Review: Bioshock: Rapture
Words by: Marco Fiori | Posted on: Wednesday 24th August, 2011 | Filed under: Features.
A man chooses, a slave obeys. Is John Shirley a slave, bound to the shackles of an existing source material, limiting his creativity in exploring an underworld universe full of eccentricity and lost-hope? Partly.
As with any video game novel tie-in, fans expect service and writing for an audience with pre-existing expectations can prove tricky. Bioshock fans are particularly sacrosanct about their canon, so messing with anything too much could cause issues. Shirley, an extremely proficient writer, is all too aware of these limitations.
As he skirts around the obvious, he manages to add flesh to Bioshock’s scraps of narrative. Throughout the game, the player comes across memoirs, clues and recordings of Bioshock’s tragic history. A city at the bottom of the North Atlantic, a destroyed vision of greatness – it’s all reproduced in this prequel book.
Andrew Ryan, immigrant tycoon, has a vision that many are now familiar with. A 1950s haven from potential atomic warfare – an example of free enterprise, removed from socialism and communism – away from the nosy US government and those than expect economic support. It’s a Mecca for those than believe the world is broken.
Only, as we all know too well, it went wrong. A social experiment that was undercut by the fanatic Sofia Lamb, the crafty Fontaine and the mysterious Atlas. These names will be familiar to fans, as will the supporting Tenenbaum, Cohen, Dianne, Bill, etc, etc. For those without any experience of Bioshock, the sheer onslaught of characters can overwhelm.
Shirley does his best at explaining who everyone is, but often flits between protagonists without any sign of waiting. One minute we’re in Persephone, the next, Andrew Ryan’s office as he grapples with Adam, Eve, Splicers and hookers.
Nobody wins in Rapture – the shadows and spirits that appear in the game are a reminder of what happens in the book. It’s a well rounded novel and one that adds much to the back-story, but often the characters are too complex to fit in effectively. Names come and go, people explode and kill – you could read the book and have little idea who’s important and who’s not.
It isn’t until the end, one that’s sadly rushed through, that we learn the fate of the majority. Character representation is certainly substantial, but some of Rapture’s most interesting plot points are swept under the carpet. Shirley does reproduce transcriptions of the recordings found in the game, building his narrative web around them, but mostly his creation is his, with the game as the backbone for everything.
While several potholes remain, and a lot of events towards the conclusion are left for the game to fill in, the overall structure of the book is strong. Rapture is at its most interesting at its beginning, when the foundations of the city are being laid, the vision of Ryan untouched and the characters unspoiled by greed.
As it goes on, it becomes more about the game, and less about the narrative. This is by no means a bad thing, but again, non-fans will struggle to understand the significance of many of the novel’s incidents. Bill, the cockney mechanic who’s taken by Ryan for his honesty and engineering genius, is likeable and is the glue that holds the city, and book, together.
If you share Bill’s traits, you’ll find yourself warming to him easier – some might find him a lose character, one shrouded in cliché. Overall, his contrast with a maddening Ryan, and the fact he’s a down-to-earth chap among social bigwigs, industry powerhouses, and vicious lunatics, means he’s easy to appreciate.
It might trip towards the end but Shirley does an adequate job considering the guiding hands in play. It’s worth taking another trip beneath the surface to see just what happened to the art-deco Atlantis.
About Marco Fiori
Marco’s been playing games since 1996 and has been writing about them for four years. RPGs are his strong point and he has an unholy love obsession with the Calibri font. Follow him on Twitter @M_Fiori
Xboxer360Scoob on Thu, 15th Sep 2011 2:04 pm
I'm currently reading this – about half way through – and it's definetely an interesting read, if not a little loose. It does feel as if Shirley is trying to pack in as much info as possible (which is good), but trying to represent/flesh out a little bit about a lot of characters you may come across in the game via audio logs etc can get a little tiresome. I would have appreciated a more rounded experienced focussing on a smaller number of characters as opposed to (almost) everyone, but the juicy dialogue behind the game's leading characters (Andrew Ryan etc) gives a satisfying insight to the events in the game…