BioShock | The Big Daddies

[00:00:00] Hey, it's your boy Dre here off the top with a spoiler warning. Okay, we will be operating under the assumption that you, the listener, have already played BioShock as most people have, which means we will be discussing everything about it up to and including various story twists, characters, and endings. Full spoilers will be on display here, so if you don't want to be spoiled on what is now a very old game, please do not listen any further.

[00:00:26] But if you want to hear two guys who just played BioShock for the first time, we're glad to have you and we will get started right now.

[00:00:52] Hello, party people. Welcome to our BioShock shindig. BioShock shindig. Maybe that's what I should subtitle these episodes. I've been thinking, okay, I've been going back and forth, Thrak here. Hey, Thrak is with me, everybody. The BioShockers? What do you think of the BioShockers? No, we're the Big Daddies. We're the Big Daddies! Big Daddies! Holy shit! Okay, welcome to our BioShock shindig, the Big Daddies. All right? Tag team, back again.

[00:01:24] The Big Daddies, I was going to say from the 90s, but we were born in the 80s. So, oh no, you were born in the 90s! I was born in the 90s. Oh my god! You can say that. I cannot claim this. Oh yes, yes. Yes, I grew up on the Mighty Ducks. By the way, hi, Thrak. Thrak is with me to talk about the BioShock. We're going to be doing, this is part one of three episodes. We're going to be doing the entire BioShock trilogy.

[00:01:50] Just one day, I was just talking about this in a Discord we share, and I was just like, hey, you know, I've always wanted to play these, and you're like, me too. And then we high-fived over the internet, and here you are. We played all three of them, but this is just the first one. Yes, yes. Hi, Dre. I'm back. How are you? I'm great. I'm excellent. I am very excellent. Good. I am feeling very plasmidious. Is that a word? I'm a little damp for some reason.

[00:02:18] Yeah, I can't imagine why that might be. But you know what? That's your business. I'm not going to ask you questions. Okay. But yeah, we can just get right into it. I don't think this needs a whole lot of preamble. I think everyone listening to this knows what BioShock is, whether they played it or not. So I'm not going to break it down completely for you. But I will say BioShock was released on August 21st, 2007.

[00:02:47] Man, that feels like a lifetime ago, because it was. It really does. Do you have any... It was released three days before my 13th birthday. Crazy, man. I was a full grown ass man. And like you were like... I was in middle school, dog. So crazy. Dude. Middle school. Stuff that came out in middle school. Like Chrono Trigger came out when I was in middle school. You know what I mean? I was a baby. You were barely...

[00:03:16] I was shitting everywhere, because I was like, this game is fucking awesome. You were shitting everywhere. You were barely circumcised. You were playing Chrono Trigger, man. It's just... I am circumcised. Okay, yeah. Well, I mean, shit. I only invite circumcised guests on Fine Time. If you've been on Fine Time and you were not circumcised, don't tell me about it, because I will not have you back on.

[00:03:45] It's a secret to everybody. The fine cut. The fine cut. Any... I couldn't really find any interesting production notes. I was looking for some. Like, you know... There was something about some of the other games later here, but I couldn't really find anything about the original Bioshock so much as just Kevin Levine. Ken Levine, the mastermind behind this, Kevin Levine. We have made our co-hosts Kevin and Ken Levine one on the spiritual-sexual level.

[00:04:15] His full name is Kenneth. Kenneth Levine. Yes. I mean, a guy making this kind of game, his name is Kenneth. Yes. Please. I mean, he probably insists people call him Kenneth. He worked on System Shock 2, so I guess that's where he got the shock from Bioshock, even though this doesn't really have anything to do with System Shock. Though I think these games are considered spiritual successors, and I think that's because, like,

[00:04:45] Irrational, who did the old System Shock games, kind of, like, morphed into the team that made Bioshock. I mean, Ken Levine was at the helm for... I think he was at the helm for System Shock. Okay. And so, like, Bioshock was him... I think the idea was him trying to take what worked with System Shock and kind of move it to the console, basically, because System Shock was a very PC-ass game for its time. So, trying to do something in that realm, but completely different. Right.

[00:05:14] You could say this was definitely something to work on console. We can... Well, I'll get to that a bit later when we talk about presentation. But, yeah, like, this was a very busy time for me, August 2007. The reason why I never played Bioshock originally was just that month was crazy for me. There was Blue Dragon. There was Dynasty Warriors Gundam. There was Metroid Prime 3. All three things I had been anticipating for fucking forever, man.

[00:05:44] And so, like, Bioshock was also coming out. I was like, ah, you know, I'll get... Okay, I'll get to that later. Ah, 17, 18 years later, here I am now, just now getting to Bioshock. So, that's just what it was. It was a victim of circumstance. Why did you never play Bioshock at the time, besides the fact that you were just 13 and you shouldn't care? Well, let's see. In 2007, 13, let's see. I had a 360 at that point. 360 was the console I got, like, the earliest.

[00:06:14] You know, like, I got it for Christmas in 2006. But with it, I got a copy of SmackDown vs. Raw 2007. Oh, wow. Played the shit out of that. That's a great game. Yeah, a lot of my friends played that one. Yeah, and this was the time where, like, the 360 was often considered the shooter console. And it really was, like, that time where I got into all the shooters. Because 2007 was... That was a banging year for video games in general. It's one of the best years ever. Yeah. Yeah, because, like, in 2007,

[00:06:43] just trying to see, like, what all came out that year. Yeah, we had, as you said, Metroid Prime 3. We had Call of Duty 4, which was a big, big deal at the time. That probably set Call of Duty on the path for being, like, tip-top. I mean, it was popular before that. But, like, that really put it... Oh, that's when it went over. Because I had... At the time, I had Call of Duty 2. Love Call of Duty 2 still to this day. But, yeah, Call of Duty 4 was, like, it went into the mainstream. Halo 3 was that year. And that was probably the biggest release that year. The Orange Box came out that year. And that...

[00:07:13] See, that collection is really what got me hooked into shooters, really. That and Rainbow Six Vegas. Oh, okay. But I can't remember... I can't remember what year the original Rainbow Six Vegas was. I think it may have been 2005. I think. I'm not completely sure. It was 2006. Ooh, okay. So I may have already had Vegas at that time. And I was hooked on one and two. I probably have, like, thousands of hours in both of them. But anyways. Anyways, so I was always aware of Bioshock. I was kind of aware of Bioshock when it came out.

[00:07:42] Because by the time you hit, like, 13, 12, 14, and you're into gaming, you're starting to, like, become more aware of what's going on. And I would go to the rental store, like, every week. Like, it was that era where, like, Friday night, we'd all go out to dinner. And then, you know, I'd beg my mom to take me to Family Video. Oh, Family Video. Yeah, because we didn't really. We had a blockbuster. We had one blockbuster. But my parents didn't like going there because they were expensive. Right.

[00:08:10] But you could go to Family Video and, like, you could rent movies really cheap. And even games weren't that bad. Like, we would get, like, it was like a five-day rental for, like, three or four bucks or something like that. Yeah. So we would normally do that. And you would see the new releases. And I remember seeing the cover art for Bioshock and being very intrigued by it. But I never grabbed it at the time.

[00:08:33] Then cut a little bit later to high school, around the time Bioshock 2 came out, one of my high school friends was obsessed with Bioshock. Like, he played both games. He read, like, the books. Got, like, super into the lore. And he did that thing that I think you probably know where somebody gets so into something that it completely kills your interest in it. Oh, yeah. Like, they're a little too obsessed with it. Like, you need to calm down, buddy.

[00:09:02] So I never played at that point. But it was, I remember I found the double pack of Bioshock and Oblivion for 360, which is one of the strangest double packs I could think of. You know, it made sense at the time, I think. You know, right now it seems weird. But at the time, I remember seeing that. I'd be like, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's just like there were two completely different companies. Right. So, but anyways, I had that.

[00:09:32] And I played a teeny bit of Bioshock 1 on that back in the day before my 360 died, which was, that was a rough day. And then it just kind of put it out of my brain and then cut to years later when I get my Switch and then they're doing the Bioshock collection. And I was like, you know, I've always wanted to play these games, see what the big deal was. Right. So I grabbed it and I played a couple of hours of it on the Switch, but I didn't get very far, probably because I was just playing other things at the time.

[00:10:02] And then when we get to this, it's like, yeah, it was one of those like, it's about time. It's about time. I finally see why people are so goddamn obsessed with this Bioshock thing. So, so yeah, so I got them for my Series X. The good thing about the Bioshock collection is it's very cheap. So for people listening who have not played Bioshock and are like curious or whatever, no matter what modern system you have, Bioshock collection is there. And it's usually on sale for like 10, maybe 20 bucks.

[00:10:31] And it is, they were on PlayStation plus years ago and Bioshock infinite. That's why I have them. So I didn't have to, I didn't even have to pay anything. Yeah. I'm sure they're now on the new tiers of like PlayStation extra essential or whatever you call them on the show. PlayStation plus real with cheese. But like, yeah, it just featuring Dante from devil may cry, new funky mode. But like, yeah, it's just, yeah. So that's, that's how I have them. So I'm like, they're here. I may as well play them. And I always, I always planned on it.

[00:11:01] So yeah, I guess that's a clue. And that's how we played these. We played the previous gen versions like PS4, Xbox one versions via PS5 and Series X, which is obviously the way to go here. So you had a couple attempts at these. I, the only thing I never actually laid hands on the game. My roommate at the time was playing them and I watched him play some, sometimes at just like a little bit. So I knew about like the pipe dream hacking game.

[00:11:28] I knew about that and I knew what a big daddy was. That was about it. And I didn't really know anything else. So I was going in pretty fucking fresh here considering how old and how famous these games. And then, you know what? Speaking of famous, I think we've talked about this. We have a certain aversion to games with like, if something's real high, critically praised and has a lot of commercial success.

[00:11:52] Sometimes I'm just kind of like, and maybe it's just a contrarian in me where I'm just kind of like, is this come on? Is this really that good? So did you have an expectation of Bioshock going in? I know you, again, you played a little bit, but were you expecting to feel the way you felt? Well, funnily enough beforehand, it's funny you mentioned the knowing what the big daddy was.

[00:12:15] How I learned that that character was named big daddy was from its infamous appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Want to know a secret? Me too. Because I remember when that game came out, everyone was like, this is a weird game. It was weird. It was very weird. And one of the things that people thought was weird is like, why the hell is there like a big daddy in here? Yeah. It was a weird character. I had it on Vita. People act like that game is like the worst. It's not. It's just weird.

