Saraj Fanatico
10-01-2007, 11:03 PM
BioShock
http://ui23.gamespot.com/662/bioshock01_2.jpg
BioShock is a first-person shootervideo game by 2K Boston/2K Australia (previously Irrational Games), designed by Ken Levine. The game is a PC and Xbox 360 title. It was released on August 21, 2007 in North America and on August 24, 2007 in Europe and Australia.
The game received overwhelmingly positive early reviews, particularly in mainstream press where its sophisticated, "morality-based" storyline , its immersive powers and its Ayn Rand-based dystopian setting were all singled out for praise. Following early reviews, the share price of Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of the publisher, increased 20%.
Set in 1960, the player assumes the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the dystopian underwater city of Rapture and survive the mutated beings and mechanical drones within it. The game incorporates elements found in role-playing and survival horror games, and is described by the developers as a "spiritual successor" to their previous title System Shock 2.
Gameplay
BioShock is a first-person shooter with role-playing game customization elements similar to System Shock 2. A 14 minute video showing gameplay and some of the AI was released on September 20, 2006.
The player collects weapons, health packs, and Plasmids that give him special powers such as telekinesis or electro-bolt, while fighting off the deranged population of Rapture. The player can choose to use stealth to slip by security cameras and foes, or hack security elements to turn them to his side. Hacking, which is based off the Pipe Dream game concept, can also be used on health and vending machines to gain extra benefits, or on locks and safes to gain access to the locked contents.
The main resources in the game are ADAM, EVE, and Money. ADAM is used to purchase new plasmids, EVE (similar to the concept of magic points) is fuel for active plasmids, and Money allows the purchase of items and ammunition (see below) as well as "buying out" (effectively bribing) security elements such as bots and turrets.
To adapt and advance his or her character, the player can spend ADAM to gain Plasmids to give himself new or enhanced abilities. These are grouped under the Combat, Engineering, Active, and Physical trees. The "Active" Plasmids are essentially alternate weapons, running off EVE and needing activation by the player. The other classes of Plasmids (referred to as Tonics) are passive abilities that work as long as they are equipped.
Plasmids are versatile, and the player can use them in concert with each other and the environment to great effect. For example, Telekinesis can be used on all physically-simulated objects; the player can catch and redirect grenades or rockets, hold large objects like corpses as impromptu shields, or use those same objects as projectiles. An element of choice is present as not all plasmids can be equipped at once, so the player must decide which to take and which to place into storage.
Most Plasmids alter the character's appearance, keeping up with the theme of "sacrificing your humanity" referenced by Ryan in one of the game's trailers. For instance, the Incinerate ability causes the character's hand to glow red, take on a charred appearance and radiate flames from the fingers. However, selecting a weapon will revert things back to normal, suggesting that any physical changes conferred are temporary. Higher levels of the same plasmid cause more prevalent changes, for instance the highest level of Incinerate causes a heavier glow, more severe charring and more prominent flames. All in all, there are over 70 plasmids and tonics.
The player can customize weapons to hold bigger magazines or recoil less etc. at special machines called Power To The People stations. Each weapon also comes with a selection of three different types of ammo (such as normal, anti-personnel and armor piercing bullets for the revolver). There is also a "research camera" in the game that analyzes enemies, granting the player increased damage, Plasmids, and other bonuses (usually only against that type of enemy) when enough pictures of them are taken.
The player can also access several types of vending machines, including the U-Invent, which combines gatherable spare parts into ammo, tools and so on, The Circus Of Values, essentially a regular vending machine that sells everything from cakes to first aid kits, the El Ammo Bandito, a vending machine that specializes in normal and specialty ammo, and other more specialized machines such as health stations.
Instead of reloading a saved game state if death occurs, the player simply respawns at the nearest Vita Chamber. This convenience is not available during the final boss fight.
Plot summary
Setting
A man has a choice...
I chose the impossible.
I built a city where the artist would not fear the censor.
Where the great would not be constrained by the small.
Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality.
I chose to build...
Rapture.
—Andrew Ryan
The game takes place during 1960 in Rapture, a fictional underwater city secretly built in 1946 on the mid-Atlantic seabed, entirely self-sufficient and powered by submarine volcanoes. Constructed by business magnate Andrew Ryan, Rapture was envisioned as the only place on Earth that could support individualism, and populated by those Ryan believed exemplified the best in humanity. During the early 1950s, this population peaked at several thousand, though ranks of elite emerged from the rest, discomforting many.
