Bioshock 2 - The better game

[dagens24]

Better game mechanics/gameplay, but the story wasn't anywhere near as good.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I'm going to boldly say that Bioshock 2 didn't improve on anything Bioshock did. It just changed it. If you go into Bioshock 2 expecting the same hijinks as from the original you're already going to be let down.

Bioshock slung you into Jack's shoes and you experienced Rapture through his eyes: completely alien. You followed orders for your survival and everything you did in Bioshock 1 was to help you out; at least until you've learned that you're being controlled. Even then it's pretty much do what you can to get your ass out of there.

I always felt Bioshock 2 was a very well done sequel. Rather than try and introduce another outsider into Rapture we were put into the shoes of someone who had already discovered Rapture and had been drawn into it's life. It started off exactly where Jack left. Alpha was integrated into the community and so we weren't supposed to be in awe at Rapture, it's as familiar to us as it is to Alpha. Not only that but instead of progressing to benefit ourselves, we're not progressing to save our Little Sister, Eleanor.

If they hadn't done Bioshock 2 the way they had I don't think there could have been a sequel. To people who played the first there will never be that awe of being introduced to Rapture, so why bother trying? Treat it like a familiar place and you get Bioshock Vets settling into Alpha's boots quite nicely.

But on the note of Little Sisters, I've never seen the point in harvesting. In Bioshock 1 if you harvest all the way through you're just making it harder for yourself by not getting the Hypnotise Big Daddy; which cuts down gathering ADAM by more than half if you use it strategically. Even in Bioshock 2, thanks to Proud Parent and Big Sisters there's always enough to go around.

 

[Azahul]

Can't say much more than that I absolutely agree. It was a good direction to take the game, and I'm glad that they did do it that way.
I will say though that I always harvested purely for the different ending, as opposed to the extra Adam. I certainly never found myself running low on the stuff.

 

[Risingblade]

I liked Bioshock 2 a lot more than the first one. I felt more connected to the story. When Lamb tried to suffocate Elonar I front of me I kinda lost it and started pounding against the mirror.That was the first time I had ever been so drawn into a scene from a video game.

 

[Tdc2182]

Disclaimer. I understand this is all your opinion.

Now, when I first got my hands on Bioshock, I played it twice. Once through harvesting the Little Sisters as I went, the second time rescuing them. In both cases, I didn?t really care for them one way or another. I was just trying to experience both endings. When Bioshock 2 came out, I decided before I even sat down to play it that on my first play through I would rescue the Little Sisters, and then harvest them on the second. At the time of writing I?m on about my third attempt, and I am yet to harvest a single Little Sister. This is a seriously big deal for me, as I?ve never had an issue separating myself from a game emotionally. In fact, in most games with a moral choice system, I tend towards the evil options on my first file.

First problem here. Why? I thought that Bioshock 1 did an infinitely better job at giving you a reason to give one god damn about the Little sisters.

Hmmmm... the first time I played through Bioshock 2, there wasn't a huge difference. The new character design for the Little Sisters made me lean in favour of rescuing them over harvesting, and so I did that the first time through. On subsequent play throughs, the knowledge that I Eleanor looking over my shoulder and learning from my every action curtailed any attempt to be evil. I'd get to the first Little Sister, having resolved to finally harvest her, only to find myself unable to hit the button. The first game, by contrast, never really managed to get me to care about the Little Sisters all that much. I mean, sure, they were still little girls, but the first game didn't have the whole emotional tie that was actively stopping me from making evil actions in the second. The reasoning behind it ties directly into why I think the sequel was the better game.

When it comes to the other moral choices in the game, whether to kill or spare the Grace, Stanley, and Gil, I have to admit that I was impressed. Since my first play through was intended to be the good one, I spared Grace and Stanley as they were the obviously ?good? things to do. However, when it came to Gil I was completely thrown. I honestly could not tell which was the right action to take. Eventually, I let him live, pretty much solely because he promised to go outside and because I liked the mental image of letting a giant, deformed squish-thing loose in the ocean. Still, the fact that the game presented me with a situation where no clear course of action was the right one impressed me. That was something that the first Bioshock most definitely lacked.

I'll give you that one, though the black and white moral choice system is, to put it simply, kind of dumb. It's never really giving you a choice, just double checking which ending you want.

And I think that no matter what, killing Gil would have been a dark choice. Yeah, he was much more of a dick about everything than anyone else, but that never really made any difference on which was the "good" and "bad" choice. Vengeance is never considered morally good by anyone

I was thinking less about vengeance and more that he'd begged you to kill him while he was still sane. It taps dangerously close to the issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia, an issue that I feel pretty strongly about (but I won't go into it here). It's like someone wanting to die before they lose their capacity to think clearly, so they can die still knowing who they are. Admittedly, you're a bit too late in the game, and its possible to think of insane Gil as a whole new person. But that's exactly what makes it such a brilliant moral dilemma, there are many different ways of looking at and it's entirely up to interpretation.

