T w e n t y S i d e d
Here we are. The big turning point of BioShock. If you’re thinking of playing the game, you might want to give this one a miss.
Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself. At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index. |
Ah screw it. Just watch the dang episode. Also: Vader is Luke’s father, Rosebud is a sled, Hans Gruber kills Dumbledore, you are Darth Revan, and Bruce Willis is a ghost.
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
MMO Population Problems
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
Bruce Willis is a ghost? Man, this completely changes the story of Die Hard for me.
No kidding, that does explain a lot.
Unless he’s talking about Armageddon, where it explains why he stuck with the asteroid.
This comment made my day.
Well played, sir, well played.
Darth Willis is Luke Revans sled?
For me, it actualy explains why he never did it with Cybill Shepherd (or at least for many, many episodes of Moonlighting..)
You know who else was a ghost? Travis Bickle.
It also explains why he never made it with Cybill Shepherd either.
Plus, that chick is totally a dude.
Snape is Hermoine
Ron Weasley was phone.
Malfoy was a sock
Harry dies after contracting a terminal STD from Sirius Black during a night of forbidden passion in Diagon Alley.
I think you have confused Sirius Black and Draco Malfoy here.
Your optimism with regards to the Internet amuses me.
Both are overly optimistic, it was in an alley way orgy with Voldemort, Snape and Malfoy senior.
Soylent Green is Dumbledore
Hm. You guys really should do a Lets Play on KOTOR.
This marks the very first time that I’ve finally caught up with the spoiler warnings. I’m still carving through the backlog of articles, but that’s not a feasible landmark. And that gameplay shift joke was definitely worth the wait.
You forgot Soylent green is people :)
Soylent green is your father!!!
And that it was Earth all along.
YOU MANIACS!
And then the apes blew up their society too!How could this happen?!And then the birds took over and ruined their society!And then cows!And then…I dont know,is that a slug maybe?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Darth Vader is not your father. Don’t mine too much admantium, it is there to seal in the demons. The alien base is at mars.
And the enemy base is down.
That would be, “The enemy’s GATE is down.”
Sorry.
All your gate are belong to us?
You have no chance to recover from that misquote.
…
Make your time.
Don’t eat too much candy, it’s there to seal in the clowns.
I love the machinegun upgrade by the way. I don’t know if they do it on purpose, but there’s something disturbing about a machinegun which puts ‘lol’ in giant fluorescent letters on your screen while murdering stuff.
Yeah, I first thought that the video had the ‘lol’ letters in the corner to make a point or something – took me a bit to realize it was the weapon upgrade that looked like it..
It turns out that if you stand in the dark, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
My favorite: The ship sinks.
But you wouldn’t believe it the way some Avatar fangirls keep going on about Zuko x Katara.
That Heavy is a Spy.
ooh-oooh, big problem. I killed plenty of spies, they’re dime-a-dozen backstabbing scumbags, like you! (ow) No offence.
The Princess is in another castle!
And Starbuck is a – umm – wait, what WAS Starbuck by the end of BSG anyway..?
“Starbuck is…” a good place to get coffee.
Think she was some sort of angel. Oddly, it made more sense than LOST did as a whole.
Yeah, here’s a Spoiler for LOST – a complete waste of six years worth of television viewing on a total mind-screw.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MindScrew
I still say it ended with jack becoming the new smoke monster and continuing the everlasting fight against hugo and ben.Its much more fulfilling and ironic that way.
Which I why I’m glad I gave up after season 2.
You MONSTER! How dare you link anyone to tvtropes! That site ruins lives! I literally spent an entire summer going from link to link to link to link to link.
Also all of Margaret Oliphant’s children die (high-brow literary spoiler).
Edit: I just spend a half-hour over there because of you! MONSTER!
Half an hour? You, sir, got off easy this time.
If you accept that her father was the Cylon Daniel, then she was a half cylon which could, in theory, let her come back through a regeneration chamber. But then they threw that out the window by making her disappear so yeah, angel I guess.
It’s a shame too because if they left out the disappearance, it would imply that Daniel was out there, somewhere in the universe with the key to immortality (magic bathtub) that any modern human could use… if they knew where to find it.
Josh Veil – Can carry large bombs in his pants
Shamus Young – Gut Puncher
Rutskarn – He has puns fore you.
