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Opinion: On BioShock 2 And Why Return Beats Renovation
by Leigh Alexander [PC, Console/PC]
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February 25, 2010
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[Sequels often get penalized if they don't change enough, but Gamasutra news director Leigh Alexander examines BioShock 2 to find an interesting challenge -- and opportunity -- in keeping some things the same.]
The main reservation critics and fans seem to have about the largely-acclaimed BioShock 2 is that it doesn't bring much new to the table, a conservative sequel to a game that didn't really need a sequel.
Wired's Chris Kohler said the game was "stamping on well-trod ground," and Game Informer's Andrew Reiner said the dystopia of Rapture had developed "the familiarity of a local shopping mall." The innovation of Rapture as a setting was part of what made the original BioShock so exciting, and now that players are used to it, the game loses something, some say.
Another recent release, No More Heroes 2, was also said to have been unnecessary -- director Suda51 himself has said he hadn't planned on tacking a sequel on to the story of Travis Touchdown.
Why do games that "don't need sequels" get them? The answer's obvious: the game industry's more hit-driven than ever, and it's no longer enough to make a successful game -- publishers need successful franchises. This leaves two options: conceive every game as open-ended, always setting up for a sequel, or attach sequels to games that "don't need them."
Neither sounds very appealing at first blush. But the major rush to sequelize even those titles that make solid self-contained experiences could create, by necessity, a promising shift in the way developers build worlds and innovate in them.
Although fans were quick to note that that BioShock 2 didn't feel much different from its predecessor, 2K was wise with it. The original title was so strongly received that to significantly change much about it could have been disastrous. Fans loved BioShock for its unique and deeply-realized world and the signatures that populated it: Madness, decay, philosophical frenzy, and the strange energy system governed by the eerie Little Sisters and their hulking protectors.
There's even very little room to improve on the game mechanics. They can be iterated upon, as with the welcome tweak to the hacking minigame, but BioShock's gameplay is well-established and part of its appeal. So much about the game identifies it distinctly that there isn't much that can be changed in a sequel -- there are too many elements without which it wouldn't be itself. But that's not a problem: That's a success and an opportunity.
BioShock is not just a stand-alone narrative. It's a framework. Rapture isn't the story, it's the story's housing. The lamp-eyed Little Sisters and lumbering Big Daddies aren't characters, they're elements of the visual language. Thinking about a sequel for a game with such a strong signature, it becomes clear that its key elements are signposts for the experience, and not the entirety of the experience itself.
And with the framework so distinctive and so firmly-established, there's a unique chance to evolve the expectations of gamers. Where BioShock presented one character of an only loosely-known identity with an objectivist despot as adversary, BioShock 2 presents the same sort of character and an enemy adherent to a different philosophy.
What can BioShock 3 do? It can't change Rapture's look, its citizenry, its rules or even meaningfully change the experience of interacting with the world. But it can present a new quest for self and a new philosophy to test within Rapture's mad power vacuum. In other words, it has no choice but to iterate on story and theme, and this fashion of approaching game franchises will only make gaming richer as developers get better and better at it.
It will be interesting if games start to become franchises by building a strong universe and desirable mechanics first, and then yield sequels that don't overhaul those things, rewrite the design mechanics or tack on new features where none are really needed just so gamers won't complain there's nothing new.
The result will be a new kind of sequelization. BioShock 2 returned us to Rapture in the best way possible: By simply creating a new adventure therein and a new way to look at familiar things. It's perplexing to see critics penalize a game for declining to change what they best loved about it.
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The idea of establishing a solid universe is nothing new either, that's the whole point of introducing a solid franchise, so you can develop on top of an existing world. As mentioned it will be interesting to see the evolution as developers get better at creating in an existing world, but I hardly see how you can't understand that people would feel less than thrilled with a story that is all too parallel with the first Bioshock.
Regardless of whether it needed a sequel or not, Bioshock would be evermore tiresome when #10 comes out and oh look, you yet again play as a no-name drone following the orders of somebody else...
In the original you slowly find out your real purpose - it all unravels very well. Who you are and why you ended up in Rapture. In Bioshock 2, there is little or no mystery involved. At least none the player can't figure out on their own. Any revelations are mostly muted. Player progression is almost an exact reproduction of the 1st game. The introduction of Rapture's denizens almost feels like a carbon copy. When you get to the point of doing camera research it's really more a rehash. The chief difference being how you collect Adam.
