Can it even be called "Bioshock" without Ken Levine?

EDIT: I see I was ninja'd by Drayth.

I attribute the success of the series to Kevin Levine's involvement. For me the weakest installment was 2 (though the actual gameplay was a step up from 1) and that was the one he was least involved with. I'm a huge fan of Infinite.

Since Kevin's done with the series anything that comes next is Bioshock in name only. Especially with the direction this one sounds like it's heading.

I loved 1, 2 was ok, 3 not so much.
I always thought Bioshock 1 would have been better if it was more "open world" like. Have the entire city of Rapture available to explore.

There were many time I caught myself looking out the Rapture windows and thinking "I wish I could explore that building".

Ah well......

I was blown away by the Bioshock trilogy + expansions, truly one of the best gaming experiences of my life, Infinite especially.. loved that game.

BioShock is an amazing series, hopefully this delivers. Sounds good so far.

Speaking of which it would be awesome to see a BioShock RTX. That first game would really benefit from more realistic lighting and now that the newer Unreal Engine that it's based off supports it....

Loved all the Bioshock games.

I'll be passing on this. I want a game I can play wherever I am at, with or without internet connection.

As a big fan of the series, I don't think they need to do this. While the original games were by no means perfect, they were enjoyable and had a fairly coherent narrative. And, they were standout single player experiences from a time when the AAA game industry was starting to move towards a multiplayer focus. Shifting to a live service model with road maps for massive amounts of DLC and likely a multiplayer focus if not a full MMO is just going to kill all of the things that worked for the originals. And, perhaps in a touch of irony, part of Rapture's downfall was adopting a system that opened the doors for corporations to charge the consumer for pretty much everything, creating a have vs have-not society that collapsed in on itself. 2K shoving Bioshock into a live service model is basically starting down that very road.

I'd say they should go the Link's Awakening route and do a complete rebuild of the game with some tweaks to gameplay and story to smooth over some of the rough spots in the original release, but with examples like COD4: Modern Warfare, we know they'd just make the old games look nicer with all the horrible trends in the current AAA market tacked on.

VaranDragon wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 11:00:
Im one of the few people who never got into Bioshock. Im talking about the first game here. One of the most overrated pieces of shit to ever be ported onto the PC IMO. I think I must have played it for about an hour tops and then just uninstalled it in frustration.

Apart from the cool "what-if" Ayn Rand setting (which is kind of fucked up in its own way) everything about it screamed console port, and the whole terrible gunplay mechanics combined with the weird plasmid powerups *ugh*

I guess I came into it expecting to be blown away by a spiritual successor to System Shock, however it was nothing even remotely close to that.

So yeah I ignored all the rest of the games that came out after that.

Too bad. You missed one of the better narrative experiences of that decade.

Also, I found the combat generally satisfying and reminiscent of a more polished SS2. The first hour or two wasn't that much fun because of how much hoarding you had to do with both plasmids and ammo, but after a while the game opened up and became *way* more fun.

I loved Rapture but the game overall was pretty meh for me.

aka_STEVE wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 10:39:
please do NOT make a Bioshock mmo-style -as a service game.....

Agreed. They're always looking for that Fortnite "competitor" it seems. Fortnite reminds me of what I think "The Sims with Guns" would look like--ugh....;)

BioShock: what employees of BioWare feel almost daily.

The Half Elf wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 10:14:
I'm not sure if it was just me, but not sure if I somehow missed a huge part of the story or what in Bioshock Infinite, but the ending made no sense to me on how Booker was the father. And that being said i still need to finish Prey.

Let's see if I can do this quickly...

So... Realize you're dealing with parallel universes here. Lots of them.

So in one universe, Rosalind Lutece does research into quantum mechanics and discovers parallel universes. She reaches out into one universe where instead of being a woman, she was born a man. They learn to communicate with each other, and eventually meet up in the same world via a tear. Comstock uses their technology to peek into the future and into parallel realities (this is what racks his body with cancer and leaves him sterile). Wanting a child, he looks at parallel universes and finds an alternate version of himself, who has a daughter, and lots of gambling debts. He pays off Booker, takes the daughter, and as you see, the daughter's pinky is cut off as the tear closes. Because Elizabeth's body is occupying 2 universes at once she can create tears. Probably. They never make that explicit.

Edit: An important thing about tear jumping is that eventually your memory changes and kind of molds to the reality you've jumped to, leaving two memories of the same "timeline". When you have two memories of the same event, you get the nosebleed as one of them takes precedence over the other. But the important part to remember is that you *can* forget when you play with tears, timelines, and parallel universes.