Mumbles – Hates people who carry heavy things very easily
I think I’m getting better…
Also, I am a Cylon. And so are YOU!
George Lucas, in yet another attempt to squeeze a few more pennies out of the Star Wars franchise as the 3d makeover fails miserably, retcons Episode 4 so that not only does Han shoot first, but it’s Jarjar Binks that takes the hit – sixteen times!
I’d buy that DVD. It doesn’t even have to have the rest of the movie on it; just JarJar getting repeatedly shot.
Oh, yes. Two straight hours of Jar Jar getting shot, every time from a new camera angle.
And in glorious VATS style slow motion.
And at the end of Return of the Jedi there’s a bunch of wookies having a party and roasting ewoks.
Star Wars Battlefront 2. Go to Instant Action>Naboo>Hunt. It’s a mode where Gungans fight battle droids. Lots of fun.
Hey man, this isn’t about Gungans, this is about Jar-Jar Binks. Big. Difference.
I think Battlefront 2 gungans are modelled after Jar-Jar Binks. I could be sadly mistaken, though.
Maybe it was just me, but I thought Jar Jar was a genius!
It’s very possible it’s just you, yes.
Jar Jar, you’re a genius!
I thought he was about as annoying as C-3PO.
The main problem with Jar Jar is therefore that it’s a bit redundant having him and 3PO in a scene when they both serve the same function in the film (vaguely irritating buffoon character that younger kids (in particular) enjoy).
Oh and the racist overtones. That was more than a bit awkward to watch. But it’s not exactly limited to Jar Jar – and again 3PO started it, having always been a hideous caricature of ‘English’ (but on the other hand it made a nice change from “I’m English so I’m pure Evil”)
i know it’s been said before.. and i have no business saying it… but for the love of my whiplashed eyes, please, turn down that mouse sensitivity. even just a little. having the camera snap around so unrealistically fast is something like being trapped in the viewpoint of a paranoid sparrow. really, i’m ten minutes in and don’t know if i can keep watching from the vertigo of it all.
but anyway, this is my first time commenting on anything, so i have to say how much i enjoy watching these Let’s Play episodes. i got hooked from the fallout 3 playthrough you all did when i found myself with similar sentiments about the progression of the series. it was a huge relief to know i wasn’t the only person that didn’t think it deserved the kind of mass praise that it got from all the major media. and hilarious the whole while. it made me smile to see every game-breaking item and technique short of straight cheating just to make the sorry thing progress faster. the entire game spent picking apart plot holes and engine bugs to pass the time in place of not being able to find any real plot or exciting events. and it turned out so much better than if it had been some straight faced fanboy version willing to suspend disbelief to no end. you did the unimaginable for me – made fallout 3 entertaining.
and now the same with bioshock 2, a game i was able to play for literally less than an hour before ragequitting in seething disgust of everything from the controls and fighting system to the linearity of the plot. yet i’ve watched almost 10 full episodes of this game now, each over half an hour, and i still can’t wait to see what happens next. incredible.
i’d want to see it turned into a television show to tell you the truth. but anyway, thanks to the team for putting something out there so fun to watch. friggin brilliant. and if the motion sickness keeps up.. well, i’ll just have to drink more, paint some eyes on a puke bucket, and make it my viewing companion. inner ears be damned, i’m not gonna miss an episode.
and i almost forgot to ask – are there any plans on going high def with this some time in the future?
But this isn’t Bioshock 2 :/
Probably just a typo.
ack, sorry. yeah my mistake. i really need to cut down on the early morning bourbon.
I’ve taken to mostly just listening to these because of the camera issue, but it definitely loses something that way.
I have to admit that even with its many flaws, the writing and voice acting for Andrew Ryan in this part of the game is fucking phenomenal.
Also, regarding Atlas… well, spoilers:
Fontaine used the identity of Atlas after he was “killed” by Ryan during their civil war and still uses it. I imagine that his transmissions to you could have been intercepted by Ryan’s cronies or Ryan himself, so for the sake of keeping his identity concealed, he stuck with it until he had actual control of the city and its people. I imagine that the ruse with his family was done just in case his control wasn’t 100% absolute (which it isn’t).I mean, ultimately it’s all a meta-commentary on the nature of player choice in games, so expecting it to be totally consistent from a story perspective might be a little bit much, especially considering that talking to the player through the fourth wall is the whole point.