The discovery of "ADAM," stem cells created from a species of sea slug, by Dr. Bridgette Tennenbaum further upset the social balance. ADAM's prevalence greatly accelerated genetic engineering research, creating a plasmid industry that sold everything from a cure for male pattern baldness to abilities like telekinesis, with active types like the latter requiring a serum, "EVE." In order to improve ADAM yields, the "Little Sisters" were created, young girls with the slug embedded in their bodies. Although initially just ADAM "factories," during the war (see below) they were repurposed via mental conditioning to extract ADAM from the dead, and process it within themselves. The "Big Daddies," armed and highly-enhanced humans in diving suits, were simultaneously created to defend the Little Sisters as they worked.
For several years, Rapture was everything Ryan intended it to be - a paradise of freedom and wealth. But ultimately, the very reason it was created - Ryan's paranoia of various world authorities - caused the city's downfall. Strictly forbidding outside contact to keep Rapture a secret, a black market in smuggled goods arose, and former mobster Frank Fontaine came to dominate it. Unlike Ryan, Fontaine wanted more than wealth - he wanted control. And his wealth, combined with his monopoly on Tennenbaum's research, soon gained him enough power and followers to challenge Ryan for it. In late 1958, Ryan lost patience with the conflict and apparently had Fontaine killed - an action that proved useless. Another figure, Atlas, took Fontaine's place as the leader of his opposition. On New Year's Eve that same year, Atlas and his ADAM-augmented followers started a riot between the lower and upper classes. This sparked off a civil war between Ryan and Atlas that eventually spread to all of Rapture, crippling the city. As the war progressed, Ryan began to betray his ideals. The advocate of reason and self-determination began using torture and mind control in his battle with Atlas. Eventually, he became so unreasonable that a number of his supporters began attempting to assassinate him. By the time the player enters Rapture, only the "Splicers," citizens with severe mental and physical problems caused by excessive ADAM use, are left, forever scavenging throughout the city. The remaining non-mutated humans have managed to barricade themselves in the few remaining undamaged areas.
Story
The player takes the role of Jack (the name on the package he holds), a passenger on a plane that crashes over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960. After surfacing, he swims to a nearby lighthouse, finding a bathysphere terminus inside. Descending into the ocean, he discovers Rapture, which has fallen into chaos. Upon arrival, Atlas assists Jack via radio in making his way to safety, while Ryan, believing Jack to be a government agent, uses Rapture's automated systems and his pheromone-controlled Splicers against Jack. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to use the abilities granted by plasmids, and to kill the Little Sisters to extract their ADAM. Hearing Atlas' words, Dr. Tennenbaum intercepts Jack and urges him to save the Little Sisters instead, giving him the means to only kill the embedded slug and leave the girl alive, promising to repay him greatly if he does so. As Jack works his way through the city, he learns through audio logs, genetically-induced ghostly playbacks of past events and radio messages about Rapture's fate. Atlas says his wife and child are hiding out on a submarine and just as they're about to reach their goal, Ryan has it detonated; an enraged Atlas tells Jack that Ryan must die.
Jack makes his way to Ryan, who in person offers no resistance to Jack's efforts. Instead, he reveals to Jack why he is here: Jack was actually born in Rapture two years ago, genetically modified to mature rapidly; he is Ryan's illegitimate son as a result of an affair with Jasmine Jolene, an exotic dancer. Ryan further informs Jack that he was designed to obey orders when given with specific phrases, then sent topside with instructions to hijack and crash an airplane to allow him to return to Rapture. Ryan calmly demonstrates Jack's lack of free will by using the trigger phrase "Would you kindly...", which Jack realizes Atlas has been using since the beginning. After Ryan orders Jack to kill him, putting the city in Atlas' hands, Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine. With Ryan dead, Fontaine no longer needs Jack, and leaves him at the mercy of the reactivated security systems. However, Dr. Tennenbaum and her Little Sisters help Jack escape through the vent system, where he falls and loses consciousness.
When Jack awakes, Dr. Tennenbaum assists him in breaking the remaining conditioned responses, some of which she had deactivated previously. During the subsequent pursuit of Fontaine, the doctor predicts that the only way to get through the last few obstacles would be to assemble a Big Daddy suit and follow the rescued Little Sisters through passageways only they can open. By the time Jack reaches him, Fontaine has injected himself with vast amounts of ADAM, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack and the Little Sisters are eventually able to subdue Fontaine, when the Little Sisters swarm Fontaine and stab him to death with their ADAM needles. Three endings are possible depending on how the player interacted with the Little Sisters. If the player did not harvest any, the ending shows the rescued Sisters returning to the surface and living full lives under Jack's care. Otherwise the ending shows Jack turning on the Sisters after defeating Fontaine; at some later point, a ballistic missile submarine carrying nuclear SLBMs comes across the wreckage of the plane, when it is surrounded by bathyspheres and overrun by Splicers. There are two variations of the "harvest" ending; if the player only harvested Sisters, Dr. Tennenbaum's voice during narration is harsher, while if the player both harvested and rescued the Sisters, Dr. Tennenbaum's voice is softer and resigned in tone.
