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March 28, 2024, 07:02:57 PM

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BioShock - the Collection

Started by Ferris, August 29, 2021, 12:25:09 AM

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H-O-W-L

Quote from: HamishMacbeth on September 24, 2021, 11:26:30 AM
I always thought it got a bit of a bad rap just because "Bioshock is perfect and doesn't need a sequel" became the mantra at the time. Sure, the story isn't as impactful, but I liked the gameplay more and found the level design more enjoyable.

I think it is a wholly better game than Bioshock 1, in purely mechanical terms, but I think the story is weaker; mostly because Rapture as a character gets sidelined a bit much for the quasi-familial elements.

HamishMacbeth

Quote from: H-O-W-L on September 24, 2021, 12:05:49 PM
I think it is a wholly better game than Bioshock 1, in purely mechanical terms, but I think the story is weaker; mostly because Rapture as a character gets sidelined a bit much for the quasi-familial elements.

I think that's fair. There's also something a little cynical in the whole "last time we showed you a disturbing far right libertarian fantasy, now here's the left side of the coin" as if you can just transpose any political criticism into Rapture and it still works.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: HamishMacbeth on September 24, 2021, 04:01:26 PM
I think that's fair. There's also something a little cynical in the whole "last time we showed you a disturbing far right libertarian fantasy, now here's the left side of the coin" as if you can just transpose any political criticism into Rapture and it still works.

I think it's fair to say that Lamb is not truly on the left, not to play No True Scotsman, but ultimately what she espouses, what she wants to achieve, is a very right wing sort of thing. She doesn't truly want an egalitarian collectivized society -- that's grift, and all her backstory says as much. She wants a top-down bio-totalitarian dictatorship which she controls, as Mother, through Eleanor. Everyone is unified with Eleanor, whom is controlled by Sofia, and all thought, all dissent, is quashed and controlled by her. The circuit is one, and one is the machine.

bgmnts

My only problem with 2 is the same issue with BaS. As in, the idea that Lamb has been around Rapture whilst everything was going down is shoehorny and rubbish.

The same with the theme really, like "ahh but collectivism is just as bad ahhh". Not a fan of the sort of childish effort. But then fuck it not arsed about the story. I feel the first one could never really be topped as the perfect brew of story, characters, world building, level design, sound design, character design, gameplay etc.

H-O-W-L

I think the theme is well-done but as you say retrofitting it into Rapture is sort of half-arsed. It's a game that would've worked a lot better with a whole new setting, or if it had explicitly decanonized Bioshock 1, or even was a prequel, as some kind of like... Bioshock twilight zone anthology thing.

Mister Six

#65
Quote from: H-O-W-L on September 22, 2021, 10:22:07 AMIt's why I also hate a similar coupling in Fallout 4 -- there's no way the pre-war world of Fallout was racially tolerant or LGBTQ+ accepting, at least not openly. It was a fascist hellscape.

How do you know that? Definitely a hellscape, but I don't think there's any indication in Fallouts 1 through New Vegas that America was racist or homophobic (at least no more so than the present) before the bombs fell. The aesthetic comes from '50s sci-fi, but the actual year the bombs came down was 2077.

GoblinAhFuckScary

saw bioshock is on sale on switch as usual but the image they've chosen is hilariously out of scale, so now the big daddy looks tiny baby sized



big dadlet

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Mister Six on September 29, 2021, 02:28:43 AM
but I don't think there's any indication in Fallouts 1 through New Vegas that America was racist or homophobic (at least no more so than the present) before the bombs fell.

Missed this post the first time around.

There was a LOT of anti-Chinese racism and anti-Asian sentiment, which was referenced in FO1, 2, 3, and NV in some form or other. There's even an internment camp for Chinese people in both FO3's DLC Point Lookout, and FONV. While it might seem a reach to extrapolate that to general racism I think it's not a very far one considering even our world struggles with it in the 2020s and we're, at least overtly, less of a fascist hellhole jingoworld than Fallout was. While I doubt it means that other people of color were second-class citizens, merely being of Chinese descent (or having sympathies toward the Chinese period) was enough grounds to be slighted societally and probably even legally.