However, it is the last few levels from when you find Eleanor onwards that truly changed the game for me. Until then, I was beginning to become rather bored with the story. Then, all of a sudden, the game changed. I realised that the actions I?d been taking up until this point hadn?t just been for my own sake. They?d been guiding the development of Eleanor. The moral choices weren?t just me arbitrarily deciding to be good or evil, they were also serving as lessons for my character?s daughter.

I'll also almost give you that one, but the way they executed that was so damn tacky and simple that it contrastively drew me out of the story.

May I ask what you found tacky? Having Eleanor basically act according to the way she'd seen her father behave came across as a pretty accurate example of how parents help shape our moral compass, in my mind.

I?ve cared for characters in games before, usually because that had quirky personalities or were funny or badass or because some aspect about them appealed to me. Despite this, when it was called for (say, if I?d made the decision to do an evil play through), I?d always still be able to kill them off, safe in the knowledge that they?re nothing more than a bunch of files on a computer that will still be there in my next run. Eleanor in Bioshock 2 was different, and I?m not sure I can make it clear why.

I'm gonna stop right here and make it clear why I appreciated games like this and Call of Duty (minus Black Ops). The decision to play a faceless mute character is a kind of confusing one, but in doing so it redirects attention to the actual important characters and makes it much easier to tell their stories. This is an area where Cinema very rarely touches upon

It's certainly an interesting design decision. Delta, despite being faceless and mute, became a character that I actually cared about. But yes, without a doubt Eleanor is the most important character in the story.
Although, thinking about it, it was an odd decision to make in the first game. Andrew Ryan is certainly a big character that you wouldn't want to take away from, but following his death there wasn't really a character to take his place. Jack is still mute and faceless, Fontaine isn't a hugely interesting character, Tenenbaum acts as more of an instructor. The latter part of Bioshock does suffer in my view as a result, where Bioshock 2 conversely strengthens towards the end of the story as Eleanor's presence increases.


And it probably helps that I wasn't too annoyed by the "Defend the Little Sister" segments. In fact, I often found them rather fun. Setting up traps to see if I could get through one without firing a shot or being hurt in turn was certainly a good little diversion.

Uh oh. I'd gotten Gil and the little skinny guy hiding in the Subway glass cage guy mixed up, My bad.

The more I re-read my own post, the more I realize that I have pretty weak arguments. I submit, though I do not agree it was better.

I guess I appreciated the more Philosophical side of Bioshock 1 rather than the emotional thing that more games try to follow (not a bad thing).

You don't see to many games that get you thinking, and I guess the original Bioshock had more of an impression on me.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Rapture got beaten up a bit in the first game, but I was under the impression that the self-destruct machine was turned off. Certainly though, the place is a good deal more run down in the sequel.
In the second, the only place that is destroyed is Persephone (and the occasional room that gets flooded).
Anyway, I actually found the human element of Bioshock 2 a lot more prevalent. The Communist (and strictly speaking, we're talking Communism taken to an even greater extreme) ideas are there, but Sophia Lamb and her subordinates (Grace Holloway, for example), are a good deal more than just the sum of their ideas. Personally, I found plenty of human dramas around the place (even in the Multiplayer, which I thoroughly enjoyed in large part for the story elements that popped up during the loading screens).

Just for the record, Sophia Lamb is not a communist. She's promoting an extremely hardline form of utilitarianism where the good of the collective must always be enforced no matter the losses on a personal level. You can find parts of utilitarianismm in communism, but the two are not the same. For example, you don't see a "flat" society in Lamb's rapture and she still practices some form of psuedoreligion (this is a big no-no for any communist since religion is a tool of oppression according to Marx).

Sophia Lamb's idea is that the self must cease to exist for the good of the collective (compare to the Utilitarian device: "Maximum possible benefit for the most people") whereas Communism inherently promotes the idea that the individual (worker) will prosper in communism since the individual gets more political power, more freedom (economically and politically) and a higher personal value by being a part of a greater collective then by being at the mercy of the forces of capitalism.

 

[Flailing Escapist]

I think 2 had better gameplay but 1 had a much better story. Tho I really loved the parts in 2 were you got to choose the fate of several antagonists throughout the game. And I REALLY loved the part in 2 were you took over a Little Sister for about 20 minutes near the end. But the part of 2 that really killed it for me was those annoying times you had to protect the Little Sisters while they harvest dead bodies. But this doesn't happen just a few times but a few dozen times, now I know its optional but you get so much adam from them that you almost have to, especially in the harder difficulties. Anyway thats just me, but both the Bioshocks are pretty good, not the best shooters in the world but the story makes up for it.

