BioShock's Opening Is Still A Slice Of Dystopian Perfection
People weren’t happy when I wrote about the narrative mediocrity of BioShock Infinite a few months ago, so much so that I’m still getting a bunch of lovely messages about it. You guys are the best, but please stop telling me to kill myself it’s a real downer.
To balance out my karmic playing field I thought I’d write about BioShock again, but this time I’ll be heaping praise upon an opening sequence that remains one of the genre’s very best. See, it is possible to criticise a thing and still enjoy it. Irrational Games struck gold with the original dystopian shooter, combining immersive sim elements with the tenets of blockbuster epics to create an experience that was packed with equal amounts of gravitas and nuance. It remains a masterpiece.
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It’s almost hard to believe that when it launched in 2007 it managed to penetrate the mainstream so effectively. We might poke fun at its rather flimsy exploration of free will and Objectivist philosophy today, but back then it was breaking new ground and exploring narrative ideas that the medium hadn’t really broached upon before. This was before the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or Halo 3, so it really was a different time.
Although I imagine the masses were also attracted by its gorgeous graphics and bloody violence, the art-deco beauty of Rapture’s failing utopia proved a treat to explore regardless of whether you cared for the yarn being unfolded. The audio logs, environmental storytelling, and atmosphere were things we’d never seen before at such a scale, and its impact was unmistakable. Yet none of these memories would have been made possible without the game’s opening, which far outweighs
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