How can I explain Bioshock to a parent?

[Loner Jo Jo]

Well, if you want to turn her around on it, you're going to have to spin it slightly. Sure, there is the choice of you can save them to be morally upright or you can kill them to gain more ADAM. However, I would make the argument that these Little Girls are in misery and oblivious to it. They have to scavenge Rapture for the dead, looking for their ADAM. They are mutated themselves to be dependent on the substance themselves. Really, killing them can be skewed to be as morally justifiable as saving them. If you kill them, you put them out of their misery, save them from the never-ending cycle of dodging Splicers and desecrating corpses. If you save them, sure they're alive, but they're still in Rapture, a city on the brink of ruin, literally. It's not a fit place for a child to live. This would be my best argument to try and convince your mom that Bioshock isn't some horrible baby-killing game. Then, once you have her neutral ground again, you can explain the other aspects of the game.

 

[Jake0fTrades]

SNIP

All I did was give a very basic description of the premise. If I were introducing you to the game, you wouldn't want me to reveal any plot-related events or spoilers. I said just enough to give someone the idea, but still leave them with enough questions to spark an interest.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

If you wanted to be honest you would have to say: "the reason you can kill girls is because of a tagged on and asinine morality system that the developers added to the game in order to pretend to be a role playing game."

 

[qewi]

My dad :hey son what are you playing?
me:a game about an under sea city that went crazy and gives you super powers from killing scuba divers and little girls.....and its sooo pretty
My father:Have you been smoking pot again?

 

[Suicida1 Midget]

I dont know what to say. I have the mom who watched me play the gears 3 campaign. She asked if the noob got us all killed.( The moment when the rift wrom eats the raven) and laughed at carmine being eaten alive. Or numerous moments from fallout. Srry cant help ya.

 

[lacktheknack]

The only problem is, parents refuse to imagine that perhaps their potrayal of video games is wrong.

Well the main problem with that is that Bioshock, a supposedly mature and thoughtful exploration of objectivism is actually 1% exploration. The other 99% is shooting guys in the face with bees. I mean, honestly, it's hardly all that mature is it?

This is my main issue with video games, actually. I love how the OP says this:

So my question is how do you show beautiful video games (that takes time to play) to a parent?

in reference to Bioshock. Beautiful? Well, I guess there's some beautiful scenery, it's just behind the girl you set on fire that's currently screaming as her skin peels, crisps and turns black.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_v1nyF-OLGLU/TLxTCfoiVsI/AAAAAAAAA28/eYy1o-K2lZc/s1600/bioshock-2-dlc.jpg

BEAUTY!

Silly tangent aside, there's honestly no point in showing your parent things like Bioshock unless they watch trashy and violent movies/TV shows a lot themselves. You're only shooting yourself in the foot. ("YOU JUST CUT THAT GUY'S HEAD OFF! GROSS!" "But Mom, this is a deep experience that focuses on the fall of a man's sanity in a hostile-" "YOU JUST CUT SOMEONE ELSE'S HEAD OFF! EW!") Stick to things like Braid, Myst, economic strategy, puzzle, and other "family friendly" stuff if you want your parents to take any of it seriously.

(If it's different in your experience, then good for you. This is my experience.)

 

[Treblaine]

The only problem is, parents refuse to imagine that perhaps their potrayal of video games is wrong.

Well the main problem with that is that Bioshock, a supposedly mature and thoughtful exploration of objectivism is actually 1% exploration. The other 99% is shooting guys in the face with bees. I mean, honestly, it's hardly all that mature is it?

This is my main issue with video games, actually. I love how the OP says this:

So my question is how do you show beautiful video games (that takes time to play) to a parent?

in reference to Bioshock. Beautiful? Well, I guess there's some beautiful scenery, it's just behind the girl you set on fire that's currently screaming as her skin peels, crisps and turns black.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_v1nyF-OLGLU/TLxTCfoiVsI/AAAAAAAAA28/eYy1o-K2lZc/s1600/bioshock-2-dlc.jpg

BEAUTY!

Silly tangent aside, there's honestly no point in showing your parent things like Bioshock unless they watch trashy and violent movies/TV shows a lot themselves. You're only shooting yourself in the foot.

Beauty =/= pretty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do you find Bioshock an aesthetically enthralling game? Or is it simply you assume your mother would be so prejudiced to deny beauty when it involves fantasy violence.

The point of all this is to demonstrate what WE find great, not present a family-friendly equivalent of something vaguely related to our interests.

