My Heart in the Sand

Today is Valentine’s Day. So I would like to take a moment and profess my undying love for something incredibly important to me. These people have changed my life. Thanks to them I now have a deeper understanding of myself and those around me. I have seen the worst that mankind has to offer so now I can see the true beauty. I would like to take this moment and say that I love Spec Ops: The Line.

I have written before about why this game deserves to be played and I will not bore you all with that again. (If you haven’t read it yet, then read this In Depth – Spec Ops: the Line). What I would like to do here is just explain my undying love for perhaps the best game I ever played. Even better than the original God of War. That means a lot seeing as how until now that was my previous favorite game of all time. It now stands as my second. I’m sorry Kratos. You have been replaced. 

Never before has a game given my such a visceral reaction, never has it made me care so much about not only the characters I played as or with but the people on the other side of the gun as well. Spec Ops is an exquisite example of videogames as an art form. The story is strong enough to stand on its own and the gameplay although not tight overall is enough to have sold. But the art forms of written word and interactivity have been around for a while now. Movies are also accepted as an art form, but what makes videogames unique is their ability to bring all these parts together and create something brand new. Spec Ops uses what we know and understand about all the previous forms of art to guide us on a journey down the heart of the human soul. The way the desert sand is ever present in Dubai, a reminder of the unavoidable destruction of even the greatest of human endeavors. How Walker’s dialogue slowly devolves to that of a manic. The music ques driving us forward whether we wanted to or not. The patience testing and anger inducing grind sequences meant to place in Walker’s increasingly disturbed mindset. How the difference between a fade to white and a fade to black can mean everything. Spec Ops uses all these familiar elements and combines them to a sum much greater than its parts. 

When it becomes legal for man or woman and videogame to get married I am going to marry Spec Ops: The Line.

That simple. Nothing more. I want to go to bed every night and lay down gazing into the fiercely blue eyes of Captain Walker. I want Sergeant Lugo to wake me in the mornings with a quick funny but ultimately meaningful line. I want Lieutenant Adams to be there every day with his strong and securing stair.  I want Colonel Konrad to ask me the tough questions. I want The Radioman to DJ my life. 

Happy Valentine’s day. I love you, Spec Ops: The Line.  

So in reference to my Bioshock related article, Flawed Morality, I got this in my inbox.

“Okay Steven let’s talk. There are three endings to Bioshock one good, two bad. These are based on if you save the little sisters or not, though if you think about it, Jack was not raised in Rapture, he does not have thous ideals as the normal people in it do. The big Daddy’s protected the little sisters from people with low morals, and ever since that first little sister, they have been watching you too. Jack was not raised in Rapture he’s different in his mindset and the game gives him two options, he could be a saint because he went through all that, all of that struggle and anger and still came out with his morals, he was still the “good guy” no matter how much blood was on his hand from the crazy people that lived there. Or he could have lost his morals, all that he was is gone, he gave in to the madness that was there and now that he went top side there is no stopping the insanity. That is what I think the endings mean. Might not be right but my view on it.”

First, thanks for sharing computerbutt. But I don’t agree. I think you are mistaken in your Bioshock facts. There are audio diaries from Dr. Suchong that prove his involvement with Fontaine and the development of Jack as a weapon against Ryan. Suchong mentions how nearly from birth the child was experimented upon and injected with every possible form of plasid enhancements. Suchong also subjected Jack to the mental conditioning that leads to the “Would you kindly?” In another audio diary Suchong mentions how fast the child is growing. “Baby is now a year old, weighs 58 pounds, and possesses gross musculature of a fit, 19-year-old”. Jack was raised in Rapture, by the crazies that were Suchong, Fontaine and Tenenbaum. For all we know Jack could be two, possibly three years old. He was grown from the beginning to be a weapon. He has advanced muscles and strength that make him seem adult. But he had no life on the surface. They were fake memories. Jack was sent to the surface only to come back down.

Which is why I think the endings of Bioshock are so detrimental to the rest of the game. The only person with an understand of conventional morality in Rapture is the player. Ryan is obsessed with Objectivism. Fontaine cares only for his greed. And Jack was raised in a lab in that beautiful, sunken city. He has no understanding of right and wrong. Jack was raised to kill. Bioshock giving the players multiple endings based upon the flawed morality system of the game is terrible. It’s running up to the finish line miles ahead of the competition and then just stopping, turning around and going home. Bioshock lacks the conviction to follow its story and the ideas it wishes to present out to their very end.

