Bioshock's Launch Aftershocks

It should come as no surprise that the level of hype BioShock reached in the last month has had some aftereffects. The game itself is really good; few are disputing that. There were, however, some problems. Next Gen has a few words with Ken Levine on BioShock's troubled launch looking at the broken Big Daddies, the allegations of a rootkit, and the 'widescreen issue'. There are other issues still floating around, of course: despite rumours Levine has now confirmed there will be no PS3 version of the game, and one problem may just be starting as big media finds out about the Little Sisters. 'The Boston Patriot-Ledger ... argues that BioShock is "testing the limits of the ultraviolent gaming genre with a strategy that enables players to kill characters resembling young girls." Despite the shock-inducing lead, the article goes on to give a more or less accurate description of BioShock's choice between saving and harvesting the creepy Little Sisters ... The conclusion tries to draw a link between BioShock's violence to a stabbing death allegedly inspired by Grand Theft Auto, but the connection is pretty weak.' To close on a good note check out 1up's profile of Levine's career, or download the BioShock score ... which is beautiful.

Comments

Well Don't That Beat All.

[Petersko]

"And finally, I want to personally congratulate Racer_S from the Widescreen Gaming Forums, and his awesome user patch to expand the widescreen FOV in BioShock. I'm currently tracking him down via email, but hopefully, he'll accept my gratitude, and maybe an Nvidia 8800 to boot."

Now that is a terrific attitude. 2K Games went up 10 notches on my Classy Scale.

Morality Shock

[Devir]

THe game is brave enough to touch on many issues others are simply too scared to face.

Harvest or "Save" the Little sisters. The guy helping you out says you should kill them to harvest all the "Adam" you can get, this lets you essentially level up faster. Or you can Save them as their creator would like and get some huge reward later on. She has gained some morality after turning little girls into monsters.

The theme is that you are in a fallen paradise city. The residents have gone insane and most are trying to kill you. You're forced to make moral choices on surviving, or dying. The city itself has fallen in disrepair and most residents will most likely die in a few years anyway.

I've not noticed anything "considerably" broken with BIg daddies. I just see them as spawning and searching out the sisters. If you already got all the sisters in the level, then the big daddies just go on looking. It adds texture.

The other moral issues in the game are gene modifications. Most denizens are mod junkies and have become twisted because of it. They were all once normal humans who took a little too much drugs. Some of the doctors in the city have gone a step further by doing horrible surgeries on people disfiguring them and killing their nurses in the process. It adds to the flavor of the story in which you are stuck in a Hell and are trying to find a way out.

As far as "preservation of life" vs killing them goes. As far as the main character knows, they cant be "cured". They're trying to kill him, so he's gotta eliminate them first. The morality here is perhaps death is the better alternative. Either that or live life being disfigured and insane.

Bioshock has gone through some serious blood and sweat in it's creation. I give them huge artistic credit as well as taking us to a level of morality so few are brave enough to go. There are many things that should be spoken about, but are not.

Re:Morality Shock

[sammy baby]

I've not noticed anything "considerably" broken with BIg daddies. I just see them as spawning and searching out the sisters. If you already got all the sisters in the level, then the big daddies just go on looking. It adds texture.

After I'd "rescued" all the Little Sisters from a level, I tried following around a Big Daddy just to see what would happen. It approached one of the crawlspaces, banged on it thunderously, then seemed almost to sigh when no Sister emerged from it to shepherd. I actually felt bad for it. Maybe there's some other spawning/AI problem, but I haven't noticed it.

As far as "preservation of life" vs killing them goes. As far as the main character knows, they cant be "cured". They're trying to kill him, so he's gotta eliminate them first. The morality here is perhaps death is the better alternative. Either that or live life being disfigured and insane.

Yeah - I don't recall anyone making an issue of it when Max Payne featured a character gunning down "Valkyrie" crazed addicts. And nobody particularly weeps for the zombies in Day of the Dead.

Re:Morality Shock

[Kelbear]

After a scene in the fisheries, the game spawns 3 splicers scavenging in sewage water, and you stumble upon them from a high vantage point without being noticed.

Obviously in gaming terms the correct thing to do is to electrocute the water, zapping all 3 and inflicting high and/or lethal damage on the spot, saving me from the potential danger these 3 splicers represent. After all, this is a shooter, and your primary interaction with anything in the world is to well, shoot it.

So of course I zapped'em. Then something strange happened, I felt a twinge of remorse.

The game had done such a good job of immersing me into the setting, a dying city filled with desperate people fighting for survival over the remains. I, as the player had been taken from normal society and thrown into Rapture. I had climbed down into the sewage to scavenge through the remains of the 3 splicers, when I realized that I was standing where they stood, doing the exact same thing they were. I'd attacked them in the same way they would have attacked me given the chance. Hell, I'd even attacked them with a plasmid I had spliced into my own DNA, just like them. It was an interesting thing to notice and I laud Bioshock for managing this, intentionally or otherwise.

