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[ab.aeterno]

Atlus at the end of the game turns into the character on the cover of Atlus Shrugged, he even shares the same name. I can't remember every hearing people complain about that element of the wank ending to that game.

...you mean he turns into Atlas, as in, the Greek mythological God tasked with holding up the world, for whom there are hundreds of pieces of art depicting him doing just that? The one for whom Atlas Shrugged is named, and whose cover depicts?

 

[Pifje]

https://twitter.com/IGLevine/status/469437165437747200

The association and connection between the girl and the diver guy is the most peculiar part here, not the fact that the girl could be from the movie. Levine, you dirty bastard. Playing ignorant seems to be a very popular way of avoiding the topic.

 

[DNAbro]

The association and connection between the girl and the diver guy is the most peculiar part here, not the fact that the girl could be from the movie. Levine, you dirty bastard. Playing ignorant seems to be a very popular way of avoiding the topic.

Or you know, it could be a coincidence. But nah let's grab pitchforks and insult people. That is the perfectly rational thing to do.

 

[Dunan]

The bidding on that Yahoo auction is up to 787 yen.

I will bid on it and translate whatever story the Big Daddy / Little Sister cover is about -- assuming the story isn't already a translationof something that was originally in English -- if none of you gaffers are already bidding. If so, I won't bid; no sense in bidding against each other.

 

[sublimit]

Wait, are we really suggesting that an incredibly obscure Japanese magazine would almost certainly have come across his path at some point and that this is just pure coincidence?

Jeez, paranoid Gaf at its worst.

Wait, are we really suggesting that a very popular (in Japan obviously) Japanese Science Fiction magazine may not have come across his path at some point and that this could not be a coincidence?

Jeez, Defence Force Gaf at its worst.

 

[Shengar]

Damn, nice find. Since this is an obscure SF story (?) from Japan, I wouldn't accuse Levine for any plagiarism. You would be surprised how thing like this could be a massive coincidence. It's possible that both Levine and the author of that SF story draw from the same inspiration for the "Big Daddy+Little Sister", we just don't know it yet.

Nah thats something else, heres the birdman:

the cover is just laying out random characters over a background

Someone, please, put a caption on this gif
Fuck everything will be nice

 

[Wesker28]

Anyhow, this thread is blowing my mind

 

[jim-jam bongs]

This thread was and continues to be painfully stupid.

Firstly, the notion that this image was the inspiration for the Big-Daddies and Little Sisters is ridiculous. Did anyone saying that actually read the Kotaku article? Because if so you would have seen that originally the duo looked like this:

There is absolutely no way in which Ken Levine, when brainstorming for BioShock, thought to himself "hey this sc-fi cover is neat, but it would be better if the little girl was a huge rat and the diver was a kendo fighter with a machine-gun".

Secondly, as I said before, the Big-Daddy visual design was not done by Ken Levine. Someone linked the design progression earlier. Wells started with a design which resembled an old diving suit, then spent time looking at experimental suits which didn't all make it into production. His final design was based upon one of those experimental diving suits. Is it easier to believe that a designer would draw inspiration from old diving rigs when designing a character with the ability to walk along the ocean floor for a game set in the past, or that the whole design was lifted from a single image on the cover of an old Japanese magazine?

Maybe Nate Wells did see the image at one point, who knows; but the reaching in this thread is so fucking stupid it burns.

 

[DNAbro]

Wait, are we really suggesting that a very popular (in Japan obviously) Japanese Science Fiction magazine may not have come across his path at some point and that this could not be a coincidence?

Jeez, Defence Force Gaf at its worst.

Yes, that is exactly what we are suggesting. It's not that hard to believe.

Jeez, Hate Gaf at its worst.

 

[Duster]

I think the "fact" two comic strips called "Dennis The Menace" were both started at the same time on opposite sides of the Atlantic by pure coincidence proves such things are possible.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/10/18/the-odd-case-of-dennis-the-menace/

 

[Spirit of Jazz]

...you mean he turns into Atlas, as in, the Greek mythological God tasked with holding up the world, for whom there are hundreds of pieces of art depicting him doing just that? The one for whom Atlas Shrugged is named, and whose cover depicts?

Well thank you for assuming my lack of knowledge due to a spelling mistake, however I don't see how that information's pertinent to this argument? The issue was with direct influence (originality) and Atlas at the end of the game was directly influenced by that specific depiction of Atlas.