So Booker/Comstock. In Booker's youth, he was accused of being part native american and having divided loyalties. So he was particularly bloody and ruthless against the native americans he fought with. He also participated in the Boxer rebellion. All this bloodshed and really, really vicious fighting left him guilt-ridden. And so he came to a point of decision. A priest offered to baptize him and cleanse him of his sins. Every decision point in every life in this game leads to multiple parallel universes. Eventually this branches out into infinity.

So there are 2 main branch bundles to the timeline at this point. In one, Booker rejects religion and stays Booker, becomes a gambling drunk, has a daughter, becomes a Pinkerton. (Or any number of variants on this story. But the important thing to remember is, in all of these parallel universes Booker rejects religion).

The other bundle of timelines, Booker accepts the baptism and religion and finds god and becomes an evangelical. He changes his name to Comstock. In one of the timelines of this branch bundle, he meets Lutece, uses her technology to build both Columbia and the ability to look into the future/past/parallel universes. Doing this however leaves him sterile and wracked with cancer. But he's had a premonition that his movement and his progeny will at least firebomb New York if not take over America/the world. So he uses the Lutece technology to find a timeline where he has a child. And so he peeks at the Booker timeline bundle where Booker has a daughter, and makes Booker a deal to trade the girl to wipe away the debt.

The Luteces eventually discover the New York firebombing thing, and I"m simplifying but agree to send Elizabeth back to her original timeline. So they go to that timeline and hire Booker, again in debt, to "Bring them the girl". So he's unwittingly going to go rescue his own daughter.

Eventually Elizabeth figures all of this out and realizes the only way to stop Comstock, *really* stop Comstock and all the parallel realities that lead to the NYC firebombing is to stop *all* the Comstocks. However, as soon as Booker is Baptized, an infinite number of parallel realities branch out from there involving Comstock.

Therefore, the only way to *stop* Comstock is to stop the baptism. But just stopping Booker from getting baptized in that one instance doesn't prevent Comstock. In an infinite number of realities, something happens and Booker becomes Comstock anyway. So the only solution is to go back through the timelines of the infinite parallel realities to the point where there *is* no Comstock, which is just prior to the baptism, and kill Booker.

This is why Elizabeth drowns him in the river. But as a side effect, if Booker dies, Elizabeth is never born. Which is why after he dies all the versions of her disappear.

I *think* that's the most plain that I can make this. I'm not even getting into all the reality-jumping that happens in the game and if Booker is corrupting Elizabeth (each jump takes you to a world that's more grim than the last as Bookers' cynicism rubs off on Elizabeth. She says the Tears are sort of a wish fulfillment so she's jumping to places that she has influence over), nor am I getting into some of the other fuzzy stuff. There's some bad writing here and a few gaps in the story, but hopefully that answers your questions.

Goodnight, Irene

I've enjoyed all the Bioshocks (including Infinite) but will have to pass on BaaS. bioshock as a service

I liked the first two BioShocks (especially the first) but Infinite was complete garbage imo so I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about a new Shock game. There are quite a few games in this style now so it's not like this would be a long awaited return or something (also because Infinite is at best artificially and only very loosely connected to the first games).
Final nail in the coffin is the service crap. BioShock as a service. Uh-huh. Definitely gonna work out reeeeeeaaaaallllly well for a narrative game. All in all a solid sub-meh from me... and I mean really "sub".

Beamer wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 11:11:

The Half Elf wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 10:14:
I'm not sure if it was just me, but not sure if I somehow missed a huge part of the story or what in Bioshock Infinite, but the ending made no sense to me on how Booker was the father. And that being said i still need to finish Prey.

Unlike a lot of people, I thought Infinite was enthralling.
But Prey is definitely the better game. Go back to it, haha.

Prey is a great System Shock like game that got the wrong title. And I liked all Bioshock games but think the 2nd game was weaker than BS1 and 3.

The Half Elf wrote on Nov 13, 2019, 10:14:
I'm not sure if it was just me, but not sure if I somehow missed a huge part of the story or what in Bioshock Infinite, but the ending made no sense to me on how Booker was the father. And that being said i still need to finish Prey.

Unlike a lot of people, I thought Infinite was enthralling.
But Prey is definitely the better game. Go back to it, haha.

Im one of the few people who never got into Bioshock. Im talking about the first game here. One of the most overrated pieces of shit to ever be ported onto the PC IMO. I think I must have played it for about an hour tops and then just uninstalled it in frustration.

Apart from the cool "what-if" Ayn Rand setting (which is kind of fucked up in its own way) everything about it screamed console port, and the whole terrible gunplay mechanics combined with the weird plasmid powerups *ugh*

I guess I came into it expecting to be blown away by a spiritual successor to System Shock, however it was nothing even remotely close to that.

So yeah I ignored all the rest of the games that came out after that.

Buy-o-Shock

please do NOT make a Bioshock mmo-style -as a service game.....