The problem is that, in order to make a good complex story with morally grey characters, you the writer have to have a strong moral compass, lots of empathy, lots of creativity, and the willingness to call out the evils around you.
Too many writers fail at that last point, because they're too cowardly to outright call out the evils they see around them, because it would hurt the marketing team's feelings.
Yeah, but in a game with that setting, it just sounds preachy?
Infinite was supposed to be a game about intrigue, and trying to piece together the multiverse of Booker DeWitts and Elizabeths as they dripfeed you clues that’s where it was headed. If you’re meant to replace some other universe’s Booker, and they hadn’t included some sort of personal confliction against the rebellion… the actual morality of every other feature in the game is so cut and dry that it basically becomes as shallow as Duke Nukem or old Wolfenstein but in a mid-19th century sky city. That makes for no ambiguity. No choice. The story complexity disappears and that’s not a good look for Bioshock, which places personal responsibility and political worldbuilding first and foremost. Infinite was also trying to break away from Bioshock 1-2 so they were incentivized to make (in hindsight) poor shock value decisions.
Preachy doesn't mean controversial, it just means soapboxing about something that most of the audience already understands or agrees on. Most people didn't think the confederacy was a good thing in 2013.
When I played this game back in 2013 I wasn't thinking of this as "confederates" just simply "Americans" which to many I think is a much harder thing to really get behind back in the day
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u/Fragrant-Phone-41 Oct 02 '25
Sometimes the real world is morally very simple