[00:12:45] It's just very strange. It's just a flawed Smash Brothers clone, which is every Smash Brothers clone. They're all flawed in some way. I think it's better than like Nickelodeon All-Stars. I think it's better than like some of the other attempts recently, if I'm being completely honest. Yeah, I played Battle Royale. It's fine. It's not the worst thing in the world. But anyways, any expectations that's going in? Yeah, I get what you're saying when like a game is so beloved and so like a critical darling, you know.

[00:13:13] And a game like this that still has like hardcore fans to this day, despite it's been like 10 years since there's been anything new from the franchise. It's fair to go incautious. I tend to go incautious kind of in general with most games, just being like, you know, let's see what the big deal is. But it wasn't anything that's like, okay, 97 on Metacritic. Show me what you fucking got. It wasn't that. It was more just like, it's just like, let's, I usually go in saying like, let's see what the big deal is. Like, well, what's the big deal with this?

[00:13:44] So, and when I played it for like back in the day on my 360, I really didn't think much of it just because I was kind of playing a bunch of different stuff outside of, you know, playing Rainbow Six Vegas all the time. So it just kind of was whatever. But when I played it on Switch, I remember thinking, I'm like, yeah, this is good. It's not amazing, but it's not bad. So my expectation going in this time was, you know, let's just finish it. Let's see what the big deal is. People really hype up the story.

[00:14:12] So I wanted to just kind of get that whole experience in pretty much. Yeah. And I, you know, I, again, I very cautious of this kind of stuff. Bioshock kind of blew me away. It really did. I mean, I am like, if I do letter grades on Blue Sky when I, when I post a game that I beat it, I'd give this an A. I give Bioshock an A. Yeah. Yeah. Like at the end of it, I was like, yeah, that was good.

[00:14:42] Like that held up a lot better than I thought it would. Because another issue I usually have with games that are so beloved, but then as the years go by, it's like, does it still hold up? You know, because it's the whole like, you know, did, you know, did the game age or whatever? I mean, I know like our buddy Quest or my nemesis Quest has talked about how like games don't age. We do like our expectations of games change. Right.

[00:15:07] And there are things about it that are a little bit dated, but it wasn't like completely. It wasn't like, say, when I played Alone in the Dark for 3DO where I'm like, I can respect this game for what it did historically. But this game is unplayable now. Right. Like it really is. Like Bioshock is not like it's it holds up surprisingly well. But it's kind of the only game I've played in this. I mean, would you call Bioshock an immersive sim?

[00:15:35] You know, that's tough. Right. Because like I actually I wanted to ask you, would you just call this a first person shooter? And I don't think that covers it either. And also, but here's the thing. I don't really I think it's more akin to like an action adventure game like a Metroid Prime. But I don't even think that covers it really. Like the closest comparison I could make to this game because people made the comparison to me all the time was Half-Life 2. Because I had mentioned how much I love the orange box.

[00:16:04] And people had always said like, oh, you like Half-Life. If you like Half-Life so much, you would like Bioshock because they're both single player story focused. Like, you know, first person shooters. Right. Like they're very different games when you really think about them. But I think the idea is that it's a game that puts the focus on the story and the overall like immersive experience that you have being little Jack or Gordon Freeman or whatever. Like getting sucked into like all this weird shit that's going on because Half-Life 2 is that like kind of getting.

[00:16:34] Sucked into this weird conspiracy that's going on with all of these with the combine and everything. Right. And this is just you like kind of getting sucked into Rapture, not really knowing what's going on. But as you play further and further in, you realize, oh, like there's more going on, you know, and you're and spoilers. You find out you're connected to it. I just I. Yeah, it's I think I don't think immersive sim is correct. I would not call this an M sim.

[00:17:03] I've never I've never played an immersive sim. So I don't have like a comparison to that. Like I've never played Dishonored. I've never played. I don't even know what other immersive sims are. I would say I would say like Fallout 3 or New Vegas are much more M sim than like Bioshock. I think. See, I thought those were just like RPGs. They are. See, that's what that's why I've always like struggled with that concept of what really an M sim is.

[00:17:30] However, Bioshock also has a lot of touches of survival horror. Yes. Which I was not necessarily expecting. Yeah. But I think if you think about it, I think in this time, like horror elements were kind of in vogue because like two years prior we had we had a really great game come out called Resident Evil 4. And Resident Evil. Oh, fuck you. I love that game. I love that game. Shut up.

[00:18:00] Both versions. Both versions. But but that game was a runaway hit and it proved that you could have horror elements in a game without making it a horror game. Because I wouldn't say Resident Evil 4 is a survival horror game. It's not. That's why I'm not with it. Obviously, I wanted to write a horror and I did not get that. But that's that's you know, that's that's that's neither here nor there. That's fair. But like but but think of that.

[00:18:22] And then I think it was a year later, but we had the original Dead Space come out and like and Dead Space and again was another combination of action and horror. So I feel like that's much more survival horror, though, than like a Resident Evil 4 that I kind of I almost would consider that more akin to like the straight up survival horror. We might have now like Resident Evil 2 2019 or something like that, where it's like, really, this is survival horror. Or no, it's not like the old tank controls and fixed perspectives.

[00:18:51] But this is about what you're going to get nowadays. That's how I consider Dead Space, old or new. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I played the remake and fucking love that remake. But yeah, the survival me too. But the survival horror elements are just like maybe that part where you get the shotgun for the first time and then like the lights go out. Right. And then the spotlight is put on you and then all those enemies attack you. That's like some PS1 survival horror shit. You know, like that's like that's a compliment, by the way.

[00:19:17] Yeah, it definitely gives you that like you're alone kind of figuring out this weird environment, you know, and they do a good job of introducing the big daddies as these really formidable opponents. But the game has really good progression. So by the end of the game, none of that stuff bothers you because you know you're strong enough to take it on, whether due to like just gaining better weapons, better plasmids, and also just like learning better strategies for how to deal with all the enemies as well.

[00:19:46] Plus like all the just just the little sisters in general or just like touches like that are all very survival horror stuff. Yeah, you know, like it's all, you know. Yeah, maybe the immersive sim stuff comes from the fact that there's not one set way to do things, you know, like, like, you could like, you could be a hacker and hack everything. You could just blow everything up. You could like try to stealth and like sneak up behind people and bop them in the head with a wrench. Like you could do like an all plasmid run. You could do an all pistol run.

[00:20:16] Like you have a lot of different options for accomplishing your goals. But it's not like, say, a Dishonored where if I'm correct on this, Dishonored gives you a lot of options and different like, like it lets you play the game to however skill set you think works for you. Whereas Bioshock isn't completely that, but it feels like it's maybe edging into that sort of idea.

[00:20:39] But that's what that's what Fallout is, you know, and that's why I consider that like very much more more M-Send. It's obviously an RPG, but like, you know, I think that that gets there a lot.

[00:20:52] I don't even know if this is necessary because, again, I feel like most people play Bioshock. Should we just the premise of the game, how it starts? You're on an airplane. Yeah. And then you're looking at a picture of presumably your family. You're looking at a picture of something.

[00:21:22] Then the plane crashes. You survive this crash into the ocean and you wake up into the ocean. You know what? Actually, I remember this because there was a demo of Bioshock on 360 like on the on the Xbox Live store. That was a very popular demo. Yeah. And I did play that because I remember being like, whoa, this looks crazy. You're just like waking up and like flaming wreckage water. This is nuts. You know what I mean? Like I knew a lot of people who played that demo.

[00:21:49] Like when I was playing online with people, when that demo came out, people were like, yo, you got to check that out. Like, that's really cool. And for some reason, I didn't. I don't know why. You would have been blown away, even though now we can see it in like much, much higher spec. Even at the time, though, it looked it looked crazy. Yeah. And then you're and then you're swimming towards the lighthouse, you know? Oh, it's the only thing you see in the in the background.

[00:22:11] And by the way, I know like there's a lot of talk nowadays about people hate the yellow paint and the developers telling you what to do. I hate that shit, too. I've hated that shit for 20 years. I know it's invoked to talk about now. But Bioshock is one of those games that is so fucking good at not doing that, you know, because you crash in that wreckage. That could be the most confusing thing in the world.

[00:22:35] Somehow, you know, to go to that lighthouse and there's not like a big yellow paint paint stripe on it to tell you to go there. You know, certain games handle like the yellow paint better than others. You know, like like I think Uncharted handled the whole like kind of guiding you better, but because it's like you're climbing up all these different like mountains and all these crazy high buildings. So they just do little subtle.

[00:23:00] It feels more subtle to just be like, oh, this is something you can kind of grab on to, you know, because it was like such a new gameplay idea at the time that you kind of need to guide people. But like, as I had said before, the Resident Evil 4 remake has so much like yellow paint and yellow tape that it's kind of it kind of became the meme. And I'm and I found it to be a little much, but I didn't really care about I didn't mind because I think just people just bitch about anything these days. Like, is it is it over the top?

[00:23:29] Yeah, but like I just play the game as normal and I'm fine. You know, I just think there's just so much more interesting. Like it just stifles like instead of doing something creative, you're just going to put a yellow stripe. It just it just takes away creative. It's like, how can we get the player there? You know, you can think of some cool gameplay or visual thing to do, which would be just it's just so much more fun to have that stuff.

[00:23:51] Yeah, yeah, because because kind of on the opposite end, like I just recently beat the original version of Silent Hill 2 and that game doesn't tell you jack shit as far as like what items. Well, it gives you a hint where, like, say when James like tilts his head in the weird angle. So you're like, oh, something's in the room. And I found the most frustrating part of that game was just trying to interact with certain items. And that's why in Bioshock, well, the first two, because they're in very dark environments. I put I turned on and the options like make the items flash.

[00:24:20] That's what Resident Evil does. That's what survival horror games do. I think that's important. I know some people might think, oh, that takes you out of the game. No, man, there's no need to be running around the dark, pressing X on everything like you just don't need to do that. I find it weird that like the items flashing would take somebody out of a game, but the yellow paint everywhere wouldn't. Oh, man, I don't understand how someone could feel that way. I guess people do because the flashing items to me, that's just like it. I mean, if anything, it just says, oh, it's a video game.

[00:24:49] But yeah, man, that's what you're playing. Like whatever, man. Speaking of video games, speaking of video game, the most video game me thing about it. And this was something games did back in this era for some reason was that they always wanted to come up with a canonical reason why you could respond. And you notice that whether it was Borderlands, whether it was this, whether it was like plenty of other games, it's like we need to think of this. We can't it can't just be video game. You're back.