On the subject of spoilers: I was spoiled before I played Bioshock (I only got it after you guys started this), and knowing the spoiler ruined nothing for me. I literally do not comprehend the aversion people have to spoilers. I don’t get how it ruins anything.
I’m the complete opposite. For me, if I know the major events of the game/movie/book, I won’t play/watch/read it at all. Whats the point? I already know everything about it, why should I waste my time?
This happened to me with Final Fantasy 7. I’ve had every single major and minor plot point spoiled for me throughout the years. As such I have a very large “meh” feeling towards it and have no desire to play it.
Honestly, I think its just because people want to be surprised, and telling them a major plot point beforehand spoils the surprise. Like if someone gets you something neat, and gives it to you out of the blue, it’d be a nice surprise. But if someone tells you what your friend got beforehand, its not much of a surprise and more of a “yeah, thanks” moment.
I hate surprises. I don’t want gifts out of the blue. They often feel like impositions. “Take this crap.” Surprises are more likely to get a “Yeah, thanks” from me than pre-planned gifts.
I agree completely. But you’re the first person I’ve ever run across who agrees with me on this, so I think we have to go on gracefully accepting the fact that we’re the ludicrously small minority…. :)
Nah, I suspect we’re probably just in the small group of people ornery enough to admit it publicly. Everyone else just acts gracious and then re-gifts the crap when no one’s looking.
Who do you have following me? It’s much worse, because then I try and make my gifts not surprises for other people. I’d rather them have an idea what I was getting them and being assured they’d actually want it than relying on an imperfect knowledge of what they’d want or need at the time.
I guess this is one aspect in which we’re completely different, then.
I’m horrible to gift shop for, because I can never think something up; I’ll always just say “Make something up, it’s the thought that counts“. Which I honestly mean, oddly enough.
“For me, if I know the major events of the game/movie/book, I won't play/watch/read it at all. Whats the point? I already know everything about it, why should I waste my time?”
I hear that often and I never understand it. How about to just enjoy the story? Seriously, is the “surprise” (quoted because really surprising plottwists that you didn’t see a mile away are rare) your sole enjoyment?
No, but when a big surprise is ruined, it takes a lot out of the story. Just doesn’t seem as good as it could have been if it’s been spoiled for me.
*shrug*
Different mindsets, I suppose.
Yeah, guess so.
Stupid nature and evolution, making people have different tastes…
Evolution?You mean we werent created from dirt 6000 years ago?Arghhh!Youve spoiled everything for me!!
Also, a meteor killed the dinosaurs.
I have exactly same attitude towards spoilers as you, Irridium.
I won’t play Jade Empire for a couple more months (even though I have a full version – from Cover DVD attached to ~5$ magazine), because the major plot twist was hinted to me on this very site.
What’s strange, I have a feeling regret and emotional potential lost to me forever every time I read a spoiler. I still wonder why do I read them.
I’m more ambivalent about spoilers. If I haven’t heard them then I get to have the surprise, but if I have, I get to watch the movie/play the game differently. I get to pick it apart and see how subtly they hinted at the reveal (or failed to). If I’m only going to play a game once (which is perfectly reasonable for the 40+ hour games you’ll still find today) spoilers let me notice things I wouldn’t have seen the first time.
And if you aren’t using that Jade Empire cd…
(kidding, kidding, I’ll buy my own.)
It all depends on the style the story is written and presented in.For example,I had so many people recommending me baldurs gate,and telling me almost the whole story,but Ive still enjoyed it a lot,even from a non gameplay point of view.
I agree completely, but strangely I don’t think Bioshock is the sort of story that gets hurt by spoilers. I had the game partially spoiled before playing it (Atlas is controlling you is what I had heard, no specifics) and I think it helped a bit actually. Knowing that twist makes the beginning of the game make more sense.
Really games that have one big twist is rarely hurt by spoilers imo since the building and revelation of the twist is the important part not the mechanics of the twist itself. Games that have many small twists (usually with one major twist) can get hurt a lot though imo. Games like Deus Ex and Arcanum where the constant twists and turns creates the mood of the plot that you can’t trust anyone (seriously the twists in Arcanum are amazing, they make these huge reveals and the plot hardly acknowledges it, like “oh yeah your dad was the snow man, you didn’t get that?”). When reveal leads to reveal it undermines the mood to know the final plot twist. That said it won’t completely ruin it of course, I actually knew the “biggest” twist in Arcanum and I still consider it one of the best cRPGs ever but then again not all twists were spoiled for me so I was still mostly guessing through the game.
