Levine Explains BioShock Infinite's Civil War

[boholikeu]

Well if they did do it as allegory for America then it would just be ANOTHER allegory for america today.

Most other allegories for America in the media typically have a liberal or conservative slant to them. This game could be unique if it managed to be neutral.

am i the only one that sees bioshock for what it is an unorigonal badly made system shock clone

No, there are plenty of other gamers looking through the same rose-colored glasses that you are.

 

[Flamezdudes]

Definatly interesting. This is one of the reasons i liked BioShock, the ideology of a man rejected from outsiders. It's very interesting.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

This could be a good game if expanded on.


The best bit about BioShock has always been the polotics involved.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Ugh, I like the philophy and politics of Bioshock, and yet this game also makes no sense. Didn't Andrew Ryan found Rapture because there was never a place like it that existed, far away form humanity?

Now they're making it sound like Rapture was inspired by Columbia. THe time line gets confusing

Separate universe, I do believe.
I think it's just named "Bioshock" because it's all about a "shock" to a "biosphere".

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

Ugh, I like the philophy and politics of Bioshock, and yet this game also makes no sense. Didn't Andrew Ryan found Rapture because there was never a place like it that existed, far away form humanity?

Now they're making it sound like Rapture was inspired by Columbia. THe time line gets confusing

Separate universe, I do believe.
I think it's just named "Bioshock" because it's all about a "shock" to a "biosphere".

and all my hopes for an integrated universe are SHATTERED!

 

[FinalFrog]

Personally I think I would have preferred a story which involved eugenics. Google "Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics" and witness the horrific truth: much of the Nazi's beliefs and even methodology was developed in the US of A and funded by charities such as the Carnegie Institution*. There's some really creepy letters between Nazi eugenics scientists talking about how they *aspire* to be half as good at eugenics as the USA's researchers. It was only once news of what the researchers were working on got into the media and WWII started that they basically shut the place down and tried to cover their tracks.

I think that could hold a lot of potential for them since it would go well with the title "Bioshock."

*This may sound sinister but it made prefect sense for the beliefs of the day. If poverty and crime is genetic and unable to be diluted by intermixing with other gene lines, as they believed in that day, then the only way to create a world in which no one is doomed to a life of crime and poverty is to end the gene lines of those people who carry the genes for poverty and crime. It's horrifying to consider how much they believed themselves to have the truth...

 

[poiuppx]

Sounds cool. I like the idea of actually having shades of grey, rather than 'Well, they might be working for Atlas or Ryan, but either way they're basically just the same wrench/pistol/hook/rifle-packing Splicers with no distinctions' thing Bioshock had going for it.

 

[Andronicus]

How are they going to make the Vox Populi evil? I just can't see a group of people dedicated to equality and passion being evil...

Passionate =/= compassionate. Even people who fight for things you might agree with can use dirty, underhanded tricks to get what they want.

 

[Thorvan]

Ugh, I like the philophy and politics of Bioshock, and yet this game also makes no sense. Didn't Andrew Ryan found Rapture because there was never a place like it that existed, far away form humanity?

Now they're making it sound like Rapture was inspired by Columbia. THe time line gets confusing

Andrew Ryan didn't create Rapture just to prove that he can build giant cities underwater. He did to escape society itself. He was sick of al the unspoken rules and obligations that society forced on its residents and wanted brilliant minds to embrace their true potential without being held back by censorship or laws (which incidentally is why Rapture is so fucked up).

It is a bit overkill to build a city undewater just for that though, but then the game wouldn't be as interesting if you just ran around frozen meadows in Greenland now would it?

Rapture could potentially have been inspired by Columbia. But we'll never know until the game is released. Personally, I'm really interested in seeing where Irrational takes the story they have created.

Well the game IS set about 30 years before Bioshock 1. Factor in that Rapture was already destroyed, seemed to be in a good decade of ruins, and that the audio tapes seem to indicate many years of everything that was going on (the break throughs and such) and you can asusme that Columbia existed while Andrew Ryan was alive.

