If you are reading this and haven't gotten Bioshock yet, what are you waiting for?  I'm amazed I took a break long enough to come over to the PC and post this.

I had a heated debate with a fellow Ensemble-ite today about the aspect ratio "issue" in Bioshock.  Basically the horizontal field of view is the same in widescreen and 4:3, which is sort of a no-no in standard optics terms.  I'm not quite sure why they made the decision to have a fixed FOV, but the crux of my argument was that just because you can technically see extra pixels in the 4:3 version (since it is taller, and the width of the view is fixed between the aspect ratios), that doesn't mean it is inherently better.  If they designed the game for the widescreen FOV, then the 4:3 aspect ratio is wrong, even if it shows you more along the top & bottom.

So you can argue the FOV in Bioshock widescreen is too small, but IMO you can't use the 4:3 rendering as evidence of that.  Alas, to no avail -- I was completely unable to convince my counterpart in this discussion of that point of view... the "extra" pixels in the 4:3 were just too much for him to get past. 

Oh, and here's a picture of my new Big Daddy figure valiantly guarding my switchbox at work: