BioShock [SPOILERS INSIDE: ENTER AT OWN RISK]

[UnSub]

1) Fontaine loves conning people. Especially smart people.

2) Fontaine ends up at Rapture and sees a lot of opportunites for grift. He gets a big legit income from Fontaine Fisheries and another illicit income from running the smuggling.

3) Tenenbaum discovers the sea slug (i.e. ADAM producer) but needs money to develop it. The smugglers give her the money. She starts hanging around with Fontaine. It is possibly a romantic liason.

4) Fontaine Futuristics develop ADAM functionality that everyone in Rapture wants - Tenenbaum works on ADAM, Suchong works on the plasmids.

5) Fontaine obviously keeps the smuggling going and grows his power. He wants control of Rapture. His Little Sister orphanages and poorhouses provide him with plenty of raw human resources.

6) Tenenbaum develops a conscience and has a falling out with Fontaine at some point. She knows about Fontaine's plan to get at Ryan through his son since she was the one who pulled the egg out of Jasmine Jolene. Suchong looks after the mental conditioning and experimentation on Ryan's genetic offspring. According to one hazy memory of a radio communication, Fontaine tells you that he and Tenenbaum put you into that bathyscape to the surface. This has to occur prior to September 1958, as does Tenenbaum falling out with Fontaine.

7) Ryan, fearing the loss of control of Rapture, starts to abandoning his Objectivist ideals and eventually nationalises Fontaine Futuristics. All plasmids are hence rebranded Ryan Industries. I'm guessing this happens in 1958. Suchong comes to work for Ryan.

8) Fontaine "dies" in a shoot-out in 1958. He reinvents himself as Atlas, friend to the working people and leader of an underground against Ryan.

9) Atlas builds a guerilla movement that attacks Ryan's power base and forces him to start locking people up in Apollo Square. Ryan's former friends turn against Ryan, who is now a dictator.

10) On New Year's Eve 1959, a horde of Fontaine's workers riot and Rapture's society collapses, driven by the collapse of order and the effects of ADAM.

11) Jack arrives home at some point in early 1960.

Don't get me wrong, there are some huge holes in the story, mostly driven by the difficulty of nailing down a timeline for all this to happen. But imo it's a long way from "a wizard did it" (except for the genetics manipulation bit in the story - that's magic, no matter how many lab coats it tries to put on).

[Kail]

Don't get me wrong, there are some huge holes in the story, mostly driven by the difficulty of nailing down a timeline for all this to happen. But imo it's a long way from "a wizard did it" (except for the genetics manipulation bit in the story - that's magic, no matter how many lab coats it tries to put on).

I dunno... I think maybe my problem is mostly just with Fontaine himself.  Everyone else I can kind of understand, or at least I think I do.  But Fontaine just baffles me.  Most of the stuff I'm not getting seems to revolve around him.  Why steal the baby in the first place?  As far as I'm aware, the main reason you being Ryan's son is important is because the bathyspheres are keyed to work only for someone with his genetic code, but the lockdown (unless I'm mistaken) was fairly recent, almost certainly some time after Fontaine harvests the egg and sends the main character away... so why steal the thing in the first place?  Does he just go around nicking embryos, or what?  Why send the kid out of Rapture?  Fontaine was building an army of splicers in secret down there, why was this one guy sent away while the others weren't?  Why give him false memories?  I can understand him wanting to trick someone, but conning someone who is both under your mental control and has memories provided by you seems a bit like bringing a bazooka to a paintball tournament.  And if he's not doing it for kicks, it seems like a stupid plan, since pretty much the whole reason you go after him is because he's screwing with your head. 

Why bring him back to Rapture?  Partly this ties in to "why send him away in the first place," partly it's "why doesn't Fontaine do it himself, since he's an engine of destruction and Atlas evidently has more mobility than you do, despite the alleged lockdown" and partly it's about the timing.  Rapture has clearly fallen to shit, the city is taking on water virtually everywhere.  What does Fontaine want "control of the city" for?  The people?  They're all irrepairably insane, as far as I can tell.  The buildings?  They don't look like they could last a week without attention from some workmen, all of whom are either dead or gibbering madmen.  The ADAM?  He's already got almost all of it.  The money all has Andrew Ryan's face on it, so I doubt that it would be considered legal tender outside of Rapture.  If Fontaine brought you back earlier, so that you could take control of the city while there was still something to salvage, or later, after the crazies had killed each other off, I could maybe understand it, but he seems to bring you in right when the danger is highest and the payoff is lowest. 