I agree here. Part of what makes a game/movie/book really good is it’s replayability/rewatchability/rereadability (I think I created at least two words there). I’ve played No One Lives Forever at least four times from start to finish…I can almost recite some of the earlier parts of the dialogue verbatim. The lack of surprise doesn’t detract from my enjoyment one bit.
For me, it depends on the individual book/movie/game and my relationship to it whether I mind spoilers or not. Sometimes the fun is in just going along for the ride even though you know how it ends and sometimes it’s in noticing and wondering about the details and piecing together the story at its intended pace. I re-read/watch/play things all the time and still get loads of enjoyment on each repeat, but that’s completely different from having them spoiled in my mind. I’d rather people warn me if they’re about to spill details so I can choose for myself than to just blurt it out because they personally don’t see the big deal.
Surprise gifts are another story entirely and almost always unwelcome.
Part of the strength of a big reveal is usually the shock or awesome value of it, the story builds up to its spoilerable moment(s). If you already know what’s going to happen though, the story becomes less interesting.
Compare it to skipping to the end of a mystery novel to find out who was the culprit – it changes how you view the story because you’re no longer trying to figure out who did it, you have to get your enjoyment from other aspects of the story.
A) I don’t generally read mysteries.
B) As I remarked with KOTOR below, I generally figure out the mystery long before the “big reveal”. Ones I can’t figure out tend to be “out of nowhere” reveals, which are cheats and uninteresting.
And figuring it out for yourself is part of the satisfaction, too.
There’s a reason that ‘out of nowhere’ plot twists are unsatisfying – even though things often happen that way in real life. (Good) stories tend to be structured in such a way that you can figure out that a) something important is coming and b) what it is, ahead of schedule.
(with the ideal, from a story perspective, being to figure it out just before it happens in the story – so you get to feel clever and satisfied, but you don’t have to spend the next few chapters / minutes / levels wading through clues that you don’t need any more)
Yeah, but the thing is, I have always figured it out long before the reveal, which means I do have to slog through chapters.
Dwarf Fortress tells me that the entrance to Ryan’s place should be sealed with obsidian, not open to walk after that magma trick. Would have been funny, too.
Honestly the Atlas persona in regards to the player made no sense to me, why keep it up? My view on it is a bit cynical in that I think it just wanted to mimic the twist from System Shock 2 — in that the kind (err, not that she was very kind even when pretending to be human) would turn on you, etc.
Except that in SS2 it made sense, there was nothing to make the player do any of that stuff… so gaining the players trust and all that before revealing herself as being SHODAN made sense.
The scene with Andrew Ryan is incredible, the second ‘reveal’ just takes away from it.
What is the general “statute of limitations” on spoilers in general anyway? In general conversation, should we have to dance around Aeris’ death? Sovereign in Mass Effect? The fact that Master Li is a dick in Jade Empire?
For that matter, should the “limitation” differ depending on how popular the game in question is as well? Take…Modern Warfare 2 or Halo: Reach. Wildly popular games. Should we expect people to be talking about spoilers freely after a shorter amount of time for these games than for…I dunno, Armored Core For Answer?
Then of course there’s the nature of the spoiler themselves, how important they are to the story and how much of a twist secret they are.
You’re free to articulate a standard method of evaluation and grading of SPOILERS if you like. :p
I fear such mathematical equations are beyond my ken. Perhaps I should entreat Mr. XKCD for help?
My policy is spoil everything always, but I’m a jerk.
I’m pretty sure the general rule in conversation is, “Hey, have you played this game? No? You plan on it?”
Most people I know try to avoid spoilers to games they haven’t played, yet.
Very rarely will you meet someone who sincerely doesn’t care whether they know major plot points beforehand. I’m actually one of those people, and get a lot of flak for it. I treat everyone else as if they were me, so it gets me into trouble if I’m talking to someone who doesn’t like knowing the plot before they experience it themselves.
Funny how no one said yet that they are both tyler durden.
Oh,and you want spoilers?How about this:kane did it,it took just 6 days,the snake was lying,and they survived in an ark.Ha!
