*Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite.* The BioShock franchise is one of the most beloved in the modern era of gaming, being a model for storytelling and world-building to developers and creators across the industry. With the rumored existence of a BioShock collection for the Xbox One and PS4, …
With Failure to Connect, we asked our writers what games they were unable to connect with, regardless of their fiscal and critical success. For the month of May we will attempt to explore this issue in detail on a case by case basis. Bioshock and its spiritual-sequel Bioshock Infinite (and to a lesser extent its …
As science fiction has popularly shown, the best dystopias always began as utopias. The idea of a fallen utopia is something that humanity seems to take an inherent comfort in. Much like our unflappable interest in seeing our heroes and idols fall fall from grace, a destroyed wonderland, or one that hides a myriad of horrors beneath its carefully constructed facade, is a reassuring proposition, one that works to assuage any guilt we might have for not trying to be better, or affecting any real change in our own society or circumstances.
As a teenager, I felt I would never age. Yet I also knew I would, and more than that, I could anticipate that when I did, everything would change. So I stood then, with confused ideas about time. The future would never arrive, yet it was also imminent. Now, my teenage years were horribly boring and sexless, so I was certainly looking forward to some sort of revolution. It was only a matter of emerging out the far side of high school, into the end of the world as I knew it. Life is a succession of points of no return, and if we find apocalyptic stories about crashing asteroids and alien invasions so absorbing, it might be because they exaggerate this fact. Popular fiction brims with characters who undergo processes of self-discovery while everything around them burns, from The Lord of the Rings to Akira. Watershed moments can be as monumental as they can be personal and private, and though graduating high school or parting with your family are not exactly comparable to a tidal wave, such commonplace events can inspire fear and trembling regardless.