#retraux

The year is 1960. In the Mid Atlantic, a plane has gone down in a mysterious accident. The only survivor, a man called Jack, swims across the flaming ruins of the vessel, and finds a strange searchlight nearby. It has a bathysphere that takes him to an underwater city of magnificent architecture. As he descends, a recording plays. One full of promises of prosperity, where people would be free without the constraints put on them by the outside world, be it censorship in the arts, taxes for the commerce or ethics for science. A dream city for the fulfillment of human potential: Rapture.

Too bad by the time Jack gets there, the place is in shambles with the people inside having lost their minds long ago. Along with the now crazed folk refered as "splicers", malfunctioning security machines run amock, hulking metal humanoid creatures guarding little girls with glowing eyes, and there's this strange dispenser of metal srynges. Once Jack tries one of them... his body is altered. What the hell is going on down there?

Developed by 2K Boston (later known as Irrational Games), this first person shooter game can be considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock series on its use of light survival horror and RPG elements, be it through a few moral choices in the story and upgradable skills in the plasmid system(the srynge I mentioned earlier? It alters your body and enables pyrokinesis, telekinesis and some other things at the low cost of some body horror). The setting, on the other hand is mostly, exchanges the far future for luxurious art deco which rests on stark contrast with the mental decay of the people of Rapture.

The half flooded ruins of a dream turned into a nightmare is full of tragic backstories, result of nothing but the hubris and arrogance of the people in charge, and unravelling the mystery behind the important figures of this place is engaging, heartbreaking and more than a little disturbing.

And because it's actually really important to set the tone, this is the full recording:

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone!' I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... RAPTURE. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

Now, this is of course just the basic outline of things. Even with some of it's luster staying behind as time goes on, BioShock has been widely considered one of the best videogames of all time for a reason. A plethora of them in fact, which is why I was hesitant about calling it a horror game initially.

Not because I don't think horror deserves acclaim or be high brow, mind you, but because like some other games or movies (and dysotopian fiction in general), it's simultaneously capable of being frightening and shocking while also not having that being the primary goal of the narrative. In this case, it's more concerned in unpacking many of the flaws of things like the so called objectivist philosophy found in the works of people like Ayn Rand. Indeed; the one silver lining that gives anyone in the story any semblance of fulfillment and happiness in their life is achieved through compassion and community, in sharp contrast with the individualist hubris that doomed the so called city of tomorrow. Even with some warts like the moral choices being rather superfluous (something the game's creator Ken Levine openly admits to), the thematic core of the story stays rock solid after all these years.

Gameplay wise it's a little less impressive, but frankly still interesting to play. The gunplay isn't the punchiest, but the plasmid system makes up for it, being both a primary means of combat and a skill tree which unlocks a few variables that can enrich your playstyle (Wasn't kidding with the body horror though, the Insect Swarm skill in particular is not your friend if you have trypophobia). And while even more... shallow and kinda tacked on, it's always fun to "hack" the machinery in Rapture through simple puzzles either to get items or use defense robots as your allies.

Screenshot of Calvery Stankoff from an unknown episode.

Behind-the-scenes photo from an article ran in Ironton's local newspaper. The character is believed to be Sariah, but this conflicts with accounts from viewers of the show, who say that Sariah was a cloth doll, not a marionette.

Vintage-toon Vector.

40.- Design a new furniture series.

Hmmmm... I'm actually pretty bad when it comes to interior design matters, so I don't have an interesting nor overtly concrete answer for this one. That said, I'd really like more retro sci-fi stuff. :3

...Oh! And more "mad scientist lair" items would be cool too! We have a few of them in New Leaf, but I'd like even more props, like vats of florescent liquid, Tesla coils, shelves with chemicals and/or preserved specimens/samples, and stuff like that.

An imaginative 1980s-style music video of “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye feat. Kimbra. 

Take Note: Although it seems like Gotye and Kimbra officially made this themselves to re-promote their old 2011 hit, it’s actually not the case.

It’s instead a well-crafted fan video made to look like it was created in 1988 using footage from the live concert, radio performance, and archived 1980s videos on top of a 1980s remix of the song. 

It also helped that the video was rendered in SD resolution and with loads and loads of filters to give it that old VHS recording feel that matched the look of the camcorder recordings of 1988.

So, using GIMP, Paintschainer, Piskel and some personal tweaking, I made a sprite of Bombadire, one o my personal fav monsters from @bogleech‘s Mortasheen, in the style of those wonky Gen 1-type Pokemon sprites! Using the actual original art as a base even!

Here’s the actual size, I tried to stick to the 56x56 limit of the original POkemon sprites: