There's no way they can stretch out a story and subsequently milk it for that long. I'm already concerned about the sequel.

Eclectic Dreck:

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.

Nice post, I agree with pretty much all of this. Lets be honest, the only reason Bioshock's plot was so lauded is because other game writers don't try as hard, but I found the plot nothing like as interesting or mysterious as HL2's. Pretty much everything either gets spelt out or tossed out as pretty much magic.

Considering the material the writers had, in terms of unlimited genetic modification, I was disappointed to see, what, 3 or 4 enemy types? Most of which just wanted to hit you.

The slightly cartoony graphics eliminated much of the horror for me - I was able to run it on highest settings, and whilst it was pretty it was all to... rounded and shiny, a bit like my impression of the Doom 3 engine.

Bioshock was an OK game, but it had no replay value for me - I was glad I got it as a present so I didn't pay for it. If they plan on making even a single sequel they are going to have to seriously get more imaginative and environmentally interactive with their plasmids (fire melting ice? Done in Legend of Zelda on the N64! setting oil on fire in about, oh, 2 sections? wow... lets see some REAL environmental interaction, destructible set pieces, raging fires - how awesome would that have been in the claustrophobic underwater environ?) - there was so much potential in Bioshock to make a breakaway shooter with what was essentially a magic element, but they just focused on telling a story. The gameplay suffered, became simplistic and repetitive. A sequel would have to excel where Bioshock failed if it is to make any headway. Otherwise I will point and laugh at yet another greedy corporation.

Axolotl:

Eclectic Dreck:
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.

But my complaint was that one of the things that made Bioshock great was that it wasn't a battle between good and evil.

Reading this makes me wonder if everything that was good about Bioshock was purely an accident.

That's kinda my point. The themes and story of bioshock really aren't all that grand. It's only the fact that we find such a story in a game that it's heralded as brilliant. Keep in mind, it wasn't long ago when shooters in particular had no coherent story beyond a few paragraphs in the instruction manual.

As far as a major theme being a battle of "good versus evil", it all depends on how the player approaches the game. According to Rand's theory, only a handful of the characters in the game were worth anything. Fontaine was the villain not because he committed atrocities (so did Ryan, and so does the player and every other person who ever set foot in Rapture as near as I can tell), but because he is a second hander - a person who owes their success to another, greater person. If there is a morality tale at the heart of Bioshock, it's well hidden by the simple fact that even the nicest characters in the game are fairly monstorous. There is no true paragon of virtue to emulate, because everyone in the city is guilty of terrible crimes. The best thing you can do as a player is draw a moral line in the sand when it comes to a single set of characters: the little sisters. Do you sacrifice the life of a child to further your power or do you not?

For all it's pitfalls, Bioshock succeeds wonderfully. While I tend to believe that any series that goes on for five sequels is a bad idea, the very basic themes of the game offer a surprising number of potential stories. Who needs the characters when the central ideas of power, objectivism, and science unfettered by moral trappings can be applied in any number of other areas? Jack, Ryan and Fontaine are simply character archetypes commonly seen in other media, and nothing says any of that needs to exist. So long as you have the science you can explore any number of conflicts and relationships and still call it bioshock - nothing else really needs to remain.

GuerrillaClock:

clarinetJWD:

GuerrillaClock:
People forget this is a world where games like Brutal Legend are dropped because Activision "can't make yearly updates" (paraphrase). Money talks. Bioshock was a roaring success, but I would have thought with the story in the original that even one sequel was stretching it a bit.
I have no idea how that guy managed to link Bioshock to Star Wars though. It leads me to the conclusion that every single person working in the games industry is a chimp in a skin suit.

Wow...so because some corporate execs want the company to be profitable, and because of a couple designers trying to live out their whole career on one game, everyone in the industry is "a chimp in a skin suit." Well, as "a chimp in a skin suit", I take offense to that, as I'm sure the many other developers here do as well. Please, in the future, think before you type. You have proven that every single person on the internet generalizes (Yes, that was sarcasm).

That being said, 6 is too many unless they do a Half-Life, where each game is different enough it can stand on its own. Let's wait for the first sequal before we condemn it to mediocrity, shall we?

Please tell me how you would take a game like Bioshock, stretch it for a further 5 games and still retain any credibilty. I have no problem with companies making money, that's what they do, but nobody likes to see a favourite game/TV show/whatever dug up and stretched out in a way that clearly will not work. In a Mario game that has essentially no plot then fine, but a plot-driven game like Bioshock will only end up being dragged through the mud. I apologise if my comment appeared overly inflammatory, what I was getting at was it is a very depressing world we live in where games are not given chances because they can't be updated yearly, and great standalone games are given unnecessary standalone sequels that sully the memory of the original.

Did you read my post at all? I didn't say that. In fact, I said that 6 is too much. What I had a problem with is you taking the poor decisions of a few people and calling everyone in the entire industry a chimp. I'll agree that Brutal Legend is getting a bad deal...even though it is very much still alive, and I agree that standalone sequils can ruin a franchise, but I think we need to wait for at least one of the new games to come out before we categorically say it's a bad thing.