As for homophobia, it's more of a general guess but characters like Major Knight are pretty cagey about being gay, so it makes me think that -- and again I don't think it's a far stretch -- that there were (and still are) some homophobic attitudes throughout society. The NCR is shown to be a little bit prejudiced (what with all the jokes about legionaries being gay) and they like to be a pre-war American LARP in many cases, so I think that a general undercurrent of homophobia in the pre-war world is not a wild stretch.

As a whole I think the tone of FO1 tries to imply that the pre-war world was worse than the post-war one in many ways (The Glow really nails this home) and that the bombs falling was an inevitability. There's a lot of follow-on from this in the sequels too -- lots of "actually yearning for the pre-war world is fucking stupid, because it was terrible" stuff. It really, really was a terrible place to live, and being anything other than the heteronormative standard (which kept the fascist war-wheels turning) almost certainly wouldn't have been great.

And for that matter-- the Enclave are pretty big on "genetic purity" -- if Fallout 2 were made a bit later (or Bethesda had any balls) I imagine they'd probably have ethnic distastes too. Definitely against people of Chinese or East Asian descent.


So -- a lesbian couple of different ethnicity (IIRC a black woman and an asian woman, according to the GECK, though FO4 doesn't distinguish between different asian nationalities) existing pre-war is not, of course, impossible or silly or unfeasible, but for them to live in Sanctuary Hills, a community established for veterans returning from the war with China... the most nationalistic arsebastards ? It does stretch it to me, and it feels like Bethesda threw it in as a bit of point-scoring, rather than considering the weight of the world it was displaying.

But it's just one of many many many little problems with that intro sequence in FO4. It's waaay too starry-eyed, and makes the pre-war world seem almost liveable. This is the series where, the first glimpse of the pre-war world we got, was unarmed Canadian citizens being shot in the head by Americans in power armor.

bgmnts

Yeah Fallout should be bleak as fuck, always.

Ferris

And because I'm thinking about BioShock due to the discussion in the (excellent) FPS NIGHTMARES thread, what does everyone think about the rumoured 4th game under development?

Supposedly set in an abandoned arctic city which sounds like a laugh, like The Thing but with pop-philosophy. At least they're not giving in to temptation and reheating Rapture (or Columbia).

samadriel

Bioshock Infinite was an odd one for me, because I kind of admired it's raw portrayal of racism (rare for videogames), while I loathe what I perceive as a gigantic case of whataboutery (not sure I'm using the term right, but fuckitpost) with the Vox Populi turning out to be equally as evil as Whitey. So I have a quarrel with both people defending or damning BI. I never played BS2, which is a shame because I hear people say it's the best of the series these days, but I think the scraps of misguided intelligence seen in both BS and BI are praiseworthy enough that I'd probably give a new one a try. Glutton for punishment, hey?

Ferris

I'd forgotten that vox populi anti-twist. What point is it trying to make there?

Shame really, as it was the one that had the most enjoyable gameplay for me.

samadriel

Yes, BI did a lot better than the original in combat, I think level design helped a lot there.

Edit: I guess the VP thing was just lazy game design? Booker's mostly among the blacks and the Irish now? Fuck it, make THEM shoot him too.

bgmnts

Just wanna say again the first two Bioshocks are fucking exceptional and the third one is crap cheers.

Pink Gregory

I haven't replayed Infinite, was 1999 mode any good or was it just a bunch of .ini tweaks?

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Pink Gregory on January 21, 2022, 03:31:07 PMI haven't replayed Infinite, was 1999 mode any good or was it just a bunch of .ini tweaks?

The latter. It was also fucking insulting for them to compare the birdbath-shallow stealth gameplay in "1998 Mode" to Thief.

Mister Six

Quote from: samadriel on January 20, 2022, 03:47:51 PMwhile I loathe what I perceive as a gigantic case of whataboutery (not sure I'm using the term right, but fuckitpost) with the Vox Populi turning out to be equally as evil as Whitey.

Most of the Vox Populi character models were white, but the leader being a black woman kind of skews the perception.