[00:25:17] We need to have a reason why you can come back. And it's like you don't really need to have that. But it's like it's fine. You're making it part of lore, whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's also like, OK, it's almost sometimes it's like, are you just embarrassed that you're a video game and you just need to, you know, like in many ways I prefer when it's like you just straight up die in the games like, oh, game over, you're dead. So you just reload your save. So they just pretend it didn't happen like that makes more sense. It's like, oh, you actually died.

[00:25:47] But if I just load up the save, I'll be just fine. Right. The Vita Chamber is a obviously like a fun little fun little idea, just like the new you station in Borderlands, you know, whatever. But weirdly enough, I think the Vita PlayStation Vita Chamber, it fits in to like the lore and the aesthetic of Rapture. You know what I mean? Like it fits. Right. You know, because because really for me, the best part of the game is the environment.

[00:26:15] Like let's talk about them now, then just say, say whatever, say whatever you want about them. So it's like. So as you said, like the intro, you're on the plane, you crash there. There's nobody on the plane conveniently. Of course. And then and then you just you see the lighthouse and you're like, well, I guess I got nowhere to go. So you go in. The door is suspiciously creaked open. Right. Right. And you go in and what is like the first thing you see, like the lights turn on and you see this giant fucking face statue of like Andrew Ryan, like right there. Right.

[00:26:44] I like, you know. Yeah. It's like it's like no, no, no God, no man. I forget what it says at the front, but it's like the big banner. Right. And you're like, well, what the fuck is this? And then you see the. Oh, what is it? The bathysphere. And then you go into the like bathysphere and then you get that sweeping shot because you have Andrew Ryan. And basically explaining why he created Rapture. And as he's saying that is when you get that sweeping intro section where you see Rapture. Yeah. This insane underwater city.

[00:27:14] And it is such an amazing way to set up the game and set up the like really the star of the show to me, which is Rapture. Yeah. As you had mentioned that, like the game doesn't have any cut scenes or at least not many cut scenes. Very few. Because Ken Levine was always opposed to them. He hated cut scenes because he feels they take you out of the game. They do. And yeah, and there are cut scenes in here, but they're only for like very specific story parts in the game.

[00:27:43] The rest of it is just like when dialogue is happening or something, you're still like controlling it and looking around. And quite frankly, that's the best part of the game to me. You know why? Because like this generation, I probably talked about this with you and just on fine time in general. This generation, this PS3, 360 Wii generation is like my least favorite. And part of the reason why is because we leaned so hard. This was like the AAA as we know it today.

[00:28:11] It was, it was the beginning of it. Yeah. It was the beginning. And it's just like, that means endless cut scenes. That means tons of talking. That means every game wants to be a movie. Now we all have to have movie scores instead of video game music. It was a very big change for me, someone who's old and frail like me, who just did not, was not with that kind of stuff. And then quite frankly, I'm still not. I hate Uncharted. Okay. I hate games like that. I hate a lot of games from this era that are so popular.

[00:28:40] I wish I had played Bioshock at the time because that this would have been the antidote to that. And I'm not just talking about just cut scenes. I'm talking about a lot of stuff that I can't get into. Otherwise, I'll be here for three hours. But point is the fact that Bioshock's scenes, they're not, they're all scripted events in a fun way, not in a narrow way, like a Call of Duty. Don't go off this path or else, you know, we'll, we'll send you back or you'll die or you'll fail the mission. The hell kind of name is soap.

[00:29:10] I can't stand that shit. But, but Bioshock in doing it this way makes you genuinely feel like you're part of the action. And that's ironic because a lot of the reasons why they all have, all these developers have all these cut scenes in this game is that they, they say you want to feel like you're part of something. Bitch, when you're playing the game, that that's when you're part of something, not just watching a scene.

[00:29:33] So the fact that Bioshock does this and fully commits to this is by far the best thing about it. And I think it's quite frankly, one of the best ever do it. See, I see what you're saying about the whole, like the 360 PS3 generation felt like they were really pushing for the cinematic experience in games. But really, if you think about it, a lot of that stuff started well, even before that. Of course.

[00:29:58] Like you could argue, like say the Super Nintendo Sega Genesis era was you're starting to see a lot more cut scenes and like story building up. It was a lot different for sure. But say like you get to the PS1 generation and I think the game, the big game that influenced everybody to want to do the cinematic approach, Metal Gear Solid. Yeah. Because it handled it in such a unique way. And with the technology getting better and more people wanting to play these games and wanting to have that big cinematic experience that you could interact with.

[00:30:27] Like we didn't need full motion video anymore. You know, fuck Night Trap. We're going to do this a lot more cool. But yeah, the 360 PS3 generation was like the cut scenes were starting to get excessive. I mean, Metal Gear Solid 4. It's one of the best games I've ever watched. Right. Like it doesn't. The great trick about like you said, there's very few parts in Bioshock that you were not directly controlling.

[00:30:56] And basically near the end of the game, one of the few scenes you don't control is when you, the character, do not have control of your own body. Yes. You realize you're being controlled by somebody. And it's just, whoa, now I can't actually move. That is such a great trick. I know that like people probably like gloss over that kind of stuff or maybe think, oh, of course, you know, you're being controlled by somebody.

[00:31:21] But like to have the entire game not be that and then all of a sudden it is that for a reason. That's incredible. I love when games do shit like that. And Bioshock nailed it. Would you kindly? Would you kindly? Would you kindly shut the fuck up? I'm surprised no one said that in this game. I was expecting it. Yeah, that's the thing. It never this game never really gets that vulgar in the language as well.

[00:31:50] There's some there's some fucks, but it's not really like. Yeah, it's not excessive because this was that was another thing this time. This era was like, you know, like GTA was influencing everybody to just, you know, like and even Saints Row as well, like just fucks and shits all the time, which is fine. There's a place for that. But Bioshock, I will say it keeps it classy. But, you know, it's a different approach. Yeah, as well, because the writing is the writing in this game. It's fucking phenomenal. Like still to this day, it's some of the best writing I've ever seen. It's really good.

[00:32:20] Well, I guess maybe this might be an inroad to talk about like the enemies in this game. Briefly, there's not a whole lot to say. They're just crazy people. They're just people that are insane, which is great. I think that's great. I love that. Well, they have a name. They do have like lore. Splicers. I love that. They I love that. They are just like people that are insane. They're not zombies. They're not creatures that have been mutated or something. They're just people that are batshit crazy for the most part.

[00:32:56] Because basically with Bioshock, you know, the whole idea was it was meant to be this sort of like like libertarian utopia under the sea. Pretty much. Yeah. That's basically what's meant to be like Andrew Ryan. Like I think he directly quotes like Ayn Rand. Oh, of course he does. It's like one of his big influences, of course. That was the thing to do in 2007. And then so they're down there doing this and everything seems fine. And then they discover this.

[00:33:24] One of the scientists there discovers this thing called Adam, which Adam is basically this substance that allows humans to become like, you know, super powered. Like they can mutate and then do all of these things. And with Adam like becoming like discovered and becoming a hot commodity in Rapture, it's basically what causes the whole thing to just fucking collapse in on itself. Yeah.

[00:33:49] And splicers are basically people who have become enhanced by the plasmids, but so much so that it's like consumed their body. Like a good comparison is when Gollum gets the ring in Lord of the Rings and it just completely degrades him and just consumes his body. Like the power of the ring is too much for him to contain. Yep. The splicers is essentially a version of that.

[00:34:12] And they're your main enemies throughout the game are these people just trying to hunt you because they realize you are capable of Adam and have plasmid and they just want to harvest you for that. Yeah. Because funnily enough, at the very start of the game, when you get knocked out and splicers are looking at you, they don't fuck with you because you don't have any Adam yet. Yep. They don't care yet. They leave you alone.

[00:34:34] But the moment you get the jab, brother, and you can start shooting lightning, that's when they come after you. You know? Oh, man. I would get a COVID jab every week if I could shoot lightning. Let me tell you what. I would get another one. Oh, everyone would have. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I do want to go back real quick to Rapture in general because it's essentially Art Deco Atlantis. It's the best way to describe it.

[00:35:01] It's like 1950s, 40s retro futuristic. Before we got on the air, we were talking about L.A. Noire. That's why it's one of my favorite games ever. I love that shit. I bought it the other day and I'm so stoked to sit down and play through it again because I've beaten that game a bunch, but I never get sick of it. But here's the thing, though. As you know, I grew up in Southern California and I've been to L.A. a million times. There's parts of L.A. that still look like that. You know? That's awesome.

[00:35:30] Those are always my favorites, like seeing those old buildings. Of course, we have examples all around the country. The Empire State Building is like an Art Deco tower of power, right? Yeah. But it's the most obvious example that people kind of gloss over because it's just been there for so long. But we just take a lot of people don't. Yeah. A lot of people don't really know about building architecture. Yeah, of course.

[00:35:52] Like like it was like like when Control came out in 2019, everyone then started going on about brutalist architecture because it was a big influence on that game. And it took me a while. It took me a while to realize what everyone was talking about. I was like, oh, it's fucking Control, man. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Fucking love Control. Fucking love that game. I do not like it. You asshole. Anyway. Anyway. It's a divisive game. I understand that. I played it. Man, I tried. I gave it like four hours. I just couldn't.

[00:36:22] I'm sorry. I will say I like Control for a lot of the same reasons I like Bioshock. I can understand that. Which is like the lore and the world building and the setting are just phenomenal. Speaking of, like you said, a vision of the future, what we thought the future would look like from that time.

[00:36:41] In retrospect, isn't it a bit strange that we had two games within a year of each other, like Bioshock and Fallout 3 that had this like atomic age aesthetic and pre rock and roll music and that romantic mid century shit. Yes, of course, Fallout existed before 2008. But everyone knows what I'm trying to say. Fallout 3 brought that shit, you know, to 3D and like to life. And they kind of came out around the same time.

[00:37:08] And it's like it's kind of weird that these two things happen the same. But that sometimes happens in video games and art, I guess. And I don't think Fallout 1 and 2 had that distinctive an art style. No. Like I know they had an art style, but like they didn't go for that. Well, the only thing that was really distinct was like the Brotherhood of Steel shit. Was like the steel and like the mechanical stuff was really – that's the stuff that really carried over to Fallout 3. But as I said, I also referenced The Incredibles, which came out around the same time.