Eclectic Dreck:
Fontaine was the villain not because he committed atrocities (so did Ryan, and so does the player and every other person who ever set foot in Rapture as near as I can tell), but because he is a second hander - a person who owes their success to another, greater person.

But he doesn't owe his success to anybody else, he managed to build an unstoppable criminal empire on his own. He is far closer to the objectivist ideal than Andrew Ryan ever was. Thats the whole point of the game it's a deconstruction and refutation of Ayn Rands theories and beliefs (with a deconstruction of video games as a whole also included around the point you meat Andrew Ryan.

I used to talk to Ken Levine in the 2k forums before Bioshock was released on the 360. This was back when their wasn't alot of info about the game. He was a really cool informative guy. I was pretty much the biggest supporter of the game in the forum. The other forumers thought it would be a good game, but I was explaining that it was going to be one of the best games of this console generation...I was right LOL After the game was released he stopped posting in the forum, especially after the critical and commercial reaction it received.

I just hope the next games will have a few more RPG aspects to it, considering that the fisrt game had virtually no RPG aspects (don't tell me that the Plasmid system was RPGish, you could use every plasmid in the game and it just came down to a matter of which plasminds you used more often, just like trying to find our favorie gun in an unreal tournament game)However I did find the story and enviroment very compeling and I hope those don't get screwed up.

I think that three is enough, six is just dragging out what was a good game and turning it into an excuse to take money from people who don't know any better.

it can't be any worse what than how the tony hawk or FF series turned out, resident evil is the only franchse that has pulled this off well (gta series being moderately good as a series). and unless 2k can replicate that kind of magic with the bioshock universe, then that will inevitably lead to the series's downfall

Oh dear. Yet another amazing name going down the drain because the farmer wants to milk the bloody cash cow for all it's got. The first was nothing short of epic, I'm hoping the second will be good. I have a bit of faith in the third, but any film or game with a 4 at the end of its title will almost certainly be disappointment, unless it brings something new to the franchise, like Call of Duty 4 did.
But six games? And then they'll do several ranges of action figures. Then a few films. Then an MMO. Then ten books featuring content worse than that in your average fanfic.

Let's not crucify them yet, okay? Good games usually have good sequels. There doesn't really seem like there's much left of the story but...let's just see how two turns out.

To be perfectly honest, the only thing I see that has been done wrong is admitting it this early. To me, it sounds like a developer day-dreaming. Hell, it sounds like me. Without even knowing if the first title is a success, I've already planned out two sequels, in detail. It's a dream, it's something to aim for. It's not a prediction.

Planning ahead is never wrong. Knowing what to do, where you'll end up, is never wrong. It can only lead to something better. It will mean that when the sequels do come, IF they come, they will be coherrent, and they will make sense. It's going to be planned out, from the start, which means there won't be a stupid inconsistency to explain how a sequel came to be.

This early, they're not trying to cash in on all the sequels. That would be too stupid, they actually know what they're doing.

This early, you can't judge them, and seriously, you could at least give them the benefit of the doubt. System schock, System schock 2, and then Bioschock, it's not like they have a bad track record, or like their earlier sequel was just a cash-in from the first title. They know what they're doing. Judge them when they do try to cash in and release poor games, not now, when they've just admitted to dreaming about the future. They might just pull it off, and if not, they might just stop while they're ahead.

3 is enough. the first game, the prequel, and the sequel

I don't even think there should be a Bioshock 2...maybe a spritual successor but Bishock has NO room for a sequal...Andrew Ryan WAS Bioshock...end of story...second best character after GLaDoS

Lvl 64 Klutz:
Hopefully it ends up like Xenosaga: "We have a story that will span eight titles..... ....but you know, 3 is enough."

Wasn't that just six games spanning two generations of Hardware, with the fifth episode going around the same timeline of Xenogears? At least the ending to the last game wasn't a disappointment (a little cliched, but entertaining nonetheless.)

I think Bioshock2 will be fun but I donno about six.
I BS2 they should open up some exploration and let you go out in to the water at some point.
I don't think they can make more than 2 without becoming a pile of crap that keeps on building up on my cabinet.

jad4400:
I just hope the next games will have a few more RPG aspects to it, considering that the fisrt game had virtually no RPG aspects (don't tell me that the Plasmid system was RPGish, you could use every plasmid in the game and it just came down to a matter of which plasminds you used more often, just like trying to find our favorie gun in an unreal tournament game)However I did find the story and enviroment very compeling and I hope those don't get screwed up.

That's because it was a shooter, not an RPG. The comparison to system shock again does the game disservice because you expect RPG elements. Instead of being perceived as a shooter with weapon and stat upgrades it's seen as an RPG made for drooling morons.

The system is actually closer to Clive Barker's Undying, where you wield magic with one hand and a weapon in the other.

implodingMan:
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.

Can anyone name a blockbuster that didn't end with a # in the last 12 months?

Pyronox:

barryween:
I bet two will be good if the fix the one glaring problem: This game is too F@#$ing easy!