Any emotional interaction with a shooter has been incredibly rare, aside from this, they had done another "Mr. B-b-b-bubbles...". The only other game I can think of that has brought on feelings other than rage or fear, was HL2:Ep1, where my instinct was not to blast Alyx in the face with my pistol at every turn(unlike the HL1 scientists), but I had actually wanted to comfort her after a scene exiting a Combine railcar.

Put it all to the side

[SilentChris]

I used to write for GameSpot. When we came across a game like this, we reviewers would tend to "lean" the score higher. Don't misunderstand me -- it's a fantastic game. My point is those rating points you see on reviews translate into sales which become big dollars, and we WANT games like this to financially successful. Games like BioShock keep the industry alive. So we would give them a little help.

The gaming community needs to "lean" BioShock higher. We need to stop focusing on the (lack of) a rootkit. We need to stop complaining about the install limitations (in all honesty, who is installing this game on more than 5 machines anyway)? In particular, we need to really fight against those focusing on the "child killing" aspect. (Which, to be frank, is completely disturbing in-game and meant to make the player feel awful).

We need to focus on the art of the game, and try to forget all the tangential stuff. Yes, I know, it's hard for Slashdot folks. "Rawr rawr DRM... rawr rawr install limitations... rawr rawr never going to support this company again." Just put that to the side if you can. We NEED to support games like this. otherwise it's back to horrific Madden clones and movie-licensed drek.

Re:Put it all to the side

[berashith]

I don't understand why I should buy this game if I absolutely disagree with the conduct of the distributor. I have many games that I really like ( starcraft , etc) that i continually install on new machines, or mabe delete for a time and then put back when I feel like another round. If this game is that good, maybe I will want to play it again in several years. If the distributors insist on treating me as a potential criminal for the rights to view their content, then they can fail if I have anything to say about it. The price is too high for me, so I will continue playing Madden clones or reading books, or playing instruments, or riding skateboards and bikes. I have other things I can do, and not being willing to tolerate conduct that offends me is my option. If this concept gains steam with enough people, it is not the people's fault that the industry suffers. It is the industry's fault for treating their customers as theives.

Re:Put it all to the side

[eddy]

> We NEED to support games like this.

I'll support them when they support me (=us gamers). Tit for tat. I have already cooperated first, and that didn't remove the silly copy-prevention mechanisms (and please don't say the word 'publishers', I'm not an idiot). I'm all out of cooperation.

See you in the bargain bin.

Re:Put it all to the side

[fimbulvetr]

The story in this game struck as awesome. I've never seen a video game with this sort of story and so well executed. The play was good and the plasmid/tonic selection is so powerful it deserves to be in many future games.

I felt many distinct emotions in this game: Fear, Surprise, Empathy, Pity, Rage, Aggression, Sadness, Regret and Shock(From the dialouge, like "Don't you fucking judge me!").

Doom maybe had me on Fear and Surprise, but no other game has given me the spectrum above.

Re:Put it all to the side

[Rycross]

Theres a lot thats different about it. Its not a genre-shattering game, but it has enough creativity in enough places to deserve the credit. Setting, for one. Instead of yet-another-WW2-game, we have an underwater city set in the 1960's. That lends a lot to the atmosphere. The plot that follows is also well done.

I don't play enough FPSes to comment on whether the actual mechanics are innovative or not, but I'll take a stab at some of the things that I found nifty. They mixed in RPG-ish character upgrades, that you can buy using Adam. This Adam is obtained through either saving or harvesting the Little Sisters, which the summary touched on. You get less if you save the sisters. Theres also the Plasmids, which are magic or psychic like abilities. You can stun people, set them aflame, freeze them, and shock them. You can do nifty things like set a person on fire, so that they jump into a pool of water to douse themselves, then shocking them while they're in the water for extra damage.

Really, theres no one thing thats completely revolutionary about Bioshock. It just has the right settings, the right mechanics, the right plot, the right amount of tension, etc. in the right places. Its a very well put together game.

Re:Put it all to the side

[IthnkImParanoid]

There is a more compelling story and atmosphere (which I'm severely understating because other posts explain it well), an rpg-lite component allowing you to enhance your character, and far more variety than the average fps: my strategy for dealing with enemies has changed completely as the game has progressed, not only based on the enemy but based on the abilities I have at the moment. It's not just a "which weapon do I use: the best one or the one I have the most ammo for." I can actually control the style to some extent.

If you liked System Shock 2, you will like this game. If you haven't played System Shock 2, you should. If you didn't like it, I have no idea what you look for in a game.