Also change:

Mom: "YOU JUST CUT THAT GUY'S HEAD OFF! GROSS!"

to

Mom: "I JUST CUT THAT GUY'S HEAD OFF! GROSS!"

You had missed the critical element here of involvement. Bioshock does not work for you to just passively watch nor get a highlight reel. It is a game you have to play and make choices yourself. In a movie they make efforts to explicitly and authentically justify the violence of the protagonist, but in a game all that justification goes on in your own head.

And observer will always doubt whether it was right to incinerate that armed madman, but you would never do it if you didn't think it was the right thing to do.

Any one encounter doesn't tell much, it is many repeated encounters that teach you that you cannot reason with these lunatics and if they don't kill them then they will kill you!

 

[Lieju]

Sadly my mum knows a surprising amount, I just tested her.
"Mum, do you know Bioshock? *Points to game piles under TV*"
"That's the one where you're in the underwater city, right? And it has the little girls and the daddies and you either kill or save them with that potion thing to get that ADAM & EVE stuff. Oh and there's that blonde ***** in charge talking to you in the second one?" <3

My mom knows it as the "One with the pretty city and the scary hand".
The scary hand referring to the ice-plasmid.

Anyway, I would try to explain how it's different from watching a movie, narrative-vice, and how you get to explore and stuff, and that it's a good example of good storytelling in video-games, and not just that, but in a way that would have been impossible in any other media.

And tell her that while games as an artistic medium is still young, and that's not the greatest artistic masterpiece ever, it's a good sign the games are getting there, and that it's a step in the right direction.

But, well, my mom is interested in that kind of stuff, art-history and such (and liked the look of Rapture), so it would be a great argument to present to her specifically...

 

[Drizzitdude]

Explain it as the most amazing game, ever made, ever.

 

[Treblaine]

It is TOTALLY different when it is YOU doing the fighting. You are challenged, you control the pace, you get the rewards, and the choice is always with you what and where to go next.

For example, the film Die Hard doesn't follow John McClain search through every inch of the building, but it does cut right to him characteristically moaning about eating a "Prehistoric Twinkie" for a bit of dialogue between him and Powell then cuts away again to something else.

Well that's actually my main point, I'm not saying gaming generally can't explore this theme but I don't think that Bioshock was effective in part because of it's genre. If you're making an FPS you kind of limit your story pace because you have to have several hours of shooting people, regardless of whether the story benefits. I seem to remember thinking Bioshock worked better as a condemnation of drugs than as an exploration of objectivism since that's where most of the actual problems in the city came from.

My main problem with people calling Bioshock 'deep' is that it's just not. I'm not saying it's complete shit or anything but it's important to kind of realise that it's not the most complex art ever. The bit I'm taking umbrage with is the idea that parents aren't going to understand the story when it's so simple, I mean they're not stupid.

Incidentally, did you quote and reply to me 4 times in the same thread?

I can see you've discussed me a few times too and you seem to think I don't get gaming. I'd respond that my opinion is that a lot of gamers don't get anything else. Bioshock may look mature and complex if you're determined not to judge it against other mediums but since I read a lot and watch a lot of films I don't see why I should have two scales for games and not-games. I have noticed a lot of people on here don't read that much, well books are probably the best medium for delivering a complex story. I don't think we can really say that people can't understand Bioshock when the books they read are hundreds of times more complex, I think than when most non-gamers look at Bioshock they think it's kind of juvenile.

Myself, I think the game's alright, a seven out of ten, an alright shooter with some odd graphical choices and slightly repetitive. I don't, however, think the game is in any way cerebral. It's an FPS with an FPS plot, albeit a good one, but I am acutely aware that the plot is there to drive the shooting. I think that in order to find this game as profound and earth-shattering as some people do I'd have to have never encountered this idea before in other media.

(yes I have quoted you a lot, because you have said a lot of things that have earned scrutiny)

FPS is a presentation style, not a genre. It's like writing from the first person and assuming that is a genre with inescapable tropes.

FPS is NOT a genre. It is a graphical perspective that in some capacity involves guns. That could be ANY genre. And frankly it isn't limited to guns or shooting.

It is simply not true that Bioshock is "several hours of shooting people". Is THAT how you tried to play the game?!? Seriously? Just rush through it without ever stopping shooting every enemy and trying to finish the game as quickly as possible?

