User blog comment:Willbachbakal/Co-Op Plasmids: Telekinesis/@comment-3567720-20110727224603/@comment-1330314-20110728143741

I was expecting someone to mention overpoweredness when talking about my Plasmids, only not as late as now. To answer that, I'd like to point out that the difficulty of combat in co-op, i.e. the health, damage output and numbers of enemies is drastically increased compared to the singleplayer, and thus your Plasmids would have to adapt accordingly (especially since you play a Big Sister, the most skilled Plasmid user in the BioShock series).

Regarding the technical bit, I myself am not too sure on how to remedy this at the moment. Either the system would differentiate and cause you to use Telekinesis when you're pointing at an object, and the advanced iteration when you're not, or you'd just click to use Telekinesis instead and it would intelligently recognize which object (or enemy) you'd like to pick up.

As for the "solid energy" thing, the energy cord's not physical or anything, if that's what you're suggesting, it's just there to show you're using Levitation on something as well as give the Plasmid a bit more reactivity, since just lifting up something wouldn't convey a proper sense of movement or physical clout as you'd smash the thing around.

Although I try to stay as close to the BioShock canon, I do tend to follow a rule which is known in TV Tropes as the "rule of cool" - basically, if it sounds really, really good, it's worth adding even if it's not 100% realistic or if it doesn't make too much sense, contextually or not. However, I personally think my Plasmid suggestions here are viable in the BioShock universe, since they don't deviate too far from the main theme in the case of "old" Plasmids and remain consistent with the Rapture universe in the case of the "new" ones.

I've been accused of being unrealistic before, but what struck me in particular was this one case: when I was writing blog posts in my Multiplayer Weapons section, I came up with Big Daddy-sized (my multiplayer takes place in the Civil War and features Big Daddies instead of Splicers) replacements for the Nail Gun and the Elephant Gun: a portable laser and a railgun, respectively. After that, about two or three users quickly complained that such advanced weapons were unrealistic in Rapture, and that I was moving away from biopunk and straight into sci-fi territory. Guess which weapon then featured in Minerva's Den.

The message I'm trying to convey through this story (which, incidentally, is also known on TV Tropes as an "Aesop") is this: when looking at fanfiction, don't judge whether it's realistic or not based on the presence of similar things in-canon, since it might just pop in later in an expansion. Granted, certain things are definitely out, like aliens or space travel or magic or whatever, but it's best to keep an open mind.