Going the opposite direction of where most people were taking this: Bioshock Infinite. A game that really set me up to thinking I was going to be John Brown and turned me into Jake Tapper instead. The whole game set up this theme of rebirth and redemption, and when the game dropped the fact that Booker DeWitt, the player, was literally a white supremacist war criminal, I was taken aback but honestly I was pretty hooked. Here was this man trying to bring them the girl and wipe away the debt, and it got me thinking of what could someone honestly do if they realized what kind of horrendous, despicable things they had done in the past with no real way to atone for it? How does someone get up in the morning knowing "I was one of the direct perpetrators of the Wounded Knee massacre" while also realizing how heinous that action was? How can you redeem the irredeemable? These questions really caught my attention during the game, and while it was setting up the plotline of a secret underground resistance led by POC against their white supremacist oppressors, I GENUINELY thought that Booker was going to try and redeem himself from his past by fighting with the Vox, knowing that while it won't fix the racist injustices he had committed in the past, he could still spend his life fighting for a more equitable future
Of course, if anyone reading this actually played Bioshock Infinite, you know that literally none of that happens, Booker never has any character growth or reconciliation for his actions, and the game pulls a massive enlightened centrist move by equating people in a fucking slave revolt to be as bad as their oppressors and the game ends in this very stupid, confusing "billion different alternate timelines" nonsense where no one learns anything.
Imo burial at sea part two made the Vox even worse, what with the whole Daisy Fitzroy only threatening to kill that child so Elizabeth would kill her. It not only made the Vox make less sense, but also destroyed one of the few consistent themes that bioshock infinite had.
That's BioShock's main problem, isn't it? As a standalone game it was good but they had to keep going back, retconing and over-explaining things until neither its setting nor message were any good. The BioShock sequels retroactively make the first game worse.
Going the opposite direction of where most people were taking this: Bioshock Infinite. A game that really set me up to thinking I was going to be John Brown and turned me into Jake Tapper instead. The whole game set up this theme of rebirth and redemption, and when the game dropped the fact that Booker DeWitt, the player, was literally a white supremacist war criminal, I was taken aback but honestly I was pretty hooked. Here was this man trying to bring them the girl and wipe away the debt, and it got me thinking of what could someone honestly do if they realized what kind of horrendous, despicable things they had done in the past with no real way to atone for it? How does someone get up in the morning knowing "I was one of the direct perpetrators of the Wounded Knee massacre" while also realizing how heinous that action was? How can you redeem the irredeemable? These questions really caught my attention during the game, and while it was setting up the plotline of a secret underground resistance led by POC against their white supremacist oppressors, I GENUINELY thought that Booker was going to try and redeem himself from his past by fighting with the Vox, knowing that while it won't fix the racist injustices he had committed in the past, he could still spend his life fighting for a more equitable future
Of course, if anyone reading this actually played Bioshock Infinite, you know that literally none of that happens, Booker never has any character growth or reconciliation for his actions, and the game pulls a massive enlightened centrist move by equating people in a fucking slave revolt to be as bad as their oppressors and the game ends in this very stupid, confusing "billion different alternate timelines" nonsense where no one learns anything.
Imo burial at sea part two made the Vox even worse, what with the whole Daisy Fitzroy only threatening to kill that child so Elizabeth would kill her. It not only made the Vox make less sense, but also destroyed one of the few consistent themes that bioshock infinite had.
And destroyed a good deal of Bioshock at the same time. All while making Elizabeth less interesting.
That's BioShock's main problem, isn't it? As a standalone game it was good but they had to keep going back, retconing and over-explaining things until neither its setting nor message were any good. The BioShock sequels retroactively make the first game worse.
Daisy Fitzroy did nothing wrong