DarthVolod said:
A much better and more balanced approach would have been to make these characters tragic villains rather than mindless zealots of X idealogy. We never get the chance to relate to these people, and we are essentially told that their strong beliefs in X idealogy drove them to become insane (maybe it is slightly different with Comstock I guess but still). Essentially, the "warts" are all we are seeing of each world view being presented. Virtually no one in the game is sympathetic or relatable aside from the few characters we are outright told to like (little sisters and Elizabeth ... and that's about it). There is nothing outwardly noble about any of these causes (at least as they are presented in the game).We are never presented with characters that really articulate what made them uproot themselves and go to Rapture or Columbia. The one exception (and easily the best part of the otherwise horrible Bioshock 2) was the character of Charles Porter who had a persuading albeit short audio diary explaining how Andrew Ryan convinced him that Rapture was a place where Porter would not be subject to the racism that was rampant on the surface, and that Rapture was the ideal place for brilliant minds like Porter. All three games needed so much more of this... I would consider myself to be a proponent of Objectivism (which Ryan's strawman version of Objectivism Levine bashed in Bioshock 1), but even I would admit that the altruist/communist/socialism of Bioshock 2 and the jingoism of Bioshock Infinite also deserved a more balanced approach. As illogical as communism/socialism etc and jingoism is, it still deserves a more balanced examination than it received. Maybe I am expecting too much out of these games though, and of a game developer that refers to themselves as "Irrational" Games. |
I'd argue that though you came to these worlds after the warts had largely overwhelmed their ideologies, the files you recovered hinted at their more noble intentions in their earlier days; for example, the Vox aimed to liberate the poor and disenfranchised, and however badly it turned out in the end, Ryan's dream of unfettered scientific progress certainly took place. As you pointed out, there's Porter, and Comstock's zealotry is explained through his obsessive plunge into christianity as a refuge from the trauma of Wounded Knee.
