Final thoughts

Some articles about BioShock have been written about the game's overall themes and indeed the issues the game deals with are deeper than just "Shoot everything that moves". It's no secret that Rapture's creator Andrew Ryan sounds a lot like Ayn Rand. Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged was about a man who took the best thinkers of the world and put them into one place outside mainstream society. BioShock is Irrational's take on what happens if such a gathering can go wrong. While the first portion of the game we played just hints at the overall storyline we know that our player character is caught in the middle of a power struggle between two of the remaining humans in Rapture.

The player character is also faced with choices early in the game. At one point he can take out one of the creatures called a Little Sister by either killing her and taking all of her Adam or simply turn her back to being human and taking only some of her Adam. Supposedly we will find out later in the game how either killing or saving Little Sisters will change how the game is played. And while Andrew Ryan is heard on speakers in the game we never actually encountered him during our playtime. Will we face the creator of Rapture at some point in BioShock and if so will he be a good guy, a bad guy or something in between?

It's actually hard to write about BioShock for this preview article. There was so much to do and so many options we had to play with in the game but we also know that we only scratched the surface so anything we write about for this preview will only be expanded upon when the full game is released. We also know that talking about the plot of the game might be a moot point since there are developments in the storyline that we just don't know anything about and likely won't until the game itself is released. But that's a good thing in the end.

It's been a long time since we have played a single player action title and not be able to predict with some certainly what will happen in the end or indeed if there is more than one ending to the game depending on what your character does and encounters during his exploration of Rapture. Will he use up Adam too much that he turns into a creature? How will the civil war between the two factions in the game end? Just who the heck is Andrew Ryan? Will you find your way out of Rapture and if so what happens next? Irrational and 2K Games have us guessing and we couldn't be happier. So far BioShock is turning out to be the game we expected to be and more. It's a first person shooter that has a deep gameplay design and a setting and storyline that looks like will have us on the edge of our seats. Oh, and it just happens one of the best looking and most unique games we have ever seen. It's going to be a long wait for us to get to the end of August to find out how BioShock continues from where we had to stop playing that night at the press event back in April. We think (and hope) it will be worth it.