Carrot, Stick, Go! 1: Exploring Rapture Is Enough

Carrot, Stick, Go! is a monthly TGR column by Eddie Inzauto, exploring the reasons why we play games, the ways they reward us, and what we gain from our experiences with them as a whole.

I often ponder why we play certain games and not others. More specifically, I question which elements of each game are the most important to the overall experience and my personal enjoyment of it. With BioShock 2, a game that is not presented with a unique interface or radically different way of playing, a marginal hybrid of a first-person shooter, I find that the joy of playing it comes far less from how I actively influence the game world than from what I passively take away from that world. It is more about exploration than achievement, but could it survive on exploration alone?

Player input isn’t the game’s strong suit - nor is the bullet-permeable Bid Daddy outfit, but that’s for another discussion. The shooting mechanics aren’t particularly refined and the progression from one area to the next, gathering Adam, fighting splicers and Big Sisters, all grows somewhat stale through repetition. What is most compelling in the undersea dystopia is the revelation of Rapture’s history and the mystery of the metropolis itself, of its stories and its inhabitants.

The exploration of a mystery world is in no way a novel concept; literature, film, and even interactive media have utilized this theme many times in the past. One benchmark title, Metroid Prime, not only cast players as a galactic bounty hunter exploring essentially extinct worlds, but devoted a significant portion of the game to scanning and cataloging descriptions of everything from enemies, objects, and environmental features to Pirate data logs and ancient Chozo lore, each entry teaching the player something about the otherwise alien planets.

In BioShock 2, the information is less meticulously organized and rigidly structured, but is instead drawn from radio recordings scattered about the city, messages scrawled on walls, and period advertisements, among other things. Perhaps this is enough for it to become a sole motivating factor for players to see the journey through to its end.

Is the world of Rapture enough on its own to warrant a return to it in BioShock 2?

While the hunt for information is largely optional in both games, BioShock 2 makes it a self-guided discovery by hiding that information, often placing radio recordings at the dead ends of otherwise useless paths or concealing them in drawers and ice blocks, forcing the player to work to uncover them. Other tidbits are blended into the rendered environment as simple visual elements, and cannot be collected and logged, but only viewed and processed as-is, via the player’s own perceptive tools. The player has to observe the decaying city to piece the picture together. This method of exploration is more similar to how we investigate the real world, and by mimicking that, BioShock 2 connects players more closely to the in-game search for answers. In turn, the discovery of the city’s history and the actions and motivations of its characters easily become enough to keep players pushing forward, seeking out Rapture’s remote corners, and devouring every little scrap of knowledge they can find. Even the final goal becomes more a means to reveal the truth than to simply save the day and be a hero; the reward is internal rather than external.

If discovery is indeed enough motivation, then could 2K Marin have minimized combat in BioShock 2? More broadly, can a game like this survive without combat as a prime directive? Would it stand a chance in today’s market or would it be doomed to fail? While games like Animal Crossing and Endless Ocean don’t have combat-orientated goals, they also get written off as non-games or placed in other shunned categories, such as kiddie or casual. Can the same design philosophies be migrated to more adult-themed works?

The Animal Crossing franchise has been largely successful with building on core concepts that do not require combat to increase interest. Players are most often driven through self-assigned objectives revolving around exploration and collection. These are not simple doodad hunts, but serve to piece together the world in which the player resides. Like the intricacies that give substance to Rapture and the Metroid Prime universe, building the museum, filling the insect and fish catalogs, completing a KK Slider music library, and cultivating a variety of fruit trees are all instrumental in defining Animal Crossing’s world. These are of course different characteristics than in the other titles, but in all cases, each individual in-game item is a small piece of a much larger puzzle.

In BioShock 2, the world is instead defined by its characters and living history, the information about which is all similarly collected as the game progresses. Rather than animal and plant species, the stories of political and philosophical movements and of opposing ideologies are the flesh and blood of the game world. The intrigue of what exactly led to Rapture’s reascension and subsequent second demise, and whose actions were to blame for these events, are all of immense importance to the game’s appeal. I dare say more important than its moment-to-moment gameplay. Even actions as simple as roaming halls and reading old posters or observing architectural design, in essence shaping a post-mortem portrait of the former city and life within that city, are far more memorable than the 300th splicer the player shocks and drills into an undersea grave.

So what would improve the experience, and how could the game actually work without so much filler combat? Believe me, I don’t assume that conflict can be eliminated entirely, because human beings crave such challenges, but conflict can again be internal as well as external. Even the delightful Animal Crossing maintains conflict without combat, as the townsfolk can become angry with player characters, turning conflict avoidance into a motivating factor. The M-rated Penumbra: Black Plague similarly axed combat and focused on the player’s fear of the enemy. Games like BioShock 2, though, are designed with combat in mind, so a complete overhaul would be necessary to remove it entirely. Instead, simple adjustments could reduce the combat, improve the exploration, and even give remaining conflict more significance.

Consider this: what if mandatory combat was limited only to battles with Big Daddies and Big Sisters?

The Big Sister battles presented far more excitement than encounters with splicers.