[00:37:38] And it had a – it was trying that same idea, but it did something completely different with it. Yeah. But – and I would say Fallout 4 and Bioshock, they both have similar ideas, but they take them in very different directions. Yes, of course they do. As well. But it was just weird that like we had kind of the same sort of aesthetic happening at the same time. Yeah. But that's how art goes, you know? You see a lot of things come out and it's like the same time. And it's like did they rip off each other? It's like no, these came out at the same time. Okay. Weird. Yeah.

[00:38:08] But yeah, like Rapture is still to this day one of the most fascinating environments in a video game ever. Like these giant skyscrapers that are in the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. And like you have all of these like unique rooms and all like the neon signs and like music stores and like these weird bars. And everyone's favorite, welcome to the circus of value. I can hear Steve saying that to me right now.

[00:38:37] I'm sure he does a great one. Steve, if you do record it for me and I'll enter it. We offer no returns. And then later you find the ammunition one that's a-oh-me-oh-gay-e-boh or whatever. And I'm like, it's not as good, but it's in the same vein, you know? It's, you know, they thought about a lot about these and I really appreciate that they- Yeah, and it all works so well.

[00:39:04] Like, and then like having like the bathyspheres and the big daddies, like that old school style of like, of sea traversal in there as well. I did not realize. I did not realize that a big daddy was essentially like scuba gear until I actually like played the game. And I was like, oh, wait a second. You're the end where they want to put you in the big daddy suit. And I was thinking, oh, okay. I played this entire goddamn game and I went my whole life without even thinking about that. Of course, they're underwater.

[00:39:33] That makes sense, dumbass. Like, yes. See, when I like first saw the big daddy and all that, I went, oh, it's that dude from Scooby-Doo. The ghost of Captain Cutler. Scooby-Doo. I looked it up. But yeah, the ghost, yeah, like the kind of guy underwater with the seaweed and he has the same type of helmet. You know, like, yeah, that's what they used to deep sea dive back in the day. You know? Just a great world, man. Just what a great world. And the lore is fascinating.

[00:40:02] Like, I couldn't give two shits about most video games lore. Me too. Because despite, you know, credit to the writers who have to write it. I'm sure they write interesting stuff. But I think most lore doesn't enhance the games that they're in. But that's why I don't like cut scenes that much in most games for that reason. Because it's like, I don't care, man. I just don't care what you're talking about most of the time.

[00:40:27] But like, there are so many games, or even say like the Elder Scrolls, where the lore is there and it's good. But there's just so much of it. It can like completely overload you. But Bioshock handles the lore. Like, it's all very well written. And it handles it probably in the best way any game ever has with the audio logs. Because you can just find an audio log, turn it on, and then you can just listen to it as you play the game. And as you play the game, it doesn't take you out of anything.

[00:40:56] And, you know, and this wasn't, I mean, you do have to stop and read those logs in Metroid Prime. They're not voiced. But that's the, to me, that's the most Metroid Prime thing about Bioshock. That's why I said that earlier. It's because you get all that stuff just from text. You get to read all this stuff. Or if you don't want to, you don't have to. If you don't want to listen to audio logs, don't listen to them. Yeah. Because like, as much as I say enjoyed the Mass Effect series, I never sat down and read the compendium because that is a lot to read.

[00:41:24] And I'm sure I would have loved all of it and it would have been fascinating. But it's like, I'm here to play the game, not read a fucking book. You know? And a lot of games, even still to this day, still have like the text where you read like a lot of text. And I'm like, why can't I just like put on the audio, the audible version? And just while I'm playing the game, I can listen to the lore of whomever the fuck while I'm stabbing somebody in the eye. Like that's more enjoyable. And Bioshock does that.

[00:41:52] Like even when you go into the menus or when you do the hacking minigame or whatever happens, like it never, it doesn't stop for any like specific reason. It just keeps going. Yeah. So you can just sit there and engage with it. Fine.

[00:42:23] Do you have anything on like kind of just the, we've been talking about a lore and, you know, story and stuff. And that's what really matters here. Do you have anything about like the actual gameplay, like the nuts and bolts about it? Just like combat, anything, environments, pipe dream, hacking game. Probably my favorite thing. Do you even know what pipe dream is? Am I right? If I'm referencing something that is not known to you while he's typing into his computer. I may know what pipe dream is. Hold on. Like I know the phrase pipe.

[00:42:50] It's an NES and Game Boy puzzle game by Bulletproof Software. Ah, pipe mania. They said pipe dream. And that's why when I saw, when I saw my roommate play, I was like, oh shit, it's pipe dream. Holy shit. And of course he's, he's, he's a year older than me. So he definitely knew what pipe dream was. So, uh, you know, um,

[00:43:15] And so, yeah, so the, the, the gameplay itself, I think is where the game is just a little bit on the dated side because you could tell at least like the shooting wasn't the main focus of the game. Not really. Like the combat isn't bad. Like it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but like even comparing it to games of the time, like, like say like a Call of Duty 4 or Halo or a Metroid Prime, like the shooting doesn't feel nearly as good as it does in those games.

[00:43:42] No. And Metroid Prime feels hell dated. I played Metroid Prime Remastered. That feels ancient. I mean, it didn't feel like the most with it at the time that again, that doesn't make the game bad, but now playing it in now. Oh my God. Well, cause I think Metroid Prime was sort of the last, like the last game to be in the pre Halo console shooter. Cause Halo was, is what kind of made everyone go, oh, this is how we're supposed to do shooters on console.

[00:44:09] And since Prime was being done at the same time, they kind of did their own weird thing with it. And it's, I mean, I beat the GameCube version and it is, it's, it's a bit, it's a bit rough to play these days, but. But to be quite honest, I don't like playing with the modern control scheme that you can do in remastered. I'd rather just play the GameCube way. I haven't played remastered yet, so. It's great, but I'd rather just play the GameCube way, you know, where you just lock on and just sort of circle strafe. I just think the game is so built around that. Yeah.

[00:44:37] That I just think it's better just to do it that way. Now for talking like Metroid Prime 3. Yeah, of course I'll bust out the Joy-Cons cause that was made for Wii and Nunchuk, Wii mode and Nunchuk. But like for the first two, nah. I'd love two and three to come to Switch cause I still haven't played them. I, I, two is my favorite. Three is really good too. I think I, I think the first one's my least favorite out of the trilogy.

[00:44:59] Um, I feel like the, I feel like Bioshock is a bit over systemed a little, if you know what I mean? Like the invention machine and the scrap parts. I don't think we needed that probably the camera stuff. Not really, you know, I just feel like there's a little too much things. What I like about like say the cameras and that stuff is like you can hack them if you want, or you could just blow them up.

[00:45:24] No, no, no, no. I mean like when you get, when you get the camera to take pictures of like the, the guys. Oh yeah. To get the research. Yeah. So you can learn like the weaknesses and all that. I never really did that much. Um, I would do it on say some of the bigger enemies cause I'm like, is there an easier way to kill these? Cause one thing I didn't like was it felt like the game gave you way too many, like not too many weapons, but too many ammo types.

[00:45:48] Like why does every gun need three ammo types? Like that felt excessive to me. Um, like you get all these different plasmids that are really cool, but honestly, most people I think end up using like two of them. Maybe like I would use the electricity cause the electricity was the easiest to deal with. And then I would use, um, I would use the fire sometimes. Um, but my favorite, which I think is most people's favorite. It might be your favorite is the bees. I did not use the bees. I did not really use it.

[00:46:16] Launching a swarm of bees at an enemy and watching it slowly kill them is kind of amazing. Possess big daddy was my favorite because Jesus Christ, that breaks the game. It kind of does. Yeah, it really does. Um, but yeah, it's like the game gives you all these different options, which I appreciate them having the options, but yeah, it feels a little excessive, especially when it's like you have all these different like tech slots for like, like you have like the one specific,

[00:46:42] specific for plasmids and then one specific for, um, like just like main stats with your character. Yeah. But there's like three different types of like passives though, you know, cause it's like these passives go here and this in this row. And it's just like, I don't, we don't need three different slots for that. Like I almost would have preferred like a standard, like RPG leveling up system where you just like upgrade your stats over time kind of thing. Um, and, and I feel like the game as far as the comic is, it doesn't have a hook, like nothing about it.

[00:47:12] Like, like half life two has the gravity gun, which is one of the coolest weapons in video game history. Right? Yeah. Like halo has, you know, like it was the overpowered pistol or the battle rifle or whatever. And then like call of duty, you had like the crazy arcade fast gameplay. Rainbow six Vegas had the really cool, like tactical cover system. Like this doesn't really have that hook. It might be the plasmids, but I feel like the plasmids are almost underutilized. Yeah. Because you don't really have to use them. They help, but they're not necessary to your survival.

[00:47:40] Yeah. Like probably the most, like one of the most effective things early game, and you can kind of use it later in the game is you use the electricity to stun somebody, you smack them with the wrench. And a lot of times you'll just one shot them. Yeah. But I think there are way too many bullet sponge enemies in the game as well. That's what I was going to say. So like, I feel like early on, it's not impossible to take down a big daddy, but it's way harder than it should be. It's really tough.

[00:48:07] Though at the start, I don't mind it being difficult because it's like a fresh new thing and you sort of have to use your wits and your limited resources to take them out. I guess it's more that when you're near the end of the game and you're like super powerful and you have all these weapons and they're still just as hard to take down. It feels like you haven't progressed. Exactly. That's why you have a level up system. That is, that is brilliant. I like that you said that I didn't even think of that myself, but it's like, yeah, I just really wish like you don't feel the progression of power.

[00:48:35] And I think no matter what kind of game it is, even if combat isn't totally the focus, you definitely feel the progression of power in Metroid Prime or whatever games we mentioned. Right. Like for sure. Yeah. Metroid has always been a masterclass in making you feel more powered as you go on. And that's like even the 2D ones.

[00:48:52] Yeah. And, and, and Bioshock doesn't really do that. I guess when you get like some, it just feels like if you don't have like this certain anti, you know, personnel type or this sort of ammo, cause each gun, again, each gun has like three different ammos. You're not, you're just, you're going to have a bad time taking out a big daddy or any other big enemy. Also, I guess maybe this isn't really a problem per se. It's just the times, but there's just no penalty for dying.

[00:49:19] You can just keep going back to the Vita chamber, PlayStation Vita chamber and just keep coming back. And it just feels kind of like, okay, I don't have any first aid kits, but who cares? Because I can just do, I get, I'll just come back. Like, I don't know, man, at least Borderlands takes a 10th of your money. Like, I think this does take some of your money, but even then you don't ever really get that much money. No.

