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 Latest Episode  About the Game Bioshock is a 2007 first person shooter game that was developed by 2K Boston Games. Set in the fictional underwater city of Rapture, Bioshock gained fame and critical acclaim for its immersive environment, responsive gameplay and philosophical underpinnings that weren’t considered common at the time. Bioshock is widely considered to be one of the most influential games of all time, with many subsequent games taking cues from it in their incorporation of environmental storytelling as well as items such as audio logs to situate a player in the game world. Over time Bioshock has generated enthusiastic discussion with some people claiming that more than a decade on, it does not hold up to the lofty praise it generated on its release, whilst others vehemently defend the game for having vision beyond its years. What can be said is that few games can claim to have been studied as deeply as Bioshock and fewer still can claim to have directly influenced so many aspects of popular culture. About The LP My best friend and partner in crime Yorkshire Tea will be taking the helm for this video LP. He has never played Bioshock or its sequels and is going in almost as blind as is reasonably possible for a person in 2020. I will have the pleasure of acting as co-pilot, pointing out interesting areas and hopefully guiding Tea along well enough to keep the LP going at a steady pace. Art, so the title and episode cards, will be handled by the amazing Bifauxnen. I personally am most interested in Tea’s reaction to certain ideas in the game around moral choice as well as important narrative shifts through the game in an attempt to answer the question of whether they do, in fact, hold up. There are more questions and more ideas that I’ll want to explore as Tea plays further into the game, but for now, I think it’s best to get to the matter at hand. Episodes will release on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 23:00 BST, 18:00 EST. Episodes                                 Links The LP Beach Cross Post Thread - In case you don't feel comfortable posting on the SA forums or need to view this outside of a paywall. Our Patreon! - In case you want to support our LPs and see episodes early! Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Jul 8, 2020 23:20
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Huh. I got the ending spoiled for me before I played it, so I'm interested to see what Tea thinks of that down the line.
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Jul 9, 2020 02:26
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As is tradition I am here to remind you that the New LP Thread exists, for the benefit of those silly people not subbed to your Youtube already. Bioshock is one of those games I've come to know pretty well through general exposure despite never having actually played it myself nor actively watched an LP. I'm impressed Tea managed to stay relatively blind. I've also just learned that a version was released for the Nintendo Switch back in May. Interesting...
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Jul 9, 2020 08:31
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Black Robe posted:Bioshock is one of those games I've come to know pretty well through general exposure despite never having actually played it myself nor actively watched an LP. I'm impressed Tea managed to stay relatively blind. I think I'm about exactly as blind as Tea is! I even know of "a certain phrase" and what it is, but not what the exact deal with it was. So I'm pretty excited to finally see what the deal with this game is, cause even though a libertarian/Objectivist hellscape is totally my jam and I've always thought this sounded like a great game, I play FPS kinda games pretty much never.
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Jul 9, 2020 09:17
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I've never seen anyone have a real reaction to the story, so this should be exciting!
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Jul 9, 2020 17:02
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Oh, this should be fun. I do wince every time I see a controller prompt, though.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jul 9, 2020 |
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Jul 9, 2020 18:04
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anilEhilated posted:Oh, this should be fun. I do wince every time I see a controller prompt, though. Tea complained mightily about not being able to use Mouse and Keyboard, but it's an unfortunate problem of the way that we record.
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Jul 9, 2020 19:08
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Bioshock is one of the few games I bought for my 360 back on release, it's a really fun game with some nice spooks.
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Jul 9, 2020 20:20
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Is this OG Bioshock or the remaster?
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Jul 9, 2020 21:09
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This is the Remaster being played on PC.
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Jul 9, 2020 21:42
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Prepare for the protagonist's wrists to be horribly abused. The explanation of the great chain doesn't really ever occur in-game. Out of curiosity is this a playthrough of the whole series or just Bioshock 1?
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Jul 10, 2020 01:32
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This is going to be interesting! I'm vaguely aware of this game, but outside of "it's some kind of critique of Randian libertarianism" and um mind control phrases I think? I know absolutely nothing and am looking forward to seeing what this is all about. Some of these animations are setting off my needle phobia like crazy though, ugh. Your character's poor veins.
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Jul 10, 2020 02:34
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Bookthief posted:Prepare for the protagonist's wrists to be horribly abused. The explanation of the great chain doesn't really ever occur in-game. Out of curiosity is this a playthrough of the whole series or just Bioshock 1? Just Bioshock 1 for the moment. But Tea hasn't played Infinite either and so if he enjoys this we'll certainly consider going through that. I've not played Bioshock 2 myself so I'd be reluctant to LP that game if only because of aimless wandering time.