90% of the game is exploring, discovering the world and preparing. You seem to categorise Bioshock as if it is just Doom or something. It is a slow methodical game, finding loot, planning and learning. Yes it IS a shooter, but you act as if it is just Modern Warfare 2 or something. Encounters with splicers are frequent but actually quite far apart and brief.

The important thing is it is not "non stop fighting" there is plenty of time to stop and absorb the world.

You are again trivialising and generalising to say the game "worked better as a condemnation of drugs". See splicers are referred to as "like drug addicts" that doesn't mean they are the same as drug addicts nor even allegories for them. It's the closest analogy but that isn't the same thing and in fact directly relates to objectivism.

Drugs are for simple pleasure, ignoring all other aspects of life just to get that hit.

Adam is everything else. Adam makes you beautiful, strong, intelligent, fast and capable of extraordinary even magical feats when used correctly. It's not addiction that stimulates the base of the brain, it is greed for POWER! Adam makes you powerful and master of your universe while drug addicts retreat from and gives up on the real world and any kind of intellectual satisfaction, just to be artificially made happy with chemicals.

Randian philosophy calls for that everyone pursue personal wealth and power as the highest ideal. Surely you picked this up in Ryan's recordings, how he permitted the continued consumption of ADAM as it followed his ideal of people following their selfish needs. That it would somehow balance itself out, the old "self stabilisation" idea.

Ryan and Rand's ideals also said that the only law should be property (property is the only Law Ryan ever believes in) there should be no moral laws against unethical genetic experiments. The idea is that drugs would be totally legal in Rapture but Bioshock goes the complete other way, of those who abuse chemicals to dominate. Presumably all those who shot up heroine didn't stand a chance against the splicers and their greed for more and more power that objectivism did more than permit... it encouraged it.

I never said middle-aged-people-with-no-gaming-experience (parents) couldn't understand the story. I'm saying they couldn't understand THE GAME! If you can't interact with the world then you can't absorb the story. You have to play the game, otherwise it's like a novelization of Caddyshack, it doesn't work. OK, they can understand WHAT happens but it doesn't work. It's like explaining a joke before you tell it. Understanding is not enough, it's the WAY you tell them.

Name me a novel or movie that is better than Bioshock at exploring similar or equivalent themes. I don't want to hear about some generic Tolkien style fantasy world, or a clichéd futuristic city. I expect something as original as Rapture; a secret underwater art-deco utopia turned dystopia set in 1960's that has been descended into anarchy after the population turn insane taking on a craze of extreme genetic self modification, then manipulated by powerful political forces into civil war.

I can't think of a more original concept. That's what makes Bioshock so hard to describe.

-Elder scrolls: like Lord of the Rings, but
-Gears of War: like Starship Troopers, but
-Deus Ex: like Blade Runner, but
-Mass Effect: Star Wars, but
-Red Faction: Total Recall, but
-Borderlands: Mad Max, but

That's why I say to make splicers less aggressive, make a few of them passive and make them run from you if you're likely to beat them. That way you start off scraping Adam to legitimately survive but end up preying on Splicers as helpless and terrified as you once were, it makes you from an outsider into a part of the situation.

Again, so much depth is glossed over it's extraordinary.

Rapture is not a place where nice people survive, that is the hyper-rational objectivist ideal; it's dog-eat-dog hyper-individualism. The strong survive, the weak are killed, and the charitable are ruthlessly exploited and betrayed. That is the society that Ryan built, that Ayn Rand idealised. She said that altruism was an evil of society and to be selfishness was the highest goal.

This society is driven mad by greed, they fight and die to get more power. And if they die trying, well that's natural selection. They give no sympathy and expect none.

What I meant is that whilst you can see what someone was before they became crazy you always meet them when they're mad, you never see someone lose anything to Adam, it's all backstory and no continuing story.

Did you listen to ANY of the audio recordings? Or did you simply fail to piece together how normal people were and their progression into madness as they followed the objectivist dream? That you can do whatever you like with no restraints?

 

[Booze Zombie]

You just explain that the game forces you to make a choice and this choice either sacrifices a child for great power or you save children to have your altruism rewarded at a later point.

 

[Treblaine]

Did you listen to ANY of the audio recordings? Or did you simply fail to piece together how normal people were and their progression into madness as they followed the objectivist dream? That you can do whatever you like with no restraints?

I'll make this nice and simple.

