Bioshock 2: Negatives
By Chris Cesarano
Recently I’ve been trying to write in a style that is both critical but also humorously entertaining. With a game like Borderlands it isn’t so hard because the game is so bland that the only thing interesting about it is the visual style. Yet Bioshock 2 presents a very different case. I cannot start off with a witty joke, nor can I really think of any sort of planned spice to the mix. I can only critique its flaws for what they are.
Maybe this is because the game is still fun, albeit problematic. Or it could be due to how seriously I took the first game and thus am taking its predecessor. No matter what the case, don’t expect much entertainment here. Just cold criticism. This will also cover the single player experience exclusively. Multiplayer will be covered separately from the rest of the game.
The first problem with Bioshock 2 is that 2K Games demanded it be created in the first place. The second is that someone limited development time to two years instead of as long as necessary. The original Bioshock worked because it took years until they finally had a concept and story that worked right. That was years of not only writing ideas down, but creating actual assets for gameplay only to scrap them and start over.
The gameplay may not have been the greatest, no, but the atmosphere, missions, levels and story suggested that a lot of time, thought and care went into development. It was not taken lightly nor was it rushed to completion. As a result it is not only fun to mess with plasmids and the old style of weaponry on occasion, but every time you dive into the tale of Rapture’s rise and fall you come back with something new. It’s like a really good and complex piece of literature read again and again, or a film like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. You pick up small nuances you had never seen before each time you go back.
To ask someone to not only do it all again but to do it in such a short period of time is like digging your own grave. After about a year of development the team is going to have to decide what is in for good and not change it. There may be some minor adjustments to the story or missions, but you have your outline and are forced to stick to it. That means whoever is in charge of the story can only come up with one variation with every character in place. This lack of time reflects on how the game’s story plays out. Despite trying to make Rapture seem more alive than in the previous game it feels more empty than ever.
The antagonist of our second descent into Rapture is Dr. Sophia Lamb. She is a psychologist hired to help those dissatisfied with their experiences in Rapture. They bought into Andrew Ryan’s dream but only found the same misery they had above the surface. Or perhaps they were actually content above water and merely wanted more, but now were forced into a social standing that was not to their liking. Lamb was intended to help these people, but instead she started to grow her own following. See, unlike Andrew Ryan’s focus on doing for yourself and no one else, a sort of “survival of the fittest” mentality, Lamb believed in the Greater Good. One should act for what is best for the many regardless of your own desires.
This is an interesting direction to try and take the franchise, certainly. To try and do more with Andrew Ryan and Objectivism would have only cheapened the experience. Now there is the possibility to see a transformed Rapture changed by someone else’s goals.
Only it doesn’t really change all that much. Well, with the exception of the wall markings of the first game gone. You no longer see signs exclaiming “Ryan doesn’t own us” or similar outcries. It is now reverence to Sophia Lamb. In addition, the conflict between Lamb and Ryan seems to have occurred at the same time Ryan was dealing with Fontaine and later Atlas.
Messing with established canon is always tricky and risky no matter what franchise you’re dealing with. The greatest flaw in the Resident Evil franchise is that Umbrella’s story became too convoluted. What was great in a small and self-contained mansion incident in the first game became so blown out of proportion that it was nothing more than a joke. While Bioshock 2 does not complicate matters, it still feels a bit odd to suddenly hear public tensions between Ryan and Lamb. In fact, why did they have to openly conflict with each other anyway? Why couldn’t Lamb have sat in the shadows sowing seeds of displeasure at the system until the ashes of Ryan and Atlas were cleared away? Considering that Jack Ryan, protagonist of the first game, is mentioned in high esteem shows that Lamb could have just boded her time until a model Altruist could be used to lead the remaining Splicers her way.
Yes, the Splicers now follow Lamb willingly instead of just trying their best to survive in Ryan’s fallen paradise. Except they are still scavenging the ruins for food, weapons and currency, their sanity dangling by slowly shredding threads. The second they catch sight of you they will strike. Not one of them seems to want to try and subvert Lamb from her own throne even though nothing has truly changed and they are as miserable as ever.
Instead they seem to worship the Little Sisters and are now instructed to leave the girls be so they may gather ADAM. Or I think, at least. A few of them seem to attack Big Daddies on occasion, even though, again, it is suggested that they all follow Lamb. Who tells them not to prey upon Little Sisters for ADAM. So why would they then attack a Big Daddy, who is passive until attacked or the Little Sister is threatened?
