BioShock - The Rise and Fall

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GVMERS looks back at Bioshock:

The Rise and Fall of BioShock


Akin to the great musical artists and films of our time, certain video game releases have instituted a culture shift, establishing a clear demarcation line dividing the art created before its existence and after. Wolfenstein 3D earned its place among such a prestigious list, having fathered the modern first-person shooter in 1992. The 2001 launch of Grand Theft Auto 3 similarly shifted popular culture, birthing the open-world genre whose potential knows no limits. BioShock from Boston-based developer Irrational Games drew yet another indelible line in August 2007, its immersive gameplay, gripping atmosphere, and pioneering use of inventive storytelling devices elevating first-person shooters on countless fronts.

The original BioShock constituted Irrational's attempt at bringing the hallmarks of the critically acclaimed yet commercially unimpressive System Shock to mainstream audiences. It accomplished as much by coloring outside the lines of market expectations. Over the course of the series, however, adapting to said expectations deeply affected the core of the brand.

Development woes affected all three entries as well, often driving a wedge between members of the creative team. That series creator Ken Levine was supposedly difficult to work with only exacerbated the tension. Internal and public-facing issues aside, many would argue BioShock never shied away from challenging the status quo, all while raising the bar. But for Irrational's publisher, a contingent of fans, and even some developers, that bar could never quite reach high enough. This is the rise and fall of BioShock.

Thanks Couchpotato!

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GVMERS is a pretty nice channel. They do their research thoroughly.
 
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"Excellent," by the standard of the mass shooters of its day maybe.

To those who followed its Immersive Sims roots of Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex, BioShock was a big compromise between the pushing of the boundaries of the medium and the simple, accessible appeal of commerical blockbusters. From what started as an attempt to bring complexity to the masses, they simplified, simplified, simplified. Infinite was the worst of the lot - by then you couldn't even progress the story without killing all like an arena shooter.

Good video, Gvmers did a good job yet again covering many of the events. But they soft-peddled the ultimate season for all the dev exodus during the development. If things were simple as they appear on the surface, and all three games were "excellent," they wouldn't have closed the damn studio right after Infinite.
 
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All three games were excellent.

They didn't "close the damn studio" (I can mock with quotation marks too) because Infinite wasn't good or didn't sell well. It was popular commercially, critically acclaimed, and sold more than 15 million copies.
 
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I think Infinite is a little overrated personally, but I have to agree the series never really fell off. The only fail is Bioshock 4 taking so long to develop.
 
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Great series. I recently played/replayed it all. I had never touched the Burial at Sea or Bioshock 2 and its DLC. Very solid stuff.
I personally think Infinite and its expansions are underrated, compared to what most other games manage to accomplish. Very few games touch on that level of heights.
Too bad the combat is pretty uninspired in BS1/2. It was significantly better in Infinite.
 
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I don't usually play shooters, even under the guise of a RPG, and I thoroughly enjoyed all BioShock games. That has to say something good about them.

BioShock 4 is high in my list of anticipated games.
 
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I quite enjoyed the first one, barely cared for the second, to the point that it soured me from ever trying the third, which to date I've not played. And I'm not sure I ever will. Yet that first game was really good, and I even replayed it once.
 
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Great series. I recently played/replayed it all. I had never touched the Burial at Sea or Bioshock 2 and its DLC. Very solid stuff.
I personally think Infinite and its expansions are underrated, compared to what most other games manage to accomplish. Very few games touch on that level of heights.
Too bad the combat is pretty uninspired in BS1/2. It was significantly better in Infinite.
I found the combat in Infinite pretty drab tbh. The only thing that stood out to me about that game was the writing which is pretty good. The setting was far less interesting (to me) than Rapture, and I can't imagine how anyone could think the combat was better.
 
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All three games were excellent.

They didn't "close the damn studio" (I can mock with quotation marks too) because Infinite wasn't good or didn't sell well. It was popular commercially, critically acclaimed, and sold more than 15 million copies.
No duh. Of course it wasn't the sales, sales were great.

They sold their soul for sales. They forced a common shooter out of Immersive Sim devs. Devs dropped off left, right, and center. Also as the idea guy Ken Levine doesn't really know what he wants and keep pushing people to throw away what they already made. With that much internal conflict it wasn't sustainable going forward. That's the toll that let to the closure.

What a concept - want more sales? Just make a regular shooter! Forget the high concept Immersive Sim! Not enough people get it!
 
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I found the combat in Infinite pretty drab tbh. The only thing that stood out to me about that game was the writing which is pretty good. The setting was far less interesting (to me) than Rapture, and I can't imagine how anyone could think the combat was better.
I very much enjoyed the shooting mechanics. All guns felt punchy and solid. It certainly helped that it had a proper PC reticle and UI. (small and sharp, and not a big circle like in bioshock 1).
That was the very first thing I noticed when I first had hands-on with it. I hated the shooting mechanics in BS1. It all felt so floaty and the weapon models were huge. It pretty much felt like a console shooter, whereas Infinite finally felt like a PC shooter.
 
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What a concept - want more sales? Just make a regular shooter! Forget the high concept Immersive Sim! Not enough people get it!
The Bioshock games were advertised as shooter/RPG hybrids from the beginning though. It's not as if the devs claimed they were making an immersive sim and then pulled a 180.

That was the very first thing I noticed when I first had hands-on with it. I hated the shooting mechanics in BS1. It all felt so floaty and the weapon models were huge. It pretty much felt like a console shooter, whereas Infinite finally felt like a PC shooter.
It didn't feel significantly different to me, and it's still quite clunky compared to pure shooters like Doom, etc. I also didn't care for the special abilities (Vigors). It seemed like there was less variety there compared to the Plasmids in the first two games.
 
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Bioshock is not a hybrid, it's a FPS with a tiny bit of RPG element. If you watch the vid in the OP, it talks about it. Gradually during development it went from an I-Sim which is almost always a hybrid of genres to an action shooter.
 
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Yes, it's a shooter with some RPG elements. My point is that it was never really advertised as more than that regardless of what might have happened during development.
 
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