1. I do not think Bioshock did any of what it set out to do in a mature or effective manner.

2. I think forcing the player to frolic through the entire city undermined the feel they were going for.

3. I don't think games generally are mature enough to explore ideas with nearly the effectiveness of a book or any other medium because they need to make it into a murder simulator at the same time. Imagine trying to make a film when you're told a car has to explode at 45 minutes in, somewhat limits your options no?

4. Final thought: I understood everything Bioshock was trying to do. I thought it was shit at it.

Oh, and if you want a good series of books that deal with political machinations I'd try The First Law series, try getting that in a game!

If you're dead set on something equivalent I'd recommend either 1984 or Brave New World, they're polar opposites really so they make a nice set.

(1) I know what you think, you still haven't justified adequately. Merely stated it.

(2) You aren't forced to "frolic". You are encouraged to explore by appealing to the grain of curiosity in most people. It ruins nothing. It merely fails to be a book/film that controls every aspect of the storytelling.

(3) The violence did not distract from the ideas. They were integral. It is PURE SUPPOSITION that Ken Levine felt forced to include mindless action like "a car has to explode". What if he felt the game needed all the violence for the overall narrative?

(4) No you don't. You thought Splicers were a mere drug-addiction analogy.

I'm glad to see you bring up 1984 and Brave New World in favourable comparison with Bioshock, they are certainly peers. And of course, it would be churlish to say "this is better" the point is they are all significant.

It's easy to dismiss Bioshock as having too much fighting, just as easy as it is to say Orwell's 1984 has too much navel gazing. BOTH are similarly unfair criticisms.

All I have heard from you is prejudice and supposition, you seem to judge Bioshock first as an FPS and scorn it for that, the bias that it is as mindless as the most generic and repetitive games that use the FPS perspective seems to colour your opinion throughout.

It is easy to say "it's shit" or "it doesn't work" or "it doesn't do what I expect it should do". You could equally say that about '1984' or 'Brave New World' but that it's completely baseless.

 

[Treblaine]

(1) I know what you think, you still haven't justified adequately. Merely stated it.

(2) You aren't forced to "frolic". You are encouraged to explore by appealing to the grain of curiosity in most people. It ruins nothing. It merely fails to be a book/film that controls every aspect of the storytelling.

(3) The violence did not distract from the ideas. They were integral. It is PURE SUPPOSITION that Ken Levine felt forced to include mindless action like "a car has to explode". What if he felt the game needed all the violence for the overall narrative?

(4) No you don't. You thought Splicers were a mere drug-addiction analogy.

I'm glad to see you bring up 1984 and Brave New World in favourable comparison with Bioshock, they are certainly peers. And of course, it would be churlish to say "this is better" the point is they are all significant.

It's easy to dismiss Bioshock as having too much fighting, just as easy as it is to say Orwell's 1984 has too much navel gazing. BOTH are similarly unfair criticisms.

All I have heard from you is prejudice and supposition, you seem to judge Bioshock first as an FPS and scorn it for that, the bias that it is as mindless as the most generic and repetitive games that use the FPS perspective seems to colour your opinion throughout.

First of all it's not 'prejudice' if I judged the game after playing it. I was open to it being mature and meaningful, though I'll admit I did doubt it would be. Seeing as I bought it at launch price in the UK (which isn't cheap) I really wanted to like it, which I did. What you're reading here are my criticisms of how it handles the narrative themes rather than a balanced review of it.

1. I felt that it didn't cut to the heart of just what Objectivism would do to a society because it felt the need to introduce madness into the mix when the true exploration of Objectivism would concentrate more on the sane. I felt that a far better critique of the philosophy could have been made by setting the game just before Rapture's downfall or in forcing you to experience the pure selfishness of the philosophy firsthand. Some of the background recordings and posters were just about getting to the point, things like the Plasmid adverts showed the fear that people would feel at being under-equipped and behind in such a society but I personally found that introducing insanity into the mix diluted the message.

I also had a significant problem with the Little Sister mechanic. The idea of that choice was that you could trade your morality for power, that would have been an excellent exploratory tool but I disliked that both paths would net you a roughly equivalent reward of Adam, it should have been a hard choice to make and the player should have suffered for doing what was right, the idea is that a society like Rapture destroys your morality and to save a few Sisters, but always have the nagging idea at the back of your mind that you could be so much better if you abandoned your petty moralising would have been more effective than making it into a straight good/evil choice. I also found that the game made it abundantly clear which was the correct option since you didn't suffer for that choice and since Tenenbaum was far more authoritative in their confrontation than Atlas, if Atlas had put up more of a persuasive argument or of Tenenbaum's idea had been suicidal I would have been happier.