And then, after you kill Ryan, he stops being the masterful con-man and goes into threatening mobster mode.  Why?  That's not con artist behavior; con artists don't shout "Aha, gotcha!" just before you hand them the money.  And they certainly don't sit there and call you up to taunt you as you charge their house with a grenade launcher.  If he couldn't kill Ryan on his own, why does he think he has a chance against you, who were able to cut a swath through half of Rapture to get to Ryan, and then blasted through the other half to get to Fontaine, getting stronger the whole time?  After you ice Ryan, why doesn't Fontaine kill you?  Does he really think that those two security bots (versus the twenty or so which you've already taken down) are going to stop you? 

I'm just not seeing how it fits together... I just get the feeling that he was this kind of filler character who did whatever needed to be done in the plot to make the cool things happen.  He's the consummate deciever, except for the last half of the game where he's not.  He's a brilliant planner and criminal mastermind, except his plan doesn't make any sense.  He's a power hungry thug who plans on killing you, but he has no problem with you getting more and more and more powerful as you go after Ryan.  I dunno.  I'm just not getting him as a character, and since he moves most of the plot (especially the parts of it which take place during the game), I'm having trouble seeing it.  Ah, well.

[squirrel]

"Once you strip that down the badguy might as well just be Showdown with a waistcoat and a copy of Atlas Shrugged"

LOL. Finished it, enjoyed the hell out of it. It was appropriately spooky, atmospheric and fun. Well worth the price of admission.

I agree with most of the comments here about the story, and specifically I agree with Ironwood that I doubt I'll play through it again anytime soon. But I finished it once (a rare occurrence for me these days), and found it to be creepy, frightening, entertaining and well worth the $50 I spent on it. Yeah the story fell apart, the moral 'choices' weren't, the RPG aspect was pretty thin and it lacked the outright "JESUSSHITFUCKINGHELL" factor of SS2, but it was still one of the best games I've played this year easily.

[Ironwood]

SHODAN.

:)

[Ironwood]

Something else that's been bothering me for a while :  There's no likeable character in the game.

They're all inherintly selfish and evil.  Even Tennenbaum.  System Shock 2 had a wealth of different characterisations ranging from the evil and selfish right up the heroic figure struggling for redemption of his fathers sins and defeating even genetic ruin.

I don't give two tugs of a dead dogs cock about anyone in Bioshock.  They can all die in a car fire.

[Riggswolfe]

Something else that's been bothering me for a while :  There's no likeable character in the game.

They're all inherintly selfish and evil.  Even Tennenbaum.  System Shock 2 had a wealth of different characterisations ranging from the evil and selfish right up the heroic figure struggling for redemption of his fathers sins and defeating even genetic ruin.

I don't give two tugs of a dead dogs cock about anyone in Bioshock.  They can all die in a car fire.

The only ones I truly cared about where the little sisters. They were the only victims in the story. So, I finished the game to save their little asses. That and whoever scripted the moment in the orphanage is an evil SOB. Showing them to me in that context ensured I had to go blow Fontaine's and Ryan's faces off. Fontaine more than Ryan.

Oh, and as for "why you" I think it had to do with the self destruct. I got the feeling only someone keyed to Ryan's DNA could stop it.

[Samprimary]

Everyone else I can kind of understand, or at least I think I do.  But Fontaine just baffles me.

Fontaine didn't baffle me because I've known people essentially like him. Sociopaths who you only get to know are sociopaths because they've grown old and dumped their cover personas after bouncing between scores of social groups and s.o.'s that they've schmoozed. manipulated, and broken the trust of.

In the spoiler interview of Ken Levine, he says that Fontaine just sort of represents emptiness. He's the irredeemable monster that breaks Ryan's ideals because he thrives in the freedom that Rapture's society gives its people expecting them to do the best for society in the end.

[Tebonas]

Yeah, when we say people can't have good things because they are broken we essentially mean people like Fontaine.

Ah and ikeable characters, personally I found Bill McDonagh quite likeable. It was sad finding him dead.

