BioShock Revisited: unraveling the complex and messy legacy of the 2K KO franchise

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• BioShock Revisited: unraveling the complex and messy legacy of the 2K KO franchise

The "would you like?" In 2007's BioShock it's still one of the best in the game - you can't see it coming, and yet when that happens it just makes sense, and you think back on the story so far with a deeper understanding of The Underwater World of Rapture. This is the most iconic streak in the series: one of those rare moments you'll still remember 12 years after playing it, and probably in another 12. As Jonathan Chey, founder of developer Irrational, tells us, this moment isn't "the soul of Bioshock," but it sums up what fans loved on their first trip to Rapture. . Spins can be cheap and the gorgeous underwater environment created by Irrational would have been wasted on a lesser game; What made BioShock memorable was that it managed to wow gamers while remaining completely consistent and believable. Everything from propaganda posters peeling off the ornate walls to audio newspapers hidden on the shelves felt connected. "The world of BioShock isn't just 'hey, we found something crazy just to surprise you,' there's a broader theme," says Chey. "It can paint a very pretty picture, but if it's not interactive, if it doesn't allow you to explore and manipulate the environment and be affected by it, then it's a bit of a fun fair right now. Which has helped people to connect (to BioShock) is that the world makes sense to the player, as well as being a nice backdrop." A lot has changed since 2007. BioShock had a sequel, then a struggling third entry, Infinite, which has experienced a long development in the grip of conflict. This month, publisher 2K announced that a new studio, Cloud Chamber, is working on the next BioShock game. We thought it was the perfect excuse to revisit the series thus far and ask ourselves: in our time when games, even exceptional ones, are so quickly forgotten, what exactly is it? BioShock legacy?

The new Cloud Chamber development studio is working on the next BioShock game. (Image credit: Cloud Chamber)

System crash

BioShock felt unique when it released in 2007, but the main idea behind it was somehow completely derivative. The starting point was not to present players with moral dilemmas, but to simply build "another Shock game," says Chey, referring to the System Shock series. Chey, along with Ken Levine and Robert Fermier, founded Irrational Games in 1997 after the trio left the developer for Thief Looking Glass Studios, and System Shock 2 was their start. It is a PC classic and one of the games credited with popularizing the immersive simulation genre. But some parts were clumsy, and despite critical praise, this has never been a huge commercial success. For BioShock, Irrational, called 2K Boston at the time of the game's release, wanted to bring what they loved about System Shock 2 to a wider audience. "Not just because we wanted to make money from it, but because we felt like most people in the gaming community didn't know how cool this type of game was." What can we do to mass market it? Chey says. Obviously, we weren't talking about simplifying it internally, but making it more accessible." Obviously, BioShock has proven to be more than an extension of System Shock 2. The two games share certain strengths: a mix of shooter and RPG elements, a complex relationship between player and antagonist and environmental storytelling, but the things BioShock is most revered for only emerged later.Its story gradually took shape as Levine drew inspiration from various sources: the life of John D. Rockefeller, the writing of George Orwell and, perhaps most importantly, the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, who came to define both the game's apparent villain Andrew Ryan and the world of Rapture.

Andrew Ryan, founder of Rapture. (Image credit: BioShock (2K Games)) The team also landed a role for the "Little Sisters": genetically modified young girls that the player, upon meeting them, could save or harvest for ADAM, a resource that increased the power of the players. It was a simplistic ethical dilemma, admits Jordan Thomas, BioShock's level designer and creative director of BioShock 2. But still, he made players think. "Most people didn't say the moral choice system was revolutionary, but they did say they had feelings for the little sisters...they felt manipulated into thinking twice about (ADAM's) points versus narrative payoff," he says. . "Honestly, it's something like 101 in terms of an ethical dilemma, and other games at the time had much more textured options among the results you wanted to see, but few "among them have been integrated into system-wide systems." it was this tangle of moral choices with theme, story, and mechanics that marked BioShock as special.It seemed the developers had thought through every decision: the "manipulation" described by Thomas was the result of planning how the player would feel about throughout their journey, leading to the reveal "would you like to? The philosophical themes of the BioShock games have also won over fans, and Chey notes that the series' in-depth examination of complex themes is the BioShock's biggest impact on the industry as a whole "In System Shock 2, I didn't walk away feeling the least bit like I had sent a message to the world. I wasn't thinking about the philosophical implications of AI. BioShock's biggest innovation it was the depth of its narrative and the fact that it left you things to reflect on the world. "

The underwater city itself. (Image credit: BioShock (2K Games))

Philosophy "Double Barrel Rifle"

What things? In the original BioShock, it was mostly Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which was based on the assumption that "human happiness is the moral goal of life." In BioShock 2, it was collectivism: prioritizing groups over the individual. And in BioShock Infinite, a sprawling game, it was all about worship, quantum mechanics, fate, and more. Thomas believes that what made BioShock stand out was the efficiency with which he explored these ideas through his overall design, turning philosophical arguments into "architecture" that players could explore - without cultivating ideas. "What BioShock does brilliantly is allow you to physically explore the space described by a philosophy and learn more by osmosis, rather than lecturing," he says. "Through the repetition and the fact that wherever you turned, there was a lesson, whether it was visual or auditory, which achieves a kind of synthesis. I think that people who knew nothing about Objectivism have absorbed it and who at the same time fewer can discuss it on the internet." Its depth, a sense, even if he wasn't committed to its philosophies, that it was something, spilled over to other developers, Thomas argues: "Validation from the industry has been driven," he says, becoming an often cited example of "games as art", with the "heavy coat" that implies. These complex themes also created a tension, present throughout the series, between his nuanced ideas and instant action. It was a philosophy by means of a double-barreled rifle.