 

[ichtyander]

This thread was and continues to be painfully stupid.

Firstly, the notion that this image was the inspiration for the Big-Daddies and Little Sisters is ridiculous. Did anyone saying that actually read the Kotaku article? Because if so you would have seen that originally the duo looked like this:



There is absolutely no way in which Ken Levine, when brainstorming for BioShock, thought to himself "hey this sc-fi cover is neat, but it would be better if the little girl was a huge rat and the diver was a kendo fighter with a machine-gun".

Secondly, as I said before, the Big-Daddy visual design was not done by Ken Levine. Someone linked the design progression earlier. Wells started with a design which resembled an old diving suit, then spent time looking at experimental suits which didn't all make it into production. His final design was based upon one of those experimental diving suits. Is it easier to believe that a designer would draw inspiration from old diving rigs when designing a character with the ability to walk along the ocean floor for a game set in the past, or that the whole design was lifted from a single image on the cover of an old Japanese magazine?

Maybe Nate Wells did see the image at one point, who knows; but the reaching in this thread is so fucking stupid it burns.

The original BioShock idea didn't even have the gameplay concept of these two creatures that live in symbiosis with each other. At some point, they started transforming the story and gameplay into this splicing/Adam idea and went through several iterations, the rat and the "kendo fighter" as well as the sea slugs instead of little girls. The setting also changed from a bunker to an island to an underwater city. So in this case, I very much agree with you - the idea of two creatures in an interdependent relationship in BioShock is much older than the final Big Daddy/Little Sister design and almost certainly did not come from the image from the Japanese sci fi magazine.

Even before Nate Wells started designing a diving-suit-caretaker character, there were already several different approaches to the same idea. Maybe at one point they had some weird mix of the slug and a robot girl (for example, there are robot Little Sisters in some of the concept art) but didn't think it fit very well. I don't find it far fetched at all if at some point someone, even Wells himself, encountered the japanese mag image and thought "Huh, that actually works pretty great, when you think about it." It's basically how research works.

 

[AuthenticM]

https://twitter.com/IGLevine/status/469437165437747200

I honestly find this hard to believe, but I guess I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[AkuMifune]

Seriously tho, it's probably just a coincidence.

Yeah, probably. The image is so evocative though it's not hard to imagine this getting buried in ones subconscious and coming out later in the design process.

But it works so well I'm not sure why people care, or are so defensive of this. Everything is inspired by something.

 

[ab.aeterno]

Well thank you for assuming my lack of knowledge due to a spelling mistake, however I don't see how that information's pertinent to this argument? The issue was with direct influence (originality) and Atlas at the end of the game was directly influenced by that specific depiction of Atlas.

Do we know that? Because my point had nothing to do with your spelling and everything to do with the fact that Atlas in the game is certainly referential to the title of Rand's book as much as it is to the mythological figure both are named for.

I mean, the cover illustration you're talking about looks like a gold Atlas statue. Saying he was directly influenced by a generic interpretation of a well known myth on a single version of a cover seems strange to me. At least the argument about the magazine cover is about a more unique and iconic visual than a statue of a Greek god.

 

[meltingparappa]

To add some context, Osamu "Astroboy" Tezuka once saw a poster for Fritz Lang's Metropolis and decided to do his own comic, based on his impressions of the poster. He even brazenly titled the comic "Metropolis."

The cover image we're talking about is a little girl dressed in one of a small handful of iconic styles for young women at the time, next to a deep sea diver who doesn't have a drill hand or bee grenades or what have you.

If you were to still say that the image is quintessentially Bioshock and has to have been the SOLE source of influence on the final designs, is that really any less egregious/dumb than the final boss being the exact illustration on the paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged? Is art deco artist Nick Gaetano getting some nebulous amount of royalties from every steam sale?

 

[leobebes]

You should have taken an image from some 90s anime, they looked even weirder sometimes. Air's character designs were just a bit strange, even for its time. Laugh if you want though but it also has one of the most heart shattering stories of all time.

Ignoring, the magazine's cover, I always thought that Little Sisters and Big Daddies had some Japanese inspiration. Now that is hardly a bad thing, some great works are often based or inspired by something else, consciously or unconsciously. The first Matrix film borrows a lot of inspiration from Ghost in the Shell, sometimes taking whole scenes. Same thing with Black Swan and Perfect Blue.

