Starting Penetration
I know I talk about Bioshock in every podcast. I think I may have built it up in my own head beyond was it really was. When I first played it it was amazing, all of it worked together to flesh out this world that kept slapping you and force your eyes open with it meaty fingers. The period music that was cheerful, mournful, and eerie; it spoke of happier times, of being carefree, and then dropped in that dark, claustrophobic atmosphere it metamorphosed into at best irony and at worst derision, "How dare they?" it seemed to say, "How dare they believe they were above it all or that they were better. How dare they think they could create something better and have no consequences!" That it all fell apart on New Year's Eve and was somehow stuck in that day, a city that was to make everything better and brighter struck down in the infancy and promise of the new year, the sagging banners, the masquerade masks all of it hanging wretchedly covering the decay that had once been beauty.
Rapture was haunted and you walked through it seeing it's grandeur and its degradation, its promise and its secrets. You could see its unraveling in a way none of its inhabitants could, and you could do nothing to stop it
The first scene, the plane crash, the light house, the bathosphere trip, wondrous and beautiful yet unsettling, and then when the bathosphere arrived in Rapture the horrible helplessness of the murder in front of your eyes and the fear that your were trapped and you would be next. I had never been so pulled into a game, and I had never been so constantly engaged.
The Frags are going to do a special series of segments of looking at this game and others as we would a novel, examining it closely, breaking it down, looking at themes and symbols, analyzing characters and setting. We want to see what games have that can stick with us and how they can speak to us. We are calling this segment "Penetration." Please join us.
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