[Big Gulp]

I'm not reading any of this thread, because I'm still playing, but I just wanted to say that I'm glad I couldn't be a cold hearted bastard and kill any little sisters.  I'm just now into the little orphanage, and like the Grinch, my heart just grew three sizes.

Now I feel all sappy and icky.

[Kitsune]

Heh, just wait until he reaches the last fight, then.

But yeah, the orphanage was definitely a moment of, "Oh shit, this place would've been a disaster of guilt if I'd been killing them all this time..."

[Ironwood]

Guilt which dries up the instant you realise you're fucked for the endings anyway, so you may as well eat all the bitches.  And their little dogs too.

[Megrim]

Saw the youtubed endings, and man... you guys got shafted. Is that what passes for "resolution" nowadays? Nuke the planet? loler

I did have a question though, is there an explanation given in the game why someone designed such a system for ADAM filtration. I mean, why would they use a little-girl filter in the first place? Is there some particular scenario, or did they just stick that in there to make it all "dramatic" and whatnot?

[Ironwood]

Silly, don't you know that Little Girls Tummies are the best place to rejuvenate ADAM ?

There was an explanation.  It was bollocks.

Christ, I can't even remember it now.  It was to do with Sea Slugs.

There were definitely at least 3 audio logs talking about the creation of the Little Sisters.  But you shouldn't delve to closely into it, as you'll realise it's complete fucking nonsense.

The audio log of the parents whose child was stolen to become a little sister was heart-rending until you thought about it.  That's not telling to a collapse of a society, that's an outright break.  I could maybe accept that little sisters were grown artificially :  That the population used their own children is just fucking rubbish.


EDIT :  Try THIS.  Might be interesting.  I have given up caring.  My Bioshock CD is currently under Elena's clothes somewhere.

[Big Gulp]

Okay, finished it last night, and enjoyed it.  Unlike some of us (Ironwood), I don't overthink the plots of videogames...

What did disappoint me, though, is that the sense of dread you had in the beginning of the game really goes away fairly quickly.  For me it only really lasted through the medical ward.  After that I was a torchifying, hacking machine of destruction.  That's something that System Shock 2 never relented on; I was scared shitless throughout that entire game.

Yeah, good game, but definitely not worth the 10's a lot of gaming review sites were giving it.

[Ironwood]

Hey, I resent that;  there wasn't anything for me to overthink.

 

[Miasma]

What did disappoint me, though, is that the sense of dread you had in the beginning of the game really goes away fairly quickly.  For me it only really lasted through the medical ward.

Yeah it was briefly resurrected when those plaster splicers started attacking and when I had to worry about corpses jumping up but you adapt pretty quickly to the atmosphere.

[Tebonas]

I strongly suspect most reviews didn't go past the Andrew Ryan showdown, or even past the medical ward. Up to then it was quite good.

[Big Gulp]

I strongly suspect most reviews didn't go past the Andrew Ryan showdown, or even past the medical ward. Up to then it was quite good.

Perversely, one of my favorite parts of the game was finding out the fate of 'Papa Suchen'.  Hearing him scream on that audio tape and then seeing a doctor's corpse on a table with a giant Big Daddy drill sticking out of his chest made me chuckle.

[Kitsune]

Yeah it was briefly resurrected when those plaster splicers started attacking and when I had to worry about corpses jumping up but you adapt pretty quickly to the atmosphere.

Yeah, those plaster splicers were a magnificent, bastardly act.  Walking into that one shop, walking back out and seeing all of the 'statues' missing, that really lead to an, "Oh.  Um, that's not good." moment

As for the sisters, their role was solely to be hosts to the slug parasite-thing that was doing the actual Adam purification.  For some weird reason  (ie convenience of storytelling) the slug wasn't compatible with fully-grown hosts; Suchong laments in one of his logs that the sisters' super-regenerative powers can't be given to an adult.

[LK]

Yeah it was briefly resurrected when those plaster splicers started attacking and when I had to worry about corpses jumping up but you adapt pretty quickly to the atmosphere.

Yeah, those plaster splicers were a magnificent, bastardly act.  Walking into that one shop, walking back out and seeing all of the 'statues' missing, that really lead to an, "Oh.  Um, that's not good." moment

As for the sisters, their role was solely to be hosts to the slug parasite-thing that was doing the actual Adam purification.  For some weird reason  (ie convenience of storytelling) the slug wasn't compatible with fully-grown hosts; Suchong laments in one of his logs that the sisters' super-regenerative powers can't be given to an adult.

