Some model or other
But that's neither here nor there. The important point is that Bioshock 2 shipped with the same console-oriented field of view as the original game. That's amazing enough in itself, given the furore that 2K faced first time around. Sure enough, once again people started mistaking widescreengamingforums for some sort of important authoritative organisation rather than the random collection of self-important twats it actually is. Once again they began bitching and moaning about "horizontal+" and overlooking the actual issue, which is the limited fov which was designed for people sitting on a sofa playing games on their tv, not for the more sophisticated PC gamer.
Unsurprisingly, 2K developed a patch to address the issue. Again. What struck me as particularly amusing is how they have chosen to address the "problem". Bear in mind that when they patched Bioshock the first time, they never really admitted that they were fixing a bug, instead choosing to have a sly dig at the naysayers, suggesting they found the game too "intense". According to reports, the new patch for B2 does indeed apply a "horizontal+" logic to the widescreen cropping. So it's all good, right? Surely all those fucking idiots who raged about people on 4:3 displays being able to see more of the game world than them, the oh-so-select few with their fancy widescreen monitors, can shut the fuck up and crawl back under their rocks.
Seriously, how many people even game on 4:3 displays now? Surprisingly, looking at the latest Steam survey reveals the most common resolution is the 4:3 1280x1024. But if you start summing the results by ratio (which I can't be arsed to do throroughly) then it looks like more are playing at 16:10 resolutions. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the 1280x1024 players are actually playing at the wrong resolution for their display. The idiots. In any case, widescreen monitors are far from some sort of exclusive luxury item available only to a privileged few, as some people seem to believe.
Unfortunately, rather than expanding the horizontal fov with increased aspect ratio, 2K choose to close it down as the aspect ratio diminishes. So players on 16:9 displays experience no change, players on 16:10 see a bit less than they did before, and 4:3 see a lot less. The reason I find that so chucklesome is because it really highlights the two-pronged nature of the problem. All those fucking cocks who moaned about the unfairness of people with 4:3 displays seeing more should be satisfied, but of course they're in the uncomfortable position of realising that the cropping wasn't the actual problem in the first place.
Who gives a fuck what people on different displays see when they play the game? Really, if the game is comfortable and immersive to play, what does it matter to you if someone else sees a bit more at the top and bottom of the screen? Especially in a first-person shooter which a) is not multi-player oriented in the first place, and b) features most of the action on the horizontal ground plane, not above or below you.
So yes, I do think the fov should be adjustable, because people's situations and preferences vary. But beyond that, why do you fucking cunts even care about cropping? If the fov was adjustable within some mad range, like 60-150 degrees, what difference would it make if the 4:3 image was vert-? It wouldn't make any fucking difference, but you can guarantee the same shit-munchers would still bitch about it being "wrong". Or to look at it another way, if the fov was simply more sensible in the PC version, but the cropping was still vert-, why should widescreen players complain? Of course they shouldn't, it should be the 4:3 owners who are up in arms about the fov being too high on their displays but you can bet you'll never encounter that complaint.
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