In the end very little about Rapture has changed. There are new writings on the wall, a few more leaks have sprung and there are a few new foes about, but it doesn’t feel as if Lamb’s presence and ideas have actually had any influence at all. Of course, changing the city too much would have caused fans to cry out, but I was at least expecting a slightly different behavior in the Splicers. They are now being led to believe in the greater good, correct? Why do they then continue to scrounge around in broken vending machines solo? Shouldn’t there be a few sections of the city they have moved into to live together? There is some hint of this in a lone apartment complex where one female Splicer is propositioning a male Splicer, but it still suggests everyone is living by a survival of the fittest mentality. Not to mention every room retains the same old isolated hint of murder from the past. You never walk in to someone just trying to live at home or even hide away.
Ten years have passed since the fall of Rapture, which means in the desperation to survive the Splicers ought to have tried to come together, especially under the rule of one that believes in the Greater Good. Splicers that are following Lamb should have a sort of cultist behavior to them and live in communes. This means instead of striking out at you in selfish insanity they at least cry out memorized proverbs of Lamb’s as they try and strike you down.
Of course, not every member of Rapture should behave this way. Some should still wander the city, or even be in hiding of Lamb’s cult because they fear it. Anything to show that the world has changed in a period of ten long years. Instead it feels more like ten days have passed since Jack Ryan left Rapture. A character that is allegedly idolized, at least according to interviews, but is hardly mentioned throughout the game’s entirety.
Rapture hasn’t at all been transformed. It’s merely had some new foes dropped in, a couple of A.I. modifications and a brand new antagonist to go against. Yet the world remains the same as the first, which turns the sequel into more of the same. One of the reasons a sequel should not have been made.
Also gone is the memorability of the additional characters that enveloped Rapture and its many ideologies. No characters like Steinman, an analysis on how perfection is boring once anyone can attain it. There is no Sander Cohen, the disturbingly frightening psychotic artist. Gil Alexander replaces Dr. Suchong, but until you meet his deranged state he is nothing more than a verbal explanation to the origins of Project Delta, the Big Daddy the player controls. Contrast this to Suchong’s many experiments with live subjects such as commanding a man to kill a puppy against his will. The cold scientist whose only interest is in the results.
Tenenbaum makes a return, sure, but she is so forgettable that once you reach the end of the game you’ll be wondering what happened to her. A character who was memorable for being so coldly rational until she was overtaken by her maternal instinct is brought back so…you know, I’m not even sure why. She returns in order to try and save more of the Little Sisters, and early on she says she knows so much about you and was desperately trying to get in contact with some help, but as soon as she appears she is gone. It is as if her only purpose was to try and have a character from the first game present in the second. She has no importance to the plot or setting this time whatsoever.
Replacing her voice in your ear (as well as Atlas’s) is Augustus Sinclair, a character with a hokey southern-gentleman accent to suggest a deceitful politeness. The sort of man that would leave you wondering if you were just complimented or insulted. He speaks as if he’s working an angle on his own, and his past even reveals that he was only in Rapture for his own profit. The sort of man Ryan would have used as a poster child for Rapture’s early success. Tenenbaum even warns you that she doesn’t completely trust the man, but you never really know why. He’s a shrewd businessman that is certainly out for his own profit, but nothing ever comes of it. He’s just there to help you through the game and nothing more. His fate is never up for discussion nor are his own actions ever changed based on your own. The man is simply there to point you the way until he later becomes a MacGuffin to the story.
An interesting use for Sinclair would have been for him to act as a living embodiment of Ryan’s philosophy. To have him and Lamb chiming in your ear the entire time, both trying to influence your decisions until the close of the game. In fact, considering that they try and make the concept of choice so central to Bioshock 2, hearing the philosophy of Andrew Ryan’s “a man chooses, a slave obeys” would have been an excellent contrast to what Lamb was, ultimately, threatening to impose on the world of Rapture. Yet Sinclair’s only importance is to tell you where to go and how to use a few new tools.
In terms of choices, it would have also been nice if that somehow affected the world or final act in a greater manner. You have the choice to rescue or harvest Little Sisters, but no matter what you are forced to fight the Big Sister. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if, over time, Big Sisters stopped fighting you and actually joined your side? Or how about when you have the chance to spare or kill the not-so-significant NPC’s of the story. Why would every Splicer want to kill you when you’ve proven yourself not to be a monster? It would have paid off if, at some point, you gained your own following to combat against Lamb’s. Even if you killed some of them, let’s say they had actually added more depth to the setting with some Splicers that didn’t believe in Lamb’s rule. They would have saw you as a revolutionary and followed you, so either way you could have established a following to combat Lamb with towards the end.