 

[Azahul]

Rapture got beaten up a bit in the first game, but I was under the impression that the self-destruct machine was turned off. Certainly though, the place is a good deal more run down in the sequel.
In the second, the only place that is destroyed is Persephone (and the occasional room that gets flooded).
Anyway, I actually found the human element of Bioshock 2 a lot more prevalent. The Communist (and strictly speaking, we're talking Communism taken to an even greater extreme) ideas are there, but Sophia Lamb and her subordinates (Grace Holloway, for example), are a good deal more than just the sum of their ideas. Personally, I found plenty of human dramas around the place (even in the Multiplayer, which I thoroughly enjoyed in large part for the story elements that popped up during the loading screens).

Just for the record, Sophia Lamb is not a communist. She's promoting an extremely hardline form of utilitarianism where the good of the collective must always be enforced no matter the losses on a personal level. You can find parts of utilitarianismm in communism, but the two are not the same. For example, you don't see a "flat" society in Lamb's rapture and she still practices some form of psuedoreligion (this is a big no-no for any communist since religion is a tool of oppression according to Marx).

Sophia Lamb's idea is that the self must cease to exist for the good of the collective (compare to the Utilitarian device: "Maximum possible benefit for the most people") whereas Communism inherently promotes the idea that the individual (worker) will prosper in communism since the individual gets more political power, more freedom (economically and politically) and a higher personal value by being a part of a greater collective then by being at the mercy of the forces of capitalism.

Communism is a handy catch-phrase in this case I'm well aware that Sophia Lamb's philosophy is different from Communism, but it's an easy way to describe it. Technically, I think her ultimate goal (to blend the memories of every Rapture denizen together into each person) goes beyond Utilitarian. She wants to make every individual within the city more or less the same, with the same skills and experience. Perfect quality, as far as I can tell, although the ideology beyond her ambition is decidedly Utilitarian. This is what I meant by Communism taken to a greater extremem. They've gone beyond making all of society equal and tried to make every individual equal.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Sophia Lamb's idea is that the self must cease to exist for the good of the collective

I'm betting she was Borg...

 

[Azahul]

But the part of 2 that really killed it for me was those annoying times you had to protect the Little Sisters while they harvest dead bodies.

I'm a bit puzzled as to what exactly it is about this mechanic that people find so annoying. It's not hard or frustrating, it's not like the splicers can kill the Little Sister, and it provides an alternative form of gameplay that deviates from the "walk down corridors and shoot enemies" that makes up most of the gameplay in both the first and second games. You get to make good use of all the defensive weapons and plasmids, and can even make some rather ridiculously over the top traps if you want (bouncing splicers through multiple Cyclone traps to stack effects like fire, lightning, bees, etc. for example). I actually found them fun as a result, and can't see why people seem to loathe it so much. Can anyone explain?

 

[Flailing Escapist]

But the part of 2 that really killed it for me was those annoying times you had to protect the Little Sisters while they harvest dead bodies.

I'm a bit puzzled as to what exactly it is about this mechanic that people find so annoying. It's not hard or frustrating, it's not like the splicers can kill the Little Sister, and it provides an alternative form of gameplay that deviates from the "walk down corridors and shoot enemies" that makes up most of the gameplay in both the first and second games. You get to make good use of all the defensive weapons and plasmids, and can even make some rather ridiculously over the top traps if you want (bouncing splicers through multiple Cyclone traps to stack effects like fire, lightning, bees, etc. for example). I actually found them fun as a result, and can't see why people seem to loathe it so much. Can anyone explain?

The only problem I have its that it happens SO many times in Bioshock 2. There are like 21 sisters, and 2 harvests each is just TOO MUCH. I get so bored with this part of the game. Its pretty much the same 5 minutes of the game 42 times.

 

[Azahul]

@Netrigan
Really? It was the same city, sure, but the settings were still (mostly) new. The first game took place in the high and mighty parts of the city, the scientific districts, the places of art and business, while the second one took place in the slums of the city. It really fitted the communist philosophies being tossed around the place, as it all took place in a much more working class environment. In fact, I have to say that I loved that about the second game. With such an emphasis on the survival of the fittest, the first Bioshock never really delved into the fate of those in Rapture who failed, the ones who didn't manage to climb the ladder to success. The sequel showed another side, the lower class. I actually found it a very different environment as a result, with its own character.
And yes, while the first game didn't leave much room for a sequel, Bioshock 2 managed to generally avoid tredding on the toes of its predecessor. It made its own room.

Objectivist ideals, not Communist. Don't get ideals mixed up, or you could start a flame war.

I'm talking about Lamb here, and I'm aware as well that she's not actually a Communist, more a Collectivist/Utilitarian.