Oh,and: http://xkcd.com/109/
Well I think that Fight Club for me is too important to spoil it, ever. So I think I should be kind of upset about you saying that…
Fight Club is actually the only thing that I’ve never seen a spoiler for on the internet(until now).
This is the first time I’ve seen someone on the internet that posted a spoiler for the movie.
Seriously, no one seems to post spoilers on that movie. Or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places. Either way, still pretty impressive.
First rule of the fight club is you do not talk about the fight club.
Second rule of fight club is YOU DO NOT talk about the fight club.
But seriously,youve just been in the wrong places.Ive seen it spoiled lots of times.Like in that xkcd comic.
Oh,here is one that is pretty obscure:
Sammy jankis is made up.Oh.
Well then hooray for me :D
No he is not. It’s just that some of the things about him are lies.
Also, no one has revealed the identity of Kaiser Soze.
It’s the guy telling the story (Kevin Spacey).Norman IS his mother!
Josh. Maybe I’m missing something, but why aren’t you just grabbing an object – say a corpse – and just move while holding the corpse into the zappityzap wires to ‘disarm’ them?
Wait… Rosebud was the sled? Dangit, Shamus.
I’m way too young to get that citizen kane reference.. and yet i do…because I’ve seen the movie…which i regretted.. how bout the part where your master betrays you huh shamus? for all your JE praise
Why am I even reading this? I know most of this spoilers, still I managed to avoid spoilers on JE… until now. I even spent a few seconds trying to get JE stood for. Dang it…
What would the ending even be like if you only helped one Little Sister (or none!)?
“Well, I guess you just didn’t care about Adam, or you thought the Big Daddies were cute. So you didn’t kill them, but you also left them to an inhumane fate-worse-than-death. So, good job Apathy Man, not like you care, but good job doing NOTHING”
Wait… are you GlaDOS?
“Hans Gruber kills Dumbledore”
Well, that would’ve made quite a better Potter book! :D
The cake is a lie. Werter shoots himself to death. Achilles kills Hector. Romeo kills Paris.
That horse is not a gift to Apollo (and it isn’t even mentioned in Illiad).
Also,
nobody here use the spoiler tags. Jerks.Funny thing: the cake isn’t a lie.
Yeah, the cake just wasn’t for you. Before she started lying to you she only said “You will be baked and then there will be cake”, if I remember right. Man, I love Portal and GLaDOS.
Before she started lying to you?I didnt know there was a period before that.
And yes,that is one of my most favourite quotes from the game.
The cake is a lie is a lie? That is… It’s… I’m impressed.
So can I assume that the cake is a truth?
Have you watched the ending of Portal? If not, go ahead and watch it right now. Play through the game first, if you have to; it’ll be time well spent.
I’ll wait here.
Actually I believe it was supposed to be seen as a gift to Poseidon, safe passage on the seas and horses came from the sea originally. But it has been awhile since I have read the Illiad or the Odyssey
Actually, it was a Greek Tradition for the enemy commander, when he lost, to offer his horse to the victorious army. It was a signal of deference, putting him below his opposite number.
But the Romans seemed keen on remembering about the horse.
I played KOTOR 2 first, and I still didn’t figure out the twist until I’d hit it.
Actually, I much preferred KOTOR 2. I felt the relationship between Kreia and the Exile was much more defined, and far less forced. The interactions between Carth, Bastila and Revan made wish I could press a blaster pistol to my behavior core and pull the trigger.
Oh, right… BioShock. This is not the comment you’re looking for. Move along.
I liked Kotor 2 more as well. Despite the multitude of bugs that would give a Bethesda game a run for its money, and the really lame ending.
If only Lucasarts didn’t rush the title, it would have been amazing.
Kotor 2 was superior to Kotor 1 – in my humble opinion – because the first game’s story was somewhat lame. Let’s face it, it’s the generic “farmboy’s live is turned upside down by the bad guy, Fb discovered he has a destiny and he alone can defeat the bad guy, etc…”
Kotor 2 was about the Exile’s journey to understand him/herself. It’s a wee bit deeper.
“If only Lucasarts didn't rush the title, it would have been amazing.”
That and if only Obsidian had more code monkey next to their competent writers. If only. *sigh*
I hear there’s a restoration mod that fixes most of Kotor 2’s problems. Sadly I don’t have and can’t find the PC version anywhere.
