I started playing BioShock 2 last night, despite resisting pretty much all of the pre-release hype for months. In this I surprised even myself, as I was incredibly, profoundly, spend-an-entire-afternoon-writing-loveletters-to-Ken-Levine-only-to-burn-them-all-later nuts about the first game. Everyone has a special collection of books, films, music and other media that are important to them in a personal way. Before Bioshock, I only had one game on my list. Afterward, I had two.

And still, I resisted. The original designer/writer of the game (Ken Levine) had been replaced by one of the level designers (Jordan Thomas), albeit the one who designed the best area in the game -- Fort Frolic -- as well as Thief: Deadly Shadows’ most lauded over level, The Cradle. I was convinced that BioShock’s subtle intellect, dark wit and hyper-stylized, Coen Brothers-esque dialogue could only be produced by a very select, very bright few of the games industry. What were the odds, I thought, that two of a number that could scarcely be a dozen would work for the same company?
Then I read an interview with Thomas and realized how stupid I had been.

You see, your average videogame interview quote goes something like this:

“I think players are really going to appreciate the tactical freedom afforded them by the BulletTimeExtreme technology,” says Phineas J. Designer. “It will allow for emergent gameplay and dynamic decision making while increasing the fidelity of our already leading-edge physics engine. Also, I think the story of Ruk, a space marine whose children are taken from him and transformed into Russian Terrorists is really going to resonate emotionally with our audience.”

And this is a quote from Eurogamer’s recent interview with Thomas, speaking about BioShock 2:

"How can I possibly return you to Rapture without having [Andrew Ryan, the original game’s antagonist] be a presence?" he asks. "Without objectivism, without the influences both literary and philosophical that gave birth to Rapture, it wouldn't be BioShock. Taking you back to Rapture and showing you how Rapture changes has to begin with the ideas that setting was built out of.

"From there, however, to add a new mystery to Rapture, there has to be a contrast. One of my buzz-phrases for this brand is 'an indictment of extremism', that the interesting thing about BioShock 1 was whether you agree with Ayn Rand or burn her books regularly, you can see it exaggerated massively in the form of Andrew Ryan in the form of Rapture, and you watch how the attempt to bend reality to a fairly rigid set of abstract principles fails and succumbs to this yowl of entropy."

Thomas’ quotes throughout Tom Bramwell’s interview with him are characterized by that level of literate oratorical skill, and the ideas he presents about game mechanics commenting on narrative theme so concisely summarizes everything that was brilliant about the first game that my “cautious optimism” toward Thomas’ sequel suddenly became “hysterical, frothing, volatile desire.” And really, of course they gave it to someone who “got” the first game. I was being pretty dull to think they wouldn’t.

Anyway, yes. Played the game a bit yesterday, and I’m pretty happy with it so far.  There isn’t a whole lot of high-level stuff going on at the moment, but Thomas has definitely nailed the aesthetics (both visually and textually). My primary contact speaks like a combination of George Clooney in O Brother, Where art Thou? and a southern belle—it would be silly if the dialogue wasn’t so sharply written. I just got through an area that an old, embittered jazz singer ruled over like a gang lord. Blue butterflies are being used as an obvious visual motif, but have not yet once been mentioned by any of the characters. Army of Two, this ain’t.

If I have one worry so far, it’s the game’s main antagonist, Dr. Sophia Lamb. A collectivist to stand opposite Andrew Ryan’s objectivism, she’s being written much more like one of Orson Scott Card’s lefty straw men than one of Ayn Rand’s outrageous archetypes. Of course, Ryan wasn’t very well developed until about two thirds of the way through the first game, so I’m still holding out hope for a bit of twist-humanity. More on this later, I suspect.

Of course, none of this is what I’m most interested in about BioShock 2. Indeed, like the first game, what’s really neat is how everyone else is reacting to it. The game is being scored well by all the major players, but the review text tends to reveal that the writers… don’t really know what to make of it. Once all of these have had some time to stew and settle, I’m going to write a larger piece at the end of the month on why I think they’re all wrong.

Ha ha! Just kidding.

…

Not kidding.

No, really: Even if BioShock 2 turns out to be half the game its predecessor was, the ideology of its design alone provides an excellent framework for the discussion of how we evaluate games as media. There’s an overriding tendency to break them into constituent parts and review each individually, but in a game where all parts comment on all the other parts, this approach couldn’t be sillier. Any more than that, though, and I’m giving the piece away. Stay tuned.