[00:49:46] Anyways. And there, and there's, you don't really have to buy that much stuff. Cause also like, yeah, the whole like invention thing is kind of silly. Cause a lot of the invention stuff I never bothered with. I would just like, oh, I can make a little bit more ammo. Sure. Yeah. Or like make a med kid or an Eve hypo or whatever. Right. Like that was neat, but yeah. Yeah. It tries a lot of different things. Like it throws a lot at the player, but I think it's, it's like the gameplay is competent enough to kind of like not get bogged down by all that stuff.

[00:50:16] It's just when you're trying all this different stuff and you feel like, oh, this is like a little too excessive. Like I don't, why am I going out of my way to do this one thing that isn't as convenient as just pulling out a shotgun and blasting him in the head. Yeah. Should focus on. And like the guns don't feel all that great. Not really. Um, I like the shotgun. I like the shotgun. Shotgun feels good. Yeah.

[00:50:44] I, I did. Oh, I did like the dart, not dart. The, the, uh, what is it? The, uh, harpoon gun. What is it where you shoot them darts? Then, uh, you know what I'm talking about? I know which one you're talking about. It might've been a harpoon gun. Yeah. The harpoon gun in Bioshock two. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. The harpoon guns in Bioshock two. This is something different, but it works exactly the same. Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. But that shit, once you powered that shit up, like, Oh, you know what? That is one thing that makes you feel powerful when you find the weapon up, uh, upgrade thing.

[00:51:14] And then you can upgrade a weapon. Yeah. The crossbow. You're talking about the crossbow. Crossbow was powerful. The crossbow was sick as hell. Cause that's when you could like one shot people from like a super far distance. Oh yeah. A lot of games struggle to make like the Tommy gun feel good, you know? Cause they always make it a little too weak. I understand it's a hard balance cause you don't want to be too powerful, but at the same time, you know? Yeah. Like the, the shotgun is pretty sick. The grenade launcher. I only ever really use it for the big daddy. Me too.

[00:51:40] There's really only no other reason to use it. Um, the chemical thrower. I mean, it's funny to shoot out a bunch of like a fire gel and burn people. Yeah. That was the only, I didn't really find a use for like the freezing gel personally. Yeah. Or the electric gel. Like I tried the electric gel on the big daddy, but it didn't really do any damage. It shocked him, but it didn't really hurt him. It's, it's kind of redundant because everything the chemical thrower does, you have a plasmid for. So it's like, what the fuck's the point?

[00:52:08] Yeah. I get the, I get the flamethrower though. Yeah. I mean, a flamethrower is fun. I really liked all the environments. Obviously Rapture is a crazy looking place. You talked about all the, you know, very, it's very dark and very, oh, and by the way, that's why I looked up the original 360 version of this game, because that was my memory of it. And I didn't really see much of the interior.

[00:52:29] So I'm playing this version that is much more akin to the original PC version. Cause back then the differences between PC and console were still a fucking ocean. You know, that, that shit was like, it looked very, very different with the stuff you could do with lighting and geometry and whatever.

[00:52:44] So I went back and looked at the original 360 version of Bioshock. It did the best it could, obviously. And I'm not, that version still looks good for what it is, man. And then I, and then I looked at the original PC version. Holy shit. Then of course this sort of like remastered touch that version is even better. So it's just like, I'm glad I'm playing it this way. And I didn't have to try to do some weird, like 360 emulation or some weird, like a try to play it on steam deck or some shit.

[00:53:11] Yeah. I'm sure this camera is just fine on steam. I'm sure it does. It's just that like, you know, games that were made from that era for PC, not really the most friendly with steam deck sometimes. That's all.

[00:53:23] And because the game doesn't really have an auto save, like a pretty shitty auto save, like it's very old school in that they want you to manually save like all the time. And I wasn't like prepared for that. So there were times where I lost a lot of progress because it would crash on me. And then I was like, Oh, I haven't saved in like three hours. And so I have to redo all that shit again. But it streamlined because I knew what the hell I was doing.

[00:53:48] I'm, I'm a natural frequent saver. I think like fallout games on 360 scared me for life. So like, I, I just naturally, I just naturally do that. You know, that's how I, that's how I am. So it's like, it's been 10 minutes. I'll save. Well, and you're an old school gamer. So I think you're more in touch with like, you know, wanting to manually save. Oh yeah. I never assume a game save for me. Yeah. And people are like big RPG people. They're just like saving every 10 seconds.

[00:54:13] Yeah. I save all the time. Like even in games where it doesn't really matter too much, like even like a, like a horizon game or whatever that always auto saves for you. You can still make manual saves in that game. And I still make one before I turn the game off. Right. So I just, I'm just used to it. Like when I was playing, um, like, like a dragon infinite wealth, like even when like, say I was done for the day, I would always manually save. Even if the auto save was like right after what I did, I was like, eh, let me just manually save just to be safe.

[00:54:40] Yeah. You know, just to, just to, um, I don't, I mean, we've, uh, all the environments in this game, again, we talked about them, but like, I really liked the tea garden area. Oh yeah. Tea garden was crazy looking man. Oh yeah. I loved it. And it came, you know what, you know why I liked it so much. It's not just that it looks cool. It came at the right time because at some point at the game, it's like how many, another hallway, another watery, you know, this or that, another electric, whatever you get to the tea garden.

[00:55:07] And it's like completely different. It's not like you're in a completely different game. It's just that it's such a different looking place than the rest of the game. That's like, it feels a bit like an oasis. Like if you may have been getting tired of all the dank bullshit, the tea garden comes along and just rescues you. Like, like, are you talking about Arcadia? Like the, the weird, like forest section? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where you have to, the oxygen, where the oxygen comes from.

[00:55:30] Yeah. That weird, like botanical garden that they had. And then you had like the, the, the lady trying to, you know, figure it out and then it like gets all poisoned and everything. Yeah. Like that was really cool. Um, like I liked the medical pavilion at the start of the game with that, with, uh, the, the surgeon who's like, like completely obsessed with like making people perfect, you know, like his whole little story is fantastic.

[00:55:52] That was my favorite. That was my favorite part. That was like my, one of my, not my, my second favorite character. I'll talk about my favorite character in a second, but I love that he was just like, I love the audio log where he was like, you can change your look, change your race, change your sex. It's yours to change. Yada, yada. I love that. Like one of the main characters in a triple a game that millions of people bought was just a mad scientist, just your classic mad scientist. I'd love that shit.

[00:56:17] Like mad. Yeah. Just mad with all the power that he's been given by Andrew Ryan and rapture to like be as perfectionist as he want and sort of like rewrite the book on like physical appearance and all that stuff. And he just completely cannot handle it. And it's, and it's done really well. Yeah. Like I also liked, uh, probably my favorite was a Fort frolic. That was my favorite level with, uh, it was, with, with Sandra Cohen. Like what a fucking beast.

[00:56:43] Oh my God. Favorite part of the game. That is my favorite character in the game. That was my favorite part of the game. Let me talk about that to the people real quick. Cause it was my absolute favorite. So we were talking about scripted stuff earlier and you get that here in Fort frolic, but it's fucking wild at every turn. This sick fuck. Everybody out there who hasn't played the game.

[00:57:05] Once you to kill his protege and then take pictures of their dead bodies and put the pictures on this very well crafted sculpture. He made specifically for this purpose for you to kill them and put them on there. And then he gets angry at you for doing that. Even though we told you to do that. And he sends a bunch of guys after you, you have this big brawl while this ballet music plays overhead. It's insane.

[00:57:31] It's absolutely insane. It is like, like, like there are points where he loses it and sends people out to kill you. And then, and then you kill them all. And then he's like, okay, I'm sorry. That was, that was, that was too much. That was excessive. I'm sorry. Could you please still help me? And you just don't really have a choice. You're like, okay. Yeah. It's, it's crazy, man. I love everything. It's everything. At least that's the best part of the game because it leans into the survival horror stuff. It's all the scripted event stuff. It's all the playing with lighting and environment.

[00:58:01] Yeah. And, and just everything about that was incredible. And I liked how disconnected it felt from the rest of the game. And that, I think that's great. I think that's on purpose because it, again, almost like I said with, with the tea garden stuff, I realized that this game was not going to be short.

[00:58:18] And the whole Andrew Ryan stick of, you know, I'm the evil overlord. I'm the ultimate libertarian. Maybe I get like, okay, yeah, I get it, man. Like I, I understand maybe that could have been wearing or theft. Yeah. Taxes are theft. Taxation is theft. Um, every, everything. Oh, we'll roast him in a second. Um, that could have been maybe getting like a little over the top and it's like, okay, just let me kill this guy already. But then there's this whole Sandra Cohen part, which quite frankly is like much more interesting to me.

[00:58:47] I love lunatics doing lunatic shit, whether it's the doctor, read the mad scientist who talked about before the surgeries, whether it's Sandra Cohen, Dr. Steinman. You know what he reminded me of? He reminded me of, um, you ever play code Veronica, Resident Evil code Veronica. He reminded me of a long time ago. He reminded me of the main guy. Uh, not Albert Wesker. What the fuck is his name?

[00:59:11] Alexandria, uh, Alexandria, something is sister. I don't know. Anyone just play code Veronica notes what I'm talking about. It reminded me of that guy, like to the nines. Well, if they, if, if they remake it, we'll talk about it. Uh, I, I think, I think code Veronica is my favorite of the tank controls era for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think it needs a remake. I would love it too. I would love it so much. Anyway. Yeah. That, that whole Sandra Cohen part was fucked up and delightful. Loved every second of it.

[00:59:36] Cause one of the cool things about Bioshock is that it kind of gave me almost that, like that kind of like RPG style story progression where it's, you have, you have the big overarching story, but in the middle you have all these little stories, you know, like, like when you do the stuff with Steinman, when then you go to the fishing district and you deal with that guy. And then, you know, then you go to Arcadia and try to figure out the oxygen stuff. You go to Fort Frolic and deal with Sandra Cohen's bullshit. Like it's all connected to the, the overarching story, which is like Rapture is a failed account.

[01:00:06] experiment, but you get to see, you get to immerse yourself in all these different little stories and how it's affected different types of people in different ways. Yes. But the result is still the same, which is just like these people were given too much control or too much power. And it caused them to just fucking lose their shit because they just couldn't handle it. And, and they're probably like being stuck down. Like, yeah, it's a giant underwater city, but you're still kind of stuck down there.