I find it interesting that someone mentioned Carl Jung in this thread. You might want to read up on not only synchronicity but also on his ideas about archetypes in general. I get a sense that Little Sisters and Big Daddies are very archetipal in nature. I'm not going to make any conclusions based on my meager knowledge though. The basic idea is that some images and ideas are ingrained in the human psyche, thus it's not impossible for a person with no prior knowledge to have an idea or an image that came from 2000 years ago. It's also not impossible for two people to come up with the same thing, yet beinh completely unrelated and oblivious of each other. I believe there are some documented cases of this.

*ahem*

I wonder what the story behind that image and if it actually ties into a story in a magazine.

Salient points.

It's understandable that some might have taken offense to what I originally posted. But it's true, and yes I did generalize, as I should've been clearer from the start by stating "Some."

Are there some anime and Japanese fans on Neogaf and scattered throughout the internet who are eager to find something, any little nitpicky thing to grind Western art/gaming dominance right now?

Yes.

It might take a keener eye than most to see in passive-aggressive posts and understated comments filled with bias. Hell, I saw it here when this thread first began. If Levine was inspired by the painting, who cares? We all steal, or as you pointed out with youre Jungian example, it could be borrowed through our subconscious. It's also not out of the realm of possibility that it could've been coincidental, its' not like the concept of little girls wearing Little Debbie dresses never existed before, or how menacing we've known proto-diving suits to be.

To the untrained eye, popular Japanese art all looks the same. I don't care how hipster-ish you think you are and care to point out the minute and subtle differences in Manga and Anime. If you ask any 52 year old dude off the street in Europe or the Americas, who owns an elementary grasp of pop culture, they could probably tell your from a single anime drawing that it probably originated in Japan. There's nothing wrong with this fact, either. I just wanted to point out the hypocrisy of some who embrace a style that has been copied over and over and has now become dominantly homogeneous, yet some of these critics are licking their chops by trying to get back at a dominant figure in western gaming/storytelling over their perceived notions of what they consider plagiarism.

And just to show you that I'm fair, I agree with you that the storylines from Japanese pop cultural series or films strive for more originality than American serials or film. Believe me, I know it. I write stories for a living, and if I deviate from common tropes in genres, I'll hear it from some of the fans of the genre because I threw them for a loop.

I think this is an example of artistic and cultural convergent evolution. A biological metaphor would be an Icthyosaurus and a dolphin. One's a reptile, one's a mammal, and both never lived during the same epoch, yet both were shaped by their environment independently and ended up looking very similar due to forces unknown.

 

[Nealand Liquor]

Why are people getting so worked up about this?

Even if the big daddy and little sister characters were inspired from that magazine, who cares? The plot was inspired from Atlas Shrugged. It's still a fantastic game.

Because some people today have to be outraged and offended by something.

 

[2+2=5]

Imo if this image was only discovered recently and not the day Bioshock was announced(more than 7 years ago!) means that not even Japanese people know that book, realistically how many chances are there that a non-Japanese guy saw it?

 

[leobebes]

Because some people today have to be outraged and offended by something.

Like I said in my posts, it runs much deeper than this.

Despite the origin of this thread and the false and inane perception of "plagiarism", it doesn't mitigate what Levine and Irrational attempted and brought forth, culturally speaking, to the medium we all love.

One can't overlook how Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite elicit meaningful discussion in a medium dying for it, all while having solid and entertaining gameplay, even if one feels the art direction for both games was contrived (which I highly disagree). But if the general opinion felt it was contrived, who cares? The games were special for the sum of all their parts, and that's not just my opinion, it's one shared by shared by many.

 

[PandaPedinte]

I just realized Ken Levine also plagiarized Oggy and the Cockroaches

 

[extralite]

Gay vampires, you say?

Should have said male gay maybe, although Rice's books have female couples as well. Anyway, the similarities between Poe and Interview are much more striking than either with Carmilla.

Another common theme is the child vampire who can't grow up. I don't think that's in Carmilla, or is it?

 

[ZackieChan]

Some totally off the wall conjecture in this thread. There's a reason why copyright law allows for independent creation: because it happens all the time.

 

[Tempy]

Some of you people have never had a creative thought process it seems...

 

[revolverjgw]

I remember when Kojima's composer ripped off that Russian composer that nobody has ever heard of. You never know where artists get their inspiration, they can look deep...

