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7/8/2025, 2:38:28 AM
>>530361556
The themes of Bioshock 1 and Infinite are all about "the illusion of choice". In Bioshock 1, pretty much all of Jack's decisions are completely pointless because other people are making his decisions for him and the few he can make himself make very little difference overall. Levine tripled down on this in Infinite and BaS (which canonized Bioshock 1's good ending via Elizabeth's clairvoyance) as a core element of Infinite is that the player's choices don't matter at all, not one bit. Even though the player is presented with many choices in the game, they chane quite literally nothing, as Booker will always wind up being drowned by Elizabeth.
Bioshock 2 on the other hand completely ignored what Levine considered to be the most important element of 1. 2 is a story about a mindless golem realizing he is a man, and a father, and every single choice the player makes in 2 is meaningful because it changes the characters around them and how the story plays out. Levine hated that, he loathed it, and he has stated that most of the reason he even made the twist of Elizabeth being Booker's daughter was because of how much he hated what Bioshock 2 did with Eleanor and Subject Delta.
Also I'd recommend reading Ken Levine's The Jewish Influences of Bioshock, where he talks at length about his jewish heritage and how it informed his creative process. It's enlightening to realize that the main difference between Jack and Booker - who got a good ending and who didn't - is that Jack is jewish, with two full blooded jewish parents, and Booker was a goy. It also makes Infinite's depiction of a white ethnostate, the negative connotations of Christianity in 1 and Infinite, as well as the historical revisionism of events like the Boxer Rebellion and the Battle of Wounded Knee incredibly suspect.
The themes of Bioshock 1 and Infinite are all about "the illusion of choice". In Bioshock 1, pretty much all of Jack's decisions are completely pointless because other people are making his decisions for him and the few he can make himself make very little difference overall. Levine tripled down on this in Infinite and BaS (which canonized Bioshock 1's good ending via Elizabeth's clairvoyance) as a core element of Infinite is that the player's choices don't matter at all, not one bit. Even though the player is presented with many choices in the game, they chane quite literally nothing, as Booker will always wind up being drowned by Elizabeth.
Bioshock 2 on the other hand completely ignored what Levine considered to be the most important element of 1. 2 is a story about a mindless golem realizing he is a man, and a father, and every single choice the player makes in 2 is meaningful because it changes the characters around them and how the story plays out. Levine hated that, he loathed it, and he has stated that most of the reason he even made the twist of Elizabeth being Booker's daughter was because of how much he hated what Bioshock 2 did with Eleanor and Subject Delta.
Also I'd recommend reading Ken Levine's The Jewish Influences of Bioshock, where he talks at length about his jewish heritage and how it informed his creative process. It's enlightening to realize that the main difference between Jack and Booker - who got a good ending and who didn't - is that Jack is jewish, with two full blooded jewish parents, and Booker was a goy. It also makes Infinite's depiction of a white ethnostate, the negative connotations of Christianity in 1 and Infinite, as well as the historical revisionism of events like the Boxer Rebellion and the Battle of Wounded Knee incredibly suspect.
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