Dual-use powers and weapons in BioShock Infinite. (Image credit: BioShock Infinite (2K Games)) "(It's a) Jekyll and Hyde schism between the major issues that so many people who work on games want to discuss, and also the brutal action vehicle they have to use," Thomas says. . And looking back, it's something that amazes me all the time about this era of video games, trying to achieve something that speaks to the human condition, while having to respond to commercial demand." Most would agree that neither Neither BioShock 2 nor Infinite lived up to the original, which garnered the best reviews from critics and often appears on lists of the greatest games of all time.In part, that's just because it's the first: it was brilliant. and new, and fans had never played anything like it before. To some degree, a sequel was almost always doomed. But it also indicates structural problems with the development of the two subsequent games. For BioShock 2, as Thomas described above, they were Time and creation constraints Now a member of another studio, 2K Marin, Thomas only had two years to build the game and said it had to compete with Gears of War and Call of Duty – far from the Silent Hill-type game he wanted to create . The development was a "heartbreaking series of reality checks," says Thomas. At first, he devoted his efforts to creating dreamscape versions of Rapture's past, through which a little sister would discover her own history. But ultimately he had to "deviate" from the version of the game sought by the highest-ranking officials, "with little touches of surrealism that I love so much."

Obsessive Little Sisters: Do You Save Them Or Use Them To Get More Powers? (Image credit: BioShock (2K Games))

Big ideas, little people

Had he had time, he would have wanted a deeper exploration of antagonist Sofia Lamb's altruistic philosophy, he said. What he is pleased with is that he was able to tell the stories of "little people", echoing the fact that the game was created by a newer, smaller team. "We tried, we wanted to compete with the big brother, but when we couldn't, we had this happy accident, which was that we moved the narrative to focus on the forgotten: the people of color, women of the time who were neglected and powerless, so in the new power structure they were ahead." He admits that he could have done more on this front - the game was called for by Tropes vs Women in the video game series to have female characters as "background decoration", for example - but he did it. sees it, at the very least, as a step in the right direction. Infinite, on the other hand, was hampered not by scope, but by its own ambition. In addition to trying to serve as an exclamation point for the series, it has attempted to tackle arguably the heaviest themes yet: racism, racism, American Exceptionalism, cults, and infinite worlds.The writers, including Thomas, have gotten "really wrapped up" in the quantum mechanical world, perhaps to the detriment of sociopolitical themes . Infinite didn't have much to say about racism, for example, other than the fact that it existed. "People tended to say, 'This game is racist,' or 'Oh, these people are racist and that's not described with enough nuance.' 'It's satire, but it doesn't have time to be deep satire. I understand these perspectives. It's true the team's brain didn't shut down, it was just a function of time and energy and where it could register in the middle of the energy."AAA gun show," he says.In trying to touch on a lot of themes, the team he paid less attention to each one individually, it was "lots of ideas, all competing."

The flying city of Columbia. (Image credit: BioShock Infinite (2K Games)) When we ask Thomas how he hopes players will remember the BioShock series as a whole, he says he wants them to think of it as a "visit to a foreign country, where they were immersed". in a place where he challenged them, and where he asked them, if not to learn a lot, at least to question the world around them and what the real world around them says. "It would be a wonderful start," he says. "And then they allow their own ideas, whatever they are, to mature unlike this immersive experience in a distant place. I think BioShock games, at their best, are places where meaning can be explored, even if your mind doesn't change, at least you've been lucky enough to be exposed to another perspective, externalized and sized, instead of just being pushed."

Walking in the clouds

BioShock's legacy among fans, and the extent to which each player has committed to its ideas, is of course unclear. What is perhaps more measurable is its impact on the development community. Some developers, like Thomas, have remained loyal to the series; The participation of others was more ephemeral. Either way, each of them will have taken a piece of BioShock with them. Thomas and fellow BioShock developer Stephen Alexander went on to found Question Games, which this year released the horror-thriller The Blackout Club. Chey founded Blue Manchu, developer of Card Hunter and Void Bastards. Disgraced developer Arkane was called in as a support studio during BioShock 2: the studio's co-creative director, Sébastien Mitton, helped build parts of Rapture before building Dunwall.

(Image credit: BioShock Remastered (2K Games)) Thomas also cites the huge impact BioShock has had on the indie space, saying that developers who were aware of the tension between BioShock's story and mechanics responded by adjusting their focus on their own. own terms, mitigating this tension. This is evident in the work of Gone Home developer Fullbright, made up of a team that worked on BioShock 2: Minerva & # 39; s Give DLC, for example. "(BioShock) is still an explosive action shooter, but it can be instrumental in making people push themselves and go beyond what we've managed to do," says Thomas. "And I think there's a role for games like this. You can be very critical of all three games, but I think that asked people, 'Hey, could we do a little more?' I'm glad to see the industry is a little more interested in what their games are saying." In this way, perhaps we should not think of BioShock as a great monument overlooking the sea, but, as Thomas says, as a series of "stepping stones" for others. Hopefully Cloud Chamber will step on these stones and follow a path to an exciting new land.