[ SECRET POST #4796 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4796 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #687.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/MAIFX5q.png

[(Anonymous)]

I have no input on the philosophy of Bioshock 1 & 2 enemies, just came here to say that these Tumblr statements about Bioshock Infinite seem like an overt generalisation. Like, it was pretty obvious that the narrative positioned itself criticising the racist enemies, and portrayed the racial equality activists as rebels who also resorted to violence as a mean to resolve their oppression because it was a war after all, but still a stretch to call them "evil" imo

[(Anonymous)]

I was going to say something like this, but you put it much better than I would have.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to back up the assertion that Bioshock Infinite's Vox Populi were portrayed as bad guys. The game might have meant for them to be sympathetic initially, but they also did a bad job by making the leader into someone who betrayed the protagonist quite evilly. I think this comes down to not exactly direct intention by the game's writers, but because in general the story was not well done.

I'm reminded that on twitter the game's publisher posted a poll about which faction would the audience support, the obvious bad guys (Columbia) or Vox Populi. No one of course wanted to vote for Columbia but the publishers were surprised that no one wanted to vote for the Vox Populi either. The publishers thought they had made the Vox Populi sympathetic, but people were saying that the game shouldn't have made the people fighting against racism into enemies then.

[(Anonymous)]

They made Daisy threaten the kid of one of the white supremacists to paint her to be an equivalent to all the racists in power. They definitely intended for her and her faction to be read as “evil” considering the aforementioned fact and that you mow them down in doves with little to no regard or critical thinking. Like that is the biggest fucking Y I K E S in a game filled with yikes moments.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I'm the anon who wrote the post above you, and you summed up my thoughts way better than me.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Different anon from above:

Or as I've heard a few critics put it: "This is a game that would've benefited mightily from just having ONE black person involved in developing the game's storyline."

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - That's fair enough, I suppose it didn't come across as evil for me though because of the lengths to which poc were oppressed in the game it just came across as though they were resorting to violence because the situation was already extreme. Daisy's motivations were still much more understandable than, say, Atlas in #1 who just was out for his own selfish interest.

And IMO they were not *intentionally* portrayed as evil, it was sloppy writing, like anon before you explained Bioware had intended to make them sympathetic, it just happened to land as "all sides are evil! 1" instead of "even noble motivations can be tainted by violent methods aka all is not fair in war" for the overwhelming majority, which is IMO a far more consistent and sensible point to make, but also sadly requiring more attention and nuanced writing that they were willing to give the game

[(Anonymous)]

Either this is a huge simplification or Bioshock is hugely simplistic idk which

OP

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, they aren’t the only enemies you beat up. In 1, for instance, the final boss is evil by Objectivist standards and undermined their society with manipulative false altruism.

[(Anonymous)]

You’re not missing much. Infinite is bad and ended up pulling a “both sides are bad!!!!” and painted the enslaved black people as enemies for wanting freedom and had their leader threaten an innocent white kid and then have her be killed by the heroes for the sake of ~nuance~ and to further the white heroine’s character development. They tried fixing it with the dlc but it’s pretty obvious how bad the narrative misstepped.

[(Anonymous)]

What do Unitarians have to do with... oh.

[(Anonymous)]

On 2: the problem wasn't that she was utilitarian, the problem she was utilitarian at the cost of innocent people, mainly small children. She was utilitarian up to a point, and that was, "Sacrifice these little girls so I can make my daughter into a memory receptacle." She took the ideal of altruism to the point that she didn't matter if a few lives were lost or completely destroyed, and never once did she submit herself to the experiments because she was a goddamn hypocrite. Sofia Lamb had a messiah complex.

On Infinite: I can see what they were trying to go for with Daisy. They were trying to have a story with Daisy about even those who fight for the greater good can go too far (Daisy trying to kill the good) in their fanaticism, which Bioshock is repeatedly critical about over all of the games. (Fanatics of the selfish lifestyle, fanatics of altruism, fanatics of racism.) The point was that hurting innocents no matter how good your goals are is never okay. That doesn't mean it can't fall flat.