Development
Original story
Originally, BioShock had a significantly different story compared to the released game, where the main character was a "cult deprogrammer"—a person charged with rescuing someone from a cult, and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to a normal life. For example, Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does where "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were." This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by a Senator to initiate these actions. While the gameplay with this story was similar to what resulted from the released version of the game, the story underwent changes, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first.
Influences
In response to an interview question about influences from the gaming website IGN, Levine said, "I have my useless liberal arts degree, so I've read stuff from Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and all the sort of utopian and dystopian writings of the 20th century, which I've found really fascinating."
In regards to artistic influences, Levine told Electronic Gaming Monthly, "As a kid, I was obsessed with 1984 and Logan's Run. I love exploring what happens when good ideas fall apart." One reviewer has also compared BioShock to Orson Welles' 1941 film, Citizen Kane; although the film and game are set on opposite sides of the World War 2 era, they share some symmetry in their themes of lost innocence.
In the realm of current events, Levine has also mentioned an interest in "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around."
Similarities to System Shock series
According to the developers, Bioshock is a spiritual successor to the System Shock games, and was developed by former developers of that series. Levine claims his team had been thinking about making another game of that type since System Shock 2. He pointed out many similarities during his narration of a video initially screened for the press at E3 2006: There are several comparable game play elements: Plasmids serve the same function as Psionic Abilities from System Shock 2; the player needs to deal with security cameras, turrets, and drones with the abilities to hack these; ammo conservation is stressed as "a key gameplay feature," and audio recordings serve as the same storytelling device that email logs did. The use of "ghosts" from System Shock 2, phantom images who replay tragic incidents in the places they occurred, also exist in BioShock, as do modifiable weapons with multiple ammunition types. Additionally, Atlas guides the player along with a radio, much in the same way Janice Polito did in System Shock 2.
Comments? Yes? No? I got this game, very fun.
http://ui23.gamespot.com/662/bioshock01_2.jpg
BioShock is a first-person shootervideo game by 2K Boston/2K Australia (previously Irrational Games), designed by Ken Levine. The game is a PC and Xbox 360 title. It was released on August 21, 2007 in North America and on August 24, 2007 in Europe and Australia.
The game received overwhelmingly positive early reviews, particularly in mainstream press where its sophisticated, "morality-based" storyline , its immersive powers and its Ayn Rand-based dystopian setting were all singled out for praise. Following early reviews, the share price of Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of the publisher, increased 20%.
Set in 1960, the player assumes the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the dystopian underwater city of Rapture and survive the mutated beings and mechanical drones within it. The game incorporates elements found in role-playing and survival horror games, and is described by the developers as a "spiritual successor" to their previous title System Shock 2.
Gameplay
BioShock is a first-person shooter with role-playing game customization elements similar to System Shock 2. A 14 minute video showing gameplay and some of the AI was released on September 20, 2006.
The player collects weapons, health packs, and Plasmids that give him special powers such as telekinesis or electro-bolt, while fighting off the deranged population of Rapture. The player can choose to use stealth to slip by security cameras and foes, or hack security elements to turn them to his side. Hacking, which is based off the Pipe Dream game concept, can also be used on health and vending machines to gain extra benefits, or on locks and safes to gain access to the locked contents.
The main resources in the game are ADAM, EVE, and Money. ADAM is used to purchase new plasmids, EVE (similar to the concept of magic points) is fuel for active plasmids, and Money allows the purchase of items and ammunition (see below) as well as "buying out" (effectively bribing) security elements such as bots and turrets.
To adapt and advance his or her character, the player can spend ADAM to gain Plasmids to give himself new or enhanced abilities. These are grouped under the Combat, Engineering, Active, and Physical trees. The "Active" Plasmids are essentially alternate weapons, running off EVE and needing activation by the player. The other classes of Plasmids (referred to as Tonics) are passive abilities that work as long as they are equipped.
Plasmids are versatile, and the player can use them in concert with each other and the environment to great effect. For example, Telekinesis can be used on all physically-simulated objects; the player can catch and redirect grenades or rockets, hold large objects like corpses as impromptu shields, or use those same objects as projectiles. An element of choice is present as not all plasmids can be equipped at once, so the player must decide which to take and which to place into storage.
