anjohl: I think you spend too much time on wikipedia.
No Wikipedia, sorry.
None of those similarities would come across to someone who was not either a Rand fanatic, or who exhaustively searches out explanations to every game they play.
If you want a game to deal with serious philosophical issues (which is where the whole discussion started), you might want to consider to actually read some philosophy first. Otherwise the whole thing pretty much flies over your head...which, guess what, is exactely what happened.
Even if you don't catch every single reference (I'm sure I missed tons of them), Bioshock is one of those games that encourages you to actually pick up relevant literature and read up on themes it presented. Which is a good thing, even though you might *gasp* accidentally learn something...
I am reminded of a young second year sociology student who told me he was writing a paper examining the film Alien from the "feminist perspective", specifically looking at it as a "critique of male sexuality". I just about hurled. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and a generic Doomlike by an overachieving, pretentious designer is just a Doomlike.
Ahem. It is a well known fact that from the getgo the Xenomorph was designed as a nightmare version of male sexuality.
Direct quote from Dan O'Bannon, screenwriter of
Alien:
"One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex... I said 'That's how I'm going to attack the audience;
I'm going to attack them sexually. And I'm not going to go after the women in the audience,
I'm going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.
Sometimes a cigar ist just a cigar. And sometimes not knowing what the hell you're talking about is just not knowing what the hell you're talking about (also just about hurling).