I hear ya. I could kill Fontaine on the hardest difficulty with only my wrench and without losing an entire health bar. Hell I only got hit once.

I have to admit: I haven't bet the game. But I got a good enough expireance with it where I never killed the lil' sis', and the Big daddies i just iced and shot with my tommy gun. It was just to easy!

Elite L Dizzy:

implodingMan:
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.

Can anyone name a blockbuster that didn't end with a # in the last 12 months?

Yes there was...no, there was... no wait um.... nope. THe only good games without a number were Dead Space and Mirrors Edge(and while i have never played it, Left 4 Dead sounds cool). These games were good but by far not Blockbuster titles (at least in sales).

Aww, man. I can't believe they're going to try and mess with a great game like 'Bioshock'! Was 'Bioshock' even really a battle between good and evil? It felt more like a battle of simple survival. (Or maybe eating little sisters was just wrong, but who cares?)

How can you possibly hope to 1-up a game like that?

Maybe, you can possibly mess with the story and get something decent out of it, but what about the bad guys? The Big Daddies MADE Bioshock. Call me out on it if you want, but lets be honest here.

Getting off topic, sorry. . . .Anyways, the only way they could hope to even MAKE ONE sequal to Bioshock is to create a prequal of the game and show what Rapture was like before the freak out.

Where would the Big Daddies be though, huh? Honestly. . .I bet they'll half-ass it and create something called 'Big Mamas!' a proto-type of the Big Daddies.

Grr, cant' write anymore.

barryween:

Elite L Dizzy:

implodingMan:
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.

Can anyone name a blockbuster that didn't end with a # in the last 12 months?

Yes there was...no, there was... no wait um.... nope. THe only good games without a number were Dead Space and Mirrors Edge(and while i have never played it, Left 4 Dead sounds cool). These games were good but by far not Blockbuster titles (at least in sales).

I'm pretty sure Left 4 Dead outsold Bioshock. Although I'm not really counting the PS3 version of bioshock which just came out, and there is no Left 4 Dead for PS3, so that's a fair comparison.

Left 4 Dead has sold roughly 3.6-3.9 million copies, and Bioshock has sold about 2.2 million in about a year.

http://ir.take2games.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=314411
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/left_4_dead/news-10099.html

If nothing else, I would definitely consider Left 4 Dead to be a "blockbuster".

Silver:
To be perfectly honest, the only thing I see that has been done wrong is admitting it this early. To me, it sounds like a developer day-dreaming. Hell, it sounds like me. Without even knowing if the first title is a success, I've already planned out two sequels, in detail. It's a dream, it's something to aim for. It's not a prediction.

Planning ahead is never wrong. Knowing what to do, where you'll end up, is never wrong. It can only lead to something better. It will mean that when the sequels do come, IF they come, they will be coherrent, and they will make sense. It's going to be planned out, from the start, which means there won't be a stupid inconsistency to explain how a sequel came to be.

This early, they're not trying to cash in on all the sequels. That would be too stupid, they actually know what they're doing.

This early, you can't judge them, and seriously, you could at least give them the benefit of the doubt. System schock, System schock 2, and then Bioschock, it's not like they have a bad track record, or like their earlier sequel was just a cash-in from the first title. They know what they're doing. Judge them when they do try to cash in and release poor games, not now, when they've just admitted to dreaming about the future. They might just pull it off, and if not, they might just stop while they're ahead.

Hmm, you make a good point. It's just hard to understand why developers try to fix something thats not broken. Could they honestly really make it better than the first one? We've all seen our fair share of good games with bad sequeals. True, not all of them were bad, and few were even better. (Kingdom Hearts 2 is an example)

It's just that 50/50 chances aren't something I like to bet on. v.v

Cristoph Hartamnn:
if we spin it the right way and get the right twist of innovation, we can make six parts of it, as Star Wars did. It's a fight between good and evil, just like Bioshock.

Does this mean he is going to add an asinine comedic character for the children, a love story that not even the Care Bears could stand, and a set of villains that will die an all to short and easy death?

runtheplacered:

barryween:

Elite L Dizzy:

implodingMan:
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.

Can anyone name a blockbuster that didn't end with a # in the last 12 months?

Yes there was...no, there was... no wait um.... nope. THe only good games without a number were Dead Space and Mirrors Edge(and while i have never played it, Left 4 Dead sounds cool). These games were good but by far not Blockbuster titles (at least in sales).

I'm pretty sure Left 4 Dead outsold Bioshock. Although I'm not really counting the PS3 version of bioshock which just came out, and there is no Left 4 Dead for PS3, so that's a fair comparison.

Left 4 Dead has sold roughly 3.6-3.9 million copies, and Bioshock has sold about 2.2 million in about a year.

http://ir.take2games.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=314411
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/left_4_dead/news-10099.html

If nothing else, I would definitely consider Left 4 Dead to be a "blockbuster".

Dang for real!? I didnt know that! I'm kind of shocked, I didnt here about it that much. So yay! There was a new ip that was a blockbuster!