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Chone

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 11, 2006
1,222
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Every review I've read of Bioshock has praised its storyline, I've beaten the game twice now (first time on Hard for the gameplay and the second time on Medium for better appreciation of the story) and I just have to say that the story, while good, failed to live with my expectations and all the hype built by reviewers.

Everyone talks about the twists in the storyline when there really is only one twist in the game and while unexpected and interesting in its right, it only really brings the whole story downwards.

First of all, Atlas, he is an interesting intriguing fellow, he appears to be driven by his love of his family but shows interesting facets of his personality at times (for example at the first Little Sister encounter) and it just seemed like he would be a really cool character.

What happens then? Atlas becomes Fontaine and suddenly he is just a shallow character. Fontaine is nothing more than an ordinary thug and his motivations go as far as just wanting to more power and control the city, meh, just meh, sen that been there, Fontaine is a pretty stereotypical and shallow villian. Fontaine's only interesting trait is his ability to act and deceive and that says more about the Atlas/Fontaine VA than it does about the story writers.

Ryan is a pretty interesting fellow, in fact, he is probably the most interesting and well done character in all of Bioshock. He has Randian beliefs but sometimes he doe things that don't really fit the mold yet he is conscious of them. Ryan shows so much personality and you really end up liking him or at least appreciate him as a character.

Which brings me to another point, when talking about main characters, especially in videogames, it should be someone you can really sympathize with since it represents YOU the player. But Jack... well he is not even a character the way I see it. Once its revealed that you are just an experimenting with pre-programmed memories you realize Jack is nothing more than a mindless, soulless, heartless tool. He has no life, he has no history, he has no feelings and no personality, he is just a machine programmed by Fontaine.

This is probably why Jack never speaks and is never surprised by the Rapture world but its really disappointing because it alienates you from the main character a lot, by the end of the game, I could have cared less about what happened to Jack. It would have been much better to play a real outsider with a life and history outside of Rapture.

The would you kindly and atlas->fontaine twists were not bad per se and personally I didn't expect them and they did shock me but what was left after that really left a lot to be desired, it killed all interesting characters and brought the story down.

In the end the only memorable characters end up being Andrew Ryan, Dr. Suchong (he should have been the villian), the Atlas personality and Sander Cohen. Jack is forgettable and so is Tenembaum even though she serves her purpose well in the storyline.

The Rapture world and concept is incredible, the story and characters in Bioshock are not. Andrew Ryan is amazing and he was probably the character with most work put into it. The setting and lore is great, the Big Daddies, the Little Sisters, ADAM, EVE, all of that is greatly done and paves the way for a newer game with hopefully a better sequence of events and deeper, more interesting characters.

In the end, I enjoyed Bioshock's storyline but I didn't think it was too great, the setting and lore was really well done but the core of the story is really weak and forgettable. Andrew Ryan is really the only memorable character.

Well I just wrote that really quickly but I'm more interested to see what others think. What did you think of the story? The character? the lore? the world of Rapture? etc.
 
Whoo, time to bring up an old thread. I just (as in minutes ago) finished the game on PS3, and I pretty much agree with the above poster. I was foolish to expect the game to live up to the expectations created by the hype surrounding the game, the countless awards, etc. While a good game, with some good twists, I really felt that it left much to be desired, just as the OP said.

Funny enough that the only reason I found this thread is through a Google search discussing the game's plot, because I thought that I must have missed something since I apparently don't feel the same as all the people who posted high scoring reviews for the game. I kept waiting for some character development, and it was pretty good up until the Ryan encounter, which is where the main guy pretty much ceased to exist as anything more than a first-person viewpoint that can hold guns and shoot lightening (among other things).

All in all, I give it an 8/10. It earns a high score for its setting, weapons, creative upgrade system, and combat. It loses points for its somewhat disappointing story, while still good, but not as great as I had hoped.
 
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