Best moment in the game for me was when I got the Power to the People buff, turned around, saw that the chair that was previously occupied was now empty.  Had about a second to say "oh SHIT" right when the first plaster splicer attacks you.

Straight out of a movie, that scene.

[UnSub]

I strongly suspect most reviews didn't go past the Andrew Ryan showdown, or even past the medical ward. Up to then it was quite good.

I believe that the BioShock narrative probably works best when you run through it as quickly as possible. It's when you stop and think about it that things start to fall apart.

[UnSub]

They used little girls as the system for producing ADAM because it the sea slugs couldn't work as effectively in larger bodies and it was found that re-feeding ADAM to the slugs increased ADAM output 4x, or something. Why only little girls? Fontaine made that decision; something about only needing one toilet in the orphanage (which is junk, as anyone who has ever seen a girls vs guys line for toilets).

However, BioShock really does use science as magic in many respects.

[Ironwood]

I thought it was because Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dogs Tails interfered with the efficient production of ADAM, whereas Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice caused the production to go through the roof ?

Seriously, ignore the whole story.  Enjoy the water effects.

I want to talk to this guy Levine.  Mostly to punch his face.

[UnSub]

I thought it was because Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dogs Tails interfered with the efficient production of ADAM, whereas Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice caused the production to go through the roof ?

Seriously, ignore the whole story.  Enjoy the water effects.

I want to talk to this guy Levine.  Mostly to punch his face.

If it's up on YouTube or if you know someone who bought the BioShock CE box, watch the Making Of... video. I get the distinct impression (or I'm looking at it squint-eyed, your pick) that BioShock suffered from three too many re-writes as the setting changed yet again and the monsters were altered and suddenly the game engine was optimised in a new way. I think almost everyone agrees that the first bit of BioShock is excellent, but it is the later levels that let it down.

[Samwise]

10) On New Year's Eve 1959, a horde of Fontaine's workers riot and Rapture's society collapses, driven by the collapse of order and the effects of ADAM.

11) Jack arrives home at some point in early 1960.

In between there is the war between "Atlas" and Ryan.  There was a recording from Diane McClintock lamenting how Ryan didn't like her any more after the scarring she suffered in the New Year's attack, followed by one about how she'd joined Atlas's resistance movement, and how they'd killed a little girl for her ADAM, and how it broke her heart to do it but but it was Ryan's fault for putting them in this position, et cetera.

Suchong also mentions that using the girls as "gatherers" (sucking blood/ADAM/? out of corpses) started during the war, because there were all these corpses lying around needing to be recycled.  This is what led to the development of the Big Daddies, since even with their super-regenerative powers it wasn't going to be cost-effective to send the girls out into a war zone unescorted.


As far as the whole sea slug thing, my reading of it was that the sea slugs don't generate ADAM directly themselves, but secrete some enzyme that breaks normal tissue down into ADAM, which is some sort of stem-cell-type tissue that can be easily "shaped".  That's why the worker who got bit by the slug regained the use of his hand -- his damaged tissue was broken down into ADAM, which then simply grew itself into a new hand in the absence of any fancy plasmids telling them to grow a hive of bees or what have you.

The girls initially simply provided a convenient place for the slugs to live while they turned blood into ADAM.  Before the war, the slugs were "fueled" by the girls' own bodies (like parasites) and produced ADAM at a slow but steady rate.  After the war started, there was this sudden surplus of human tissue lying all over the place, and the ADAM industry adapted by developing the "gatherer" system.


I'm not convinced Ryan is dead.  Not that it really matters since we're most likely not going to see a sequel, but he could very easily have respawned in a Vita Chamber and then escaped in a sub during the confusion that followed his death.

[Prospero]

Actually we're supposed to see sequels every couple years according to Irrational. On what, I can't imagine. Maybe the other super sekrit underwater cities?

[Miasma]

Playing as a little sister growing up in New York/Tokyo/London and discovering her powers as the government tries to capture her to aid in the cold war and Rapture survivors still itching for some Adam try to harvest her.

Boilerplate baby!

[Kitsune]

I'd play that.

[LK]

That actually would be pretty cool.

[Ironwood]

Oh God, STOP.