[01:00:33] Like, yeah, like you can't really, I mean, you can kind of leave, but really though, not, but not readily, you know, it's just, no, no, no. It's essentially like you might as well should be living on the moon. Yeah. It's just, it's, you're, you're so far away from home, even though you still are on earth. It's, it's true.

[01:01:08] Would you argue that it feels like Fort Frolic is roughly when the game is starts to peak? Yes, absolutely. Like, I don't think the game peaks necessarily right here, like maybe just a little bit after, but like. Because after that you go right back to the Andrew Ryan stuff. I am, again, I am, I am libertarian supreme. You will never kill me. And then I guess the only like really whoa, awesome part after that is where you find out you're being controlled, which you kindly.

[01:01:35] Do you want to talk, do you want to talk about Atlas real quick? I don't really have a whole lot to say so much. It's just like, I don't know. They try to present it as this thing where it's like, oh, you were following this guy. You trusted. And it's like, I don't know if I ever trusted him so much. It's just, I didn't really have a choice. I was just doing whatever he said. I wasn't really like, you know.

[01:01:53] Yeah. So yeah. Atlas is an interesting case. So basically like Andrew Ryan becomes this like dictator basically. And then Atlas sort of rises up with all of the, like the poor and the depraved in rapture to sort of be there. I don't know. Like, I guess they're like Che Guevara or their Castro to sort of be the revolutionary force against him. And so he's the one that's kind of leading you because I guess he's like, oh, a new person, maybe they'll help me or whatever. Right. And he's like, you know, my wife and kids, could you help me get my wife and kids back?

[01:02:22] And then, and then they blow up and then, and then, and then Atlas kind of loses it a little bit, but you're still kind of going with it. Cause he's really the only ally you have outside of a Tenenbaum who Tenenbaums her own interesting case herself, which we'll get to. But yeah, you get to Andrew Ryan's office, like, and by the time you get to his office and he's right there, you know, my, my thinking was like, hmm, well, we, it doesn't feel like the end of the game. Like we've already found the dude. It feels like it's a little too quick.

[01:02:52] And then like the big twist happens where you learn that you are not just like a random person who showed up. Like you are the son of Andrew Ryan. Like your name is Jack and you were sort of like led to believe that you were just like a random person who showed up, but really you are like his son. And then, and then you realize, yeah, he's like controlling you. And then Atlas helps you like get rid of that control, which you do. And then you kill Andrew Ryan.

[01:03:20] And then once you do that, Atlas then like pulls the wool over your eyes and goes like, ha ha. I wasn't actually Atlas. My name is Fontaine. And Fontaine was sort of like the other main guy that was contesting Andrew Ryan for control over Rapture. And now that Ryan is dead, Fontaine takes it over and just becomes even more of like a crazy shithead villain. But he is nowhere near as interesting as Andrew Ryan is.

[01:03:48] And it feels like at this point, like the twist is awesome. Like it's presented incredibly well and it threw everybody for a loop to this day where people go like, oh, that twist, man. But it feels like right after that, it goes straight into standard video game schlock of go kill the bad guy. Yeah. Like all the intrigue is gone. And because Fontaine, like they tried to present him as like a gray area area area kind of character because Andrew Ryan is kind of presented that way also.

[01:04:17] Laughable. In a little bit. Sort of. But yeah, I just I mean, Ken Levine always said that he meant this to be like both both sides. If you will, as equally valid. I'm sorry. There's only there's only one people calling other human beings parasites. I mean, I don't know what else to say, bro. Like Ken Levine, the ultimate centrist. I mean, Jesus centrist and a libertarian at the same time. That's amazing. It's just like it's a one two combo.

[01:04:48] Thrac games were not political in 2007. Remember, I keep telling you this. Oh, God. Deus what? What are you talking about? Oh, my God. People are so fucking stupid. People really say that shit. You know, there was a there was a fucking video game base that was made for like the Reagan Bush election campaign in 1980. Goddamn for on the Coleco vision. So don't tell me games were never fucking political until 2018. You shit. How many? How many?

[01:05:18] How many video games didn't wasn't Bill Clinton in NBA Jam or like wasn't? Yes, he was. Like, come on, bro. Bro, I understand that's not what we're talking about here. I'm just saying, like, let's let's not let's not get crazy. And it's been said before. Metal Gear fucking solid. Like that shit is political as hell. Hello. Like people just like like what it is, is all these fucking shit heads on Twitter. Or they probably call it X are like realizing that like they are.

[01:05:46] They don't realize that like games have always been political. It's just when they played those older games, they weren't thinking about politics as they were a child. Yeah. So it just like none of that stuff kind of resonated or sat with them at all. And now that they're older and have political beliefs, they are just being like willfully ignorant to that stuff and are just thinking for some reason like, oh, this game just start like the playable character is a woman. For some reason, that makes it political. Yeah.

[01:06:14] Which shows like which that should just tell you what their politics are, which is just like atrocious, really, because there have been female playable characters in video games. For fucking ever at this point. Okay. Like it's not a political statement to have a fucking woman as your main character. It's like the family guy. Of course not. I mean, but, you know, people will make it that it's like the family guy meme where it has like the skin tones where it says like normal and then political next to the brown ones.

[01:06:42] It's like, you know, but yeah, people are nuts. But yeah, Bioshock's Bioshock's politics, man, are really something. I mean, look, and I always make the point of like, I don't always have to play games that I agree with. Games can have reprehensible worldviews and still be interesting. Bad people are interesting and can be good characters. Right. And I think Bioshock does succeed at that.

[01:07:11] I Andrew Ryan is obviously a piece of shit person. Probably racist. This game doesn't really get into that, but probably. No, no. Race comes up later. Oh, yeah. But like, you know, there's stuff. There's stuff. You can make the argument, right? I mean, to be fair, when you think about it, if you're going through Rapture, for the most part, it's just fucking white people. Oh, yeah. For the most part. Oh, yeah. I think that's by. I mean, come on. Let's be real.

[01:07:40] If we built a Rapture in real life, who's going to go down there? Yeah. I mean. And if you're and if you're big inspiration is Ayn Rand. Don't know what to tell you. Yeah. And also, yeah. George Orwell is a is a is a another guy. I mean, I mean, George Orwell, everyone's fucking everyone always pays homage to George Orwell because we all read him in fucking high school. So we're always just like, oh, that guy, you know, because because he sort of represents like like criticizing things.

[01:08:09] But I think I don't want to get into fucking Orwellianism. Yeah, of course. Of course. No, I look. Anyone who listens to the show. But it is a fact like Orwellianism or whatever is it's here. Like, you know, and like Andrew Ryan, like according to Wikipedia, like his main like influences are like, you know, John D. Rockefeller and Walt Disney. And both of them like he's like a weird mixture of the two. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's yeah. And that's that's that's in the game.

[01:08:39] And I think Bioshock does it in a way that, you know. That's what always I've thought about this with all three games, but particularly this first one. I always wonder how a mainstream audience received Bioshock in that way. I wonder if they ever thought about this or it's like, oh, this is just a first person shooter. That's under in in some underground tunnel that is just not really think about it that deeply. I don't know how that's possible considering the game is just it's in your face about it.

[01:09:08] I don't think you can ignore it. No, you can. So I don't know. Like the mainstream aren't fucking idiots. It's like people have their opinions on these things. And, you know, it like it's like it's one of those things that everyone's going to have their own opinion on. And that's like with the with the politics being right there in your face, like you're going to have a fucking opinion on it one way or the other. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm I'm it's weird. I think it's weird that this game got so popular.

[01:09:36] Usually games with these kind of messages aren't don't really resonate with that many people, I guess. Well, I think also like coming out in 2007, you know, like I don't want to say like the gaming wasn't political thing, but it's more like like being political hadn't wasn't toxic as fuck yet. Like it is now like now it's like so freaking toxic and everywhere. But back then, I think you were allowed to make these sort of you're allowed to make these critiques without it being crazy because like the Internet wasn't what it is now.

[01:10:06] Like imagine if Bioshock came out like brand new now. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, my God. It would be a nightmare. And we can't even we can't even talk about fucking stellar blade on the Internet, man. Where are we going to talk about Bioshock? Oh, we can't even talk about sexy lady. Well, we kind of stopped talking about that. You know, though, like, though, we can we can talk about like Silent Hill to remake modders being weird. Oh, Jesus Christ. Fuck them.

[01:10:36] But there is there is one political sort of not just one, but this is the one that stuck out to me in the game the most. So there's a part there where there's a lot of talk about the death penalty. Right. Because it seems like there was this incident where they caught someone. They caught some thieves stealing some stuff and they put them to death. And you find an audio diary from Andrew Ryan. The reason like, you know, I think I quoted it here. Yeah.

[01:11:02] Even though there's writing in the streets, they'll get over it because a few stretch necks are a small price to pay for our ideals. Yeah. And it's like, bro, what? You're hanging them like you're not. I mean, that's on purpose. You're not even just shooting them. I think that would be more you're hanging them. You're doing that for a reason. Right.

[01:11:22] Well, because it plays into the fact that like in order for like political power to sustain itself, there needs to be violence or the like a show of force kind of thing, which is like I mean, that's essentially what like a police force is. A police force is meant to enforce what is like the current establishment in whatever country you're like, like the government. Right.

[01:11:46] And so him doing this is meant to be like is, yeah, show a force and meant to show that like, no, he's the one in control. Like these are the rules and this is what's going to like. These are going to be the example, like the heads on a pike kind of thing. And it's meant to reference that. And also the death penalty in the mid 2000s, mid late 2000s was a heavy like real life talking point.

[01:12:10] Like people were going on about like the death penalty and also like like corporal punishment and the punishment of like prisoners of war with all the horrible shit the US was doing in Iraq at the time. Of course. That people kind of have forgotten about now, which is kind of awful. And it brought it back to my mind because obviously this game came out in 2007 during W's second administration. This is dripping with it, man.

[01:12:35] Not not necessarily on purpose, but it's just games from that era just have that mid 2000s authority and authority to it. Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism. Because by the time we got to Bush's second term is when people were ready to start critiquing him more. It was kind of the same thing with Reagan, like the first like the first Reagan administration. People you didn't really want to say anything bad about him.