In BioShock 2, as a Big Daddy the player is supposed to be a menacing entity, an entity players learnt to fear from his presence in the first game. The insignificant Splicers who roam Rapture, too, should fear and flee from the player, reinforcing that aura of power surrounding the Big Daddy, and at the same time creating a new dilemma of mercy versus malice. Of course, there would be fewer of these than there currently are in BioShock 2 - a logical assumption about a derelict sub-oceanic city after its second utter collapse.

As for Rapture’s other Big Daddies, why not give players the option to steal the Little Sisters from them without a fight? Perhaps specific set pieces could allow players to use the environment, which is already a prison in a way, to trap the other Daddies and run off with their girls. This would not only improve the game by providing options for each Big Daddy encounter, but also by putting the player in the unique position of embodying a protagonist’s mental pathology. Subject Delta, the man inside the Big Daddy suit, could potentially inflict the same suffering upon the other Daddies that was inflicted upon him when he lost Eleanor. Transferring this anguish would further reveal the effects of the events of Rapture’s past, this time on the psychological level in a character who is - depending on how you deal with Little Sisters and Splicers - otherwise noble. Even conflict would be about demystification.

Finally, Big Sisters would also remain obstacles in Rapture, but like the others, only occasionally. The structured and predictable way these Sisters come after Delta in BioShock 2 is completely useless to the player, as is. There is nothing exciting or uncertain about it. A better approach would be to release them more randomly, as the player moves through the city. With fewer Splicers and a focus on exploration, the possibility for these more powerful enemies to show up at any time would greatly increase the tension throughout the game, and each fight would have a far more significant impact on the possibly prepared or possibly unprepared player.

BioShock 2 was a wonderful experience, but what made it wonderful was tarnished by what made it conventional. The allure of Rapture and the drive to explore that world could easily carry the game without the comparatively banal, interstitial combat. I would assert that many other games could survive off of non-combat mechanics, as well, if only the effort were made. Are publishers and developers too afraid to find out if I’m right?

If They Were Halo, They'd Be Kings

The massive anticipation is over. Halo 3 launch day has come and gone with great fanfare - big events, long lines, eager fans, master chief, etc. In the first 24-hour period alone, the game grossed over $170 million. To put that in terms of copies sold, it's roughly equivalent to more than 2.8 million. Of those, 1.7 million copies were pre-sold.

With Halo 3 riding high on the extreme marketing push made by Microsoft and Bungie, one has to wonder if it would have experienced such success without it. More so, it is interesting to ponder what games might have done just as well as Halo 3 had they received the same tender loving care from their respective marketing departments.

I have gone through a slew of recent releases, and come up with a pair of games that may very well have been this year's super-sellers had they been pushed down consumers' throats the same way that Halo 3 was.

Bioshock is arguably the best game of 2007. It received multiple "best of E3 honors, as well as "best Xbox 360 game" at the 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. Also the third in a series, Bioshock is the spiritual successor to a pair of games that routinely land on critics' "top videogames of all time" lists - System Shock and System Shock 2.

It's rich storyline and excellent gameplay were apparently not enough to match the might of Halo 3, however. Halo 3 managed to sell more copies prior to release than Bioshock had done with more than 2 weeks of shelf time. As of September 10th, 2K's shooter was reported to have shifted 1.5 million copies.

Bioshock's Gamerankings and Metacritic ratings are both a full point higher than those of Halo 3, even though nearly twice as many scores have been recorded yet it's total sales pale in comparison.

Metroid Prime 3 is widely considered the best original Wii title to date. It is the third part of the critically acclaimed 3-D series in one of Nintendo's biggest franchises. This is beside the fact that the much earlier Super Metroid for the SNES topped EGM's infamous Top 100 Games of All Time, and has since appeared in the top 20 range of nearly every similar list since. Still, Metroid Prime 3 sold a mere 10th of Halo 3's day one numbers in the first week after release.

The advertising behind this sales performance? A downloadable Wii channel with videos and pictures of the game, along with Virtual Console releases of the first two games in the Metroid franchise. That sort of isolated advertising is not exactly what one would expect to lead to Haloesque sales...and it didn't.

So what would happen if all of these games had equal marketing muscle backing them? Well, I'm no Michael Pachter, but I imagine it would lead to greater sales and fan support. Either of these stellar sequels could have shared in the success of Halo 3, but-- Hey, look at that! The Halo 3 "Believe" commercial is on TV.

Tell Me A Story: Storytelling In Bioshock

Tell me a story... but don't tell me you're telling it.

Videogames, more often than not, tell us stories. These range from the simplistic "rescue the princess" sort of narrative to much more convoluted plots, chock-full of twists and surprises. Not every game strives to tell an epic tale, and some obviously do a better job than others at keeping gamers interested.

Almost as important as what a story entails, though, is how exactly the game goes about presenting it. Is it really enough to have an incredibly storyline if the mechanism by which it is delivered to the player is inherently flawed or unexciting? Would you want to play a game where the main character sits and listens as his local librarian reads a novel out loud? I wouldn't.

