I remember with startling clarity the moment I was introduced to Bioshock, by way of the demo.  Never before, and never since, have I been so instantly enamored with a game.  First Person Shooter is not my favorite genre of gaming, in large part because the story always seems to be an afterthought. From the first moments of that stunningly powerful demo, I knew that Bioshock’s heart WAS its story.

And this wasn’t just any story; it was a story based on philosophy and the writings of Ayn Rand, a certifiable genius.  Within minutes I knew this game would blend my three favorite things, philosophy, literature, and killing people with electricity, into a power shake of gaming gusto.  As usual, I wasn’t wrong.

The game, as all of our readers who don’t drag their knuckles on the ground when they walk already know, turned out to be fascinatingly intellectual, viscerally thrilling, and physically arousing.  Well, maybe not that last one, but the game kicked ass on so many levels that I had to think of new levels that I had previously ignored.  The conclusion was intensely satisfying, and one came away with the feeling that they were a better person simply because they had played a video game.

This is why I will never play Bioshock 2.

You see, Bioshock was all that was necessary.  Often we hear writers pay lip service to the idea that they “do what the story tells them” or that a character “acts that way because of the story,” but most of us can see that this is only a pretentious way for a writer to avoid explaining how they came up with their ideas.

There’s a good reason for this: why someone comes up with this idea or that idea for a story is usually pretty boring.  Basically, they thought it was a cool direction for the story, and they went in that direction.  That’s it.  Apparently, it’s more interesting when they spout a cliché about “following the story’s spiritual river” instead.

For all this talk of understanding story, the people at 2K couldn’t possibly care less about their own story if they decided to make a sequel to Bioshock.  That game told a specific story that had a middle, beginning, and definite end.  Rapture was a failed experiment, and you had salvaged what you could from a ruined civilization.  You saved little girls.  (That still doesn’t sound right, does it?)  Even if you were “bad” and harvested the little sisters, the ending implied a kind of “Little Sister Zombie Apocalypse” and I’m pretty sure that’s not what happens in Bioshock 2.

Furthermore, the first game did something that I’d never seen before; it addressed the arbitrary and random nature of the tasks we performed in video games BY HAVING US PERFORM ARBITRARY AND RANDOM TASKS.  To me, this brilliant bit was as shocking (“Would you kindly suck my balls?”), as the infamous “I am your father” scene from The Empire Strikes Back.

In fact, I would argue that Bioshock’s twist was more groundbreaking since it pointed the finger squarely back at the gamer and said “You only do these stupid things in games because we tell you to.”  And we kept doing them.  This forced us all to think about gaming while gaming.   What are the chances that Bioshock 2 has something as amazing as this to hang its hat on?  If you said, “None at all,” then you win a sackboy.  Not really.  Please don’t e-mail me about that.

So, I will not play Bioshock 2.  I will not play it in a box.  I will not play it with a fox.  Start from scratch, 2K, and get back to me when you come up with a new idea.