So I was thinking-
Apr. 22nd, 2013 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI've been replaying Bioshock Infinite the past few nights, now that I have a better clue about which weapons I really need for what, how to handle Vigors, how to use the Infusions and Gear to amp myself up, etc. I've slugged my way through a good portion of the game and last night I shut the system off after landing on the Finkton docks. I'd been thinking a bit about Columbia and its society and how long the Prophet's cult must have been in operation prior to 1893 and what that must have meant for the younger people in town, etc., etc., and then something occurred to me:
Where does Columbia keep its farms?
I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a giant floating city in the skies of 1912 that's been powered by quantum mechanics since 1893. We are not talking about a world of massive realism here. But the game does at least try to establish it as plausible. A lot of resources went into building the city, and originally those resources were derived from the US government's backing, but after the Boxer Rebellion revealed to the world that the giant floating city was basically a giant floating battleship o'doom, the backing was withdrawn and Columbia seceded 'from the so-called Union', to use the words of the Kinetoscopes.
To feed as many people as you see in Columbia you need a lot of food, and to get that much food you have to grow it somewhere. Rapture had the option of harvesting food from the sea, plus they had domed gardens and arboretums to provide air and apiaries to keep the plants pollinated. We don't really see that in Columbia. Lawns and ornamental gardens and trees, yes; farm territory capable of supporting a city of that size and prosperity, no. There's a certain amount of processed food in town- we see boxed cereal and canned beans, for example. Also things like cotton candy. That stuff could be old, for all we know. I can write that off.
But there's ice cream that's said to be made in Columbia, and the hot dogs offered at carts are supposedly of Columbian make as well. That implies cattle or goats or sheep for the first, and pigs for the second- and there have to be farm animals somewhere anyway, unless the shoes are made of canvas instead of leather. There's no horses- they've got mechanical stallions instead- but meat animals? Oh yes, there's meat animals. And heck, if you stop and look at the menu at the Blue Ribbon before you leave the initial area of the game, there's turtle soup on the menu. There's meat animals in Columbia somewhere. Are there outlier islands around Columbia that house the farms, which we never see because it's just not entertaining to have Booker running through cornfield after cornfield and barn after barn? Are there zeppelins that periodically descend from Columbia to collect agricultural tithes from sympathizer communities below, or tribute from terrified communities that don't dare piss off the Prophet?
I'm assuming that a significant number of the trees scattered around Columbia are fruit trees, because they're both ornamental and practical, but there has to be either a controlled environment on an outlying island or a force that descends to the Sodom Below periodically. Booker repeatedly finds different fruits- apples, pineapples, bananas, and oranges. He's arrived at the city in early July. The people in the city don't give the impression of being in a Florida climate in July. Either those fruits are being grown in a greenhouse somewhere we don't see, or they're being grown on a climate-controlled outlier island we don't see (climate control isn't as out-of-time as it might be- Willis Carrier started filing his patents for air conditioning systems in 1906 in the real world), or they're being taken from dirtside. Or possibly the food is being pulled in through Tears, but I'm pretty sure that if that were the case Fink Mfg. would have its name stamped all over every food product in sight because they'd be the ones bringing it in.
There are no signs that I remember seeing in game that mention farms or farming areas, and no mention of agricultural laborers in anything to do with the Vox. The food has to come from somewhere, and so does all the cloth these people use. And now I'm all curious as to where. Which... is probably not what the folks at Irrational and 2k were trying to do when it came to raising questions in the players' minds, but there you go.
Where does Columbia keep its farms?
I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a giant floating city in the skies of 1912 that's been powered by quantum mechanics since 1893. We are not talking about a world of massive realism here. But the game does at least try to establish it as plausible. A lot of resources went into building the city, and originally those resources were derived from the US government's backing, but after the Boxer Rebellion revealed to the world that the giant floating city was basically a giant floating battleship o'doom, the backing was withdrawn and Columbia seceded 'from the so-called Union', to use the words of the Kinetoscopes.
To feed as many people as you see in Columbia you need a lot of food, and to get that much food you have to grow it somewhere. Rapture had the option of harvesting food from the sea, plus they had domed gardens and arboretums to provide air and apiaries to keep the plants pollinated. We don't really see that in Columbia. Lawns and ornamental gardens and trees, yes; farm territory capable of supporting a city of that size and prosperity, no. There's a certain amount of processed food in town- we see boxed cereal and canned beans, for example. Also things like cotton candy. That stuff could be old, for all we know. I can write that off.
But there's ice cream that's said to be made in Columbia, and the hot dogs offered at carts are supposedly of Columbian make as well. That implies cattle or goats or sheep for the first, and pigs for the second- and there have to be farm animals somewhere anyway, unless the shoes are made of canvas instead of leather. There's no horses- they've got mechanical stallions instead- but meat animals? Oh yes, there's meat animals. And heck, if you stop and look at the menu at the Blue Ribbon before you leave the initial area of the game, there's turtle soup on the menu. There's meat animals in Columbia somewhere. Are there outlier islands around Columbia that house the farms, which we never see because it's just not entertaining to have Booker running through cornfield after cornfield and barn after barn? Are there zeppelins that periodically descend from Columbia to collect agricultural tithes from sympathizer communities below, or tribute from terrified communities that don't dare piss off the Prophet?
I'm assuming that a significant number of the trees scattered around Columbia are fruit trees, because they're both ornamental and practical, but there has to be either a controlled environment on an outlying island or a force that descends to the Sodom Below periodically. Booker repeatedly finds different fruits- apples, pineapples, bananas, and oranges. He's arrived at the city in early July. The people in the city don't give the impression of being in a Florida climate in July. Either those fruits are being grown in a greenhouse somewhere we don't see, or they're being grown on a climate-controlled outlier island we don't see (climate control isn't as out-of-time as it might be- Willis Carrier started filing his patents for air conditioning systems in 1906 in the real world), or they're being taken from dirtside. Or possibly the food is being pulled in through Tears, but I'm pretty sure that if that were the case Fink Mfg. would have its name stamped all over every food product in sight because they'd be the ones bringing it in.
There are no signs that I remember seeing in game that mention farms or farming areas, and no mention of agricultural laborers in anything to do with the Vox. The food has to come from somewhere, and so does all the cloth these people use. And now I'm all curious as to where. Which... is probably not what the folks at Irrational and 2k were trying to do when it came to raising questions in the players' minds, but there you go.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-01 05:36 pm (UTC)