Re:Put it all to the side

[Xian97]

We need to stop complaining about the install limitations (in all honesty, who is installing this game on more than 5 machines anyway)?
The problem is that it might not be 5 machines. I installed it the other day under my profile, answering yes when it asked if I wanted to install it for all users. I activated it and played with no problems. When my 19 year old son went to play it under his profile it wanted to be activated again. So it's asking for 2 activations on the same PC. There are 3 more user accounts on that PC too, though I doubt if my wife will be interested in playing it.

That makes we wonder, is it a per user profile or per machine activation? Why ask to install for every user on the PC and not activate it for all users? I called 2K Support and they didn't have the answer either. I can't be the only one running multiple user profiles on the same PC. Also, both of our accounts have admin privileges so it shouldn't be a permissions issue.

Re:Put it all to the side

[geeknado]

I wouldn't dismiss anything that's 'better along all dimensions' personally, but one thing that's definitely interesting about Bioshock relative to most other action games(not just in the FPS genre) is that there're frequently many, many possible solutions to a given problem. Since I'm a big fan of letting other game elements do my work for me, I spend a lot of time in the game sneaking around and hacking every single piece of security that I encounter. Frequently, I'll have moved along, and I'll hear the whine of a security alarm and the sound of some enemy getting killed...It's good, grim fun. Add that to the ability to lay actual mines and other traps and you may spend relatively little time actually 'shooting' in this game, depending on your playstyle.

It's also interesting how various abilities chain together-- setting an enemy on fire with your plasmids and then shooting a heat seeking rocket at it is quite satisfying. I've played shooters where "Magic" is a part of the whole, but very few where abilities complement each other so well.

Lastly, and a-typically for an FPS, although the plot is relatively linear(you move along and open various areas sequentially, you usually have a goal that shuttles you around to different parts of said areas), there're large side areas for exploration that have no direct purpose beyond adding tone. Frequently, there'll be a little payoff in the form of a recording from a resident of Rapture or perhaps an unusual tonic, but mostly, they're just there to add to the fun of the game. It's a decent balance...You're not as clearly pushed in a direction as you are even in a decent shooter like Half Life 2.

Bioshock is the only game that I've played which actually inspires my spouse to sit beside me, totally enthralled as events unfold. She practically begs me to play so she can see what's going to happen next. All in all, my feeling is that this is a game that shouldn't be missed.

Re:Put it all to the side

[Devir]

Doom left me feeling Despair. They tried to be so horrible and grotesque that it just wasn't scary or controversial. There was little believability in the game. It was just a shooter showing off an amazing game engine.

Quake 4 came out a little later and I bought it, but played it a few months later. It was far better than Doom in many ways. You felt the horrors of these aliens capturing people and converting them to mindless soldiers through painful methods. Still not horrifying or engaging of a story.

Vampire the Masquerade was older than Doom and Quake, yet the scenes and imagery struck me a lot harder. The one scene with the blood king or whoever you had to fight in that pit of blood and severed bodies. You could almost smell it. The imagery was used strategically and not overkill as it was in Doom. It left you in the game wondering what else you'll see, and not wanting to go on, but having to so you can stop the images.

Bioshock brings you forward into a new light. The story is very real. It's engaging and drawing, you want to go on. You want to turn each corner to see what is out there and what you'll find. THe journals are interesting and I listen to them. THe dead bodies you may find are tastefully done to not overkill. They serve some emotional purpose. Like the couple who died in each others arms. I just stopped there to look at them, and threir journal crying over the disfigurment the doc did to their daughter. It was troubling and disturbing. You WANTED to find who did it and set him on fire. If anything, ujst to give their spirits rest.

People who dont want to play this game because of copy protection I can understand. If it were a mediocre game I'd fully understand. X3 had a wretched copy protection scheme and was an "ok' game. Easily skipped and wont be missed. Bioshock is not so easily ignored.

In the end of it all. I'm probably 45% done playing Bioshock and I'm still very much engaged in it's story. When I need a break, I play Persona 3, which is also hard to pass up.

I've played countless games in my life. Bioshock will be added to the "always remember" category.

Under the sea....somewhere.

[Seakip18]

After buying and playing through the game myself, it is indeed a beautiful game. It's a shame that, much like Rapture in game, has been marred of the beauty it dreamed of.

In some of the fights, I encountered AI that got stuck at times and sorta ruined the combat scheme. I remember a big daddy getting stuck twice, making it easy to pick them off.

On the other hand, I was constantly scooping out the environment, seeing if there was some advantage I could use that corridor I just walked through in entrapping a slew of splicers or setting up for taking down a big daddy.

The big daddy/little sister dynamic is just flat out neat concept. I saw a little sister walking along and the big daddy tugged at her to go a different way. Weird, yet what other game would combine setting said big daddy on fire then harvesting/saving little girl?