2. My problem with the exploration is that it's too methodical, if you were really in that situation there would need to be one hell of an incentive to draw you in rather than have you just jam the first door shut and look for another Bathysphere. In concert with the first point I would have liked them to include more neutral Splicers to set some background and actually give you, the player, something to be curious about. In my opinion I didn't think the danger outweighed the draw. I would have also liked the compass to be off by default, purely to make it seem less railroaded.

3. When you make a shooter you need to incorporate a certain amount of gunplay to keep the game exciting. Whilst I appreciate the need for excitement in a game I would have expected a character in that position to be less confrontational and more likely to sneak about. I think including so many aggressive enemies lessened their impact and was uncharacteristic for a real city, even one as ravaged as Rapture. Again, I felt that having so many enemies teaming together and attacking with no fear for their lives was somewhat counter to the spirit of a pure Objectivist society, even with the reward on your head. I would have expected the splicers to be more calculating and unwilling to get themselves hurt considering 1. what their resident doctor is like and 2. that they have to pay for their treatment. An Objectivist society is a selfish society and I never saw any sign of selfishness in their day-to-day dealings.

4. I didn't think they were an allegory for drugs, I just thought the enemies worked better as an illustration of addiction than of self interest. Little scenes like that one at the start where that splicer is talking through the door to 'Charlie', the scene shortly after in the toilet when a woman laments the toll Adam has taken on her and the desperation of a splicer attacking a big daddy made them seem like desperate addicts on withdrawal rather than people climbing to the top of the pile. I really think adding the insanity harmed the development of the splicers into something truly competitive, they didn't act like people scheming and searching for their fortune.

Buddy, I've been there. You can go in with a prejudiced attitude towards not the thing but preconceived notions of what you think it should be. And money only makes it worse. I've held the worst prejudices against things I spent the most money on.

On little sister morality:
"it should have been a hard choice to make and the player should have suffered for doing what was right"

Says YOU!

Objectivism says that to be altruistic is to suffer and drag down potential. The lesson Ken Levine teaches with Bioshock's choice is that altruism pays in kind and you can survive. Be good and people are good to you.

How could you miss that?

"exploration is that it's too methodical"

uh, YOU did that. You are the one exploring. It you don't like exploring methodically, why are you doing that? Also... you did understand the whole "Would you kindly" part? THAT is why you just jump in the Bathysphere, again this exploits gaming conventions.

"I would have also liked the compass to be off by default"

Then just turn it off. More complaining because you don't have things done for you. This is not a book or a movie or another controlled story. YOU control the experience, you can turn off the compass as easily as if you were actually there you could just toss a magic compass aside. Oh all the complaints...

Point (3)

Oy, so much nit picking when you KNOW the reasons:
-Rapture has just had a horrifically bloody civil war in the most extreme of environments
-Everyone is spliced up and definitely beyond reason
-You are an intruder and suspected spy, you have a massive bounty on you head.
-they did not form altruistic teams, they formed lynch mobs. Selfish people can still make deals with the right terms; honour among thieves

(4) except Adam is not a narcotic, it is basically a supremely performance enhancing drug. The difference is the result from them obtaining it, they want it like a thirsty man craves water. But you are simplifying things by broad appearances.

No doubt the developers dew from imagery and themes of drug addiction to create the splicers, but you are AGAIN boiling things down to little points and not assessing it all together. Particularly how the big-bad uses Adam in the end, that is not like a drug addict. Nor most of the antagonists in the game are they weakened and pacified by their abuse of plasmids consumption.

 

[Stephen Wo]

I think it has to do a lot with the fact that parents are alienated from gaming culture in many ways. You might watch FMJ with you dad because he loved it, and it's a great experience. But when he walks in to a gore splattered room in Fallout, it's different to him.

Also, games are interactive. A lot of them have choices beyond, "buy product or not".

 

[Treblaine]

That might have been the intent of the lesson but the actual execution came across as more 'it doesn't matter which of these options you take since it doesn't affect your survival in any way whatsoever'. If you want to fuck others to seize power you should be more powerful than someone who denies power to help others. As it is it's just a 'pick the end cutscene' mechanic. Honestly I think that quests in other games where you can choose to return the item or keep it are more effective teachers of the same lesson.

Uh, you could only realise that after playing through the game twice and comparing capability or DELIBERATELY SPOILING THE GAME! Even if you discovered it after the playthrough I don't see how this makes for a poor moral choice system.