[01:13:02] But by the time he got to the second one is when people were starting to like critique him heavily. And with Bush, it was kind of the same thing. We had to wait for the second administration for the critiques of his policies and everything to become more mainstream. I mean, you were that you were there when the Iraq war first came out. Of course. Like we're saying shit about the Iraq war was like deemed like horrible. Bro, I was 19 about it. I was 19 when 9-11 happened. I was fucking scared I was going to get drafted. You know what I mean?

[01:13:31] Like I was I was scared. That was literally legitimately a thing on people's minds. People forget that now. It sounds silly. But like people are like, oh, we're going to start a war out of this and I'm going to have to go hide somewhere because I'm not fighting anyone else's war. I those literally on my mind. Well, because they got rid of the draft in the 70s because like because, you know, all the burning of the cards and people going a wall. And my guess is probably during that time, maybe they they thought about it. But I think they knew the exact same fucking thing would happen. Of course.

[01:14:00] Is that people would just not fucking do it. And it wasn't worth the effort because even even today when people bring up like the draft is like making some fucking political point or whatever. It's like, but we don't do the draft. We don't. And we're never going to do a draft. And even with the selective service thing, like I mean, you know, every dude has to sign up for when he's 18. But like by the time you're 25, it doesn't matter. And it's again, it's not like they're going to use it. Doesn't fucking matter. But yeah, I just with the death penalty stuff, obviously, you know, with the you know, this is a small price to pay.

[01:14:30] It obviously made my mind go today to like whether it's Michael Brown or George Floyd or like, you know, where the all these fucking idiots will say the scum of the earth will say, well, how come they just don't obey the law and nothing bad will happen to them? You know what I mean? And it's like you dumb motherfucker. You're not supposed to like judge dread, execute people in the street because they stole something. Right.

[01:14:53] And so this game is sort of like supposing, you know, I guess I just find it crazy that people play games like Bioshock and think, oh, what a cool, cool world instead of like what a fucking horror show this is. I guess most people do. But again, that's why I brought up the mainstream audiencing, because they will play have played a game like Bioshock and then still think thoughts like that. I think a lot of it is because video games are entertainment and escapism for a lot of people.

[01:15:22] And so like they'll play the game and get immersed in it, but then like separate it from what's going on in the real world because it's kind of like their own thing when really like it's like the art imitating life thing. Like, you know, like like video games, movies, all that stuff like is art.

[01:15:39] And when you want when you consume this, this media, it like it gets consumed by people who are living in the real world and they're taking what's going on around them and putting their thoughts and ideas into this art. So like I think for for guys like you and me, it's more easy to see this stuff. But a lot of people will play this kind of entertainment just to get away from all of that stuff. So they're probably just not thinking about it. It's true, even though it's right there.

[01:16:09] It just it just seems so. Yeah, it's it's it's hard for me to fathom. I understand people do do that. But yeah, it's just it's tough for me to think of it. And there's a lot of games that are very that are a lot more subtle with their political stuff. But Bioshock is a lot more overt. It's not it's not Metal Gear Rising as far as like the political shit. But it's but it's more in the like it's pretty overt, like what they're saying and what they're selling. But again, the issue with libertarianism is that it looks really good on paper.

[01:16:39] But let's be honest here. A lot of the practice of it is incredibly flawed. Yeah, incredibly flawed because really. Like a country that is being run like half decently well, where this idea can sort of sprout in people's minds just shows that like, oh, the system actually like kind of works because there's so many things that go on that they don't think about. Like, like the easy way to knock down libertarianism is like, what about the roads?

[01:17:09] Like, that's the that's the easy one. It's the fucking roads. And none of them ever have an answer for it. And that shows you that they haven't thought about it that much in depth anyways. And Andrew Ryan is a perfect example of a guy who clearly didn't put as much thought into this as he should have. I mean, granted, the atom definitely fucked things up. But I feel the atom just kind of sped up the inevitable, which is like, which is which is like you need some form.

[01:17:36] You need some like collectivist organization in order to make society work and libertarian. But it's always funny when libertarians say like, oh, I hate the government, but we should just get like like a group, like a community to get together and form. Like basically they'll do they want a government. They just don't like the word government pretty much. Yeah, it's amazing. Like, I don't know if you if you know who Sam Cedar is. I do. But oh, yeah. OK, cool. And have you ever listened to him like debate libertarians on a show?

[01:18:07] I've never I understand that's like his thing, but I never really like dove into it. But I know the name, of course. I know what he does. Yeah. Yeah. I love the majority report and he has a whole playlist of him like dealing with libertarian guys over the years and it's always the same shit every time. And it's amazing. And to see how he dismantles their arguments and basically just pretty much says that they want what they want, which is what we have now kind of thing is amazing. You know, it's it's really good. It's great.

[01:18:36] Yeah, I should I should get into it now that you know that you recommend I should seek that stuff out. But yeah, Bioshock is the most savage takedown of libertarianism of all time. I don't I'm sure Kevin Levine didn't mean it that way because I'm sure he meant to do both sides. Bro, you didn't. You took down that shit magnificently, whether you meant to or not. It does it in the exact same way Atlas Shrugged does. Like, I don't know if you've ever read Atlas Shrugged. I've never read it, but I know. Yeah, I. Oh, God. It is. It is a fucking train wreck.

[01:19:06] And it's like because it's trying to present itself as like this like amazing artistic achievement. Right. Like, I think Ayn Rand has written some like actually decent literature. Atlas Shrugged is not that like like like I like her short story Anthem. Like, I think Anthem kind of takes the whole like the whole idea of like individualism and presents it in a way that makes sense for a lot of people. Right.

[01:19:35] And even the Fountainhead isn't the worst thing in the world. I've heard of that, too. Yeah. Obviously, I know Atlas Shrugged, but like, yeah, that's her big one. But like, it's that's a slog. It's it's it's fucking rough. So I don't recommend that. But, you know, but I've read the Communist Manifesto. So what do I know?

[01:20:14] I'm going to get to closing stuff. Do you have anything you want to say before we get to like endings or like any? Well, we mentioned the pipe mania, the pipe dream hacking game. But what did you think of it? Because people tend to hate this part of the game. I love it. And it's not just because I love pipe dream back in the day. No, I love stuff like that. I really liked it. I thought it was fun, too, because it provided like just enough of a break from the standard gameplay to give it some variety, you know, and I always thought it was fun.

[01:20:41] I mean, as you get further in the game, some of it gets harder and harder. And at certain points, I would just say, fuck it. Not to hack it, especially if there's like a safe. Oh, yeah. When they get a little too hard at the end, that's probably my only criticism. That's a bit rough. But no, I liked it a lot. Yeah, I thought I thought it was it was fun and a slightly like different thing. You know, I think some of the I think some of the environments are sometimes not great about I shouldn't even say it's the environment's fault.

[01:21:10] I think it's just the flow of the game. Sometimes it's not very natural. Like sometimes they want you to like like when you have to get the fire plasmid to like melt the ice. It's not very clear where that is, you know, and there's a very extensive hint system in this game where it's like you need to go to this office and do this. And I'm glad they have that in the game. I think they realized what was happening because it's like otherwise shit. This would be the biggest like game FAQs game of all time. You know, like holy shit. So I'm fucking King's Quest.

[01:21:38] Yeah, I almost never advocate for like the triple A waypoints, but maybe this game could have used them. There is like an arrow. There is a triple A arrow. I like that doesn't always that always that doesn't always point to the thing that they want you to get. It just points to the ultimate goal of like here's the exit. Right. But not necessarily what you need to get to get there. And the map system is kind of confusing because like it'll give you like where things are, but then it'll be like you'll go to a certain point on the map and then you see an arrow that goes like all the way to the other side. And it's like, oh, you're here now.

[01:22:07] It's like, why the fuck am I here now? Like that doesn't make any sense. That didn't bother me too much, bro. I played Goonies 2 on NES. I'm immune to like. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, dude. I I'm immune to like shitty maps. What were the the dungeon crawlers on DS that you had to draw yourself? Oh, Etrian Odyssey. I love those two. Yeah. But like I'm not drawing my own fucking dungeon. Get out of here. Oh, no. I'm playing though. I'm playing the remakes on Switch where you don't have to do it. It draws it for you. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:36] You draw a couple of things like, oh, there's a treasure chest here. I want to go back to later, but that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the original fantasy star where I played the Sega Ages version, which makes the dungeons for. Oh, thank God. I drew my own Metroid maps on graph paper. Yeah. Back in the day. That's what I did. And speaking of Metroid, I think this game has a little too much backtracking. Hmm. Do you think so? Because there were so many times where it's like the hidden system in the waypoint system.

[01:23:06] There were so many times where I got like lost and I'm like, where the fuck am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do? It like occasionally it'll do that thing where like there'll be moments where it tells you too much of what to do and it's like, okay, I get it. And then it'll like back off. And then I'm like, okay, so I went here and then I go over here and then, you know, and it's easy to get lost because again, I think the map system could be better. It could be. I don't think it's bad though. I didn't, I definitely didn't mind the way it was.

[01:23:35] No, no. It's not a where the fuck do I go kind of game, but it does get confusing at times. And, and I think like as far as like the story goes after the, the big twist, like the, the story does take like a bit of a dive until the very end. Cause then the, cause then like, yeah, it dips. But then when we get to the end, it comes back up and gets interesting again. What ending did you get? I got the good ending. Me too. Because we didn't talk about, I mean, we brought up the little sisters, but we didn't really

[01:24:05] get into like the little sisters. Go ahead if you want. So the little sisters are basically the, the, the, the main holders of the atom within the, the, the realm of rapture, right? Like the splicers are trying to get after them because they're the ones who harvest it the most for themselves. And they're working with Tannenbaum and the big daddies are meant to protect them. And so whenever you kill a big daddy, most of the time, there's a little sister that's

[01:24:30] left there and Tannenbaum and Atlas wants you to harvest them, like to take all of their atom, right? To just straight up kill them. But then Tannenbaum, rigid Tannenbaum comes in and says, no, don't do that. So I'm trying to like, she's like doing her own thing with the little sisters. And she's like, no, you need to save them, like rid them of this atom disease, you know, by, by being able to save them with your plasmid to where you don't get as much atom, but they don't die. Right.

[01:24:56] And so the game presents it as like this big choice, this big, like narrative choice, like, oh, are you going to save the little sisters or are you going to harvest them? And while it's, it's presented that way and it's really cool. I'm just going to tell everybody right now, there is no fucking point in harvesting any little sister. There just save them all because the amount of plasmid or atom that you lose from like

[01:25:21] saving them versus harvesting them is so minor that it really does not impact it at all. It's basically which ending do you want to get? Because if you harvest even just one little sister, you get the bad ending. Really? Yes. So you can't even. Even one. So you, you have to get the good ending. You have to save them all. Wow. I did not know that. Okay. Literally just one. So you're just in a pitch. Oh, we need a little more atom. No, you get the bad ending. Holy shit. That's crazy. Yeah.

