Narrative Flood

Bioshock 2 And The Big Daddy Experience

I still feel bad about having to kill the Big Daddies in Bioshock 2. They never do anything to deserve it, but nobody cares…

Bioshock 2 is an unusual game in many ways. I like it a lot. I liked it when playing. But unlike most games, I like it much more after giving it a while to sink in – to really appreciate what it does, rather than necessarily what I wanted it to be when I sat down to finish it last week. That experience was tinged with disappointment, mostly brought on by just how familiar it all seemed. Gorgeous as the level design is – and by god, it’s beautiful – it couldn’t possibly have the same oomph as the first trip through Rapture, and while the shooting is much improved over the first game, only smashing people with the drill really stood out as a solid Being A Big Daddy experience.

That was while playing it. I had fun, but I was underwhelmed. Having given it time to simmer in my head however, I’m much more impressed. The obvious complaint is that it’s just more of the same, and on one level, yes it is. It’s still a shooter, improved but still very similar, and suffers from a number of the basic mechanical problems as the first game. I wish it was Deus Ex instead.

As a story and a narrative experience though, it’s very much it’s own thing – a game that seems built not on continuing the previous game’s themes, as it initially appears, but on inverting and subverting them at every step. On the grand level, there’s the obvious altruism vs. objectivism fight between Sofia Lamb and Andrew Ryan, which doesn’t quite work, mostly because of Lamb not being a very good character (Ryan was a hypocrite, but Lamb never successfully embodies her philosophy at all), but still sets the tone. After that, you get the more metaphysical concept of the first game’s search for identity transformed into a game about actually forging one, just as the levels themselves present a reversal of fortune – not simply showing us the seedy side of Rapture rather than its ivory towers, but presenting a world where civilisation still clings on, however tenuously, if only because its residents didn’t have anything like as far to fall.

The list goes on, and the longer it does, the more interesting a sequel Bioshock 2 feels. It’s not at the same level as Thief and System Shock 2, but it is definitely in the same spirit. At its simplest, Bioshock was fundamentally about the past – dealing with what happened. Bioshock 2 is about the future. Same setting, same basic style, but seen through a very different lens.

Thinking about it like that, I liked it a lot more. For what initially seems like a slightly uninspired continuation, and one that I won’t deny I’d have preferred to see strike out in a more ambitious new direction, Bioshock 2 turns out to be a very smart game. It’s also one with plenty to talk about, so for this post, I’m just going to be focusing on the bit that jumped out the most for me – how it handled the morality of playing as a Big Daddy, and what the role comes to mean by the end.

In case it’s not obvious: SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE. HERE BE SPOILERS. SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! AFTER THIS, SPOILERS! GOT IT?

A Kill To Build A Dream On

Yes, and she’s not the only one…

A good father’s job revolves around two things: protection and upbringing. This is the heart of Bioshock 2’s morality. Plenty of games offer straight-up good vs evil, and there are others that offer more granularity and shades of grey. Bioshock was a very binary game. Either you harvested Little Sisters and were Evil, or you saved them and were Good. That’s still the case in Bioshock 2. What’s new is its embracing of two extra, much lesser used extremes: mercy and vengeance.

Vengeance is nothing new. Almost every game focuses on it – executing traitors, taking out the dark overlord for whatever horrible crime, or whatnot, with mercy as an afterthought. Bioshock 2 is in the rare camp of games that prioritise and reinforce the concept. It gives you the option for vengeance, and even the justification, but it’s the merciful option it usually holds up first.

That’s interesting on its own. The real twist though is that where Bioshock made a bad attempt at guessing your motivations, Bioshock 2 creates a situation where it doesn’t actually matter. It’s not your opinion of your actions that count, or even the computer keeping score (at least, not within the fiction), but how your decisions appear to an initially neutral third party.

To clarify, in case you haven’t played the game. Throughout the game (technically, at three key points, but let’s maintain the fiction), your every move is being watched by Eleanor, the Little Sister that your character is bonded with. She makes it clear from the start that she considers you her actual father, but it’s only near the end of the game that you realise she’s also learning from your example. If you teach her that the ends justify the means, that revenge is a dish best served with a side-order of mwah-ha-ha, that’s how she turns out. Show mercy and compassion, she learns from that instead. The ending completes the paternal metaphor, as your daughter goes out into the world without you (at least, not physically) to be whatever you’ve brought her up to be.

My Heartlessness Belongs To Daddy

“Well, it’s okay, but it’s no Sander Cohen…

Now, I will say that while I love this concept, the execution isn’t subtle. The main problem is that of the three characters to offer the kill-or-spare mechanic, none of them actually do much to you. For the first, Grace, it’s very obvious that she doesn’t understand what’s going on, and never truly gets in your way, while the second is an odious man who nevertheless has only really wronged you in the backstory, and most players are likely to kill just because he smells of future back-stabbery. The third is a mercy killing, which I did without any lingering animosity.

Thematically, there’s a good reason for all this, but as actual moral quandaries, it would definitely have worked better if characters in question had been more actively in your face. Vengeance without animosity is just pulling the wings off flies – it’s easy to be merciful when you have no real reason not to be. I’m surprised that there wasn’t another choice involving one of the main characters, for instance Sinclair playing both sides for a while, or something involving Meltzer, the father who came to Rapture to find his daughter transformed into a Little Sister, if only to offer a situation where the player had to balance sympathy and anger more directly. As it is, you know you’re actively being ‘evil’, and while the consequences are well handled, there’s never any doubt that there’s a moment of finger-wagging in your imminent future.

(Unrelated: Sinclair not in fact turning out to be a traitor, but rather a more honourable Fontaine, was one of my favourite small moments in the game. Yet again, he’s a massive inversion – not just of the fact that absolutely everyone expected him to be a baddie, but of the usual Rapture mindset. Most people in Bioshock end up damning themselves by taking their personal philosophies too far. Sinclair is one of the few willing to back down from them in the name of what’s right. Even if it isn’t enough to save him, at least he dies with his humanity intact.)

What stuck out the most for me is how this fatherhood element doesn’t simply add a theme to the game, but completely changes its tone. Subtle as a brick it may be, but in pushing you towards the good path, Bioshock 2 ends up with arguably its most dramatic inversion – replacing its predecessor’s cynicism with optimism. For this Big Daddy at least, what really matters has nothing to do with how awesome using the drill is, and everything to do with stepping up to the plate and actually deserving your twice-adopted daughter’s brainwashed love. That’s a kind of sentiment you don’t normally see in FPS games, and a fine example of the Bioshock series continuing to be something more interesting than just drilling zombies through the face.

Although the drill really is pretty awesome.

Maybe next time, it’ll even work against doors.

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