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Jul 10, 2020 09:55
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Bookthief posted:Prepare for the protagonist's wrists to be horribly abused. The explanation of the great chain doesn't really ever occur in-game. Out of curiosity is this a playthrough of the whole series or just Bioshock 1? I just completed a full playthrough of the entire series last month. The Great Chain is explained well, but you need to be judicious about picking up the audio logs to ensure that you're understanding the full context of everything. There's a lot of characters whose stories are told (sometimes out of order) from the start to the finish of the game in those logs, plus a lot of Andrew Ryan explaining his philosophy and issues. The Great Chain is the analogy Ryan came up with for his extreme free market libertarian economy. No one individual can move the chain, but the entirety of Rapture will pull it in the way it needs to go naturally. Predictably, he doesn't take it well when it looks like it might not pull in the direction he wants it to. Natural 20 posted:Just Bioshock 1 for the moment. But Tea hasn't played Infinite either and so if he enjoys this we'll certainly consider going through that. I recommend it. It's better than you'd expect it to be and it helps flesh out some of Rapture and the Big Daddy development a bit more.
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Jul 10, 2020 13:42
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The "I choose... RAPTURE!" reveal is still one of my favorite moments. Could you turn on subtitles? The dialogue is quiet enough that I can barely make out what they're saying, and subtitles would help.
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Jul 10, 2020 16:03
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chitoryu12 posted:I just completed a full playthrough of the entire series last month. The Great Chain is explained well, but you need to be judicious about picking up the audio logs to ensure that you're understanding the full context of everything. There's a lot of characters whose stories are told (sometimes out of order) from the start to the finish of the game in those logs, plus a lot of Andrew Ryan explaining his philosophy and issues. missed those audio logs. I'd also chime in the audio logs are pretty good, and the environmental storytelling in the game in general is great. Adding another person to the request for subtitles, the audio in this game can be rather finicky for dialogue between various splicers or wandering characters.
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Jul 10, 2020 16:42
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Bookthief posted:missed those audio logs. I'd also chime in the audio logs are pretty good, and the environmental storytelling in the game in general is great. Adding another person to the request for subtitles, the audio in this game can be rather finicky for dialogue between various splicers or wandering characters. Of course! Subtitles will show in episode 4 since episode 1-3 is a batch.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:18
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Jul 10, 2020 22:59
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The pools of water are one of those cool environmental tricks that end up being too good. Outside of a few really obvious tutorial appearances, there's really very few pools of water in the rest of the game, and very few are in spots the enemies will stand in naturally.
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Jul 11, 2020 01:30
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The setting of Rapture is heavily inspired by a book. I don't think it's a spoiler, as the game assumes you may have read the book and it only really relates to the initial setting, but I'll spoiler it just to be sure. The book Atlas Shrugged depicts a world where the Government of the US is increasingly draconian towards corporations and very wealthy individuals - though this is actually depicted as a bad thing. Rather than let the government take what they have created, the rich people run off and form their own hidden society - Galt's Gulch. Rapture is effectively the developers' own take on Galt's Gulch, though they clearly take a much less rosy view of it than the author.
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Jul 11, 2020 03:44
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Also, I absolutely insist that Yorkshire keep looking at everything. There's already been an absurd number of hints as to the backstory of the game and future major characters that he's seen in just these two episodes that won't become apparent for many hours. From the very first cutscene, there's important details to remember. It's not a mystery game, but it takes from the genre in that there's a ton of clues from the beginning and lots of complex relationships between characters that paint a full story as you zap and whack splicers. In particular, you can figure out one of the big upcoming reveals about two chapters early just by looking at the decor. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 04:44
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You missed the splicer killed by Big Daddy sitting in an obvious spotlight  Rule of Rapture: check everything. Crates, bodies, every nook and cranny. A lot of the good stuff is hidden away.
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Jul 11, 2020 20:01
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I figured the hacked robot would just be a fragile unhelpful NPC that would serve as cannon fodder at best, but I did not expect to see it bust out a machine gun and go GTA on those nerds.
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Jul 12, 2020 06:44
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Shitenshi posted:I figured the hacked robot would just be a fragile unhelpful NPC that would serve as cannon fodder at best, but I did not expect to see it bust out a machine gun and go GTA on those nerds. BioShock 2 brings the hacked security bots to a whole new level. Not only can you get a gene tonic that lets you repair them (and give them randomly generated names!), you can upgrade a plasmid to actually summon them out of thin air. It's completely normal for Subject Delta to spend the latter half of the game surrounded by buzzing security bots named Whitney, Kenneth, and Frederique.
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Jul 12, 2020 07:04
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Jul 13, 2020 22:52
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Atlas's voice is terrible, but even so far I think the Little Sisters' voice is pretty much perfect.
