BioShock created a fantastic world full of philosophies and moralities worth exploring, then decided "eh, too much work" and made it Half Life But Capitalism Is The Bad Guy. Very lazy Saturday morning cartoon morality.
BioShock 2 is a better game because both extremes are represented and portrayed as disastrous. Anarchy got us the hellscape of drug addicted supervillains that is Rapture, while collectivism got us The Rapture Family. Midwits accuse it as being boomer-tier "both sides are bad, I just want to grill" fence sitting, but the real message is that extremism itself is bad no matter what form it comes in.
Ironically, the splicers tell probably some of the most indepth and philosophically groundbreaking stories in the original Bioshock. Unfortunately this story is entirely told by their random dialogue while they aren't hostile and is basically impossible to assemble with a video putting them all together (Dark Souls before Dark Souls!). It does better at showing the flaws of the system than any "Ryan is a hypocrite!" could ever do.
The sequel actually does rather well at not making it "extremism v extremism" anymore. Sinclair alone would be an absolute villain in any other story (including Bioshock 1), and he is filled with villainous actions the game doesn't shy away from showing, but in the end he is shown to not be a cartoon caricature and capable of thinking beyond his ideology and politics plenty of times like a normal human.
All of them tell a complete "story" of their fall if you assemble their dialogue in some semblance of order. So its less of a monologue and, much like Dark Souls, a bunch of random one liners that tell a bigger story.
But the ones I was thinking of when I wrote that were specifically Wader, Toasty and yes Pigskin from the first game, as well as Spider and Brute in the second. And Baby Jane in both.
Each one in the context of Rapture presents a specific moral quandary about its world that focusing on the "big stars" like Atlas and Ryan never could. Focusing on those extremes is basically useless because its all vacuum philosophy based on larger than life guys, wherein the Splicers present real problems that exist in our current world and how more "power/technology/freedom" could exacerbate them into horrific levels.
Also, Brute is my boy and is full of legitimately good quotes for everyday life.
BioShock created a fantastic world full of philosophies and moralities worth exploring, then decided "eh, too much work" and made it Half Life But Capitalism Is The Bad Guy. Very lazy Saturday morning cartoon morality.
BioShock 2 is a better game because both extremes are represented and portrayed as disastrous. Anarchy got us the hellscape of drug addicted supervillains that is Rapture, while collectivism got us The Rapture Family. Midwits accuse it as being boomer-tier "both sides are bad, I just want to grill" fence sitting, but the real message is that extremism itself is bad no matter what form it comes in.
Ironically, the splicers tell probably some of the most indepth and philosophically groundbreaking stories in the original Bioshock. Unfortunately this story is entirely told by their random dialogue while they aren't hostile and is basically impossible to assemble with a video putting them all together (Dark Souls before Dark Souls!). It does better at showing the flaws of the system than any "Ryan is a hypocrite!" could ever do.
The sequel actually does rather well at not making it "extremism v extremism" anymore. Sinclair alone would be an absolute villain in any other story (including Bioshock 1), and he is filled with villainous actions the game doesn't shy away from showing, but in the end he is shown to not be a cartoon caricature and capable of thinking beyond his ideology and politics plenty of times like a normal human.
All of them tell a complete "story" of their fall if you assemble their dialogue in some semblance of order. So its less of a monologue and, much like Dark Souls, a bunch of random one liners that tell a bigger story.
But the ones I was thinking of when I wrote that were specifically Wader, Toasty and yes Pigskin from the first game, as well as Spider and Brute in the second. And Baby Jane in both.
Each one in the context of Rapture presents a specific moral quandary about its world that focusing on the "big stars" like Atlas and Ryan never could. Focusing on those extremes is basically useless because its all vacuum philosophy based on larger than life guys, wherein the Splicers present real problems that exist in our current world and how more "power/technology/freedom" could exacerbate them into horrific levels.
Also, Brute is my boy and is full of legitimately good quotes for everyday life.