Most Plasmids alter the character's appearance, keeping up with the theme of "sacrificing your humanity" referenced by Ryan in one of the game's trailers. For instance, the Incinerate ability causes the character's hand to glow red, take on a charred appearance and radiate flames from the fingers. However, selecting a weapon will revert things back to normal, suggesting that any physical changes conferred are temporary. Higher levels of the same plasmid cause more prevalent changes, for instance the highest level of Incinerate causes a heavier glow, more severe charring and more prominent flames. All in all, there are over 70 plasmids and tonics.
The player can customize weapons to hold bigger magazines or recoil less etc. at special machines called Power To The People stations. Each weapon also comes with a selection of three different types of ammo (such as normal, anti-personnel and armor piercing bullets for the revolver). There is also a "research camera" in the game that analyzes enemies, granting the player increased damage, Plasmids, and other bonuses (usually only against that type of enemy) when enough pictures of them are taken.
The player can also access several types of vending machines, including the U-Invent, which combines gatherable spare parts into ammo, tools and so on, The Circus Of Values, essentially a regular vending machine that sells everything from cakes to first aid kits, the El Ammo Bandito, a vending machine that specializes in normal and specialty ammo, and other more specialized machines such as health stations.
Instead of reloading a saved game state if death occurs, the player simply respawns at the nearest Vita Chamber. This convenience is not available during the final boss fight.
Plot summary
Setting
A man has a choice...
I chose the impossible.
I built a city where the artist would not fear the censor.
Where the great would not be constrained by the small.
Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality.
I chose to build...
Rapture.
—Andrew Ryan
The game takes place during 1960 in Rapture, a fictional underwater city secretly built in 1946 on the mid-Atlantic seabed, entirely self-sufficient and powered by submarine volcanoes. Constructed by business magnate Andrew Ryan, Rapture was envisioned as the only place on Earth that could support individualism, and populated by those Ryan believed exemplified the best in humanity. During the early 1950s, this population peaked at several thousand, though ranks of elite emerged from the rest, discomforting many.
The discovery of "ADAM," stem cells created from a species of sea slug, by Dr. Bridgette Tennenbaum further upset the social balance. ADAM's prevalence greatly accelerated genetic engineering research, creating a plasmid industry that sold everything from a cure for male pattern baldness to abilities like telekinesis, with active types like the latter requiring a serum, "EVE." In order to improve ADAM yields, the "Little Sisters" were created, young girls with the slug embedded in their bodies. Although initially just ADAM "factories," during the war (see below) they were repurposed via mental conditioning to extract ADAM from the dead, and process it within themselves. The "Big Daddies," armed and highly-enhanced humans in diving suits, were simultaneously created to defend the Little Sisters as they worked.
For several years, Rapture was everything Ryan intended it to be - a paradise of freedom and wealth. But ultimately, the very reason it was created - Ryan's paranoia of various world authorities - caused the city's downfall. Strictly forbidding outside contact to keep Rapture a secret, a black market in smuggled goods arose, and former mobster Frank Fontaine came to dominate it. Unlike Ryan, Fontaine wanted more than wealth - he wanted control. And his wealth, combined with his monopoly on Tennenbaum's research, soon gained him enough power and followers to challenge Ryan for it. In late 1958, Ryan lost patience with the conflict and apparently had Fontaine killed - an action that proved useless. Another figure, Atlas, took Fontaine's place as the leader of his opposition. On New Year's Eve that same year, Atlas and his ADAM-augmented followers started a riot between the lower and upper classes. This sparked off a civil war between Ryan and Atlas that eventually spread to all of Rapture, crippling the city. As the war progressed, Ryan began to betray his ideals. The advocate of reason and self-determination began using torture and mind control in his battle with Atlas. Eventually, he became so unreasonable that a number of his supporters began attempting to assassinate him. By the time the player enters Rapture, only the "Splicers," citizens with severe mental and physical problems caused by excessive ADAM use, are left, forever scavenging throughout the city. The remaining non-mutated humans have managed to barricade themselves in the few remaining undamaged areas.