Could this be what you are referring to? http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/TSL_Restored_Content_Mod;111657x
Somehow, when I rented the game, I didn’t encounter even a single bug, except once – and that one ruined my save file. (No patches. No mods. Just vanilla Kotor 2, a scratchy, old one.)
Could. Not. Disagree. More!
I figured out the twist of KOTOR before I even landed on Dantooine. That might contribute to why I’m relatively unimpressed by it compared to its deeper, if flawed, sequel.
Also, Revan should have been the woman. Male Revan is boring and sucks. Female Revan is awesome, especially if she dies with Carth on the Soul Forge in the never-finished ending that should have been canon.
So many different points to comment on…where to start?
I’d say Atlas may have kept up the ruse for Ryan’s benefit. I’m pretty sure they could listen to each other talking to the player on the radio. Also, he’d been living that lie for a while by this point; it was probably becomming more natural than his real voice. Still, that reveal seems silly and lacking after the first one. Why would he send turrets to kill Jack when he could just ask him nicely to top himself?
It really bothers me that Ryan says ‘would you kindly’ after giving the order and the character obeys regardless. The moment was also ruined for me when the putter broke cleanly in half there at the end. Was it made of cardboard?
Absolutely nothing is different about the last act of the game if you kill Little Sisters except that instead of saying ‘he’s the one who saves us’ they say ‘he’s the one who hurts us’. I had a really hard time believing Tenenbaum would have them help me after I’d killed a few, especially after the angry ending.
It seems to me there was something else, but I think I’ve rambled enough.
To be fair, he does order you to kill yourself in the very next scene.
One fun way they could have “Little Sisters saved/killed” impact the last act is by limiting your stock of Sisters in the escort mission to the number you had saved. Let’s face it, anyone doing the evil path is a hardcore gamer anyway, they can handle going back to the last checkpoint.
So, I’m too lazy to use spoiler tags. So don’t continue reading if you haven’t seen the video or played Bioshock previously. Yep.
On to business:
When I played through this part the first time, I think I played it exactly the way the developers wanted me to.
As I wandered into the room with “Would You Kindly?” scribbled on the huge board with the audio log of a boy killing a puppy, I didn’t quite get what was going on. I was like “wait… this is… kind of… did… who was that?” and as I was still thinking about that, I stumbled into the part with Andrew Ryan. Somewhere in the back of my mind I went “…WAIT A MINUTE…”, to finally get triggered by Atlas switching over to his Fontaine-y voice. At that point, I could feel all the pieces shift into place in my mind and I stood up and shouted “WHAT THE FFFUUUU-!!”
Then I had to stop playing the game and just walk around a bit and brood over how the game had just played me for such a massive fool. I was seriously impressed.
Yep, me too. By that point I was more interested in the conflict in Rapture in general, not so much in Atlas tasks. When I saw that “Would you kindly?”-board with the photos, I wasn’t thinking too much about it – something in the back of my head was itching to think about it, and by the time I met Ryan, it made “CLICK” just while I was talking with him. I understood this cruel thing they did too my character and that I cannot stop killing Ryan. I was impressed, seriously. That part really worked for me.
Yo dawg, I heard you like avoiding spoilers so I put a spoiler warning around your Spoiler Warning so you could avoid spoilers while you avoid spoilers.
This is a good comment.
I need to avoid more.
The Ryan part really disappointed me.
When he starts saying “A man chooses, a slave obeys”, I thought that FINALLY there would be a meaningful choice to the player.
I figured he’d give you the golf club, and then you could choose to kill him or let him live.
But the game commits you to killing him without letting you do anything. Frustrating.
I know there’s supposed to be some sort of meta-thing about linearity in games, but it really takes away from the enjoyment of the game for me to have the forced linearity and then say, “you were being manipulated! haha!”.
It creates a major disconnect between me and the in-game character, and I lost interest after that, getting to the end as quickly as possible.
I think the player is supposed to want to spare Ryan. (I certainly did.) Until now you’ve been doing a bunch of random quests for Atlas and it’s not so bad – you get to see the scenery, you get cool guns, etc. But when the linearity makes you go against your will, you start thinking, “I want to get off the rails now.” The objective promptly switches to Lose The Rails for the next hour, which is perfect.
