Bioshock 2: The political debate

[Spacewolf]

Cause I'm Mr. Nice Guy I save the Little Sisters every time, which also makes the game a bit more challenging.

Spoiler

I saved Grace cause I thought her hate was misplaced, killed Stanley cause he was a fag and killed Gil Alexander cause it was his last request (or at least the last request from who he once was).

a quick question

Spoiler

what happened to sofia in your game as im trying to figure out whether the last one is a good or bad choice to kill.

 

[presidentjlh]

Mostly, I play video games to get away from this type of philosophical shit.

 

[MercurySteam]

Cause I'm Mr. Nice Guy I save the Little Sisters every time, which also makes the game a bit more challenging.

Spoiler

I saved Grace cause I thought her hate was misplaced, killed Stanley cause he was a fag and killed Gil Alexander cause it was his last request (or at least the last request from who he once was).

a quick question

Spoiler

what happened to sofia in your game as im trying to figure out whether the last one is a good or bad choice to kill.

I'm not quite sure, but if you save the little sisters you will likely get the good ending. I'm not exactly sure if you get the evil ending if you kill Grace, Stanley and Gil.

Spoiler

Andrew and objectivism wasn't the bad guy. Frank Fontaine was. Rapture was a successful project, but Frank Fontaine caused the entire downfall. Andrew was the good guy, just a bit of a madman.

While I agree Fontaine was key to the fall of Rapture, the whole concept of Rapture was bound to fail. When you make a city with no laws and no limits con men like Fontaine are gonna come along faster than you can open the gates. So Rapture is a bit like communisim; a great concept with poor execution. But who knows if Rapture could've worked out under any circumstances?

So basically Rapture couldn't have been Rapture if men like Fontaine weren't drawn to it, resulting in enough greed to destroy it.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Actually, if you pay attention to the end of the first game:

Spoiler

Andrew and objectivism wasn't the bad guy. Frank Fontaine was. Rapture was a successful project, but Frank Fontaine caused the entire downfall. Andrew was the good guy, just a bit of a madman.

Did you play the game at all or did you read a plot synopsis from wikipedia? The whole of the first game is a deconstruction of Objectivism how it fails as a political system.

I played the game. I can't remember the exact reasons, but it was Fontaine who rebelled against Ryan. It is deconstructing Objectivism until the end when you realize that it was for entirely different reasons that it all failed.

rapture failed because he hired a batshit crazy doctor with an obsession for ubermensh projects that actually destroyed people's trust of ryan instead of helping it, allowing fontaine to create a rebellion against him. ryan should have chose more carefully in his staff.

Yeah, but then again, it's a bit hard in the first place to find people willing to live in a city under the sea, isolated from the rest of the world.

 

[Agayek]

Did you play the game at all or did you read a plot synopsis from wikipedia? The whole of the first game is a deconstruction of Objectivism how it fails as a political system.

Played through it in its entirety, and he's right. Bioshock seems to be a deconstruction, until the big plot twist at the end that reveals Fontaine manipulated events to happen as they did.

 

[Kalfira]

The problem with both is that in concept they are truly equal in societal gains. The major problem with these ideas is two simple words. "People Suck". You heard it here, not a new idea but true. I suck, you suck, we all suck. If your sitting there thinking "HA! He's right everyone else does suck, i'm glad I don't." Then you super suck and are wrong.

At some point we have all done suckey stuff. Be it cut someone off or cheat on a girlfriend or lie to your boss to make your co worker look bad. In any case, because of this it is impossible to have a sustained extreme. In Ryans world there would be no laws and everyone would be out for themselves without anything to stop them. In Lambs world there is no reward for hard work or dedication, you work for what amounts to be free. If you could make the same money being a video game tester as a lawyer, what do you think your going to do?

To answer the original question, I think I would go with Ryan on this one. While everyone is looking to screw everyone else it at least gives the opportunity to evolve as a society.

 

[Prized Cup]

To answer the original question, I think I would go with Ryan on this one. While everyone is looking to screw everyone else it at least gives the opportunity to evolve as a society.

Yeah but the society didn't evolve. It was static because people who had nothing had no government welfare to help them stand on their own two feet. If you fell from grace because of a corporate buyout (take the train guy as a shining example) or your marketing ideas were terrible you'd have to get a shitty job and stay there. There's only a few top floors but plenty of toilets to scrub.