Flawed Morality

(BIOSHOCK SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

Suspension of disbelief is defined as the willingness for an audience to accept something they know to be impossible for the purposes of entertainment. Nearly every piece of fiction requires some amount of suspended disbelief. These fictional premises may also lend to the engagement of the mind and perhaps the spread of thoughts, ideas, art and theories.  Such is the case with Bioshock. A game lauded for its intriguing story and settings as much as its pitch perfect game play. Just a week and a half ago I finished Bioshock for the first time. (Yes, I know that I am incredibly late, but due to constraints of time and money, I only recently got around to it.) My first thoughts upon completing the game and seeing its ending was: I did not like it. Not to say that Bioshock is a bad game, it is in fact a good game, but Bioshock broke my suspension of disbelief. I could not enjoy it the same after that.

The three principal elements that make Bioshock so incredible and has endeared it into the hearts of thousands of gamers are its setting, principal character and the beliefs that give them both life. Rapture, the man who built it, Andrew Ryan, and Objectivism. Rapture is an astounding place, fully realized and hauntingly atmospheric. The screams of its deranged citizens as they try to find any remnants of their previous life. The way the entire screen shakes as the lumbering hulk of a Big Daddy enters into view. All these little aspects go a long way into building a believably flawed city based around a believably flawed man. Rapture is Andrew Ryan’s city and Bioshock is unquestionably his game. Just as the sea water spills into the city, an ever present reminder of its downfall, Ryan’s philosophies flood the player. He waxes poetic about the virtues of a free and open market. You can hear the fervor of his belief in “the Great Chain” in one audiotape and then hear the self-righteous anger in his voice when it fails him in another. In the games very opening monologue Andrew Ryan claims Rapture to be a city where man can achieve greatness without the constraints of censorship or “petty morality”. The man, the city and the game live and breathe these objectivist philosophies. “Only through individual will and determination can society as a whole be bettered”. These three core concepts give Bioshock a unique feel in terms of setting and story that has never really been matched. 

And yet, with so much of the game riding on those core concepts, Bioshock hangs its ending on the morality system. If you save the Little Sisters then you get the good ending; if you harvest them then you get the bad one. Any other choice you make throughout the course of the game has absolutely no impact upon the ending. I would be alright with this if both respective endings of Bioshock were not so far sided. In the good ending you rescue six Little Sisters, take them to the surface and raise them on your own. You are Saint Jack, Savior of the Little Sisters. In the bad ending you return to the surface bring with you an army of Splicers. Your first action is to hijack a submarine carrying nuclear warheads. You are Jack, Evil Incarnate. There is no middle ground between the two endings. One is gag inducingly good; the other is genocide levels of bad.  Both endings completely rupture my suspension of disbelief about the game. I finished the game, saw my ending and then was saddened as all the rest of my Bioshock memories became tainted.     

Bioshock is a game that excels in the moral grayness of its setting, story and central philosophy. Andrew Ryan is a man of his beliefs. He built Rapture simply to prove that he could, to give physical body to the core concepts which he held dear. The player’s entire experience with the game is dictated by those ideas. The third act twist, that you had been controlled all along, falls within the concepts of individual will. Ryan’s dying words are “A man chooses. A slave obeys”.  It is his ultimate triumph, an idealist victory worthy of sacrificing his life for. The player at that point fully understands and internalizes what Rapture was built for, individual will. The final act of the game has the player hunting down the person who brainwashed them. By the time you ride the elevator up to face the final boss, you are not a slave. You are a man. 

Bioshock encourages the player to lose themselves in the city of Rapture. To give in to the ideals of Andrew Ryan. Personal gain and selfishness are things to be rewarded. Harvesting Little Sisters would not be considered an evil act by Ryan’s standards. The only evil in Bioshock is the failure of the individual. It is that reason that both endings completely ruin the experience. The endings and morality system hold the player to the conventional morality of everyday day life; thou shall not kill. And it has no place in Rapture. To force it in as the game does, to base the games endings upon it breaks my suspension of disbelief. The player character is Jack, brainwashed from birth to kill Andrew Ryan. Jack only goes to the surface so he can be brought back in to Rapture as a seemingly external force. He knows nothing of conventional morality. In the game’s closing moments as Jack and the player have gained free will for the first time throughout their experience, Bioshock forces the player into a pre-set ending cinematic of either good or evil, conventional morality. For the entirety of my play time with Bioshock, I had suspended my disbelief. I knew Rapture was an impossible city and the objectivist philosophies upon which it was built would ultimately fail. Still, I choose not to belief those thoughts, at least for a time, because I wanted to believe in Rapture. I wanted to believe in Andrew Ryan and his ideas.  Yet, the endings of Bioshock were so out of place from the three core aspects of the game that I could no longer believe in it. It is a fault of the game and of its designers that ultimately Bioshock falters in its resolve to deliver an impactful story about individualism and objectivism. It is a failure in a game that otherwise has none. Unfortunately, the end result is a game that builds itself on promise and premise but cannot deliver in execution. Andrew Ryan would not be pleased.