Rapture Is Dead: Bioshock 2

Rapture: a subaqueous Objectivist dystopia in which unbridled anarcho-capitalism, unhampered by morality, leads to the dehumanization, the genetic mutilation of its populace and the ultimate squelching of free will. Thematically and aesthetically, Irrational Studios’ Bioshock was a masterpiece, only slightly sullied by a rote video-game ending and some ultimately shallow gameplay.

It’s surprising that a game that pandered to its audience’s intelligence and sophistication would become such a break-out hit. Less surprising? That the video game industry as a whole would ignore what Bioshock did so differently and immediately turn it into a property like every other successful game: within a month of Bioshock’s success, Take Two’s executives were telling investors to expect bi-annual sequels.

Now the first of those sequels has been announced. There’s no details, except that it will be released at the end of 2009, in keeping with Take Two’s promise for a sequel every two years. For those who don’t know games, that’s a fairly aggressive development schedule even for a regular sequel, let alone a game as intellectually challenging and visually lurid as Bioshock was.

But my main fear is that Take Two’s going to do the obvious here: bring Bioshock 2 back to Rapture. It was a great setting, but a game like Bioshock should inspire sequels based primarily on common themes: Ayn Rand style objectivism, isolation, the paradox of will, the protection of the innocent, and genetic engineering as the metaphor for ethical deformity. That’s what I want to see from Bioshock 2, wrapped up in a setting as breath-takin and convention-defying as Rapture… perhaps a sister city, a Randian bio-dome splattered with blood from the inside, built in the silver dust of the moon, gazing silently down upon the alternate-history Cold War Earth from which it fled. Now that’s a sequel.

Incidentally, this entire post was just an excuse to link Ben Mauro’s fantastic fan concept art for Bioshock 2, linked below.

Bioshock 2 “Concept Art” [Ben Mauro]