Unfortunately, after that you
just end up doing random quests for Tenenbaum instead, rather than opening up the world a la System Shock 2.This was the problem I was going to mention. You’re making the point that the player will carry out pretty much whatever objective you lay in front of them with a non-interactive cut scene? Why did you think that was a good idea? It would have made sense if I steadily lost health and would just keep reviving and eventually just had to do the deed, but taking away my choice over my actions and then saying “durr hurr, you have no choices” just makes me think “No shit, Sherlock”.
It’s the same problem I had with Jade Empire. You’re saying my style has a deliberate weakness. You demonstrate this by killing me in a cut scene with a surprise attack from someone I trust and thus I have not taken a defensive stance against. I then come back and beat him up with storm dragon, double swords and spirit thief, none of which I learned from my master, just like I would have if we’d fought first time round.
But did you set him up the bomb? That’s the question inquiring minds want to know.
How many episodes are left for bioshock? I recall it was quite a short game, but haven’t played it (nor will play it, so safe to view the series), so I have no idea how far the game over is.
So, Shamus/crew, how many more Rapture-scenic tours, and what comes next? (HL2 plox?!??!?!?!?!!??!?!QUESTIONMARK)
Its roughly a 10 hour game, and this is episode 10. Each episode is 30 minutes(roughly)
So yeah hour yields 2 episodes. So if its on 10 episodes, that means they went through roughly 5 hours so far, so they have 10 more episodes. Give or take.
Again this is just a rough estimate.
We are about 2/3 of the way through Bioshock. After this, there are two more levels, the escort mission, and the final boss. (The final boss in Bioshock is extremely lame, in the proud tradition of many games with great storylines like Sands of Time.)
There’s a part in this episode when Andrew Ryan contacts you that you didn’t really talk about but I had to mention because it’s my favourite. Ryan talks about how you feel something you can’t put your finger on… Nostalgia. I always thought the way he said that was incredibly cool. For non star trek-fans the guy playing Andrew Ryan was also the evil principal in Buffy ^^.
Ryan killing himself never made much sense to me. It’s a powerful scene but why doesn’t Ryan just use you to kill Fontaine or just kill you I mean you did a lot for Fontaine but Ryan is still the guy in charge of the vita chambers and all the splicers. Also Ryan doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy that gives up, I thought that his willingness to combat enemies by sinking to their level was what destroyed Rapture in the first place. But now he just admits defeat and kills himself?
It’s because he has an emotional attachment to the player character and wants to help him. He sacrifices himself for his son.
“And now that I see you, flesh to flesh and blood to blood, I know that I cannot raise my hand against you. But know this: you are my greatest disappointment.”
You are his son, an illegitimate love-child, not even five years old, twisted by Adam into a tool of his enemies. He cannot help but love you, but he is filled with rage over what you are, what you’ve become: a slave. He hates that his own son can be ordered around, unquestioningly, irresistably, by the use of three simple words – if you were his enemy by choice, because you oppose him philisophically, he could respect you as an opponent, but no. You are nothing but a weapon.
In his last hour, he chooses to destroy Rapture, rather than hand it over to his enemies. It was his creation, his legacy, his greatest gift to art and science. He refused to see it corrupted by those who he reviled – he loved it too much. And then, he stands in front of you; he stands in front of his legacy, and sees it broken, abused by his foes. He has the same choice to make, has the same power over you that he did over Rapture. And he chooses to die. He dies to make you realise what you are, to show you exactly what you’ve become. He dies because he cannot bear to look at you anymore. He dies because he loves you too much.
Something like that, anyway.
I have nothing much to add here, except to say that this comment is excellent and this is now the way I will view Andrew Ryan, forever.
I assumed he was making a statement. When he starts making the room list, he says “You will never have my city, my strength is not in steel and fire.” It was built on an ideal (one which he inevitably corrupted yes, but still…), one which Fontaine either didn’t understand or didn’t want to follow and as such, Fontaine would never ‘have’ Rapture. While Ryan still lived, Fontaine could blame Ryan’s existence on his inability to control Rapture but once Ryan is dead…he’s got no one to blame but himself, and I think Fontaine’s lack of control and the maddening effect of that is shown towards the end of the game.
