Late during Bioshock, Jack changes himself into a Big Daddy in order to stop Frank Fontaine. In a moment which should have been impactful because of a self-sacrifice on the part of the player-character, the transformation changed nothing aside from a reduced field of view. By the time the fight with Fontaine happens, the player isn't even looking through a fishbowl anymore. The idea of playing a Big Daddy had merit, it’s just in its execution where it stumbles. We find ourselves playing as Delta (a Big Daddy) in Bioshock 2 for this reason. Much of the sequel consists of addressing the criticisms from the first game, but does improving upon Bioshock allow the game to have its own sense of identity?
Playing a Big Daddy recontexualises the relationship the player has with the Little Sisters. Instead of rescuing them, you adopt them, and help them fulfill their Adam collection duties, guarding them from Splicers until they're ready to be cured of their affliction. The player still murders the Big Daddies protecting the Little Sisters, before adopting them. Let's hope there’s little trauma as the girls cry over their dead protector. Aside from the rescue / harvest duality, there’s an additional morality system at play in Bioshock 2. Each level is run by a person connected to Sophia Lamb. They act as an end goal, and an antagonist. To move on, you need to confront them, and the player chooses if they live or die. I always try for the good endings in games with morality systems, and in Bioshock 2, the "good choices" become trickier as the game went on.
Bioshock 2 doesn't punish the player with the bad ending for a single transgression like the first game. Pushing the Little Sisters aside, there are 3 life or death choices the player must make: Grace, Stanley, and Gil. Who deserves to live, and who deserves to die? Let’s go through all three. The reason Grace hates Delta is due to a misunderstanding. Grace projects the pain of her lot in Rapture and the injustices she faced onto Delta, who broke her jaw back when he obeyed his programming, protecting Elanor as a Little Sister. I found it easy to leave her be. Mercy makes Grace realise she’s wrong, and she goes out of her way to aid the player. I waited for such a response from Stanley but it never came. Through my time in Dionysus Park, I learned about Stanley's past. How he manipulated Lamb's followers in her absence and sold Elanor to the Little Sisters Orphanage. It would be easy to say such actions deserved death, but I thought to myself, "who am I to decide who deserves to live or die?” I left him alive. Afterwards, I thought about the silliness of such a question, what with the hundreds of Splicers I've murdered over the course of the game already, but I stick by my decision to let Stanley live.
Gil is where I made a quote "bad" choice. My rationale for letting Stanley live reflects the way the Bioshock 2 team coded the morality system. Who is Delta to decide whether anyone deserves to live or die? Elanor watches after all. She's always watching her father. During my travels through Fontaine Futuristics, Gil left messages addressing his slipping sanity. He begs whoever listens to end his life when they find him. When we come across Gil, he’s a tank-bound pulsating monstrosity. It would be a stretch to call him human, and even more of one to call him sane. Seeing what Gil has become, I thought the humane and quote "right" moral action was to grant the request he made while of sound mind and body. The game takes this as the wrong action. Gil may no longer be human, but we're still not allowed to take a life. I don’t disagree with this stance, but seeing I’m allowed to make a mistake and still achieve the "good ending", I had no idea this was the wrong course of action until researching this video. Perhaps the clouds of blood and agonised screams coming from the tank should have clued me in, but echoing my thoughts on considering the murder of Stanley, what's one more gruesome death when my primary action as a player is to use all manner of joyous plasmid violence on any who stand in my way?
As Bioshock 2 is a refinement of Bioshock, I expected a similar narrative structure as well. I didn't get it. The pivotal moment of Bioshock, (the Andrew Ryan scene) is not at the climax of the game, though it feels like it should be. One reason the last few hours of Bioshock were lacking. Playing through Bioshock 2, I waited for Lamb to have her "Andrew Ryan moment" and I expected it at Dionysus Park. Imagine my surprise hours later when I still hadn't encountered her. I remember saying to myself, "Oh of course, they've addressed many criticisms about the first game, perhaps the climax is at the end where it belongs". There’s a similar moment to the Andrew Ryan scene when the player first encounters Lamb and Elanor face to face, but it’s understated compared to what I expected. It’s just not as memorable. There’s no twist in Bioshock 2 putting everything the player has gone through in a new context. No “Would you kindly” moment. When the player comes face to face with Ryan, he champions his free will by ordering his conditioned slave of a son to kill him. Meeting Lamb contains no traces of her supposed philosophy. She suffocates Elanor to sever her link with Delta, all to complete her plan. Nothing more. Sophia Lamb is no Andrew Ryan.
