2007’s BioShock works because of Rapture. The once-flourishing metropolis is submerged in stories of individual tragedy, while the cracks in the utopia’s ideology have burst open, letting the salt water and the failure of its people destroy its vision of independence.
After 15 years, the overarching and individual stories of Rapture still work so well because of environmental storytelling – the practice of presenting a narrative, character, or emotion to the player through the game space itself. That said, many games have introduced new ways of using the environment to present narratives since then. So what did the original get right, and what can be learned from more modern examples for the upcoming sequel?
