Yeah, I know I said I’d said that I’d write up some E3 thoughts but I feel it’s too late for that now. So, moving on, I never really wrote about how I felt about BioShock after completing the game, just about how things were going part way through. To put it frankly, it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. The gameplay, environments, characters, and story all came together perfectly to make one hell of a video game.
That being said, why am I not at all excited for BioShock 2, the sequel to one of my favorite games ever? I’ve watched the trailers, I’ve dug through the site reading every bit of information there, and I’ve read many previews and impressions. Yet I never come away with that feeling of really wanting to play the game.
Maybe part of it has to do with Kevin Levine, the man who almost single handedly wrote the original BioShock, not being part of the project. The story 2K Marin has presented to us so far just doesn’t work for me. While the original BioShock had this mystery and intrigue about a plane crashing in the middle of an ocean and discovering an incredibly underwater civilization, along with great characters and wonderfully written dialogue. The story in BioShock flowed perfectly along with the action and the gameplay while early impressions leave me feeling as if BioShock 2 will merely use the story as a carrot hanging in front of a player’s head but never reaching a really compelling or interesting point. It’s kind of hard to put into words exactly what I mean but basically I feel that BioShock 2 is merely trying to take all the great action moments from the original and make more of them. For anyone who has ever finished the original, I get the feeling that we could have a lot of moments similar to the disappointing final boss fight.
Maybe part of it just has to do with playing as a Big Daddy. It instantly brings back memories of the annoying time in the original BioShock spent in a Big Daddy getup, protecting a Little Sister. In fact, with the early gameplay footage we’ve gotten it seems like there will be a lot more of that in the sequel. Joy.
The whole Big Daddy thing just doesn’t sit well with me. For one Big Daddies are slow, lumbering behemoths and yes I know that you play as a prototype Big Daddy who is apparently faster and more agile than his younger brothers, but that’s just it. We all know that prototypes of just about anything are never as good as their final versions. It’s admitedly a pretty weak point but some that just annoys me when I think about it. Another quick thought, since Big Daddies are really just human beings under the suits the prototype Big Daddy (ie. You) can use plasmids. So this means that regular Big Daddies would be capable of using plasmids, so why weren’t they ever given extra plasmids? Just something I thought of, it’s not to say that they lacked foresight or anything like that.
Finally, maybe it’s just because we’re returning to Rapture. Encountering Rapture for the first time was amazing. BioShock has perhaps the best initial 15 minutes of any game I’ve ever played. Progressing through the city to discover how these people once lived and how they came to their own demise was intriguing to say the least. Now with BioShock 2 we’re put back into this same environment. The sense of awe and wonder simply isn’t there anymore. Sure they can perhaps further explorwe the back story to Rapture but it just won’t be the same. Well actually, it will be the same. It will feel no different than it did in BioShock except we’ll be missing the awe, wonder, and intrigue mentioned earlier.
Of course, it may seem a little hypocritical for me to say these things when some of my most anticipated upcoming games are Modern Warfare 2 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 but those are entirely different games. It’s like comparing a stereo and an iPod. Sure they both play music, but they have different functions, designs, and contexts, but I digress.
Spoilers from the original BioShock start here. I wanted to avoid them as much as possible so just skip this short little paragraph.
We’ve already discovered the biggest mystery Rapture had to offer with Jack. Well, I shouldn’t say that since they could easily just conceive a new mystery to discover. Maybe the Big Daddy is also Andrew Ryan’s son?
End of spoilers
It was said in an interview that Rapture has been rebuilding which I find hard to believe when you consider that the remaining inhabitants were either spliced out of their minds, insane, or just plain evil, and anyone who was still holding on to some of their sanity was killed not long after having met them. Frank Fontaine did mention at one point that he’d planned on running the city with Ryan out of the way which I found laughable for the reasons mentioned above. There would be nothing to run, the city is dead. Considering Fontaine is presumably killed at the end of the original game that means that someone else has stepped up to take the lead of the city rotting at the bottom of the sea.
The point I was trying very clumsily to make is that BioShock 2 feels like it will just be BioShock all over again through the eyes of a Big Daddy and nothing more. Nothing they’ve shown yet has made me think that they’ve done a few things different to set this game apart from the first. As a side note, I feel that Modern Warfare 2 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 have both accomplished this task. Maybe I just don’t want to ruin that memory of BioShock and have it bleed together with the sequel. After all, a memory is a powerful and albeit unreliable tool. I remember loving both Mega Man Legends games as a kid and yet everywhere I look people keep mentioning how bad both games were. It’s why I haven’t gone back to play either since. I don’t want to ruin the great memories I had with those games and replace them instead with disappointment and boredom.
