IMO, your points require no argument. Realism can be fkn great. However this never was supposed to be a realism sim. So, I think it's silly to get so nit-picky. How realistic is anything in this game? Honestly? A submarine appears from a faint thin blue print in thin air. How's that for verisimilitude, among many other things...
I think you are failing to get an important aspect of the entire argument taking place.
Taking DNA from one thing and injecting that DNA into another thing in expectation that the second will somehow gain the properties of the first is stupid.
It is not a matter of realism, where realism is some sort of indulgence that can be made when it would be convenient (and that's not getting into how one unrealistic thing doesn't excuse the other). The explanation and mechanism described makes no sense and even if it is on an alien planet. The story's suspension of disbelief is shattered which is a problem that can be solved.
DNA is not life essence (see above), injecting DNA around into random creatures does nothing because we know how that works. You are "injected" by DNA every time you eat food but you don't absorb it. Your body actually relies on recognizing and rejecting foreign DNA to work. You don't need to be a biologist to know this. You do not gain feathers from eating chicken or crow cobs when eating corn. This is not some esoteric knowledge of biologists, this is common knowledge.
Having an alternative, better explanation costs the developers almost nothing, especially in this stage of development. It wouldn't even require changing existing game props.
Thank you for summarizing the point I was trying to make in a much, much more eloquent fashion. Bioshock I can, somewhat, forgive for the plasmid thing because, well, they had serious manufacturing set ups just to make those damn things, and had an entire city's worth of the best and brightest to make it happen. Logistically speaking, even with advanced technology the 'dna injector' style device is still unfeasible due to, simply put, the lack of manpower. You may be an unsleeping man/woman, but even with that designing such a device, or even just modifying it to work with unknown creatures who have completely uncatalogued DNA sequences, that might not even have the same type of DNA sequencing as we do is....bizarre at best (for all we know they could be triple helix, or have a fifth or sixth amino acid, where as here on earth it's only GATC, on that world it could be different)
The scientific part could be handed down to specialized super-intelligent AIs that could do it faster than you. They could then analyze and isolate various genes that have a profound effect on organisms.
But even then it wouldn't make sense. Genes are part of a code, but you need to whole code for it to work. Turtle shells only work on turtles because their entire body structure is designed around it. Even with several adaptions from a cheetah would not make you faster because a cheetah's body is specifically designed for those adoptions to work, for those adoptions to not hurt the body (too much) and for them to be useful. Placing cheetah genes in a snail, even if it somehow made sense, would not make snails faster because they don't move the same way.
The scientific part could be handed down to specialized super-intelligent AIs that could do it faster than you. They could then analyze and isolate various genes that have a profound effect on organisms.
But even then it wouldn't make sense. Genes are part of a code, but you need to whole code for it to work. Turtle shells only work on turtles because their entire body structure is designed around it. Even with several adaptions from a cheetah would not make you faster because a cheetah's body is specifically designed for those adoptions to work, for those adoptions to not hurt the body (too much) and for them to be useful. Placing cheetah genes in a snail, even if it somehow made sense, would not make snails faster because they don't move the same way.
Exactly, thus why I said something akin to grafting would work better
Comments
Thank you for summarizing the point I was trying to make in a much, much more eloquent fashion. Bioshock I can, somewhat, forgive for the plasmid thing because, well, they had serious manufacturing set ups just to make those damn things, and had an entire city's worth of the best and brightest to make it happen. Logistically speaking, even with advanced technology the 'dna injector' style device is still unfeasible due to, simply put, the lack of manpower. You may be an unsleeping man/woman, but even with that designing such a device, or even just modifying it to work with unknown creatures who have completely uncatalogued DNA sequences, that might not even have the same type of DNA sequencing as we do is....bizarre at best (for all we know they could be triple helix, or have a fifth or sixth amino acid, where as here on earth it's only GATC, on that world it could be different)
But even then it wouldn't make sense. Genes are part of a code, but you need to whole code for it to work. Turtle shells only work on turtles because their entire body structure is designed around it. Even with several adaptions from a cheetah would not make you faster because a cheetah's body is specifically designed for those adoptions to work, for those adoptions to not hurt the body (too much) and for them to be useful. Placing cheetah genes in a snail, even if it somehow made sense, would not make snails faster because they don't move the same way.
Exactly, thus why I said something akin to grafting would work better