Unfortunately, the choices are just as shallow overall as the characters. None of the characters in Bioshock 2 seem to have any importance outside of the level they are present in, nor do they seem to encapsulate an idealogy as most had done in the original Bioshock. They simply exist. One is a woman that firmly believes in Lamb’s philosophy, another is a man that cheated her and finally an assistant gone insane. They merely educate you towards the history of your character and your Little Sister Eleanor.
Which brings to the next point of family. One of the main ideas presented in Bioshock 2 was that of family. Except it didn’t really come off all that well. The player themselves feel little attachment to the Little Sisters, especially the one that is supposed to be yours. The game opens with a simple cut-scene that you cannot control, explaining how you had gotten separated from Eleanor. Unfortunately there is no time for you, the player, to become attached or to interact with her.
This scene should have been in the player’s control the entire time. The very first level should have been the player wandering Rapture in the days before its decline, seeing it in the best of its times as well as the reactions people gave the Big Daddy. The behavior of Eleanor and even small interactions to play with her, hold her, pick her up, so many possibilities to have endeared her into the heart of the gamer. Instead a quick five minute clip that is out of your control. Sure the actual separation of you from your Little Sister is powerful in its own right, but the attachment is not there. You don’t feel as if your connection has been severed and you are trying your best to find out what has happened to her. Instead the player is merely pushing forward because, well, that’s just what you do in games.
Contrast this to getting to know Atlas early in the game, and how many levels you were given to get to know the guy and the plight for his family. Of course, a lot of players were pretty sure Atlas would betray you in some fashion any way (I know I was), but once you saw that Bathysphere supposedly holding Atlas’s family explode you had a reason to want to go after Ryan. He was an asshole! You were going to get back at him for you and Atlas! This connection had also made the moment of betrayal all the more gut-punching. Yeah, I expected to be betrayed, but I wasn’t realizing just how badly I’ve been manipulated. The time and care spent attaching me to the character had thus made the rest of the story more than “going through the motions”, but an emotional desire to complete my goals. That powerful betrayal also meant I was now geared up to take on the villain, eager to see him fall.
This doesn’t mean you aren’t given any chance to grow fond of Eleanor, but it is after she has grown older. Very little conversation is had and you barely get to know her. Further, just because you grow attached to the character doesn’t mean that father-daughter mentality is established. You don’t feel protective of her especially since you were never forced to. There was never any hint as to how fragile she truly is, especially since Little Sisters cannot be harmed until their Big Daddy dies. Why should I even protect what is, for all intents and purposes, the most powerful thing in the whole damn game?
To make matters worse the writing is done in such a manner that it feels as if there is a bit of an unhealthy relationship going on. I’m supposed to feel like a father figure, but hearing all the Little Sisters call me Daddy all the time gets a bit…uncomfortable. Eleanor doesn’t seem to look up to me but to instead have very questionable emotions towards my character. It interferes with the dynamic they are going for between the player and this character. The only real attachment I had gotten was from the recordings made before she was turned into a Little Sister. These helped form her personality so I could like her as a child.
Once again, that opening level would have been a great time to establish an attachment. All the player has seen before of Little Sisters is them wandering the halls looking for “angels”. They are disturbingly cute, sure, but no one sees any sign of their past life. It would be interesting if Eleanor would try and talk to you as a Big Daddy as you wandered the halls. “Pick me up Mr. B, I have a secret for you!” After picking her up she could say something completely inane. My niece loves to say “I have a secret for you!” and then when she gets close merely whispers “I love you”, demanding you not to tell anyone else. It’s small and inane and also quite silly, but at the same time it is endearing and adorable.
Another possibility would be to have heard her speak of her life before being a Little Sister as if it were a dream. One of the levels has a carousel on it, for example. Walking by it to hear her discuss a “dream she had” of it, even though her voice might suggest she’s not sure if it was real or not, would have given some light to what sort of life these Little Sisters truly lead. This way, after the ten years pass, you’d have a great desire to not only reunite with Eleanor but to see what she might have become in a life without you.
Speaking of what Little Sisters would later become, this brings me to the Big Sisters. If you read previews and other materials leading up to the game’s release, you know that they are some of the original Little Sisters grown up. In presentation, they do a good job of representing this. However, never in the game do you really learn more about them. Why did they choose to take on the form of the Big Daddies? Why didn’t we find any recordings of the original Sisters that would take this form?
