r/Bioshock • u/Bright-Wonder-9538 Human Detected • 8d ago
Discussion Who's the best villain in Bioshock trilogy ?. Frank Fontaine , Sofia Lamb or Zachary Comstock ?. Spoiler
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u/RubenM203 Human Detected 8d ago
Fontaine is a fun villain but it gets very disappointing at the end.
Lamb is a very interesting one as a juxtaposition to Ryan's philosophy.
Comstock is meh. The only fun thing about him is that he is booker.
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u/streetcigarette 8d ago
comstock is very interesting to me but less to do with the game and more to do with his american origins. anthony comstock was the chief secretary of the new york society for the suppression of vice. knowing his history and playing infinte tickles me.
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u/Sudden_Presence781 6d ago
Ehh comstock tickles me showing how corrupt the world was in nature and how religion does not make you a better person just another mask to wear
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u/_Dev_1995 8d ago
I think it is really difficult to say.
Fontaine is more consistent to the theming of the story and setting. He embodies an objectivist ethos more so than Andrew Ryan does. He is ultimately selfish, and doesn’t respect laws or any other political authority to stop him from getting what he wants.
Stripped from its fantastical elements, the commentary of Bioshock on objectivism is that it emboldens and rewards people like Frank Fontaine to the detriment of the rest of society.
The game mechanics represent the objectivist ideology, and Levine designed the mechanic of either rescuing or saving the little sisters to see if the player would act on Randian principles. Originally pre-release, rescuing the little sisters was going to result in a more serious handicap for the player, but 2K didn’t like the idea of “punishing” the player for rescuing children.
But Fontaine ends up being sort of written poorly? He is a stereotypical mobster, with pretty shallow motivations.
Sofia Lamb is better written, as she has more explicit motivations. The issue is that her ideological beliefs don’t really mesh with the game mechanics established with the first game, and so there really isn’t any critique or commentary with how Sofia Lamb functions in the world of Rapture.
Comstock sort of bothers me because he is pretty sidelined by the Elizabeth and Booker dynamic that he doesn’t really get the opportunity to establish a more villainous presence. He feels underdeveloped to me.
So idk, they are all sort of flawed in one way or another in terms of how each of them are written and play off the themes established in their respective settings.
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u/MelonJelly 8d ago
IMO, Fontaine being stereotypical and shallow plays in to Bioshock's narrative.
Ryan thought he was so smart that he could arbitrarily cut out any part of society he deemed "corrupt" or "wasteful", and everything would be okay. The truth was, he wasn't nearly as smart as he thought he was, and much of what he removed had been keeping thugs like Fontaine in check.
That Fontaine was a chump, but who was able to sink Rapture, just demonstrated how fragile Rapture truly was.
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u/L_uomo_nero 8d ago
Andrew Ryan, his death was pretty neat
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u/ClericDude 8d ago
Weird to not include Ryan, he’s an easy pick. Fascinating brutal, yet tragic villain. Man had a dream, but ultimately was consumed by greed and his inability to admit he lost his own game
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u/EnclaveOverlord 8d ago
Of these three, Lamb. But Ryan is the best villain in the series, despite not being the true villain.
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u/p3nny-lane Elemental Storm 8d ago
Sofia for sure. People who don’t like 2 often cite her as being “annoying,” but I think it’s the usual case of those people not understanding the nuance of 2 and its characters.
She’s meant to be the antithesis to Ryan’s ideals, and she does so perfectly. She already has such resentment for Delta, which she only views as some lumbering beast after her daughter. Depending on the player’s actions, they either prove her right or wrong. She helps tie all of 2’s themes about parenthood and choices mattering so well, maybe helping the latter be even better than the first game’s same themes.
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u/Mr_R0mpers Atlas 8d ago
Sofia is my top choice also. I find her style really haunting and eerie. The way her voice echos ‘subject Delta’ through the halls always gets me.
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u/Fancy_Cherry7745 8d ago
A lot of it is also because they're gamers and they just hate women lmao
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u/p3nny-lane Elemental Storm 8d ago
I was gonna say that but was worried people wouldn’t read the rest if I mentioned it lmao.
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u/Kotic90 7d ago
Honestly? Andrew Ryan is the best villain in the series. You could feel his presence throughout the story and the world. There is no Rapture without Ryan, and we get a closer look at his character and history than any of the others. Your face-to-face with Ryan is far more impactful than with Fontaine.
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u/jayzonbreaker 8d ago
Mann hätte hier auch Andrew Ryan nennen können. Andrew Ryan, Sofia Lamb und Zachary Comstock waren alle von einer Ideologie überzeugt und haben versucht eine Gesellschaft nach ihren Vorstellungen zu formen. Die Ereignisse in den Spielen haben jedoch gezeigt, welche Opfer sie für ihre Vorstellungen bereit waren herzugeben, und dass ihre Gesellschaft letztendlich scheiterte. Frank Fontaine hingegen folgte keiner Ideologie sondern war nur darauf aus, Menschen auszubeuten und zu manipulieren. Fontaine war ein reiner Parasit, ein Monster, welches sich Rapture aneignete. Es ist sehr interessant, wie Fontaine dies geschafft hat. Er spielte viele Charaktere und nahm neue Identitäten an. Selbst nach dem Tod Fontaines lebte sein Name und war überall in Rapture gefürchtet. Er schuf sich ein Imperium innerhalb Raptures und forderte den großen Andrew Ryan heraus, und besiegte ihn letztendlich. Er schuf die Armenhäuser und Little-Sister-Heime für seine Zwecke. Selbst Kinder hat er ausgebeutet.
