Zero Punction on Bioshock

[PlagueOfLocust]

twesterm said:

Lost tears of Kain said:

Choice plays every part in gameplay, not just the story, it contributes to the adam, which in result gives you the ability to change who you are, i agree with plague almost fully with everything he has said

The "lame" interactive cutscences were fantastic i believe, and choice does effect story progression, not as much as they said, but plays a little mroe then i think you believe.

The choices make all the matter, in any game. If choices had no effect, then there would be no reason to include them. The choices will always have a effect, and i believe they had a decent, but not to deep effect, that def effected my gameplay choices and effected my view of the game overall

The thing with the more adam is that it doesn't result in much more adam at all. It's almost like just slightly varying the difficulty setting. One of my buddies actually made it through the game by rescuing one little sister and ignored the rest with little difficulty. I believe I read somewhere that you could still get just about all the plasmids by rescuing the little sisters if you didn't take a few of the health and/or eve upgrades. All it really is is just a difficulty setting and it's not even a big one since you get gifts anyways.

As for the lame interactive cut scenes, that's merely a personal choice. I don't like them a lot. They can be neat if done well, but when you're forced to just stand there behind a pain of glass and watch, stand next to somebody you can't interact with until the scene ends (the guy at the piano), or all enemies stop what they're doing as soon as an audio diary plays they are lame in my book. Like I said, personal choice.

As for no reason to include the choice, there is a huge reason: gimmick. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's actually really smart, but it's only a gimmick. You give the player the feeling that they are controlling their actions (which fits well with the story) when really it's all just smoke and mirrors.

-edit-
And just to elaborate how much  the extra adam really doesn't matter, how many times did you find yourself hoarding adam or just buying things because you had the extra adam?  I know I didn't need any more than three plasmids at any given time and having a lot of tonics were useful but it wouldn't have bothered me to go without most of them.  The choice really is just smoke and mirrors.

"Need" and "want", "could use" or "would really like" are two distinct things. You could make it through the game with no Adam if you're willing... this undermines the concept for you? The CHOICE to do such a thing highlights the fact that it is, indeed, a choice that affects the game. You sure as hell won't get the same experience with no Adam as someone who has it does.

And the word "gimmick" is just a way of adding negative connotation to what you could just as easily refer to an interesting and unique element of the game. It's not a gimmick when it's the core concept of the design.