Story
The player takes the role of Jack (the name on the package he holds), a passenger on a plane that crashes over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960. After surfacing, he swims to a nearby lighthouse, finding a bathysphere terminus inside. Descending into the ocean, he discovers Rapture, which has fallen into chaos. Upon arrival, Atlas assists Jack via radio in making his way to safety, while Ryan, believing Jack to be a government agent, uses Rapture's automated systems and his pheromone-controlled Splicers against Jack. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to use the abilities granted by plasmids, and to kill the Little Sisters to extract their ADAM. Hearing Atlas' words, Dr. Tennenbaum intercepts Jack and urges him to save the Little Sisters instead, giving him the means to only kill the embedded slug and leave the girl alive, promising to repay him greatly if he does so. As Jack works his way through the city, he learns through audio logs, genetically-induced ghostly playbacks of past events and radio messages about Rapture's fate. Atlas says his wife and child are hiding out on a submarine and just as they're about to reach their goal, Ryan has it detonated; an enraged Atlas tells Jack that Ryan must die.
Jack makes his way to Ryan, who in person offers no resistance to Jack's efforts. Instead, he reveals to Jack why he is here: Jack was actually born in Rapture two years ago, genetically modified to mature rapidly; he is Ryan's illegitimate son as a result of an affair with Jasmine Jolene, an exotic dancer. Ryan further informs Jack that he was designed to obey orders when given with specific phrases, then sent topside with instructions to hijack and crash an airplane to allow him to return to Rapture. Ryan calmly demonstrates Jack's lack of free will by using the trigger phrase "Would you kindly...", which Jack realizes Atlas has been using since the beginning. After Ryan orders Jack to kill him, putting the city in Atlas' hands, Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine. With Ryan dead, Fontaine no longer needs Jack, and leaves him at the mercy of the reactivated security systems. However, Dr. Tennenbaum and her Little Sisters help Jack escape through the vent system, where he falls and loses consciousness.
When Jack awakes, Dr. Tennenbaum assists him in breaking the remaining conditioned responses, some of which she had deactivated previously. During the subsequent pursuit of Fontaine, the doctor predicts that the only way to get through the last few obstacles would be to assemble a Big Daddy suit and follow the rescued Little Sisters through passageways only they can open. By the time Jack reaches him, Fontaine has injected himself with vast amounts of ADAM, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack and the Little Sisters are eventually able to subdue Fontaine, when the Little Sisters swarm Fontaine and stab him to death with their ADAM needles. Three endings are possible depending on how the player interacted with the Little Sisters. If the player did not harvest any, the ending shows the rescued Sisters returning to the surface and living full lives under Jack's care. Otherwise the ending shows Jack turning on the Sisters after defeating Fontaine; at some later point, a ballistic missile submarine carrying nuclear SLBMs comes across the wreckage of the plane, when it is surrounded by bathyspheres and overrun by Splicers. There are two variations of the "harvest" ending; if the player only harvested Sisters, Dr. Tennenbaum's voice during narration is harsher, while if the player both harvested and rescued the Sisters, Dr. Tennenbaum's voice is softer and resigned in tone.
Development
Original story
Originally, BioShock had a significantly different story compared to the released game, where the main character was a "cult deprogrammer"—a person charged with rescuing someone from a cult, and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to a normal life. For example, Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does where "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were." This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by a Senator to initiate these actions. While the gameplay with this story was similar to what resulted from the released version of the game, the story underwent changes, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first.
Influences
In response to an interview question about influences from the gaming website IGN, Levine said, "I have my useless liberal arts degree, so I've read stuff from Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and all the sort of utopian and dystopian writings of the 20th century, which I've found really fascinating."
In regards to artistic influences, Levine told Electronic Gaming Monthly, "As a kid, I was obsessed with 1984 and Logan's Run. I love exploring what happens when good ideas fall apart." One reviewer has also compared BioShock to Orson Welles' 1941 film, Citizen Kane; although the film and game are set on opposite sides of the World War 2 era, they share some symmetry in their themes of lost innocence.
In the realm of current events, Levine has also mentioned an interest in "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around."
Similarities to System Shock series
According to the developers, Bioshock is a spiritual successor to the System Shock games, and was developed by former developers of that series. Levine claims his team had been thinking about making another game of that type since System Shock 2. He pointed out many similarities during his narration of a video initially screened for the press at E3 2006: There are several comparable game play elements: Plasmids serve the same function as Psionic Abilities from System Shock 2; the player needs to deal with security cameras, turrets, and drones with the abilities to hack these; ammo conservation is stressed as "a key gameplay feature," and audio recordings serve as the same storytelling device that email logs did. The use of "ghosts" from System Shock 2, phantom images who replay tragic incidents in the places they occurred, also exist in BioShock, as do modifiable weapons with multiple ammunition types. Additionally, Atlas guides the player along with a radio, much in the same way Janice Polito did in System Shock 2.
Comments? Yes? No? I got this game, very fun.