I want to die. Almost most as much as the soul of Bioshock will more than likely do so if it DOES become a six game series.

Money talks huh.

SIX games? Wow, I thought the first one never seemed to end. Now five more of them? *cancels next 10 years*

I'm looking forward to the 2nd one and maybe the 3rd but 6 is just being silly.

Five more games, great. Five more opportunities for them to royally screw up a good story.

And people complain about Final Fantasy.

I'm usually quite open to sequels, but this is not the way to go about it.

Fuck fuck fuck. I was annoyed when they announced that they were making even one sequel. Why the hell does everything need a sequel anyway? Bioshock had a perfectly contained story with a clear beginning and end. The only bad part was the ending, which was because of executive meddling (originally there was only one ending, but the higher ups demanded that it have two, which is why the ending feels rushed).

i would prefer that they instead made six completely new and different games that are each as good as Bioshock, but I guess that would be asking for too much.

Don't forget about the movie being planned.
I wonder if it's just a rumor like the Halo movie.

Indigo_Dingo:

Lets back up there - people loved Bioshock for being fresh and innovative, and for taking both an incredibly unique atmosphere and a brilliantly written plot, and for how well self contained it seemed to be.

I'm going to have to stop you there. Despite my increasing disagreement with Yahtzee, he did hit the nail on the head on this one: Bioshock is System Shock 2... dumbed down. So how can something that basically IS something else (and is obviously so) be both fresh and innovative? While I'd agree it had a unique atmosphere (until Fallout 3 came out... hiding and shooting in trashed retro-futurist environments anyone?), the plot was... average. When did merely good start meaning brilliant? Are the times we're on that hard? Are the plots in games THAT bad that something that should be standard, like Bioshock's story, is put on a pedestal?

Uh. You started this thread while this Escapist story was still on the front page, for goodness sakes. Could one of these threads be locked so all the commentary sticks to the same thread?

wingshot:
Would you kindly explain how they expect to add new concepts every iteration?

Would you kindly stop asking questions and while you're at also get me a GTX 285

6 is insane I think 2 is enought to tell the story about the aftermath but the world of rapture is so self contained I can't see their being enought material as prequels are ultimatly rubbish when the first story has soo much detailing the prior events or try and use a setting other than rapture

In the fourth, I susect they'll run out of ideas and cast Tim Cain as the bad guy. Once he dies, however, the game's atmosphere disappears *obscure joke*.

minoes:
And people complain about Final Fantasy.

I think that 13 games + a huge bunch of spinoffs is a little different from 6 games.

That isn't to say that this doesn't sound silly.

Hold yer horses, there, buddy. Let's see how 2 turns out first...

Hopefully it ends up like Xenosaga: "We have a story that will span eight titles..... ....but you know, 3 is enough."

NO! I haven't even played Bioshock, yet I know that milking a franchise for 6 games after just one is released is a bad idea. Bioshock is probably a great game, but I just don't know how they can make 5 more and keep the people's interest.

EDIT: Final Fantasy is working because it's a new story each time. Yes, the characters are mostly the same, and yes, there are the same creatures, but the combat system changes, the world changes, and each game might as well not be called FF, due the lack of continuous story.

I reserve judgment until I see how BioShock 2 turns out. The teaser looks like it can only get better, IMHO. As long as Ken Levine stays in charge, it should turn out fine -- that guy knows what people like in games.

Indigo_Dingo:

It has been proven that an arty game can have an arty sequel (even if its only happened once off the top of my head, and even then only if you believe Shadow of the Collosus really was Ico 2).

Actually one of the developers confirmed it was a prequel, or at least said they consider it a prequel.

Kaido/Fumito Interview

Anyway, I agree, how the heck do they think they are going to keep it going six games? Two or three should be the limit, then switch to a new story line if your so interested in keeping the IP around. Six games is just stringing it out to make more money, and its inevitable that the quality will drop with each new game.

You can't fit six parts of a series into one under-water city. And you can't go to boston on secret missions or anything 'cause then it'd turn into just another shooter. What gives... Bad idea.

harhol:
Money talks huh.

Yes it does. I was happy with the first game, and I didn't really feel that a second was needed. I thought the story pretty much wrapped itself up.

OuroborosChoked:

Indigo_Dingo:

Lets back up there - people loved Bioshock for being fresh and innovative, and for taking both an incredibly unique atmosphere and a brilliantly written plot, and for how well self contained it seemed to be.

