Some Q's about the BioShock plot. SPOILERS XSHBDS

[GilloD]

So, I finished the game with the "good" ending and I have some Q's about plot plausability and general nit picking:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The ZOMG U ARE BIG DADDY part: Fontaine suggests that becoming a Big Daddy isn't a two-way street and Suchon's audio diary confirms this (He refers to it a s "one way street"). If this is the case, how do you return to society afterwards? Suchon mentions something about skin grafting and you don't go through any kind of surgery afterwards, I suppose it's more "dress up" than "transformation". Still, if that's the case, why doesn't Tannenbaum correct Fontaine when he makes the threat? I was pretty sure the BIG TWIST was going to be that the whole game was one big Big Daddy training sim ala MGS2. The ending kind of blew, the last boss was a breeze and the end game escort mission was a travesty.

Speaking of which- Why did I have to dress up like BD, anyway? In Tannenbaum's hidout, one of the girls readily opens the door for me. The rest seem amiable, if not thankful. So why'd I have to dress up to convince them to help me out? It doesn't make any sense.

As for story Q's: So, wait. Did the Plane Crash happen? Fontaine creates a super baby, via Suchon's experiments, and that super baby is you, the player. He exploits you into taking down Ryan. At what point does the "actual" game begin? When you arrive in Rapture? It's the mid-60's, so if the collapse happened around 59-60, where was Fontaine hiding you for 5 years? He mentions sticking you in a sub, but you can't just. Live in a sub for half a decade.

The game is a solid 9-9.5. It's a wonderful achievement and it practically demotes every other game that came before it. But while the performance is solid, the game's ending is predictable, boring and cliche in the worst way. It leaves us with nothing but a sappy Hallmark greeting card. Where it does everything else so well, it forgets to touch us, to be vague and unkind and actual. But that's nit-picking, really. It's just that elsewhere it does cliche so well: The Waltz of the Flowers sequence (VIOLENCE AND CLASSICAL MUSIC!) has been done a zillion times, but it played out so well and so memoraby that it validates the notion of cliche; That instead of merely being derivitave, it can add to our collective memory of an occassion, the effect being expotential rather than tiring.

[close]

[GilloD]

I am demanding we discuss this.

Also, playing through it again: I like this game a lot, but the plot is trite and tacky, the ending is worse. And for all of Rapture's beauty, it still feels less like a city and more like a movie set.