Video games have long transcended their borders to reach movies, series, books, comics, paintings and other audiovisual modalities. Although his relationship with the screens has not always been the best, recently we have seen real wonders with Arcane, Castlevania y Cyberpunk: Edgerunners de Netflix, The Last of Us de HBO, Super Mario Bros: The Movieamong other.
Although movies and series are very popular, books and comics have been doing things better for much longer when it comes to adapting video game stories and expanding their lore. And I’m not referring to art books and/or guides, but to stories as good as some of their sisters in video games.
The list is not exactly short, but this time I want to focus on a specific book. It has been on my shelf since 2012, it has been my companion on two trips and the sides of its pages have long had a yellowish tone. I want to talk to you about Bioshock: Rapturean essential story for any fan of the work of art in the form of a trilogy that Irrational Games gave us.
Bioshock: Rapture, before the beginning
The name of Bioshock It is video game history. It’s not an exaggeration. Its importance and impact is not only measured in awards and evaluations by specialized critics, it was also of great interest for art. Some of his concepts and scenes appeared for years in art books (study) as examples of the importance of video games.
The three Bioshocks, including DLCs, have become cult experiences and their history has been shredded to unsuspected limits. And is not for less! Irrational Games used social, economic, and political ideas and concepts that added enormous depth to the story. If we add this to the moral decisions, an amazing artistic section and fun gameplay, we have a perfect and timeless cocktail.
The story of Bioshock It spread beyond video games. Ken Levine, head of the study, he told Kotaku In 2012, he thought about making a series of comics with the sole condition of writing and correcting all the stories himself, but his limited time meant that the idea did not come to fruition. However, a novel written by John Shirley and approved by Take Two Interactive ended up hitting our shelves the same year.
Bioshock: Rapture is a novel whose story is canon and takes place before the events of Bioshock (2007). Its relevance to the lore of Bioshock is not trivial, since it offers an answer to a question that many of us asked when we first saw the underwater city: how on earth did they build such a monstrosity under the ocean?
Without going into spoilers or spoilers, the story follows Andrew Ryan. After the end of World War II, the businessman was not happy with the direction humanity was taking: the high taxes in the United States resulting from Roosevelt’s New Deal policy, religious extremism and other social conflicts, nuclear terror after the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Cold War led to the creation of intelligence agencies and espionage.
The novel tells how Ryan realizes this whole situation and reflects on concepts that until now he believed were basic. He shares many of his reflections on and we see how he shapes his iconic speech in Bioshock:
I’m Andrew Ryan, and I have a question to ask you: Doesn’t a man have a right to the sweat of his own brow? No, says the man from Washington. He belongs to the poor. No, says the man from the Vatican. He belongs to God. No, says the man from Moscow. He belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture. A city where the artist did not have to fear the censor. Where the scientist was not limited by moral triviality. Where the great were not constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can be your city too!
Throughout the chapters, moral and ethical reflections are interspersed with a very interesting (and easy to read) plot about how Ryan begins his plans to create a dream, a utopia called Rapture, initially known as The City that Shines in the Sky. Sea.
I think this novel is essential for any fan of Bioshock because he pays special attention to the people that the businessman chose to build and live in his city: from tycoons and important personalities to plumbers, electricians, architects, artists… Ryan manages to unite people with different ideologies, classes and abilities to his cause .
The only problem I’ve always had with Bioshock: Rapture is that it does not respect certain details and terminologies that we see in video games. Although they are not decisive changes, certainly any fan can easily notice them. In any case, it is a highly recommended reading that you can find in bookstores and other websites at a price of 16-18 dollars, approx. And yes, there are versions in Spanish, physical and digital.
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