BioShock

A recent article on joystiq regarding the moral choices of BioShock has been published.  In BioShock, you are a survivor of an airplane crash in the mid-Atlantic (read this MSNBC article for a full review).  You submerge to an underwater city (a la Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand) of objectivist engineers, businessmen, artists, etc.  But…  Not all is right in Rapture (the name of the underwater city).

Enter Big Daddys and Little Sisters:

The details of these little creatures is not really relevant except that you are told early on in the game that they are not human and should be killed (by your erstwhile savior and narrator, Atlas…  see why I refer to Atlas Shrugged above?  And I will go in to a little detail further down in this post to make a point.)

So, you come across a little girl, bereft of her protector and are given a choice:  Kill her and get more ADAM, a genetic substance that makes your more powerful, and more likely to survive the dangers of Rapture, or, Release her, get less ADAM, some nebulous reward from the creators of the Little Sisters, and a questionable improvement in your self image for sparing a virtual girl who begs and pleads for her life…  and who you later see singing fairy tale songs, exclaiming wonder at discoveries made, complaining about scabby knees, complaining her protector is a slowpoke and should hurry up, talking about falling asleep and more.

So, I’ve played a little over 20 hours of BioShock so far, on my first run through the game.  The first time I played, I forgot to save the entire way through, and the autosave took me past a point where I was doing well with the game, and then the game crashed.  So, long story short:  I had to start over.

My first time through, I harvested 2 of the Little Sisters, got 160 ADAM each.  My second time through, I released the Little Sisters and only got 80 ADAM and a nebulous promise of some future reward.  But, when I reached my 3rd released Little Sister, their creator gave me a gift:  A container of 200 ADAM.

Now, I’ll first admit that killing the Little Sisters was a bit disturbing.  They cry when you kill their protector, they are afraid for their lives, and then you harvest the ADAM.  While it could be argued that you’re not actually killing them, the most succinct explanation of that argument is:  “Little Sisters are terminally ill, kept alive only by the symbiote that generates ADAM.  You’re not so much killing them as removing a terminally ill patient from life support.”  But you harvest the slug for it’s ADAM content, and then you release the girl… to die.

So examine that decision more closely.  Get 160 ADAM per kill, or get 80 per release, plus 200 per 3 releases, plus additional gifts.  That’s 480 ADAM for 3 kills, or 440 for 3 releases, plus an assortment of other items (health packs, “mana” or EVE packs, components for building things, etc.)

For those I’ve spoken to about this before writing this post, obviously my original math must have been off.  I attribute that to the late night hours of game time I’ve been pursuing.  Good thing I’m not a mathematician as a profession, or my day work would suck as a result of playing this game.

I agree with the people who wrote the news article at MSNBC, BioShock is one of those games whose storyline will reverberate in gaming history for years to come.