adventure – Interactive Digital Narratives

Bioshock Infinite (Chain of Causation)

Although it’s not entirely new, Bioshock’s presentation of players with moral decisions that they don’t immediately see the consequences of is a very important and interesting inclusion in the game, especially the way it was done at the time the game was made. An article by Ryan Lizardi in Game Studies discusses the nature of the decision to either harvest or save the Little Sisters and how the player is not immediately notified about the correctness of their decision. Lizardi explains how the sort of historical time capsule created by Rapture allows this decision making mechanic to make statements about the way that the progression of history is influenced by the morality of one’s decisions and the understanding of the “infinite chain of causation”. Games since Bioshock have done this effectively (having played Undertale recently it comes to mind as an example) but to my knowledge it was one of the only games with such a clever morality-based decision-making mechanic at the time of its release. The ability for players to go back and “redo” or “correct” their actions by replaying the game differently and making morally correct decisions allows players to understand the ways that their actions had consequences on both sides of the spectrum (if they chose “wrong” vs if they chose “right”), something you are never able to do in real life which can provide a valuable understanding of this “infinite chain of causation” and bring players closer to understanding the distant consequences that their immediate actions may have. The way that games like Bioshock allow players to revisit morally complex situations and see how their actions create consequences that may not be immediately visible to them is very powerful and could be used very interestingly in the future. I could see decision-making based children’s games being created along these lines to teach children moral lessons and help them understand the infinite chain of causation discussed by Lizardi.
http://gamestudies.org/1401/articles/lizardi

Narrative Architecture in Bioshock

One aspect of Bioshock that I feel the developers excelled at is environmental storytelling, as discussed by Henry Jenkins in his “Game Design As Narrative Architecture”. Although Bioshock certainly contains strong narrative elements present in the dialogue and progression of gameplay/gamic goals, there is very little initial information that the player has about what is going on in Rapture beyond the clues they have in the virtual environment. Despite this, the player is able to use the clues around them to infer what kind of situation they are in and the progression of the game creates a smooth narrative flow with the nature of Rapture and the player’s surroundings becoming uncovered as they move through the game. The ways in which water and destroyed environments are used is very effective at this, with the sense that nature is taking its course and reclaiming Rapture from humans. There is also a sense throughout the game that Rapture was a project that never should have been conducted, that it goes against nature and is fundamentally wrong. The environment is dark and overrun with criminals, science experiments gone wrong, and insane people. There are lots of instances of broken furniture and machinery littered around the environment, creating a strong sense that the player is traversing through some sort of haunted house 1950s-inspired version of Atlantis. Through the initial elevator sequence alone, the player is able to get a fairly good grasp of the nature of Rapture and what kind of environment the game will be set in. The music and sound design strongly add to this environment, with shrieks and odd scraping sounds permeating the environment from unknown but seemingly nearby locations. The water covering almost everything in Rapture adds a unique element to the lighting, with reflections being cast from small pools of water or shine added to objects from their wetness. This creates even more dramatic lighting than the broken and patchy initial lighting causes, and when supplemented with the gaudy neon signs in some of the levels the lighting becomes a very strong element of the game environment.

Blast From the Past

Having played and loved Bioshock Infinite already but not either of the first two games in the Bioshock series, I was very excited to play the first game in the series. I love the narrative and character building present in Infinite, and the overall experience of playing the game was one of my favorite experiences with digital art that I’ve ever had. I’ve heard and seen so much about the original Bioshock game that I knew it would be good. Given this and my experience with Infinite I was pretty excited to play Bioshock. My excitement proved valid, with the engaging narrative, smooth gameplay and great graphics all creating a very enjoyable gameplay experience. I find it very interesting that Bioshock doesn’t really masquerade itself as some “art game” and is definitely geared toward a variety of audiences, especially some more hardcore gamers. I find that a lot of games now seem to try to achieve an artistic feel by including some sort of meaningful narrative and de-emphasizing every other aspect of the gameplay or at least making it feel more casual. Bioshock doesn’t really seem to do this, with the enjoyable gameplay style complementing the worldbuilding and narrative nicely. I find the graphic and setting contrast with Infinite very interesting, with very dark and dirty surroundings and characters fighting each other in the darkly colored abandoned underwater city of Rapture compared to the almost angelic coloring and character design present in much of Infinite. The religious references in Infinite contrast heavily and poignantly with the frequent drug references in the narrative and gameplay mechanics of Bioshock, bringing up some very interesting thematic concepts. I really like how creepy the first Bioshock feels, with the sound design and soundtrack creating an amazing sense of space and the sense that there’s always something out to get you just around the corner.