tagged w/ BioShock
-
The sunken city of Rapture, a world of art deco aesthetics, neon sales pitches and looming architecture, is home to more than just murderous splicers and lumbering Big Daddys, it's also a surprising breeding ground for introspection.
BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute's president, Yaron Brook.
Objectivism as a central theme in BioShock was actually the result of a confluence of ideas and happenstance. The heart of the game started, as do most of Ken Levine's games, as the answer to a problem.
"How do we make an environment that feels really complete?" Levine said. "That's where we came up with a space ship for System Shock. In BioShock we said what can we do similarly and simulate fully as we could a space ship." The answer was an underwater city, but that simply formed the game's outline, the walls that kept a player from remembering they were in a confined space. Levine wondered what sorts of people might live in an underwater city, what would drive someone from the rest of the world.
"I started thinking about utopian civilizations," he said. "You have these traditional utopian notions. I've always been a fan of utopian and dystopian literature.
"The more I started thinking about making a compelling place and compelling villain, someone who had a real concrete set of beliefs made sense."
Enter Objectivism. Levine said he had been reading Ayn Rand's books over the past few years and was fascinated with her "intensity and purity of belief."
[Rest at link]
*****************************************************************************************************************
Since there has been some attention being paid in the PC Gaming (and console gaming) community to coming release of BioShock 2, the next installment in the BioShock series from the group that created System Shock, I thought it would be interesting of me to post something that talked about how the game was tied around Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.
The game drew obvious allusions to Objectivism in many ways. One of which was the similarity between the founder of Rapture, Andrew Ryan, and Ayn Rand, in that their names were virtual anagrams of each other. The people who helped bring about the dystopia that was Rapture are the same type of characters that Rand would have considered and praised as Randian heroes. And then there was the fact that Rapture, being at the bottom of the sea, drew an allusion to the refuge of the strikers in Atlas Shrugged, a place called Atlantis...The sunken city of Rapture, a world of art deco aesthetics, neon sales pitches and... more
-
-
2K approached Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, and other awesome things, to create an image for BioShock 2. The result is this piece called “The Sisters” which shows the Big Sister watching over two Little Sisters somewhere in Rapture.
Jhonen wrote up a guest blog over on The Cult of Rapture where he details the process he went through in creating the freaky little image. Jhonen will also be at San Diego Comic-Con signing special edition prints of his “The Sisters” drawing at the BioShock 2 booth. There will only be 500 prints of “The Sisters” drawing so you better get to the BioShock 2 booth as soon as you hit the show floor.
In other news, BioShock 2 is going to be at San Diego Comic-Con in some way or form!2K approached Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac,... more
-
-
Nettle
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
So that you will not have to click on the link I will post the list further info in link if desired...
10. Donkey Kong
9. Altair (Assassin's Creed)
8. Big Daddy (BioShock)
7. Pacman
6. Kratos (God of War)
5. Chris Redfield (Resident's Evil)
4. Marcus Fenix (Gears of War)
3. Sonic the Hedgehog
2. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
1. Master Chief (Halo)So that you will not have to click on the link I will post the list further info in... more
-
-
On 2K Games' official The Cult of Rapture website, BioShock 2's new Geyser Trap plasmid has been revealed. According to the description on the site, the Geyser Trap allows you to "shoot out a burst of water that can be used both defensively and offensively. You can fling it at an oncoming opponent to rocket them up into the air, or set the traps in key locations to trip someone up as they, for example, pass through a doorway."
Here are the new BioShock 2 screens that show how the Geyser Trap can be used to launch enemies into the air.
Pics at link.On 2K Games' official The Cult of Rapture website, BioShock 2's new Geyser... more
-
-
erodut
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
A year has past since Gore Verbinski signed up to direct BioShock, but it now looks as if he will not be directing the video game movie.
Whilst speaking to the LA Times, Verbinski stated, "The bottom line is it has to shoot out of the States for budget reasons, and my schedule may be prohibitive. There's a great script and a really interesting cast. It really comes down to the financial model now. Big movies are just not being shot in the States. I'm weighing whether I can physically go the U.K. or Australia or one of those other places with a tax rebate for a year-and-a-half."
A huge amount of fans of the game believe that Verbinski is the guy for the job after his success of turn a theme-park ride bin Disney into the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. If he does stay with the project a lot of people believe he could bring the best computer game film and remove the curse of films such as Tomb Raider and DOOM.A year has past since Gore Verbinski signed up to direct BioShock, but it now looks as... more
-
-
Remember books? It's what people used to do with their time before video games were invented. The average book offered you about 20 hours of play and were portable, so could be used anywhere - the only downside is that they tended to be somewhat linear in nature, and graphics were predictably primitive.
Well the news now is that apparently a novel is being written based on the game Bioshock. I'm hoping it'll be better than the Doom novel I found at a second-hand book sale many years ago which was literally like playing the game: "I killed a demon and then I ran out of ammo... I needed to find another clip and the red keycard".Remember books? It's what people used to do with their time before video games... more
-
-
Could Prison Break star Wentworth Miller be cast in the big screen adaptation of Bioshock? Last we heard, the Universal decided to put the Gore Verbinski-directed video game movie on hold as they explored options to cut down the film’s ballooning budget.Could Prison Break star Wentworth Miller be cast in the big screen adaptation of... more
-
-
The behind-closed doors BioShock 2 demo shown to the press last month is now available to watch online - all nine minutes of it.
*dribble*The behind-closed doors BioShock 2 demo shown to the press last month is now available... more
-
-
They were going to shoot it in Los Angeles, but when the budget got up to $160 million, the studio pulled the plug to look for other places to shoot (like London).They were going to shoot it in Los Angeles, but when the budget got up to $160... more
-
-
We head back to Rapture with 2K Marin for the exclusive first preview of the sequel to BioShock.We head back to Rapture with 2K Marin for the exclusive first preview of the sequel to... more
-
-
The amazing game Bioshock is coming back with a sequel.
If something works keep doing it!
The point of the matter is the first installation was one player... the second will have some sort of multiplayer feature. No one quite knows what its gonna be but exciting stuff nonetheless.
It may be a like a Gears of Call of Resident type thing if you catch my drift. Who knows....The amazing game Bioshock is coming back with a sequel.
If something works keep... more
-
-
Slick
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
As a cast-away in Rapture, an underground Utopia torn apart by civil war, you are caught between powerful forces, and hunted down by genetically modified enemies and deadly security systems. You have to come to grips with a deadly, mysterious world filled with powerful technologies and characters. No encounter ever plays the same. A demo has just been released on Xbox Live. This game is gonna rule.As a cast-away in Rapture, an underground Utopia torn apart by civil war, you are... more
-