In order to portray some of the messages of fatherhood and family they desired it would have been key for 2K Marin to include audio diaries exploring the psychology of becoming a Big Sister. Taking the form of the Big Daddies, their protectors and father figures, would have provided great insight into them and that allegedly important family dynamic. Seeing them lamenting over dead bodies of Big Daddies here and there only to scream and flee as you drew near, playing with a Little Sister or two or exploring other aspects of the city would have revealed that human element to them. Instead they merely come off as a “more bad ass” variation of the Big Daddy that show up only if you’ve rescued or saved all of the Little Sisters in a level. This removes any personality and reduces them into being a game mechanic.
Which finally brings me to the gameplay. Most of the problems can be summarized with one word.
Respawn.
In the original Bioshock you may return to an area to find more Splicers wandering it. However, it was only after you had left to go to another large room or environment first. It allowed the city to feel as if it were still alive even after you cleared through the game. That you may have killed many of its inhabitants, but there were still plenty more roaming around. It worked perfectly fine and never wrecked the pacing of the game.
Somehow 2K Marin took a working mechanic and broke it. I don’t know what asshole complained that there weren’t enough respawning enemies, but I really wish I could kick their ass. See, now you don’t have to leave a room in order to run into respawned Splicers. Now you can stay within the room and they’ll eventually come on in by themselves. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to admire the view, read every note scribed onto the walls or just carefully lay some traps. At some point a Splicer is going to walk in and wreck it all.
Before anyone tries to tell me how wrong I am, this is after two separate playthroughs of the game. I learned when enemies simply triggered, such as finding an audio log or cracking open a safe. The first game did this as well, and that’s fine. What I’m saying is you could sit in the middle of a room for five minutes doing absolutely nothing and at some point a Splicer will show up. Or, later in the game, a tougher enemy of great annoyance and ammo absorption.
There isn’t even a good explanation for it half the time. I would enter a room, wipe the Splicers within out, then explore an adjacent bathroom that is merely an extension of the main room to find nothing. I’d go back to do search for loot and any narrative elements coloring the room and suddenly a Splicer would emerge from the bathroom I just confirmed to be empty.
Bioshock is supposed to be a game where exploration is half the fun. You should be able to take in every detail and progress through the city at your own pace. Yet that is completely ruined when you are looking at all the items strewn about and a bullet suddenly strikes you in the back.
This is only made more frustrating when you discover a body to gather ADAM from. There are plenty of traps to set and even some plasmids to combine making for what is, overall, a great aside from the regular exploration and adventuring. Unfortunately as you lay traps you may have some prematurely go off because a random Splicer walked into them. Where did the Splicer come from? Well, he respawned because you’ve been wandering this room for too long. Instead of allowing you to set traps at your own pace and leisure before setting the Little Sister down, they decided they needed to randomly drop in a foe to waste some of your planning. Take that, gamers that like to plan efficiently and effectively!
The absolute worst is where some of these enemies spawn from. In medium or small sized rooms it seems logical to drop traps by every visible door and entrance into the room. However, after holding off plenty of foes these traps may linger behind. In other words, enemies do not always come from doorways or entrances. This means most of your traps must be laid in the immediate vicinity of the Little Sister, which isn’t always that easy to do. Sometimes a trap arrow just doesn’t have a good parallel surface to attach itself to, or there aren’t many good spots to lay a set of trap rivets. So logical spots such as the door would be great, except somehow Splicers and even more powerful foes later on will spawn inside of the room. Where? I have no idea, I just know they don’t walk in through the only rational entrances into the room.
This may sound like a small caveat, but it hurts the entire experience of the game. From wanting to admire the environment, to searching for treasure and planning your traps effectively, where and when enemies spawn will hurt your gameplay experience in every level of this entire game. This was never a problem when playing the original Bioshock, where new enemies only appeared after you had left a room to return to it later. Somehow the ability to explore uninterrupted must have pissed some asshole gamer off, because I can’t think of any other possible explanation for this sudden change in design.
It ruins the pace of exploration. It ruins the pace of gathering items. It ruins the pace of laying traps. It ruins half of the traps that get strategically and logically placed. It is as if none of the people in Quality Assurance figured this out. Didn’t they do focus tests on this? How did no one spot such a major oversight that works against what made the original Bioshock fun?