It would be neat to see if he attempted a coup in Columbia and failed, but Andrew specifically says at some point that there was no place to go in order to be set apart by the world. Maybe Andrew Ryan created Columbia, and the the nationalist parties took it over to he escaped to Rapture, but Ryan always appears to be in his 30s-40s... So it's hard to tell the lineage through his potential age and the turn of things

Actually, I highly doubt the idea that Rapture was DIRECTLY inspired by Columbia, for a variety of reasons. First of all, Columbia was founded in 1893; considering the apparent age of Andrew Ryan, perhaps 50 at the time of Bioshock, it is nearly impossible for him to have known of it at its conception, and even knowledge of the city after it had left was probably pretty impossible by the time he was old enough to understand due to all the government cover ups.

Secondly, even if he knew a substantial knowledge of Columbia, the idea of an isolated city, where people could live by their own laws and some such, wouldn't be transfered by the knowledge available to Ryan; Columbia was a big patriotic show off event, banished after a scandal involving hiding weapons. The very idea of patriotism, as we know, is (nearly) the exact opposite of the ideologies Rapture was founded upon.

And finally, even if he did know the whole story, the details and philosophies behind the city and the place it becomes, would that not just turn him off of the idea? "Hmm, this failed. Maybe I should reconsider." It's not terribly in character for Ryan, of course, but there's certainly nothing about Columbia that would "inspire" him.

Note that I'm going solely off of what we have now.

 

[fenderstrat]

so its just like bioshock, which also had a civil war between 2 factions. wow

 

[Narcogen]

Ugh, I like the philophy and politics of Bioshock, and yet this game also makes no sense. Didn't Andrew Ryan found Rapture because there was never a place like it that existed, far away form humanity?

Now they're making it sound like Rapture was inspired by Columbia. THe time line gets confusing

What's the sequence of events got to do with anything?

Columbia and Rapture have nothing to do with each other besides shared themes.

Ryan founds Rapture to have a separate place where he can create a society modeled after his personal philosophy, withdrawn from the rest of the world-- hidden beneath the waves, out of reach, out of mind.

Columbia instead drifts away in to the skies, but is also separate.

There need not be any explicit connection whatsoever. Ryan need not know of Columbia to get the idea of Rapture. Neither does Ryan need to think his idea of a separate society is entirely original, or reference any previous separate society.

Just because these games are made by the same studio, and share a name, and perhaps even exist within the same fictional universe, does not mean there need to be explicit plot connections between them, or that any should be looked for, or that the apparent absence of same should be confusing. Levine himself said that to him, "Bioshock" means certain themes and gameplay mechanics, not a location.

The first game was "Bioshock". Not "Rapture".

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

Ugh, I like the philophy and politics of Bioshock, and yet this game also makes no sense. Didn't Andrew Ryan found Rapture because there was never a place like it that existed, far away form humanity?

Now they're making it sound like Rapture was inspired by Columbia. THe time line gets confusing

What's the sequence of events got to do with anything?

Columbia and Rapture have nothing to do with each other besides shared themes.

Ryan founds Rapture to have a separate place where he can create a society modeled after his personal philosophy, withdrawn from the rest of the world-- hidden beneath the waves, out of reach, out of mind.

Columbia instead drifts away in to the skies, but is also separate.

There need not be any explicit connection whatsoever. Ryan need not know of Columbia to get the idea of Rapture. Neither does Ryan need to think his idea of a separate society is entirely original, or reference any previous separate society.

Just because these games are made by the same studio, and share a name, and perhaps even exist within the same fictional universe, does not mean there need to be explicit plot connections between them, or that any should be looked for, or that the apparent absence of same should be confusing. Levine himself said that to him, "Bioshock" means certain themes and gameplay mechanics, not a location.

The first game was "Bioshock". Not "Rapture".

Yeah turns out I was misinformed, Two conpletely separate alternate universes. I didn't think Levine would create a multitude of universes to his franchise. Though I'm wondering just where he'lll make the next alternate universe, he he does so