As for the saying ‘Would you kindly’ after the fact rather than before, I assumed that the statement could be used for more than one command (“Would you kindly go to Ryan’s office and kill that son of a bitch?”, “Run. Stop.”) meaning that the only command Ryan gave which you weren’t controlled by was the first “Stop” which could have been of your own volition. Hell, I would’ve heard the guy out. I mean, I’ve got an arsenal of weapons and plasmids; he has a golf club. Best to leave him to his monologue until Reaver shoots him in the head.
Even if spoiled, that scene is still amazing to watch. Hell, I had watched the scene multiple times before playing Bioshock, and the effect was no less potent. Because that’s the magic of a good (linear) videogame plot; even if super linear, there is still this sense of YOU building up to the plot point, rather than just the plot building up itself. You collect the audio diaries, you move through the city and effect it. Bioshock, I find, does this particularly well; You are never pulled out of the action by third person cutscenes, and every switch has a decisive and immediate effect on your goals and surroundings. This isn’t ALWAYS the case, of course, but it tries hard.
Are you or are you not Andrew Ryan’s son? I remember thinking it was implied when I played, but I never hear anyone actually mention it. Am I crazy?
I’m pretty sure that they say the the bathysphere in the beginning of the game is rigged to work only for people who share Ryan’s blood. So yes, you are supposed to be Ryan’s son.
The Vita chambers are also keyed to Ryans genes. That is why Fontaine needs you.
– If only you knew the power of clonig.Atlas never told you what happened to your father.
– …
– No.I am your father.
– …
– Would you kindly search your feelings.You know it to be true.
– …
And you remember that corpse of a stripper you robbed? That was your mother…
Search your pockets…
The audio diary shows it to be true….
I still can’t believe no one gave out the biggest spoiler of all:
JESUS DIES,
even if only for three days.:P
(Now you can spare yourself to watchin a crappy Mel Gibson movie, Yay)
Dang it! That was what *I* was gonna post! :P
Shamus, be a good chap, and make Josh take some tranquilizers, would you kindly? Seriously, though, all the jerky camera movements are making me physically ill. I couldn’t watch this one all in one sitting. Thought I was actually going to throw up.
I wonder how many comments like this one would there be if there was a spoiler warning of prey or portal or alien from avp.I mean I get it,I too sometimes get sick from playing certain fpss(oddly enough it only happened to me with prey and deus ex),but it is the natural way to play these games.Really guys,Josh is playing this way instinctively and asking him to calm down is like asking someone to walk in a different fashion.
The thing is, I don’t normally get motion sickness playing FPSes, Prey being one of the few exceptions, but I get it watching other people play FPSes. All the Spoiler Warning vids for Bioshock up til now have been tolerable, but this one was just too much for me.
I just rewatched it. I honestly don’t see it. Josh appears to be moving at a reasonable rate. It doesn’t feel fast or jerky or anything, just normal looking at everything.
Have him use a trackball, that’ll slow him down :P
Slurm is slug poop.Would you kindly stop making puns?
My take on Fontaine’s Atlas Illusion:
The compulsion forced the subject to obey the order given, but how they did so was up to the one compelled, right? That allows a moderately clever bloke to find myriad loopholes, and just one carelessly worded order by Fontaine could have given Jack(that’s his name, isn’t it?) a chance to escape his influence.
Take the radio. As I recall Atlastaine didn’t actually have any other way of communcating with Jack, so let’s say he became aware of the compulsion. He could just throw the radio away. If ordered to keep it, he could smash it. If ordered to keep it whole, he could stuff his ears with some shit he found on the floor.
If it kept on like that for a while he’d eventually reach the point where it was impossible to do anything without breaking some directive or other.
So he made sure that the pawn would want to help him by painting himself in a most sympathetic light; that of a man struggling to save his family, and later to avenge his family’s murder. The compulsion got the snowball rolling, gravity kept it going, and Fontatlas’ deception provided the slope for the resulting avalanche to come crashing down, right into the unsuspecting coffeehouse.
This is more or less what I was trying to say in the Viddler comments, only better worded. :)
The only one I wouldn’t have been able to forgive if I hadn’t known it already was KOTOR.
When games like this have a “good path” and an “evil path”, I usually try to play the game once with each (usually starting with the good path). But after seeing the Little Sister sanctuary shown near the end of this video, that just totally made it utterly impossible for me to ever pick the “evil path” in this game.
And tonight, thanks to this vid, I learned that Viddler works on Android 2.2