Not saying Irrational ripped this off, but somebody definitely could have saw it and been influenced.

 

[foxuzamaki]

Of course it could have been an unconscious inspiration, something they saw once and didn't explicitly remember. .

was just about to say this.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

This could be a coincidence, or something the designer saw deep from the internets or found the magazine long time and liked the idea (unconcious inspiration), or even he could have find it when looking for diver suits and found it in the designing process... I don't give a shit eitherway, the game is not going to turn into a horrible copycat and ken levine into a hack only becuase of this. It's not even a literal copy and would be the same type of thing like getting inspiration of the Shining girls.
BTW it looks a lot more to the big daddy suit from Bioshock 2 than the famous representation of Bioshock 1.

Wait a minute, Big Daddys are called "Señor Pompas" in the Spanish version of Bioshock? Might have to start playing them if true lol.

Nope, thats how the little sisters call the big daddys, but the rest of the characters called them big daddys, without translation.
Im sure the little sisters in the english versions also gave BD a cute nickname for them, if not the translators in spanish would have added an invented characterisation trait to the little sisters.

I just realized Ken Levine also plagiarized Oggy and the Cockroaches

I would never have thought I would find and image of this horrible cartoon in a videogame thread lol

 

[stilgar]

The association and connection between the girl and the diver guy is the most peculiar part here, not the fact that the girl could be from the movie. Levine, you dirty bastard. Playing ignorant seems to be a very popular way of avoiding the topic.

I don't know whether you have anger issues or you don't realize what you're typing, but in both case you should probably take a deep breath.

 

[stargateheaven]

Damn, nice find. Since this is an obscure SF story (?) from Japan, I wouldn't accuse Levine for any plagiarism. You would be surprised how thing like this could be a massive coincidence. It's possible that both Levine and the author of that SF story draw from the same inspiration for the "Big Daddy+Little Sister", we just don't know it yet.



Someone, please, put a caption on this gif
Fuck everything will be nice

9


Its not obscure.

 

[TickleMeElbow]

Japanese-GAF:

Description of the contents of the magazine-
http://kfactory.shonan-seashore.net/SFhtmls/SFM_197307.html


Tell us about "The Abyss" story/

"The Abyss" story is from a past issue (April, 1973). All of those stories in the grid at the top are from past issues, and are reader rating. Looked it up and it's about a space pilot who wanders into a "space where nothing exists", and starts a discussion with a computer about logic and reason and shit.

As for issue 174 itself, it's hard to tell which story the cover art is depicting.

There's a story about a photographer who takes pictures of Japanese archaeological sites because he's tired of taking pictures of dumb models, one about people vacationing on the moon, and another one about businessmen suddenly forming herds and walking into the ocean to die. These were all by Japanese authors.

Then there are stories by non-Japanese authors. One is about a guy who transforms into an elephant on holidays. Another is about super computers running the world, and humans losing the ability to read/write, so they try to mod a "story telling robot" to teach them how to write...or something. The next story is about the known world being destroyed in a "final war", and scientists locking away 3 androids designed to preserve human knowledge (biology, culture, and technical science) in shelters, so that once the global catastrophe subsides, they can seek out surviving humans and pass on their knowledge.

Another story is about a group of people exploring an alien planet, who live on a "living raft" that floats on an ocean. The raft mysteriously becomes violent, and kidnaps the people with a crane. A lone surviving member makes it to land, and encounters a bunch of strange creatures. The final story is from the perspective of a "spiritual organism" who takes over humans, and once the body it took over gets too old, it puts it's "host" in a situation where he/she gets killed, and it moves on to the next person.

So, it doesn't really seem like the cover art has anything to do with any of the stories. Maybe the one where they go to the moon, or perhaps the one about the androids. Hard to say. Maybe there's more details in the full stories, but that's what I got from the review.

 

[bengraven]

I think I can buy it being a coincidence, because if it was a true inspiration it wouldn't hurt anyone for them to admit to it.

 

[magawolaz]

LMAO

 

[rapha1985]

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

 

[extralite]

Well obviously the number of people involved increases the chances that even an unlikely influence could actually be responsible.

Speaking of other superficial yet uncanny coincidences:

Does she look like Mario? That is the protagonist from the movie version of Nerawareta Gakuen. Released the same year as Donkey Kong, 1981.