By this point, I had already checked out because the events of Bioshock 2 are reverse engineered to run alongside the timeline of the first game. Sophia Lamb is meant to be an important citizen of Rapture. There's audiologs of her public debate with Andrew Ryan, how as a psychologist she influenced the downtrodden of the city into forming a religion around her and her daughter. The problem I have? None of it works. It's asking too much of my suspension of disbelief. I've played Bioshock, and yes, the game's explanation is Lamb’s imprisonment during the events of it, but to have not even heard her name until the sequel, and yet she's supposed to be this central a figure? No sir, I don't buy it.
When it comes to Lamb as an antagonist, the question I kept asking is does she believe her own bullshit? The audiologs are full of her philosophy. The power of collective, how Rapture betrays its people, how Andrew Ryan's vision is foolish, and how the current system needs to be torn down for a new utopia to flourish. It sounds persuasive on its surface, but as I heard more from her, Lamb’s message felt hollow and contradictory. It’s accepted among many players that Lamb is running a con. She's amassing power. She's a narcissist who put herself and her daughter at the centre of a religion. One who took advantage of Rapture's vulnerable citizens in order to amass power and influence. While Lamb’s role in the story sets her up as Bioshock 2's Andrew Ryan, if she is manipulating the poor for her own ends, and it is all an act, she's not Andrew Ryan, she’s Frank Fontaine.
I have trouble believing Lamb's rhetoric is all an act because of her plan for Elanor; to use Adam to put all the minds of Rapture into one person. To have this person be whoever Rapture needs them to be moving forward. To be an altruistic messiah to lead the masses to a new utopia. Let's put aside the horror of what happened to Gil for a moment, Lamb planning to do the same to her own daughter (despite the assumption being a Little Sister protects Elanor from Gil’s fate). What’s the purpose of the plan? Even with the combined memories of the brightest minds of Rapture, one person is not a collective. Everyone is not melding and co-existing as one being. The dead are going to live on in one person, and send her insane, causing more harm in the process. Is this just another empty piece of philosophising meant to maintain Lamb's control over her Splicer collective? Is this a power play, maintaining a frightening level of agency over her daughter? It’s possible, because the role of the player is to save Elanor. Are these just the ravings of a madwoman? Has Lamb always had delusions of grandeur? Is what she wants to do to Elanor the latest bad idea from Rapture’s new leader? Is Lamb just a tyrant no one dared say “no” to?
Delusional or a manipulator, since I have no idea how to process Lamb's actions and the reasoning behind them, I feel the same towards Bioshock 2 as a whole. I have no idea what it's trying to say. This disappoints because while Bioshock didn't stick its landing, I knew what it aimed for. The story of Rapture is the story of Bioshock. The mystery of Rapture unveils itself to the player in the first game, and this new outing in the same setting doesn’t offer any new insight. While Rapture is a testament to Andrew Ryan and his objectivist ideology, Bioshock 2 tries to be about the people left behind. This approach explains Lamb's rhetoric, and why the relationship between Delta and Elanor is effective. Their bond is the most memorable part of the game, especially through the final areas. Speaking of their relationship, I enjoyed how Delta wants to protect Elanor because she’s his Little Sister, but after Elanor saves Delta’s life, she puts on the armour of a Big Sister, becoming the one who then protects Delta.
In the end, Bioshock’s greatest strength is Bioshock 2’s greatest weakness; Andrew Ryan. He's still more compelling a character than anyone in both games. Rapture cannot escape the shadow of the man who willed it into being, even this long after his death. While Bioshock 2 has the opportunity to carve its own path, the first stop after the intro is in Rapture's amusement park. A shrine to the objectivist ideology, to Andrew Ryan himself, and to the first game. Bioshock 2 can't escape the shadow of its predecessor, and I’m not sure it ever wanted to. Bioshock 2 may play better, but like Lamb’s rhetoric, nothing about it feels substantial. It’s just paying homage.
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