Technically the game was better than the original - weapons/plasmids were more effectively combined and ballanced. If you never played the original, Bioshock 2's renovated game mechanics feel more worth while. It's the story that doesn't hold much water.
I agree the original was absolutely more suspenseful in terms of Jack's mystery, but once everything was explained we're left with something that could have been a Mega Man subplot. A group of underwater mutants engineer a commercial plane crash in the middle of the ocean through some mysterious radio wave, and the sole survivor is the clone of the underwater cult leader. I don't want to disenfranchise anyone who thinks that's a good story, but I definitely won't concede that point until someone's done a better job of defending the moral/human/emotional poignance of something so pulpous.
For me the first game was a process of deflation. The more I played the more I felt I was in a narrative shell game in which none of the shells actually had any prize. I empathize with my character in the second game because he's already dead and he's going to save a real human being and, by all appearances, will probably maim or destroy himself in the process. The human/emotional kernel is an order of magnitude more griping to me than the sleight of hand in the first game. And it has the good taste to not drag itself on for 16-17 hours.
It seems the worst thing we begrudge the second game is not having the capacity to surprise us. Cheap stories are built around surprise. Good ones are built around empathy. On those grounds I had a much more affecting time with the second game.
I haven't really felt that the game is a rehash at all. I recognised parts that I was walking through as being the same as parts I'd come through in the first but I still didn't feel like I was playing the same level.
All that being said there are much earlier precedences for this kind of gameplay...one of the earliest I remember is The 11th Hour, sequal to The 7th Guest. Both of those games were brilliant even though the environment was very similar...of course the core gameplay was the puzzles.
By the sheer strength of his characterisation, it doesn't matter that his dialogue is trite (in fact it helps, the deliverance of bad one liners often engenders us to a character, case in point, Jayne, from firefly), the deliverance and the belief his character displays has far more impact than Lambs. Also the flip of Randian philosophy (that of an emphasis on society rather than the self) was also quite a bland flip in standpoint (like we didn't see it coming or nothing). Sure some of the moral questions you're asked along the way were quite interesting (like the revenge/euthanasia parts), but the overarching theme failed to some degree (probably because you end up relying on a small social subset to defeat a person who's madness aims to aid society...ooo everything's a shade of grey). I ended up watching my ending and going....well what the hell did that have to do with anything.
The only way I can think of that they could have made a real sequel to Bioshock and not a remake, would have been to set it outside of Rapture, but that would potentially turn it for better or worse into a completely different game, and the only development team in the world which can pull off something like that is in Japan... How do you sequelize Ico? You make Shadow of the Colossus and then The Last Guardian... three different games with the same spirit.
It takes a lot of the energy, technical talent, artistic imagination (and of course, financial backing!) to take on the challenge of doing real sequels of awesome games that don't need sequels.
All this being said, Bioshock 2 has probably sold more than Ico and Shadow of the Colossus combined and that's all that matters by EOB.
I agree with all of the critiques of the sequel, but even as Bioshock 1.5 I enjoyed it.
I think the worst possible assumption about any subsequent iterations of Bioshock (and they are coming, it has been confirmed) is that this they will take place in Rapture.
And taking this small story about Adam and the evolution of these (magic) powers in a closed environment and opening it up to the broader world should be interesting. The challenge will be, how to evolve the gameplay and story in a way that is both radical and rooted in the source material.
This is FPS # fifty billion and 1, I want everyone to count the number of shooters released over the last 10 years compared to games in other genre's.
The "Gameplay" of a shooter is the same as it always was, the only thing pushing shooters today is trying to convey cinematic stories in them, otherwise the actual game mechanics is still - shoot, strafe, run, dodge, etc.
I admit to being skeptical that I was playing a Bioshock 1.5 when I first started. But after finishing the game, I can say it most certainly is not. The Combat, the enhancements improved the gameplay for me, and I couldn't stop playing till I finished it. The actual endings for Bioshock 1 were weak, the sequel's were much improved.
As far as what is next for rapture, I can see how this formula cannot continue without getting old, but I will allow there is the possibility that they may yet win me over again with Bioshock 3.
I would love to see Rapture become an RPG, and take place during the initial opening of the city.