Adam, you are knocked unconscious. You awake to some splicers trying to loot you but are scared off by a deep roar. You feel a thunderous force making its way towards you. A monstrous boot stomps down next to your face shaking the screen. A drill swings into view. You gaze at a massive helmet with eight yellow lights peeking through the thick metal dome. A little girl walks into the frame wearing a blood-soaked dress and brandishing a giant needle. She giggles that you aren’t an angel but will be soon. The pair wander off with the little girl humming a nursery rhyme. Atlas informs you the girl is a Little Sister, she produces Adam by extracting it from dead bodies and recycling it. The hulking brute is a Big Daddy, and he is her lethal protector. You witness a splicer try to attack a Little Sister, only for a Big Daddy to put a drill through his stomach and his head through a glass wall.
Even in the middle of the day, initially witnessing the Big Daddy had my heart racing. Learning that I would need to take one down, to get obtain Adam from the Little Sister had me turn pale. No doubt, Bioshock kick-started my love for horror with its dark moody hallways and grotesque twisted monsters. However, the world-building kept me going even in its tenser moments. As you venture through Rapture, you see many different parts of the city. From the hospital wing to the garden district to the slums, we see it all through a blood-soaked haze. The world of Rapture seems almost perfectly designed to sustain a city at the bottom of the sea. Having played through Bioshock dozens of times, Rapture still to this day excels at capturing my imagination.
As many of you know, story is not enough to satisfy this old Doomsayer. I have written off many games with clunky uninspired gameplay loops, but Bioshock does not disappoint. The opening level does a fantastic introduction to the combat. Armed with a wrench and an electric bolt plasmid, you are ambushed by a splicer not 10 minutes into the game. Atlas instructs you to use what he refers to as the one-two punch; zap him and whack him, he says over the static. With a snap of your fingers, a bolt of electricity jumps out of your fingers onto your mangled foe, stunning them and allowing for a simple swing from your wrench to take him out. You immediately see the systems at play. Your minds start brewing over potential strategies especially as more weapons and plasmids are introduced. I remember setting a splicer on fire with my incinerate plasmid, watching as he sprinted to the nearest body of water, only for me to electrocute the water as he entered it, killing him instantly. You see the pieces fall into place as your mind races to experiment with these tools Bioshock provides.
My favorite combat experiment I took part in, was when I lined a hallway with tripwires from my cherished crossbow. I patiently waited in my trap only for a Big Daddy to walk by. I shot him once with my pistol to taunt him into charging. He instantly sprinted through my web of tripwires, only for him to fall over dead mere inches from my feet. I immediately imagined my character placing one foot upon the fallen Big Daddy in triumph victory.
Now, I can already sense you rolling your eyes. Surely THE DOOMSAYER IS BLINDED BY THE SAME NOSTALGIA THAT HE OFTEN ACCUSES ZELDA OR FINAL FANTASY FANS OF. Maybe, my followers, but I will happily say that I don’t think Bioshock is flawless. Most often people will complain about the hacking mini-game. There are vending machines, security cameras, and various turrets that you can hack. To do so, you must play a quick game of Pipe Dream. While I enjoyed the quick mini-games, I cannot deny the quick-time event hacking in Bioshock 2 was better for the game’s flow.
Bioshock’s difficulty can also ruin the game’s flow. Your first initial fight with a Big Daddy is the most challenging task the game will throw at you. You will scrape by with a slither of health, but as soon as you accrue more guns and plasmids, Big Daddies can barely touch you. Throw in the Life Restoration chambers that bring you back to life the game becomes a cakewalk and the horror vanishes from sight. I clearly felt no threat as I painstaking set up my thirty trap bolt trap. Even the final boss is a joke after you discover the chemical spray and electric gel ammo.
With a game that has the challenge and horror dropping out halfway through, why do I hold this game as a champion? The answer is simply Bioshock has the best storytelling twist I have ever experienced. Even twelve years on, I am still blown away by the twist within Bioshock to the point I refuse to discuss specific details. Many of you might be expecting me to spoil it, but NAY, I SAY NAY. I encourage everyone and anyone to experience this twist for themselves. What I will say, is this twist is impossible to pull off in any other medium. Bioshock cannot work as a film, book or TV show. It is only a story that can be pulled off with the video game medium. I always herald Bioshock whenever someone questions whether video games can tell their own story. So anything someone asks for Bioshock to be made into a movie, I always roll my eyes in contempt, because a Bioshock movie would pale in comparison. If there is one thing you should take away from my rambling aboard my soapbox, it is you should play Bioshock.