Participation is key. Sitting idly by as the storyline is narrated is usually not as fun as providing direct input to the game, and then being rewarded with plot progression and new information. When a player is positioned as an integral part of the story rather than as an outside observer, the game naturally becomes more engrossing.

This week, I've been playing the STELLAR Xbox 360 game, Bioshock. I'm enjoying it immensely, even though my playing sessions are more spaced out than I'd like them to be. As far as I can tell, Brendon's 9.5 review score is spot-on, but I digress.

Although Bioshock doesn't feature a truly player-driven narrative, it does many things right with regards to the art of storytelling.

First of all, there are almost no cutscenes. That's not to say that cutscenes are bad things, because they aren't. Cutscenes are a valuable method for presenting powerful and/or elaborate story sequences exactly as the director intended for them to transpire. The goal of a game that leaves these pre-scripted, pre-rendered portions out, then, is to take creative control from the design team's hands and put it in those of the gamers.

Bioshock finds itself somewhere in-between a game that uses cutscenes to advance the plot and a completely emergent game design. Although the player's control isn't revoked in order to "better" display the protagonist's adventure, there are still a handful of scripted events that occur in the surrounding environment. These are all pre-determined, but unlike a cutscene, the reaction to each event is completely up in the air, and up to the player.

Since there is no traditional narrative in Bioshock, the backstory must be disclosed via other means. The way that players explore the game world to discover its history acts as a powerful tool for immersing them in the experience. Rather than explicitly explaining what has happened, who did what, etc., the story is pieced together slowly from the bits of information scattered throughout the city of Rapture.

This information comes in the form of random signage found posted on walls, short audio and video clips, and of course the aftermath of all manner of structural and biological destruction. Everything players see in the underwater city augments the story formulated within their own minds. The imagination is a magnificent thing when prodded in the right direction.

Finally, the non-player characters encountered throughout the game act as the very fabric that coheres entire story together. It is through their monologues, dialogues, behaviors, and especially their forsaken diaries that the player ultimately comes to understand the city of Rapture, its culture, its politics, and its tainted history.

The entire process of discovery is just downright awesome, and I feel that more games should take this approach to storytelling.

Like I said, tell me a story...but don't tell me you're telling it.

Terror From The Deep -- Bioshock Preview

Talk about terror from the deep, Bioshock is just that. Or maybe it's simply a gift from the gaming gods. 2K Boston (formerly Irrational) has been hard at work on this spiritual successor to the System Shock series for quite some time now, and from what I have seen it is WELL worth it.

As of yesterday, eager Xbox 360 owners have the opportunity to play a demo version of the game before it releases on the 21st. Being an eager Xbox 360 owner, I have played through the demo twice now, and it has skewed my personal most anticipated games list heavily in Bioshock's favor.

The game is set in an underwater city called Rapture. This city is a post-WWII metropolis, reminiscent of New York City in the years following the war. Established by a man who seems to be a transhumanist social architect, the goal of the city was to escape the backwards thought processes and inhibiting parasitic ideals that plagued the land above.

It has since fallen to ruin, lasting a mere 14 years. As you explore the forsaken, foreboding environment, one can almost envision what the lavish city was like prior to its collapse. The vestige of the urban culture reveal the former bustle and prosperity of the art deco -emblazoned Rapture, before it's apparent fall into disarray and dystopia.

To summarize, it feels awesome to place yourself inside of this world - especially since it is a graphical marvel. Bioshock is visually stunning, with crisp graphics running at a smooth frame rate. Lighting and water effects are especially nice, and the game makes use of physics technology to give the world substance. The era-appropriate music, excellent sound effects, and solid voice acting complete the experience.

The game opens up with an unexplained plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean. After swimming to a strange, monolithic island structure and taking a submarine elevator deep below the surface, the completely unequipped protagonist is met with the aforementioned Rapture, and its genetically mutated inhabitants.

Bioshock, as developer 2K Boston has said in the past, is a shooter first, and an adventure second. While it doesn't quite approach the level of gameplay depth that can be found in the System Shock games, it is most certainly a step up from the average FPS. Like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, players are able to search various parts of the environment, such as bodies and trash cans, for helpful goodies. These range from money to various food items to hypodermic needles filled with superpower-bestowing chemicals.

As for combat, many options are in place to make the action more free-form than standard point-and-shoot procedure. Players can make use of their environment and special powers to defeat enemies in many creative ways. For example, delivering a charge to a pool of water will fry any hapless enemy wading in it, and bottles of alcohol make great molotov cocktails. These, plus plenty of regular weaponry such as the demo's wrench, .45 magnum, and machine gun will all be at your disposal.

Bioshock is sure to be very action-packed, easily eclipsing the fervor found in the System Shock games, but will still refrain from drifting into the realm of mindless gun-blazing. Certain portions of the game promise to exercise the old noggin, such as the miniature puzzle game that players must conquer in order to hack computer systems.

All in all, Bioshock looks extremely promising, and I can't wait to get my hands on the final version. This is one that you, dear readers, will not want to miss.