 

[A Weary Exile]

@Netrigan
Really? It was the same city, sure, but the settings were still (mostly) new. The first game took place in the high and mighty parts of the city, the scientific districts, the places of art and business, while the second one took place in the slums of the city. It really fitted the communist philosophies being tossed around the place, as it all took place in a much more working class environment. In fact, I have to say that I loved that about the second game. With such an emphasis on the survival of the fittest, the first Bioshock never really delved into the fate of those in Rapture who failed, the ones who didn't manage to climb the ladder to success. The sequel showed another side, the lower class. I actually found it a very different environment as a result, with its own character.
And yes, while the first game didn't leave much room for a sequel, Bioshock 2 managed to generally avoid tredding on the toes of its predecessor. It made its own room.

Objectivist ideals, not Communist. Don't get ideals mixed up, or you could start a flame war.

No, BioShock 2 focused mainly on Lamb's Collectivist/Communist ideals, that's what he's referring to.

I'm going to agree with the few posters before: BioShock 2 had superior gameplay, BioShock had the better story. BioShock 2's story wasn't bad it just felt very "Fanfictiony" to me, like it was just an unnecessary extension on a plot that had already reached it's conclusion.

 

[Vault101]

I think the second game is pretty good, a little redundant but really good

of coarse youd be a fool to think it could top the "OMG WOW!!!" element of the first, its all about expectations, and I got pretty much what I expected

 

[A Weary Exile]

@Netrigan
Really? It was the same city, sure, but the settings were still (mostly) new. The first game took place in the high and mighty parts of the city, the scientific districts, the places of art and business, while the second one took place in the slums of the city. It really fitted the communist philosophies being tossed around the place, as it all took place in a much more working class environment. In fact, I have to say that I loved that about the second game. With such an emphasis on the survival of the fittest, the first Bioshock never really delved into the fate of those in Rapture who failed, the ones who didn't manage to climb the ladder to success. The sequel showed another side, the lower class. I actually found it a very different environment as a result, with its own character.
And yes, while the first game didn't leave much room for a sequel, Bioshock 2 managed to generally avoid tredding on the toes of its predecessor. It made its own room.

Objectivist ideals, not Communist. Don't get ideals mixed up, or you could start a flame war.

No, BioShock 2 focused mainly on Lamb's Collectivist/Communist ideals, that's what he's referring to.

I'm going to agree with the few posters before me: BioShock 2 had superior gameplay, BioShock had the better story. BioShock 2's story wasn't bad it just felt very "Fanfictiony" to me, like it was just an unnecessary extension on a plot that had already reached it's conclusion.

Ah, I see. Got confused when Rapture was mostly an Objectivist society. Fault on my part there.

EDIT: Whoops. :C

Delete please.

 

[Azahul]

The only problem I have its that it happens SO many times in Bioshock 2. There are like 21 sisters, and 2 harvests each is just TOO MUCH. I get so bored with this part of the game. Its pretty much the same 5 minutes of the game 42 times.

Each one happens in a different room, with different settings and terrain to use to your advantage, and usually against a different combination of enemies as the game progresses. And while that may not be much, it's the exact same thing that differentiates every single non-Sister babysitting fight that takes place in both Bioshock 1 and 2 (and most shooters in general). While I think it would have been better to only have to defend each Sister once (although, if you want, I'm fairly sure you can take the Sister to the grates and rescue her after only the first harvest), I just see the fights as a different form of all the other encounters throughout the game.

 

[Alphakirby]

And I think that no matter what, killing Gil would have been a dark choice. Yeah, he was much more of a dick about everything than anyone else, but that never really made any difference on which was the "good" and "bad" choice. Vengeance is never considered morally good by anyone

I have to disagree on that,if you remember one certain audio message from Gil himself stated that he wanted himself to die if that were to become that abomination. I killed Gil in a "put him out of his misery" kind of way,seeing as he was this horrible,mutated,accident,I though killing him would help him in the long run...because he would be free from that body,he would be his old self again...at least I hoped.

 

[Alphakirby]

The only problem I have its that it happens SO many times in Bioshock 2. There are like 21 sisters, and 2 harvests each is just TOO MUCH. I get so bored with this part of the game. Its pretty much the same 5 minutes of the game 42 times.

Each one happens in a different room, with different settings and terrain to use to your advantage, and usually against a different combination of enemies as the game progresses. And while that may not be much, it's the exact same thing that differentiates every single non-Sister babysitting fight that takes place in both Bioshock 1 and 2 (and most shooters in general). While I think it would have been better to only have to defend each Sister once (although, if you want, I'm fairly sure you can take the Sister to the grates and rescue her after only the first harvest), I just see the fights as a different form of all the other encounters throughout the game.

Until you upgrade Enrage to it's max,then it's just sitting down watching the splicers kill each other while the little sister does it's buisness...it got tedious after a while