The point is AS YOU START TO PLAY THROUGH you have to take a leap of faith, you don't know (unless you cheated with strategy guides) that you would be rewarded for rescuing the Little Sisters, you just have to hope your kindness would be rewarded. That's a moral choice with a lot of depth.

It's crazy to say it is not a good to do something if you get an unexpected reward as thanks.

It is YOUR ideals you are forcing onto the game, saying that it simply "should" be that being evil is hugely beneficial and that the player "should" be punished for doing the good thing.

Again YOUR PREJUDICE.

Let me set the scene for you; you are a lone man lost in a city of selfishness and murder. Do you:

1. lay low and figure out what you need, then make quick forays to those places, recover the items you need and hide again?

-or-

2. organise a long walking route that takes you through the entire city, encompasses all of the interesting sights and never loops back upon itself?

If you chose option 2 I don't fancy your chances. By the nature of the game you HAVE to visit locations methodically, it makes no sense from an actual perspective to drag your sorry beat-up ass around an entire city as opposed to basing yourself in the bar, torturing some splicer to find out where the nearest radio equipment is and then hauling it back to your safe place. I liked the 'would you kindly' approach because it was the developer admitting that was the stupid option and asking you 'why the hell do you ever behave like that?' but I didn't like continuing to behave like that afterwards.

As for the compass, it'd be like Amnesia shipping with the gamma all the way up and telling me I'm being stupid for not thinking to turn it down.

What the hell are you talking about? Torturing a splicer for radio equipment? Huh? How does that have anything to do with you getting to that sub, getting to Ryan and avenging yourself.

There are no problems with looping back. This isn't a theme park ride, this is an environment to immerse yourself and revisiting places in different circumstances makes you view them in different ways.

You are such a philistine. What you call "acting stupid" would far more accurately be described as questioning whether we truly have Free Will. See YOU did this, you followed his orders, it exploits video game conventions to do that to demonstrate the deeper implications of free-will. Do we really do what we want? Or merely what we are compelled to do? After all YOU did get in the bathysphere...

I highly suggest you watch Adam Curtis' documentary series 'Century of the Self' that explores such concepts in a historical and political context.

PS: ever driven a car with sat-nav and wanted to find your way there yourself? THAT is a better analogy. If you don't like the tool then don't use it. Stop nit picking.

I don't buy that every Splicer would put aside their personal grudges and plans just for one person somewhere in the city. I never saw a weak splicer finished off by his cohorts, never saw splicers send each other into ambushes to die and I never saw a splicer loot the bodies of the dead. They are grunts/imps/headcrabs, they're identikit videogame baddies and they don't behave appropriate to the setting. Splicers are supposed to be clever for god's sake, they're the cream of the crop and tempered by constant infighting.

I did see those things. You obviously have a very selective memory.

Ever notice how you usually encounter lone Splicers and rarely in groups. If they are in a group they are bickering and squabbling or keeping their distance. It may be the wild west but they can still form a posse.

Also, I just remembered: Fontaine's House for the Poor. Or; his own private army. He united a lot of the most downtrodden and conned them into helping him undermine Ryan, though his organisation was smashed the unions he formed likely remain. Also many are heard singing children's prayers to spite the outlawing of religion, this suggest some religious kinship. And retroactively it is revealed Lamb's collectivist "Family" was around then.

They are at least more imaginative foes than most other works I can think of. The average Splicer has more character than a quasi-fascistic trooper, a zombie, an eeevil mercenary or inhuman alien.

Fontaine made no sense to me, he knew plasmids were a loser's path and yet he took loads. He lost a long term advantage for a short term gain he hardly needed. Well, he did need it but that's because the game needed a final boss, if he'd have been thinking there were hundreds of ways he could have killed you before hand.

Isn't it obvious? Fontaine did think ADAM was the loser's path and tried to have you killed by other means but failed. As you got closer and closer to exacting your revenge on him he saw how powerful you were with Adam he tried to outdo you. It should be clear from each time you see him he has more powerful abilities. And he very nearly won had it not been for the Little Sisters.

Who knows what the long term consequences where, but short term the concern was death.

The game did need a "boss fight" just like any story needs a final confrontation with the antagonist. It's acceptable for so many others to do this, Avatar ended with that alien fighting a Mech armed with a giant knife. District 13 also ends with a big fight in a Mech. Goldeneye ends with Bond and Alec fighting on a gigantic antenna cradle.