The game, taken by itself, was very enjoyable. I know with the rootkit, many people will justifiably pirate/refuse to purchase the game. I just find it a shame that people will miss an enjoyable yet poignant game because of lame copyright protection. I myself will face it again with a fresh XP install in the next day or two. Do I risk putting the game back on? I dunno.

Little Sisters

[gweihir]

I am a veteran of System Schok 1 and 2, all Thieve games and Deus Ex 1 and 2, which are sort of the greater family Bioshock is part of. So far I have played the medical level and the game does not disappoint. It is definitely one of these defining games that push the boundaries. It is also creepy as hell in various ways, working expertly with lights, sounds, voices and surprises. An they do not overuse certain situiations, such as, for example, the open-a-door-and be-jumbed in Q3. Example: Typically you hear the MOBs. But when truning round after searching a desk, there was one standing patiently behind me without any warning at all. I nearly fell out of my chair!

Then I reached the point were I had to make the decision to kill or save the first little sister. They make that really hard on you and I had to stop playing for a while. Of course the kill does not happen on-screen and is only implied. It is also not a direct kill: You remove a sea-slug from her that was controlling her. It is inplied that she cannot survive that, but that she might have effectively been dead as a person anyways. The game plays very well with ambiguity here. Oh, and you cannot hurt the little sisters with weapons or in other forms. So no bashing or shooting little girls here.

All in all, I think there is no ethical problem here with the game design. The player cannot rush through this (long cutscene which is non-interruptable), and has to make a choice with as much time as he/she likes for it. I think, there is also the option to ignore the little sister (and possibly come back for her later). Supposedly the game gets very hard later one if you do that. Of course poeple that only see the pictures may come to the wrong conclusions. Those that actually play it should not. At least I see very little risk of that happening.

Levels are really large, and no loading in them. Comparisons to levels in System Shock 2 are fair, if the medical level in Bioshock is typical. And the levels are dense. You do not run through them fast, it is more a careful advancing. It also really does not feel like a console game, the demo is misleading here.

Summary: This game is a milestone and a gem. If you are into shooters with RPG elements and a creepy setting, get it. It will define the genre for the near future. And this time, I hope they got the marketing right. This thing really deserves to be a huge success. If it has, the hole genre will benefit and more interesting shooter-RPG hybrids should crop up in the future.

A note on hardware: It is playable with a 7600GT, but you have to turn down most settings. It runns completely smooth with almost the highest settings in 1280x1024 in a GeForce 8800GTS (Athlon X2 5600+, 2GB RAM), where I just disabled the high-quelity shaders (and I do not like the glossy look they give everything anyways).

Re:Want attention? Write controversy about a game.

[happyemoticon]

Some percentage of users are probably experiencing show-stopper bugs. Let's take the forum rants with a grain of salt, though: users with a chip on their shoulder are a thousand times louder than satisfied customers. Myself, I have encountered two obvious bugs, both of them AI pathing problems - no crashes. It seems to me that Irrational shipped a product which was QAed to satisfaction on some platforms, they just didn't QA for as many platforms as they should've - strange, cheap cards, MB's, RAM, bloated anti-spyware progs, etc.

I have two things to say about the little sisters.

One, if you say "You free children from their existence as vampiric, indestructible monsters with no free will forced to drain and ingest vital fluids from corpses in a post-apocalyptic watery tomb at the bottom of the Atlantic," then, the option of death surely doesn't sound so bad. It's a pretty common theme in vampire pulp, actually: you promise to save your love from their curse, and you do so with a stake through the heart.

Two, not a single child has to die in Bioshock if you don't do it. Most people, whether they know it or not, decide to reject horrible, heinous, evil crimes which they could in fact perpetrate in their daily life, again, whether they know it or not. I think some people would rather imagine that we didn't make these choices, for whatever reason. That's why they're decrying a game which illustrates that very basic choice: mercy or murder; to be a human being or to be a monster. Then, should not the headline read: "Some People Press H When Confronting Little Sisters - Could One Be In Your Neighborhood?"

Go home whiney panzies!

[HazMathew]

It's so easy to sit behind a screen and bitch and moan about the copy protection and the "widescreen issues", and threaten class action lawsuits. You don't like the copy protection? You have three options Man up, focus your energy and crack the damn thing, buy it for the 360, or shut the hell up. You don't like the FOV? Use Racer_s's fix.

Am I the only one sick of seeing boards flooded with all the whiney skript kiddies? Worried about what will happen when 2k isn't around to validate your install anymore? I got news for you, there's gonna be a crack, or 2k will deal with it when the time comes, or you can buy it from Steam (or the like) for $5.

I think this game is great, very entertaining. Worth the ~$45 for the PC version.

Big Media's got a short memory

[uem-Tux]

I was killing little kids years and years ago in Ultima 6. Read Richard Garriott's answer to the second question on this page:

http://www.warcry.com/news/view/73167-Richard-Garr iott-Interview-Part-2