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Originally Posted by Dr. Boogie
I disagree on the plot. It feels more like they handed the series off to a different set of developers with different story ideas.
If you take the first game by itself, the story is really ambiguous. They make it seem like the craziness in the city is being caused partly by some kind of old pesticide poisoning people and birds and such, but by the end of the game, you're fighting monsters with escrima sticks.
Then in the second game, they basically explain everything to you. They've left it open for another sequel, but the storytelling is a little uneven. It almost reminds of the way the narrative works in Bioshock, only they stretched it over two games.
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My guess is that Condemned (or at least Ethan Thomas's tale) will be a trilogy. In that sense, I think it's a good thing that they started giving us some of the answers (lest it become the video game equivalent of Lost). I think a lot of it is still ambiguous, though.
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For example, the Oro. We now know that they're the ones behind so much of the chaos in the city, but their deepest motives are still obscured. How deep does their corruption truly run, and are they even the real bad guys in this picture?
Then there's Serial Killer X, who remains a key figure in this plot, a yin to Ethan's... slightly different shade of yin. Whose side is he on? What does he want?
I see it as pieces of a puzzle, each adding up to something new. Investigating a serial killer in the first game led to the uncovering of a sinister, inhuman underbelly of the city; in the second game, investigating that led to the uncovering of a conspiracy that spans at LEAST the entire city, and quite possibly the whole world and much of humankind's history. Whatever's next will probably be even more momentous and insane. |
I also think that Condemned's narrative structure is better than Bioshock; this game has characters and story in addition to a creepy environment.
Besides, even if the development styles from a 2005 game to a 2008 is a little uneven, it's still pretty compelling.