Binerexis said:
Deconstruction of linear narrative? Really? All that game involved was constantly going from A to B via C and it never really tried to disguise that fact. Ooops, the roof collapsed. Uh oh, looks like you need a certain plasmid to get through here. The way it was pulling that off made me very aware that it was a game if that makes any sense.
I'm not referring to how your circumvent the obstacles in the game, I mean how the game makes asks you to reflect on the linear nature of gameplay through its story.
Usually in a game you are told that you have freedom. Freedom to move around, freedom to pick a direction, freedom to do what you want in the game world. Allegedly. A well designed game (well...a well designed
linear game anyway) doesn't actually give you freedom though - it simply gives you the well-crafted illusion of freedom. You are still being subjected to whatever the designer wants. You're still just a lab-rat running a maze. Most games don't draw attention to the illusion though. Bioshock does. You think you're free to move around Rapture and help Atlus, but you find out in the story that you weren't free at all. You had the illusion of freedom, but in reality Jack (and by extension, the player) were being subconsciously directed. Jack by Atlas, and the player by the designer.
That shit is
meta.
Binerexis said:
I personally found the atmosphere to be lacklustre. I didn't really feel as if I was there or as if Rapture was a real place whereas the atmosphere in other games and a number of films have been able to accomplish that quite well. I'll give you that it was a little creepy but that was mostly due to things randomly jumping out at me which I hate.
Then I guess this is mostly subjective then. The art-deco art style, period music and enviromental sounds all made it feel
very atmospheric to me. I didn't find it scary though, bar one or two instances in the Medical Pavillion, but I did find it atmospheric.
Binerexis said:
A narrative told through interaction and participation is something that happens in EVERY game. If I were to stop interacting or participating in, let's say, Mass Effect then the story would narrative would stop. Why? Because I've turned the game off. Like I said before, the narrative in Bioshock felt very scripted and made me very aware that I was in a game. It was a game that was playable but it's nowhere near this godly game status that people keep saying it is.
Wrong. Many games simply force-feed you a cut-scene after every level, which is about as passive as watching a film. Bioshock thinks very careful before it wrests control away from the player, and when it does, it makes sense within the story, such as your eventual encounter with Andrew Ryan. Try not to think too literal about my point. Yes, if you stopped playing a game, then you would never get to the end of the story. However, in Bioshock you have to actively engage with the environment to create the story. You only find out the barest bones by listening to whatever is fed into your ear over the comm channels. To find out all about Rapture - its idealogical roots, its creation, golden years, problems, decline and collapse - you have to root around, explore the environment, seek out the audio diaries, and piece together the story yourself. Note that I'd call the rise and fall of Rapture the greater part of the story over the thing with Jack/Atlas/Ryan.
Mass Effect is also, I'd say, a game that requires player interaction to build its story, seeing as its so heavily choice-influenced. The vast majority of games tend to deliver story in the form of blocky, unwieldy, uninteractive cut-scenes though.
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