The message of the game is that violence only leads to more violence, so I suppose it's thematically appropriate. I think in the context of a hideously oppressive system like Columbia, though, the message is hard to sell, and the game doesn't do a very good job of it. I suppose they're going for more of a Red Guard/Khmer Rouge vibe, but taking those events, shearing them of context and bolting them onto US racism leads to the complications we see here.

H-O-W-L

It also falls apart considering the game still wants to reward the player for committing violent acts and never truly punishes Booker for being such a bastard -- it actually makes him "kind of a hero" because he still Takes Down Bad Racist Men, as I mentioned over in FPS Nightmares. It's cryptofascist wank really. Ken Levine disappeared up his own arsehole.

Mister Six

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 23, 2022, 04:55:12 AMIt also falls apart considering the game still wants to reward the player for committing violent acts and never truly punishes Booker for being such a bastard

Well, it does - the plot of the game is that

Spoiler alert
Booker's violence leads to him becoming Comstock, which inspires another Booker, who becomes another Comstock over and over and over. The Bad Racist Men are there because Booker empowered them by becoming Comstock, and a new Booker turns up to slaughter them. He's not a hero, because he doesn't really manage to save anyone - he just causes oppression and death building up Columbia and chaos and death bringing it down.

In the end, player-Booker's only able to break the cycle by submitting to death.[/quote]
[close]

H-O-W-L

And yet then a Booker that did all the bad war man shit he's so-pilloried for survives at the very end with his wee babby still at hand anyway. And it's not the same Booker that gets twatted in Burial in Shit either. Infinite really wants to have its cake and eat it.

Mister Six

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 23, 2022, 04:58:44 AMAnd yet then a Booker that did all the bad war man shit he's so-pilloried for survives at the very end with his wee babby still at hand anyway. And it's not the same Booker that gets twatted in Burial in Shit either. Infinite really wants to have its cake and eat it.

I can't really parse what you're saying here, but IIRC, no Bookers survive at the end. His reality winks out of existence (presumably leaving in its place something like our own reality), because the chain of Bookers acting like cunts is broken.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Mister Six on January 23, 2022, 05:03:11 AMI can't really parse what you're saying here, but IIRC, no Bookers survive at the end. His reality winks out of existence (presumably leaving in its place something like our own reality), because the chain of Booker's acting like cunts is broken.



Sadly that's not true.

Ferris

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 23, 2022, 05:04:16 AMSadly that's not true.

Is this the setup for the DLC? It disappeared up its arse and I stopped following the story in any detail.

H-O-W-L

Nope, it was intended always to be a little wink-implication that a Booker survived with Anna (Elizabeth) intact. This was before the DLC was confirmed, planned, or released. You could, probably, take it as the DLC setup but it frankly isn't-- nothing in the scene implies it is, it's clearly meant to be all twinkly-winkly "ahhh he gets an 'appy ending" -- which is what most commentators took it as.

Ferris

It's too complicated for its own good. I'm confused and BioShock hasn't made me care enough to figure it all out.

I like happy endings though, so... good?

Mister Six

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 23, 2022, 05:04:16 AMSadly that's not true.

Ah, right, I must have skipped the credits.

Don't really get why I'm supposed to be bothered by this though. Booker goes and raises his daughter in a normal world and presumably doesn't go apeshit because nobody's going to steal her away? Sounds fine to me.

Famous Mortimer

I just started playing the remastered version of the first Bioshock, and I'm pretty rubbish at fighting. That's probably the reason I stopped playing it the first time it came out, so I'm going to try and power through it.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

I remember the sound in the Bioshock 1 remaster being particularly awful until they patched it. It was in stereo, not surround, and there was absolutely no dynamic range, so everything was equally loud. A door opening was the same volume as a shotgun blast going off.

It was pretty draining playing it like that, especially with headphones on. It was like being on the shop floor of a really noisy warehouse.

Pink Gregory

Are the remasters generally considered good now?

I still have the 360 discs and an Xbox One so I'm not sure I'd bother double dipping unless it's spectacular.

H-O-W-L

They're decent polishes of the games but they're not especially good on their own, no. There's no reason to purchase them if you didn't get them free when they launched.