I'm going to have to stop you there. Despite my increasing disagreement with Yahtzee, he did hit the nail on the head on this one: Bioshock is System Shock 2... dumbed down. So how can something that basically IS something else (and is obviously so) be both fresh and innovative? While I'd agree it had a unique atmosphere (until Fallout 3 came out... hiding and shooting in trashed retro-futurist environments anyone?), the plot was... average. When did merely good start meaning brilliant? Are the times we're on that hard? Are the plots in games THAT bad that something that should be standard, like Bioshock's story, is put on a pedestal?

Bioshock in my book was nothing more than a well tuned shooter with a "more than adequate" story. People have gassed on and on about the story but let's be honest - the story itself wasn't new, or even terribly interesting. It's themes and ideas that have been explored since time immemorial in every media ever conceived by man. At it's best, Bioshock is an idealized morality tale that demonstrates the necessity of ethical constraints and points out that just because it's possible to do something doesn't really mean you should (that has of course never stopped the human race before). At it's worst, Bioshock is nothing more than Atlas Shrugged. All the self righteous heroes become Andrew Ryan, the hoards of second handers become Frank Fontaine and Jack is nothing more than a voiceless participant in their machinations.

While the game plays in a similar fashion to System Shock, to directly compare the two is odd. If it weren't for the simple fact that the developers billed it as the "spiritual successor" to system shock, people would likely not judge it so harshly. Yes, both games are played from first person, both lean towards the horror side of shooting things and both have a blend of RPG and FPS elements. But there the similarities end there really. To compare the two because of similar gameplay principles holds about as much merit as comparing Doom to any modern FPS. The story on the other hand really holds no tangible similarities. System Shock offers to pretentious notions of morality (SHODAN needs no morals as she is by all rights a deity according to her and the many are amoral by nature), there is no real battle of wills. Thematically, the only similarity is the warning that reckless pursuit of knowledge can be dangerous, but again this is such a common theme that accusing one story of plagiarizing another because of it is silly.

If anything, Bioshock more closely resembles the original System Shock. The Hubris of science in both cases leads to disaster and in System Shock the Hacker (the PC) plays the part of Andrew Ryan to SHODAN's Fontain. Even here the similarities are slim.

Bioshock however does have one thing to it's credit: the sequence in Andrew Ryan's office. For the entire game up until that point your goal was to kill that man. By using the common technique of removing player control of their character to make a story point, the Bioshock team revealed their moment of greatest genius. It stands, to this day, as the greatest single moment in a video game to date for me. But the moment of genius is surrounded by quite a bit of forgettable gameplay and predictable story turns.

What disturbs me most about this, is where he says that Bioshock is about a battle between good and evil.

SIX!SIX! as in spending $360 just to complete the series!? I bet two will be good if the fix the one glaring problem: This game is too F@#$ing easy! But whatever, they wont see me. They only see Money!:(

It's not a big a deal really. If you count system shock and system shock 2, Bioshock is the 3rd. That means only 3 more to go!

Axolotl:
What disturbs me most about this, is where he says that Bioshock is about a battle between good and evil.

It's the easiest of all conflicts to write and understand. Rarely are writers subtle about the tension in their works. It took me a bit when reading A Brave New World for example to understand just how insidious the society was.

Game developers shouldn't try to make sequels. Here's what I mean. When Bungie made Halo, they didn't say, let's make 2 more. They made Halo, then they decided to make Halo 2, then the same for Halo 3. They shouldn't push to far. To be honest I haven't played bioshock and probably won't in the near future, but I have heard that it is a great game but what could you do with 6 more games of the same length and structure, with the same characters and the same gameplay? You need a new story, and stories don't grow on trees. This sounds like an unrealistic, ambitious and most of all pointless development.

Woe Is You:

minoes:
And people complain about Final Fantasy.

I think that 13 games + a huge bunch of spinoffs is a little different from 6 games.

That isn't to say that this doesn't sound silly.

Yeah, but after the first 6 we get "Bioshock: Unleashed" and "Bioshock: Battle for Rapture".

Also when is the final Bioshock (6) going to be released? 2025?

They could just branch out and take the IP into new territories. I'd like to see an adventure game based around a CIA agent dealing with the aftermath of the Rapture incident, which branches off from the bad ending.

While I do agree that 6 is a bit over the top, I am still sure that they will somehow manage to pull off at least ...1 or 2 more games. After 3 games, there's not much to say about the same place, really.

They could do a prequel series about how Rapture fell, kind of like Star Wars.

But... six? Why would they stop there? Why not become the next Final Fantasy? /sarcasm