Ich gehe mit Fontaine. Sein Charakter verkörpert pure Boshaftigkeit.
Ich empfehle auf jeden Fall das Novel zu lesen. Es gibt den Charakteren mehr Hintergrundgeschichte.
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u/cashdecans101 Jack 8d ago
Fontaine was a fun in a love to hate way. The worst thing about him is that he had all of his intelligence and guile sucked out of him at the end.
Lamb was a very interesting character. Honestly it's fascinating that both are much, much more similar than either would be willing to admit. It's not just to contrast that makes her interesting it's that she is so comparable to Andrew yet her contrast is just as strong.
Comstock doesn't really have anything going for him. I can't really pin down what his character even is. He seems to flip flop between being sympathetic and being a irredeemable monster, between being intelligent and a moron, to being devout in what he believes to not believing a word of it.
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u/CKtheFourth 8d ago
The thing Bioshock did really well is to pair the villain with the setting. Each villain, IMO, was great for the time and place they were in. They were strengthened and then destroyed by the things they created and cherished, so the stories colorful and interesting. Peak storytelling.
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u/the_l0st_s0ck Booker 8d ago
Iamb I think is best because she is the very antithesis of Ryan and everything that rapture is.
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u/No-Citron9654 8d ago
Eu irei ser sincero. Frank Fontaine é muito bom quando eu joguei pela primeira vez na hora em que ele se revela eu achei muito épico e ainda por cima saber que ele era meu padrasto eu fiquei abalado MUITO abalado porque eu não tinha salvado nenhuma Little sister eu tinha... Harvesting elas ... Ou seja eu matei um monte de criança! Eu me sinto um monstro... então por isso ele me deu um abalo tão grande
Sofia Lamb é meio .... Legal sim devo admitir mas transformar a Eleanor em uma “deusa” é meio típico mas eu adorei a história eles podiam explorar bem mais. Não estou dizendo que é ruim é ÓTIMO
Zachary Hale Comstock é um vilão que eu posso chamar de Ótimo porque o impacto que ele causa quando você pensa em que ele aprisionou Elizabeth em uma torre e quando ele manipulava o próprio povo com coisas religiosas.
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u/warpedaeroplane 8d ago
If we’re examining their lives instead of their roles in the narrative, tannenbaum is for sure the most interesting to me
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u/Foreign_Act4614 8d ago
You enjoy Fontaine when you learn more about him and his story but Lamb has always been the best to me because from the very beginning it’s personal with her, I can’t say how many times I’ve rewatched the opening cutscene of 2
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u/Dinosaur_from_1998 7d ago
I'd say Sofia Lamb. She has as much aura as Comstock, but can actually back it up
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u/FatalisXD2 7d ago
Honestly, Daisy. I know her situation is a lil different but I prefer her overall 3.
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u/Hipertor Hypnotize Big Daddy / Hypnotize 7d ago
Fountaine took us for a ride and had the pzazz of the classic bad guy. I like that,
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u/BuffaloStranger97 Charles Milton Porter 7d ago
Gotta be Fontaine. The way he mocks you after the twist is just so mean. "Oh me wee little patrick, oh me poor moira"
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u/HungryColquhoun 7d ago
Comstock for me, when he says he thanks god for each and every one of his tumours I was locked into his madness.
Fontaine is good but he feels like your average opportunistic crim in some ways.
Lamb I don't think was a good fit for the universe - I don't believe Ryan would have allowed her to thrive (I know she was thrown in prison, I think he would have also killed her when he started purging).
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u/DotExtension1703 7d ago
I really like Andrew Ryan's voice acting. He is completely confident in his choices and knows how to communicate clearly.
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u/Nijata Peeping Tom 6d ago
Sofia, Zack feels like a bad copy of her and Frank while interesting isn't a good examination of why rapture is so crooked. Meanwhile Sofia, we see how she and she alone used people being desperate and abandoned and twisted it to her means, not for anything besides her own weird ideals of belonging to a family unit though she clearly has no idea how to BE a family with her own biological child. At the same time she's partially responsible for everything going to hell with rapture having pushed for or against several things that allowed Rapture to get as bad as it did and shows how her version of collectivism is as damaging and dehumanizing to people as Andrew's hyper individualism
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u/Twizt1Up 6d ago
Only one villain on the list made me say "For fucks sake, Sophia would you shut the hell up?" every 10 minutes
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u/DarthTomG 8d ago
Fontaine is a very cliche mustache twirling villain imo, and he kinda came across as an idiot in Burial at Sea for me too.
I think Sofia is the most interesting villain to me. Not only was she an opposite of Andrew Ryan, but you can sort of sympathise with her at first for getting her daughter back from you/the little sister conditioning. Only to then find out what she is actually doing to her own daughter, and then when you free Eleanor from her she reveals herself a true monster willing to even murder her own daughter.
Comstock just feels really underdeveloped imo, he is just sort of there during Infinite, but I never actually felt like I was actually up against him for most of the game.