To make matters worse, half of the trap items you set down cannot be picked up. Once again, how did this get through Quality Assurance? You can pick up trap rivets and you can pick up proximity mines, but you cannot pick up trap arrows or mini-turrets to use later. Not only does this put plenty of items to waste, but it also means you may, at any point, be chased down by a really pissed off Big Daddy that walked right into a trap that wasn’t meant for him. Once again, the sort of oversight that makes one wonder just what it is the Game Testers are getting paid or credited for.
It may have been less of an issue if power felt a bit more balanced. At the very start of the game you are faced with only a splicer or two at a time and thus feel the might of the Big Daddy. Suddenly tons of Splicers are being thrown at you and your health is going down fast. You suddenly feel just as weak as in the first game instead of feeling as powerful as a Big Daddy ought to. Granted this is a necessary balancing act, but it would have been nice if the change wasn’t so jarring.
It happens again later on, as you suddenly start to feel the real might of your plasmid tonics and powers manifest. Foes go down faster and you seem to take their hits longer. Yet instead of throwing greater numbers at you they boost the health and strength of your enemies. The same number of bullets doesn’t do the trick any longer. It’s as if all that research and upgrading was for nothing.
Granted the first game did this as well, but it was also one of its bigger flaws. Small changes to foes such as having more powerful guns or rubber coats immune to electricity was fine, as was putting you up against greater numbers steadily on. It forced players to think differently while steadily increasing the challenge. Yet boosting their health was just a cheap tactic that made it feel as if all the work put into research and upgrading weaponry was for nothing. This is nothing to say how jarring it was, where one level you’re tearing them down with ease only for them to be miraculously taking more hits the next level while still appearing in greater numbers with stronger weaponry. Instead of rectifying this with better strategies Bioshock 2 merely committed the same sin. Then they brought in even more powerful enemies appeared way too often to make life a living Hell.
The remainder of complaints against the gameplay are merely small mechanical troubles. You have to stand over items way too precisely to be able to pick them up. Many of the new textures take a long-time to load and are at too low a resolution in contrast to the higher resolution yet fast loading textures recycled from the first game. The first two levels are not only too short, but they lack any sense of subtlety pushing the story forward. Instead of easing you into the situation you are rushed into it. One moment you’ll be flush with ammunition and/or money, the next you’ll be digging desperately for it (only to be interrupted by respawning Splicers during your search!). If you exit weapon or plasmid selection, you cannot immediately jump into selecting the other set of combat tools. It won’t register that you are holding the button down for some reason which makes quick-swapping in combat a little less quick.
Those are all inconveniences, however. They can either be suffered through (as some of them had been in the first) or patched later. It was everything else that is a major hurt upon the experience of the game. Players that want to just shoot everything and rush on through with little care for the story or environment will have a great time, certainly, but everything that made the original Bioshock what it was has suffered great harm.
I do not fully blame 2K Marin for this. They were given a task with a rough deadline and did their best. I applaud their efforts. However, that doesn’t stop the game from being weaker. It should not even exist. I enjoyed it, and I’ll get into what the game did right in a later post. However, there are too many things keeping this game down.
I’m not speaking this way because of previous expectations, either. I was tasked with doing a media conference call for GamersDailyNews, and in the process of research and recording the interview I started to become excited. “Maybe this won’t be as bad as I’ve been expecting”, I thought to myself. When it finally arrived in the mail I was a bit giddy. Yet in the end it was a disappointment. Partly for the story and partly for some minor oversights that could have been caught early on.
Bioshock 2 was a mistake on the part of 2K Games. They should not have done a sequel until someone was ready to tackle it. Aliens is only as great as it is because James Cameron came around later with a great idea, not because Fox demanded someone make a sequel right away. George Orwell didn’t get cracking on 1985 once he had finished with 1984. If no one ever created a sequel, then so what? Is the games industry truly childish and short-sighted enough to believe a game can’t stand on its own without a sequel? Have they never heard of A Christmas Story, Citizen Kane, E.T. or Gattaca? The game still stands well on its own and will probably continue to sell when, ten to twenty years down the line, it’s re-released for whatever consoles people are playing.
So please, 2K, please do me a favor and don’t make any more until someone has a really good, detailed and in-depth idea that will do the first justice. To Hell with sales numbers and review scores. Do it for the integrity!
P.S. Good job on screwing up widescreen on PC, guys. No, really, that is such epic failure that it should go down in the history books.
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