Now I can see your confusion. DOOMSAYER, CLEARLY, YOU LOVE BIOSHOCK, SURELY YOU MUST BE EXCITED ABOUT A BIOSHOCK SEQUEL. Alas, my loyal followers, I am not. Maybe it is all the goodwill the games industry has eroded over the years, but I cannot trust 2K Games will do the series justice. From 2K Games recent outlook on games to themes 2K Games dare won’t touch to the studio tasked with making the title, I am weary at best of a Bioshock 4. Just as I have painstakingly outlined my lover for the series, I must arduously cover why I am skeptical of 2K Games resurrecting the series.
For starters, I don’t think we need another Bioshock story. Bioshock Infinite and its downloadable content, Burial At Sea, gracefully wrapped up the series. It provides a satisfying beginning middle and end to the city of both Rapture and the newly introduced city of Columbia. All the pieces fall into place perfectly and trying to cram in more story would be like trying to add additional puzzle pieces from a separate puzzle. The Star Wars prequels spring to mind as the perfect analogy. The original Star Wars trilogy tells an excellent tightly focused narrative about Skywalker and his friend’s journey that really didn’t need the backstory that the prequels told. It works to add a confusing mess of cannon and backstory that does nothing but muddy the name of Star Wars. Bioshock 4 will mostly like follow in the Star Wars prequel’s footsteps and add nothing to the overall story of Bioshock except annoying unlikeable characters and convoluted concepts like midichlorians.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if 2K Games would want to stay away from the political theme that was essential to the Bioshock brand. With the growing political discord becoming more and more hostile every day, companies have grown reluctant to take any sort of stand so as not to risk angering any demographic with cash to burn. However, when your narrative is heavily baked into the idea of libertarian utopia that falls victim to class warfare, you can’t rip out that underlining subtext without stripping away what made Bioshock unique. I have no doubt they will try as hard as Bobby Kotick tried to convince us that the white phosphorus in Call of Duty wasn’t political. The unfortunate truth is every story, every piece of art has a political underline to it, and players throwing tantrums demanding no political substance cheapen any narrative. I have doubt Bioshock 4 will suffer the hardest from dropping any and all political themes.
The second alarm bell that goes off in my head like a raid warning, is Bioshock 4 has basically been in development since 2015. 2K Games has been longing for a sequel to Bioshock Infinite since closing the game’s studio, Irrational Games, in 2015. According to Kotaku’s writer, Jason Schrier, studio Certain Affinity was given a crack at Bioshock 4, before 2K Games canceled the project in 2017 and moved the project of Bioshock 4 within house before giving the title to Cloud Chamber. Now, while I am all for studios not crunching to complete games, it is always worrying when a title is taking too long to develop. You only need not look at titles like Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, and Anthem for titles with long troubled development history. With the project trading hands and being in development for so long, I worry Bioshock 4 will be a convoluted mess.
My other worry is the publisher themselves. 2K Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive has fallen in line with the other avarice-fueled publishers and wants to focus primarily on online titles. In 2017, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors they would focus more on recurring consumer spending:
“We’ve said that we aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company. It may not always be an online model, it probably won’t always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board.”
-Strauss Zelnick
There was a rumor at one point, that Bioshock 4 would be an MMO-style game. You know Massive-Multiplayer games, there is hype leading up to their release, but players will inevitably become fatigued and go back to World of Warcraft. While I am more skeptical of a full Bioshock MMO, I have no doubt there will be a shoe-horned multiplayer similar to Grand Theft Auto’s Online feature. It would also not surprise me if the multiplayer was tedious, monotonous, and railroad players into the game’s microtransactions. It would utterly besmirch the Bioshock name.
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! It pains me to feel nothing but apathy towards Bioshock 4. I wish I could be excited but alas I cannot muster anything but a concerned smile. By all means, feel free to be excited about Bioshock 4. I envy your enthusiasm, but I have peered too deeply behind the curtain. I don’t trust 2K Games will make the Bioshock sequel I long for, especially with creative director, Ken Levine, the mastermind behind the series, no longer working for 2K Games. The Bioshock series showcase Levine’s talents as a writer and creative director. He is as vital to Bioshock as Christopher Nolan is to the Batman trilogy. I wish Cloud Chamber the best of luck with this Herculean task. I will surely give Bioshock 4 a chance, I must admit I am more exercise for whatever name game Ken Levine and his new studio Ghost Story Studio come up with. While it won’t be set in my favorite underwater city, I have no doubt the spirit of Bioshock will live on through it.
Sources:
Good, Owen S. “Take-Two: ‘Recurrent Consumer Spending’ Is the Way of the Future.” Polygon, Polygon, 8 Nov. 2017, https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/8/16623052/take-two-recurrent-consumer-spending-microtransactions-gta-online.
Schreier, Jason. “Sources: The New BioShock Has Been In The Works For Years.” Kotaku, Kotaku, 9 Dec. 2019, https://kotaku.com/sources-the-new-bioshock-has-been-in-the-works-for-yea-1840314561.