[MrHat]

Just finished.

Anyone have a link to the good ending?

Four favorite things that I'll remember the game by in a year:

1) Atmosphere.
2) Suchong's audio and him having a Daddy drill in his corpse.
3) Killing little girls then realizing that they're little girls, aka. the Tenebaum safe house.
4) A man choses, a slave obeys.

[Kitsune]

The good and bad endings are both all over youtube, should be a pretty easy find.

[Big Gulp]

Oh God, STOP.

Better yet, the CIA gets ahold of a teenaged little sister, and sends her into Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos where she has to insert heroin into the body bags of dead soldiers  (the kids love ironic reversals!).  It all goes bad when a renegade colonel living in some bizarro primitive compound with a horde of jungle underlings decides that she's just an errand boy for the man, and that he has to get rid of her.  She then needs to terminate his command with extreme prejudice and free the POWs from the Hanoi Hilton.

Why am I not producing these games?

[AcidCat]

I beat Bioshock over the weekend, and, while those who are looking to point to video games as a sophisticated medium are pointing at this as their new example of it, this was much shallower than a "Zelda" or a "Grand Theft Auto."

The much-hyped moral stickyness of the game boils down to whether you press the X or Y button to dispose of the gatherers. Everything else is just run-and-gun shooter.

The art design of the game is a cut above what you see in most games, and its 30's deco style is really consistent throughout the game. The exterior shots of Rapture are really cool. But the art design is built into boring level design. The maps never really feel like a city. It's just rooms and corridors. It's polish and production design built over very antiquated mechanics.

It seems like corners have been cut in this game. The scripted sequences that are taken for granted in top-tier single player action games are almost absent here. The maps are not designed around creating a sense of place.  The idea that Rapture is a city torn by a war between Fontaine and Ryan is a subtext developed exclusively in the audio files. The game is just a series of rooms and hallways with splicers spawning in to attack you.

It seems like the whole premise of the game was supposed to be the choice between harvesting and rescuing the little sisters, a premise that was evidently gutted rather than seen to fruition.  Emerging in the safehouse full of little girls makes no sense at all for players who have been killing the little sisters, and for those who have been rescuing them, the whole Point Prometheus level makes no sense. If you rescued the girls, why do you have to look like a Big Daddy to get them to open the doors for you? Didn't one of the girls open the door of the safehouse for you before you got the suit?

One obvious inference is that the game was meant to branch into two paths depending on how you had been making the one relevant choice the game gives you, and ultimately that was shelved for efficiency and getting the game done.  Likewise, the idea the idea that that choice should have been a difficult one is thrown out too. Since you get a gift with 200 Adam for every three gatherers you save, the penalty for playing the hero is insignificant.  So to the extent that a central idea of the game is to offer the player an opportunity to do something noble while putting a greed incentive on doing something repulsive, that idea is likewise gutted, probably because they didn't want to work out how to balance the game around some players having very little Adam and some players having lots.

Also, the audio diaries are an awful way to tell the story. They are totally external to the game play. They might as well just print the backstory in the manual. 

This is probably the best assessment of the game I've read, you're 100% right. I swear this game must have shipped to reviewers with some special kool aid, because the amount of perfect or near-perfect scores this game received across the board is absolutely baffling.

[UnSub]

From a Gamespot interview with Ken Levine, creative developer behind BioShock:

GS: Considering that the plot inhabits the gray areas of morality and you've included general condemnation of taking things to extremes, why give the player two endings that are on ridiculously opposite ends of the spectrum?

KL: I think that's a fair question and honestly, it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me. It was a reasonable request because I think people want to just have a sense of the different consequences from doing that path.

[...]

One of the reasons I was opposed to multiple endings is I never want to do things that have multiple digital outcomes, versus analog outcomes. I want to do it like the weapons system in the combat in BioShock. There are a million different things you can do in every combat; you can play it a million different ways. Looking into the future for the franchise, that's something I want to [figure out], that by the time you get to the ending of that choice path, you have a sense of your impact on the world through lots of little permutations rather than like a giant ending piece, if you follow my meaning.

And I think we did a reasonably good job with [the endings], but there are just two of them. And this is not a game about A and B. This is a game about one through 1 million, and all those permutations of choice. And as I think about the future of the franchise, that's where I want to take that.

I think this explains a lot.