Miyamoto said, Mario's attire was supposed to show that he is hard working. Maybe the female protagonist from NG is wearing the same combination of clothes to show the changing gender identy during that time.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

Why would Levine lie about this? There is nothing wrong about being inspired by something. Coincidences happen

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Why would Levine lie about this? There is nothing wrong about being inspired by something. Coincidences happen

Cause people would rather insinuate that something nefarious occurred...for reasons.

 

[UrbanRats]

yeah, no way that is not an inspiration to say the least, Levine

great find OP, videogame facts that blow your mind material

Seriously? It's just a coincidence.
I mean Diving Bell suits are a common theme, if you're setting your story under the sea, and the little sisters' appereance is somewhat the stereotypical "little girl" vintage look, as een in the Shining and many other horror depictions, too.

Granted is a close resemblance, but it's totally possible for it to be just coincidence.
Take off the tinfoil hats.

EDIT: Oh wow, the thread is in full carnival of stupid mode right now.
Why the hell would Ken Levine lie about his inspiration? Jesus goddamn Christ, Gaf.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

Seriously? It's just a coincidence.
I mean Diving Bell suits are a common theme, if you're setting your story under the sea, and the little sisters' appereance is somewhat the stereotypical "little girl" vintage look, as een in the Shining and many other horror depictions, too.

Granted is a close resemblance, but it's totally possible for it to be just coincidence.
Take off the tinfoil hats.

EDIT: Oh wow, the thread is in full carnival of stupid mode right now.
Why the hell would Ken Levine lie about his inspiration? Jesus goddamn Christ, Gaf.

Also the Little Sisters were supposed to be slugs in early versions of the game. I guess that's made up by Irrational to cover their blatant theft though.

 

[lefantome]

and another one about businessmen suddenly forming herds and walking into the ocean to die. These were all by Japanese authors.

Then there are stories by non-Japanese authors. One is about a guy who transforms into an elephant on holidays.

Somebody has to find that issue

 

[HiredN00bs]

That Sierra title seems more coincidental than the diver holding a little girl's hand. You have a lighthouse, a kidnapped baby, portals/alternate worlds, and large mechanical birds. That said, nothing can take away from the execution of Irrational. The same can be said of Halo and Ringworld.

 

[Dead Man]

This thread was and continues to be painfully stupid.

Firstly, the notion that this image was the inspiration for the Big-Daddies and Little Sisters is ridiculous. Did anyone saying that actually read the Kotaku article? Because if so you would have seen that originally the duo looked like this:



There is absolutely no way in which Ken Levine, when brainstorming for BioShock, thought to himself "hey this sc-fi cover is neat, but it would be better if the little girl was a huge rat and the diver was a kendo fighter with a machine-gun".

Secondly, as I said before, the Big-Daddy visual design was not done by Ken Levine. Someone linked the design progression earlier. Wells started with a design which resembled an old diving suit, then spent time looking at experimental suits which didn't all make it into production. His final design was based upon one of those experimental diving suits. Is it easier to believe that a designer would draw inspiration from old diving rigs when designing a character with the ability to walk along the ocean floor for a game set in the past, or that the whole design was lifted from a single image on the cover of an old Japanese magazine?

Maybe Nate Wells did see the image at one point, who knows; but the reaching in this thread is so fucking stupid it burns.

You continue to be one of my favourite posters.

 

[zoukka]

There's no shame in using reference.

 

[kswiston]

Those of you who are calling out plagiarism have clearly never read comic books. Even if the obscure 1970s Japanese Sci Fi cover was an inspiration (which I doubt), there's nothing wrong with taking that and going in a completely different direction. Look at how many Superman analogues exist.

Invincible is one of the more popular creator owned series, and it's blatantly Superman crossed with DBZ.

 

[Canis lupus]

Sure is a lot of "coincidences".

 

[Clott]

I don't see why people need to defend this, anyone who has been through the creative process knows you draw upon lot's of references, it's part of the game.

 

[KingJolly]

Bioshock anime inbound?

 

[RiccochetJ]

I can easily see the Shining twins as a inspiration for the little sisters. Cool picture though and maybe it was seen by the design team at one point.

 

[xk0sm0sx]

Not sure if posted, but the cover pic seemed to be entirely unrelated to any of the story in the magazine. It was just a illustration done by the inhouse artist.

Edit : Nevermind, cut away post where the art seemed to be linked to the Abyss story. Then realized I was led into a GAF > Internet > Japanese forum > GAF loop.