You may recall that in the original, Ryan believes that Rapture can stand on it’s own ideals and grows increasingly paranoid that the only real threat for the society is outside interference, such as from the CIA destabilizing it. We see that these delusions are baseless and rapture collapses under the weight of its own misguided ideals. However, in Burial at Sea part 2, Elizabeth frees the imprisoned Fontaine, who had been presumed dead, attacked by Ryan’s forces for his increasingly rebellious behavior. This, in effect, means that Elizabeth is solely responsible for enabling radical revolutionaries to start the Rapture civil war, resulting in the collapse in the style of a CIA backed coup.
There’s a lot more, it decanonizes Bioshock 2 while being internally inconsistent with it’s own story telling in the same spaces, and the Daisy Fitzroy plotline doesn’t really make sense, in a way that cheapens that, as well.
While I understand what you mean and agree that Infinite and its DLCs throws everything before out the window, I would argue that Fontaine was just the first bullet that killed Rapture but there were many more bullets waiting in the magazine, so to say. The oppression and inherent wrongness of Rapture, including the addictive behaviour of Adam combined with the inherent and even desired power structures would have driven it down the drain either way. Probably later than the New Years Eve party, but it was in my mind always on a path of self destruction.
And yeah, BioShock 2 was done without the involvement of Ken Levine, so he sadly didn’t really saw it as part of “his baby”. I liked BioShock 2 and Infinite, but Infinite felt more like an alternate canon spin off than part of the main series. For me they are simply similar but different beings, not of the same continuity.
Completely agreed. Rapture WOULD AND SHOULD have collapsed under the weight of it’s own misguided ideals, that was kind of the entire point of the first game. It just really undermines that message fundamentally when instead
Tap for spoiler
an all knowing demigod comes to specifically fuck up your society on a whim.
I do also agree that, given the contradictions between 2 and infinite, we as players get to decide what the prime canon is. It’s kind of damaging to anything that might show up moving forward though unless a brave writer comes forward going “okay sure but fuck that, it didn’t happen”
Because Elizabeth causes the civil war and gives the ace in the hole to Fontaine, prompting the entire plot of Bioshock 1 by setting up Jack, and then she goes out of her way to save Sally, because she sees Jack will eventually save her and the other little sisters, once again undermining the original game’s other original message about player agency, that Jack starts with no agency but breaks free of his conditioning and gains that agency back to choose the ending, but actually, no, Jack was always destined to do things one way only and never had any agency.
On top of that, really weird that Elizabeth decides that her own death is okay because Sally would eventually be safe, given that she condemned all of Rapture to death along the way.
Yep, that is why the plot of Infinite was to me more a bunch of not fully thought through but cool sounding concepts instead of a proper and fully consistent story and world. I like the game for its art style, game play and atmosphere, but it is 100 % not making sense.
And now that you spell it out to me, I never realized before how directly contradicting that ending was to the whole concept of Bioshock 1.
Because to me it lost the point at the moment where they said:
spoiler
There are infinite Raptures. Because then we only saved them in that one single world and there are unnumbered other worlds where saving them didnt happen. So why even care at that point or feel great for saving 1
out of an infinity?
Absolutely agreed on the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” But not thinking out style of design. That’s not terrible, but it’s better suited for something completely over the top like 40k, rather than a more grounded setting like bioshock. And yeah, they really did just nail the worst version of multiversal story, in the general sense.
We’re celebrating this victory!
Tap for spoiler
Even though the player character is a literal demigod that exists amongst all timelines and is deciding, based on relatively little, that she should abandon that power and die to save one person, at the cost of thousands.
Tap for spoiler
You may recall that in the original, Ryan believes that Rapture can stand on it’s own ideals and grows increasingly paranoid that the only real threat for the society is outside interference, such as from the CIA destabilizing it. We see that these delusions are baseless and rapture collapses under the weight of its own misguided ideals. However, in Burial at Sea part 2, Elizabeth frees the imprisoned Fontaine, who had been presumed dead, attacked by Ryan’s forces for his increasingly rebellious behavior. This, in effect, means that Elizabeth is solely responsible for enabling radical revolutionaries to start the Rapture civil war, resulting in the collapse in the style of a CIA backed coup.
There’s a lot more, it decanonizes Bioshock 2 while being internally inconsistent with it’s own story telling in the same spaces, and the Daisy Fitzroy plotline doesn’t really make sense, in a way that cheapens that, as well.
Thanks for explaining it to me in more detail.
While I understand what you mean and agree that Infinite and its DLCs throws everything before out the window, I would argue that Fontaine was just the first bullet that killed Rapture but there were many more bullets waiting in the magazine, so to say. The oppression and inherent wrongness of Rapture, including the addictive behaviour of Adam combined with the inherent and even desired power structures would have driven it down the drain either way. Probably later than the New Years Eve party, but it was in my mind always on a path of self destruction.
And yeah, BioShock 2 was done without the involvement of Ken Levine, so he sadly didn’t really saw it as part of “his baby”. I liked BioShock 2 and Infinite, but Infinite felt more like an alternate canon spin off than part of the main series. For me they are simply similar but different beings, not of the same continuity.
Completely agreed. Rapture WOULD AND SHOULD have collapsed under the weight of it’s own misguided ideals, that was kind of the entire point of the first game. It just really undermines that message fundamentally when instead
Tap for spoiler
an all knowing demigod comes to specifically fuck up your society on a whim.
I do also agree that, given the contradictions between 2 and infinite, we as players get to decide what the prime canon is. It’s kind of damaging to anything that might show up moving forward though unless a brave writer comes forward going “okay sure but fuck that, it didn’t happen”
Oh yeah also
Tap for spoiler
Because Elizabeth causes the civil war and gives the ace in the hole to Fontaine, prompting the entire plot of Bioshock 1 by setting up Jack, and then she goes out of her way to save Sally, because she sees Jack will eventually save her and the other little sisters, once again undermining the original game’s other original message about player agency, that Jack starts with no agency but breaks free of his conditioning and gains that agency back to choose the ending, but actually, no, Jack was always destined to do things one way only and never had any agency. On top of that, really weird that Elizabeth decides that her own death is okay because Sally would eventually be safe, given that she condemned all of Rapture to death along the way.
Yep, that is why the plot of Infinite was to me more a bunch of not fully thought through but cool sounding concepts instead of a proper and fully consistent story and world. I like the game for its art style, game play and atmosphere, but it is 100 % not making sense.
And now that you spell it out to me, I never realized before how directly contradicting that ending was to the whole concept of Bioshock 1.
Because to me it lost the point at the moment where they said:
spoiler
There are infinite Raptures. Because then we only saved them in that one single world and there are unnumbered other worlds where saving them didnt happen. So why even care at that point or feel great for saving 1 out of an infinity?
Absolutely agreed on the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” But not thinking out style of design. That’s not terrible, but it’s better suited for something completely over the top like 40k, rather than a more grounded setting like bioshock. And yeah, they really did just nail the worst version of multiversal story, in the general sense.
We’re celebrating this victory!
Tap for spoiler
Even though the player character is a literal demigod that exists amongst all timelines and is deciding, based on relatively little, that she should abandon that power and die to save one person, at the cost of thousands.