[01:25:51] Well, interesting. And interestingly enough, like the, like according to here, Wikipedia, it says the player rescues all or all, but one of the little sisters. So I think you can harvest one. Okay. But again, I never bothered because like people have done the math. Like it's, it's kind of a minute, um, difference in the, in the atom, which, which makes it a shame that that narrative device isn't really used strongly enough.

[01:26:16] Like they could have maybe made the atom change more prominent or maybe done something else to make it more of like a genuine choice. Like it's presented in a way that you're like, oh, I'm not sure. But if you either look it up or play through the game, you'll be like, oh, it's not that big a deal. But well, that was also kind of what you did back then. Think about like fallout three was always like, you could be good, bad, or neutral. Right. And it's just kind of like, yeah, mass effect. So it's like, he's a very, it's very binary, right? Good, bad, you know, like good ending bad.

[01:26:45] That's just, that was just kind of the era, which is, I don't think that's necessarily bad. It's just what it is. But those games have more nuance and intricacies to like, which like, you know, if you want to go Paragon or whatever. Right. With, with that kind of stuff. Whereas Bioshock is just, it's presented. It's just not executed as well as I'd want it to be. So I assume you got the bad ending. No, I got the good ending. I got the good ending. Yeah. Because the good ending is easy to get. Because she also gives you gifts. Like you, she, you get a bunch of stuff if you, if you don't harvest them.

[01:27:14] You basically get the Adam back that you lost. So it's like, what's the point? And then some, and you get hell of money and you get like other stuff. So it's like, yeah. So it's, there's a benefit to doing it besides just being the good guy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it basically ends with you, you eventually catch up to Fontaine and then Fontaine morphs himself into this giant creature thing. Dr. Manhattan. Pretty much. And then, and then, and then you kill him. That was a fun fight. That was actually a fun fight. I liked it. Yeah. It was probably the best boss fight.

[01:27:44] Yeah. I would say so for sure. Cause yeah, the other boss fights in the game aren't really that spectacular. No, but it's not, it's not a game. That's really about that. You know, it's, it's, it's, they're fine. It's using the bosses as like a storytelling device. And I think it does them pretty well, but this is like a genuinely good boss fight. I beat it first try. I didn't die at all. Um, I think I did as well because once I, well, I figured out pretty quickly what I was supposed to do and I was like, okay, yeah, I got it. Yeah. That was, that was fun. Yeah.

[01:28:10] And then you escape and it's all, you know, butterflies and doves and roses. Well, so we get the two different endings, which is like the good ending is if you do that, um, you get back to the surface, um, with, uh, with all the little sisters, apparently you adopt some of them as your daughters. And so you're able to actually like, like live a full life, like after Bioshock and actually like raise these daughters to actually be able to have lives beyond this. And, and it's all, yeah, as you said, like sunshine and rainbows, but it, but it's a, it's a nice ending.

[01:28:40] I like it. No, I like it feels definitive. Um, but there is a, the bad ending, which is, I'm going to quote Wikipedia, just letting you all know if the player harvests more than one little sister, Jack turns on the little sisters to harvest their Adam. Tenenbaum sadly narrates what occurs condemning Jack and his actions. The submarine comes to the plane's wreckage and finds itself surrounded by bathyspheres containing splicers who attack the crew and take control of it. The submarine is revealed to be carrying nuclear missiles with Tenenbaum claiming that Jack has stolen the terrible secrets of the world.

[01:29:09] The more little, the more little sisters Jack harvest throughout the game, the harsher and more furious Tenenbaum's narrative becomes. So basically it's either, do you save the little sisters to try to write the, the morale wrongs of rapture or do you like harvest them to become like Fontaine or Ryan and just like this ultra powerful being that will use the splicers to become like the villain and conquer nuclear missiles though. Yeah.

[01:29:37] Well, I think there are some audio logs where they talk about building nuclear missiles down there. Of course they did. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Like I, like I don't remember all of the audio, there's a shit ton of audio logs. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But, uh, but no, that's interesting. I think I remember there were like scientists trying to build like nuclear missiles down there. Like Andrew Ryan was like, no, you got to do this because we need to protect ourselves from Hamas or something stupid. I know. Right. That's why, no, that's why I was like, oh, down here. That might be a political bridge too far.

[01:30:08] Hey, I, I, you beat me to it. I'll just put it that way. You beat me to it. Okay. That's, that's all I got to say. Um, if you, if you didn't say it, I was going to say it. So, um, shit. But I, but I, but I like the ending of the game, like the good ending because it feels, it reminds me a little bit of like Terminator two, where it's like, like it feels like a definitive end. Like it's like this, like it didn't need a sequel. It didn't need to be a franchise.

[01:30:34] Like it ends in a pretty like good spot and makes it like a fantastic, uh, singular adventure, which I feel is getting harder and harder these days because every game needs to be fucking sequel, babe. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about, you know, even stuff that's based on a property, like, like Barbie or whatever. I feel like they're going to take the wrong lessons from that and make the Mattel universe or some shit. It's like, guys, you just don't, you really don't need to, you can just Barbie. You can just have a Barbie movie and that's it. I promise. What the hell would the connect for movie?

[01:31:05] If they make a Ken movie, so help me God, please don't. I don't, I don't think they will, but I don't know. He needs bar. He needs Barbie to be something. I don't think Ken matters unless Barbie's there. Well, what's so weird is that like video games are getting more and more expensive to make, but like movies are getting cheaper to make. Yeah. Which is why they're getting like pumped out so much. These days. We'll get there in video games as well. We'll we're, we're cutting everything. Well, you've seen what's been going on in the industry the last year and a half.

[01:31:34] So we, we will, we will get there. Shit. I think I'm out of things to say about Bioshock. What a fucking game. As I, as I said up top, I can be pretty contrarian about this stuff and, you know, massively popular games always kind of, you know, I'm always very skeptical and whatever. But like Bioshock is fucking fantastic, man. Like I said, I give it an A. It's great. It's not perfect.

[01:31:58] There are some flaws, whether they're from the time or, you know, just, you know, they don't hold up in certain ways or just stuff. I didn't like about the game, but no game is perfect. But I think what's important about Bioshock is that it accomplishes its ambition. I think there's a lot of games that would maybe try to do something like this and do it much more clumsy and a lot worse. And I think Bioshock, whether by design or by accident, kind of nails it. And I'm surprised it nails it.

[01:32:27] But it's one of those games that it finds a way of meeting sort of like critical and commercial success, like perfectly. You know, it was sort of the right game at the right time. Like it was a first person shooter in the in an era where we weren't sick of them yet. So it wasn't just like, oh, another first person shooter, but it presented itself in this very unique way to allow itself to stand out from the pack.

[01:32:52] And not only did it do that and have like a really interesting concept, it absolutely executed that concept, which can be very difficult to do. But like, yeah, the game has a 96 on Metacritic like the original version does. And it very much deserved it. It was critically acclaimed. It sold very, very well. It became like it became a franchise kind of against it. Like kicking and screaming became a franchise. Sure. But it's also been like incredibly influential over the years.

[01:33:21] We still see it today, like games trying to be a Bioshock and not really hitting the way that it should. But but it's one of those things where it's a artistic force in video games, like figure like finding his sort of niche and making something that was incredibly memorable. It's like when Cliff Bleszinski made Years of War. It's like he had finally found the thing that he would be remembered for.

[01:33:48] And while people will remember Ken Levine for the System Shock games, specifically System Shock 2, Bioshock is most likely what he will be remembered for. And rightfully so, because Bioshock, you know, was his baby and he did a great job with it. And I'm going to be very curious to see how he rips himself off with Judas. I was just thinking of Judas while you were while you were talking. I was like, I just don't know. It's straight up Bioshock. It is Bioshock. It's like fucking Bioshock. It is straight up Bioshock. And I was like, oh, OK.

[01:34:15] Look, I think, look, if he still has ideas and wants to revisit that kind of motif, I'm with it. I'm I'm interested tentatively. We'll see. I mean, I mean, it's him doing it. So I'm fine with it. You know, like I feel like if you are the creator of something, you're allowed to rip it off. Oh, yeah. You can rip yourself off. Yeah. Yeah. Like it might try to do the having political messaging again. And I think it's going to polarize the shit out of people. I hope so. I really I actually kind of hope so.

[01:34:46] So, yeah, I think that's what I shouldn't say. That's when video games are their best. I just like when things are whether I like it or not, it doesn't even come down to me liking it or not. It's just a matter of I want something to be that interesting that everyone can have that sort of opinion on, even if they're shitty opinions on on Twitter. I will never call it X. But but yeah. OK, thanks for joining me for this. Glad to talk about Bioshock. We will talk about Bioshock 2 in a couple of weeks.

[01:35:16] So, yeah, see you then. Take care. Check the description of this podcast to find. Oh, you want to talk about what you're on real quick? 3DO experience experience. And I forgot to plug. Yeah. So real quick before we leave. Yes. So I'm the co-host of the 3DO experience where me and my co-host Bill have been going through the insanity that is the 3DO like the console, the games, all that stuff. We'll eventually talk about the Army Men series. It's been great. Check that out wherever you're listening to find time.

[01:35:44] You can listen to that since we're both on the Superpod Network. Absolutely. A good place to go. Go to the website. I write blogs occasionally. Hopefully, by the time this is out, I have written my blog on Silent Hill 2 because I have written it and I wanted to write a spooky blog for the spooky season. So stay in tune for that. I also stream Genesis games hopefully every Thursday. If you go to twitch.tv slash THRAC94, that's where they sit. The VODs are also on YouTube, also at THRAC94.

[01:36:11] And there I made a video where I unboxed the limited run games reissue of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties for the 3DO specifically. Oh my God. So check that out because that was an interesting thing to do. And yeah, I'm at Twitter at THRAC94. So if you want to yell at me about what I said here, that's where it goes. Okay. Yep. Excellent. Thanks. Thanks for joining me again. He will join me again in a couple of weeks to talk about Bioshock 2.

[01:36:39] Check the description of this podcast to find all of THRAC's links and all of Fine Time's links on social media. See you next time. Bye. We'll catch you next time. This has been...