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Jul 13, 2020 23:31
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Ayn Rand's philosophy is ripe for mockery, both on a moral level as well as in terms of it's own lack of philosophical rigor, so the whole X-Men LARPers leading to civiliaztion's collapse angle is more or less an accurate jab at her capitalist ubermenschen whose only real virtue was their callous ruthlessness, but lumping in changing your gender with that line of parody, or even with the idea of changing your race, which actually has received a good amount of scrutiny and is nowhere near the same as the topic of transgender people? Yeah, some things in this game have not aged well.
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Jul 13, 2020 23:53
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Not everything here is supposed to be bad. I'm pretty sure that line's supposed to show descent from "not at all unreasonable" to "batshit insane"/
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Jul 13, 2020 23:58
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For your issue with the EVE hypos - you automatically use an EVE hypo when you are out of EVE. However, pretty much every time you shoot your last lightning bolt, you switch to another weapon instantly and interrupt the hypo animation. Then you keep that other weapon equipped until the next time you want to electrocute someone, at which point you switch back to plasmid and the hypo animation goes. So if you don't want to waste time refilling your EVE at the start of combat, make sure to switch to a plasmid when you're out of EVE and not in combat.
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Jul 14, 2020 00:56
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Gnoman posted:Not everything here is supposed to be bad. I'm pretty sure that line's supposed to show descent from "not at all unreasonable" to "batshit insane"/ Burial At Sea even showed a few homosexual couples and has a highly sex-positive video you can find. The idea behind Rapture was a utopia in which nobody was restricted from doing anything they wanted. No governmental regulations or religious oppression would stop you from achieving your full potential. Great idea for things like racism and homophobia, bad idea for things like "Running a functional society."
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Jul 14, 2020 01:41
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I'm very nearly certain you can manually "reload" Eve by literally hitting the reload button while you have your plasmid hand out. It took me a while before figuring out you could do that, and I'm guessing it's because unlike with guns you'll never be prompted to reload when you're low on Eve as you are with ammo. It's a weird design flaw I believe they finally fixed in Infinite. Eve is basically a second ammo type that is treated like health in that it's represented by a bar with no hard quantification. You'll probably gain some sense eventually of how much Eve one shot of lightning costs as you keep playing, but it'll always be your mental estimation rather than a clear "I have 7 out of 9 shots left before I need another hypo." Bioshock Infinite's mana bar equivalent will have the meter divided into however many blocks depending on the ability you have equipped. IIRC anyway since it's been a while. e: should add that even though you can manually reload it, even the smallest smidge of Eve is enough for one use of whatever ability you have out, and hypos are always full refills. Ghost Stromboli fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 02:28
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Ghost Stromboli posted:I'm very nearly certain you can manually "reload" Eve by literally hitting the reload button while you have your plasmid hand out. It took me a while before figuring out you could do that, and I'm guessing it's because unlike with guns you'll never be prompted to reload when you're low on Eve as you are with ammo. I checked again and yeah, you should be able to "reload" EVE just like you do ammo as long as you're switched to a plasmid. It was BioShock 2 that removed that.
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Jul 14, 2020 04:20
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I love how Tea's take on the story - "this is too dumb to not be a set-up" - makes so much more sense, though I suspect he hasn't met many IRL objectivists.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 09:12
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Oh, fun trick with Steinman: if you shoot him as he runs away, he keeps that damage. So if you hit him enough he'll go down in about 1 second in the boss fight.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:26
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Sorry for the slightly late release! Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 23:51
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Tea's willingness to follow the arrow instead of exploring everywhere but where it is pointing is deeply disappointing to me. Half the fun is looting everything that isn't nailed down.
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Jul 16, 2020 02:13
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Considering how different the hacking sections are from the main gameplay as well as the time limit, I can only begin to imagine they were one of the few things that were universally panned amidst all the praise this game had when it came out. Also, they could have tried to be less offensive with the Korean mad scientist recording. Guy practically came off like the main guy from Despicable Me, and I don't think flat out villains like the objectivists Ryan or Steinman, or even that Nazi woman, ever talked like that.
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Jul 16, 2020 02:49
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You can break the health stations if you want; they drop a first aid kit, but it means you can't use them to heal anymore.
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Jul 16, 2020 03:00
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Shitenshi posted:Considering how different the hacking sections are from the main gameplay as well as the time limit, I can only begin to imagine they were one of the few things that were universally panned amidst all the praise this game had when it came out. The hacking sections are much easier on PC. You can just click on two tiles to swap the pieces instead of needing to take a piece and hold it in reserve to swap in, and the speed of a mouse means you can have the entire path cleared to the exit pipe in a few seconds. I'm not sure if the water is sped up to match though.
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Jul 16, 2020 07:28
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It really gets to me that Tea doesn't prioritise revealing critical-path sections in the hacking games. Like, you're flipping tiles all over the place looking for the last piece you'll need when you don't even know if it's already there or not.
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Jul 16, 2020 13:01
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