This is why I liked the Skid Row level. It really filled a gaping hole in the plot of episode one - where do the poor people live?

 

[L3m0n_L1m3]

Did you ever take a moment to think about who's side you really WERE on?

Fix'd

OT: No, I just killed whoever annoyed me. Which was pretty much everyone aside from Eleanor and Sinclair.

Spoiler

actually, I ended up killing Sinclair anyways, when he got turned into an Alpha series. I was deeply saddened by this. And then Eleanor ended up killing me.

 

[Kalfira]

Yeah but the society didn't evolve. It was static because people who had nothing had no government welfare to help them stand on their own two feet. If you fell from grace because of a corporate buyout (take the train guy as a shining example) or your marketing ideas were terrible you'd have to get a shitty job and stay there. There's only a few top floors but plenty of toilets to scrub.

This is why I liked the Skid Row level. It really filled a gaping hole in the plot of episode one - where do the poor people live?

Well. Being candidly honest. Let them die. I don't mean to be cold hearted or anything but since when is it societies job to support those who can't make it in real life? There is no "easier difficulty setting" on life, you succeed or you don't. Simple as that.

Now I WILL concede that there are those in life who had opportunity taken away from them. Like me for example. I lost my job at the local video games retailer who shall remain nameless because the store was robbed. I didn't even do anything wrong or against policy. The upper management saw me as disposable and discarded me like tissue paper. But that is the unfortunate part of being a species that is inherently flawed.

Lets break this down into some quantifiable data. It is estimated that the united states will spend almost 800 Billion dollars in 2010 on welfare, one of the many social service programs. Now if we think about this, we the people are paying that much money so that people can NOT be productive members of our society. Lets say.... pick a VERY generous number and say half of that money is to people who actually deserve it. "Down on your luckers" for example. That's still 400 billion dollars. That's enough to buy a dennys grand slam everyday for approximately 270 days(before taxes) for every man woman and child in the US. Lord knows I would rather have that breakfast than pay for people to sit on there ass and not work.

If you look at the animal kingdom this becomes even more apparent. If an ant is born with a busted leg and can't work. Do the ant feed him, pay for his medicine, send his other busted up leg children to twelve years of school? No. They don't just leave him alone. They eat him. Now i'm not saying we need to go around executing the poor and disabled. But I don't think we should enable them. By doing so we only continue the problem. Intelligence is just as genetic as heart issues.

In Ryans rapture there is no poor class. There is no "bad neighborhood with all the projects". There is only the successful people. Even if all they do is dig ditches that's still valuable. Those who don't fit this model either leave or die off. THAT is what Andrew Ryan wanted, to "Not be fettered by petty morality". The weak being eliminated is HOW society evolves. It's HOW we got to be able to walk on the moon and air condition our homes. By catering to the lowest rung we only prolong the period of development we are in instead of accelerating development. Respectfully if you disagree you can go live in a cave, naked, without even fire to warm your body. Because at some point the caveman who figured out how to use fire beat out ALL the other non fire users and guess what? Their genes died with them.

 

[Anticitizen_Two]

Rapture was founded as a fiercely capitalist society, and look how far they got! So much progress!

In the end, capitalism is a few people on the top exploiting and brainwashing all those beneath them, and that's what ended up happening. Fontaine pretended to be fighting for the people when in reality he was using them for his own gain. Ryan used Adam to brainwash thousands of people to serve him. And in the end what did it result in? Everyone was dead or insane, the city was in ruins, and STILL they were fighting over control of the city like infants!

Jack Ryan is a great example of how capitalism treats its adherents. The entire game he was CONVINCED that he was doing what was right, what he was supposed to do, what he had chosen to do. But in reality, he was being told what to do by Fontaine, and he blindly followed, never questioning. "Atlas" treated him really kindly and convinced him that they were friends and equals, but really Jack was nothing more than a tool used by Atlas, nothing more than a pawn that happened to checkmate a king. It took complete BETRAYAL for Jack to realize he was being used! We are all being used by the wealthy of society, and so few of us realize, because the wealthy are so good at convincing us that we have it better off under capitalism.