BioShock is set in 1960. The player guides the protagonist, Jack, after his airplane crashes in the ocean near the
bathysphere terminus that leads to the underwater city of
Rapture. Built by the
business magnate Andrew Ryan, the city was intended to be an isolated utopia, but the discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which can be used to grant superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack tries to find a way to escape, fighting through hordes of ADAM-obsessed enemies, and the iconic, deadly
Big Daddies, while engaging with the few sane humans that remain and eventually learning of Rapture's past. The player, as Jack, is able to defeat foes in a number of ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's own defenses against them.
BioShock includes elements of
role-playing games, giving the player different approaches in engaging enemies such as by stealth, as well as moral choices of saving or killing characters; additionally, the game and
biopunk theme borrow concepts from the
survival horror genre.
BioShock received critical acclaim and was particularly praised by critics for its
morality-based storyline,
immersive environments, and its unique setting, and is considered to be one of the
greatest video games of all time and a demonstration of
video game as an art form . It received several
Game of the Year awards from different media outlets, including from
BAFTA,
[9] Game Informer,
[10] Spike TV,
[11] and
X-Play.
[12] Since its release a direct sequel has been released,
BioShock 2 by 2K Marin, as well as a third game titled
BioShock Infinite by Irrational Games. A remastered version of the game was released on
Microsoft Windows,
PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One on September 13, 2016, as part of
BioShock: The Collection, along with
BioShock 2 and
Infinite.
Setting
BioShock is set in 1960 in the underwater city of Rapture; the city's history is mostly revealed via audio recordings the player can collect during the game.
[13][14]Rapture was planned and constructed in the 1940s by
Objectivist business magnate Andrew Ryan who wanted to create a
utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control. Scientific progress greatly expanded, including the discovery of the genetic material "ADAM" created by
sea slugs on the ocean floor. ADAM allows its users to alter their DNA to grant them super-human powers like
telekinesis and
pyrokinesis. To protect Rapture, Ryan imposed a law that no contact with the surface world was allowed.
[15]
Despite the apparent utopia, class distinctions grew, and former gangster and businessman Frank Fontaine used his influence of the lower class to plan a coup of Rapture. Fontaine profited by creating black market routes with the surface world, and together with Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, created a cheap plasmid industry by mass-producing ADAM through the implanting of the slugs in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine used his plasmid-enhanced army to attack Ryan, but reportedly was killed in the battle. Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets including the plasmid factories. In the months that followed, a second figure named Atlas rose to speak for the lower class, creating further strife. Atlas led attacks on the factories housing the Little Sisters, and Ryan countered by creating "Big Daddies", plasmid-enhanced humans surgically grafted into giant lumbering diving suits who were psychologically compelled to protect the Little Sisters at all costs.
[13] Ryan also created his own army of plasmid-enhanced soldiers, named "Splicers", which he controlled using pheromones distributed through Rapture's air system.
Tension came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958, when Atlas ordered an all-out attack on Ryan. The battle left many dead, and the few sane survivors barricaded themselves away. What once was a beautiful utopia had fallen into a crumbling
dystopia.
[16] Some of the events described above are revisited and expanded upon in the downloadable expansion
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, which takes place in Rapture during the latter months of 1958 and leads up to Atlas' assault on Ryan's forces.
Plot
BioShock's game design drew on
Art Deco for much of its imagery.
[17]
In 1960, at the start of the game, player character Jack is a passenger on a plane that goes down in the
Atlantic Ocean.
[18][19] As the only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse that houses a
bathysphere terminal that takes him to Rapture.
[20]
Jack is contacted by Atlas via radio, and is guided to safety from the Splicers and the perils of the run down city. Atlas requests Jack's help in stopping Ryan, directing him to a docked bathysphere where he claims Ryan has trapped his family. When Jack encounters a wandering Little Sister and its fallen Big Daddy, Atlas urges Jack to kill the Little Sister to harvest her ADAM for himself; Dr. Tenenbaum overhears this and intercepts Jack before he harms the Little Sister, urging him to spare the child and any other Little Sisters he encounters, providing him with a plasmid that would force the sea slug out of her body.
[21] Jack eventually works his way to the bathysphere, but Ryan destroys it before Jack can reach it. Enraged, Atlas directs Jack towards Ryan's mansion through Ryan's army of Splicers and Big Daddies. At times, Jack is forced to travel through areas controlled by Ryan's allies that have now become deranged, such as
Sander Cohen, a former musician that now takes enjoyment in watching the death and misery of others.
Ultimately, Jack enters Ryan's personal office, where Ryan is patiently waiting for Jack by casually playing golf. Ryan explains he fully knew of Atlas' plan, and explains that Jack is his illegitimate child, taken from his mother by Fontaine who placed him out of Ryan's reach on the surface, and genetically modified to age rapidly. Fontaine had planned to use Jack as a trump card in his war with Ryan, bringing him back to Rapture when the time was right; Jack's genetics would allow him to access systems such as the bathysphere that Ryan had locked out long ago. With no place to run, Ryan is willing to accept death by his own free will, quoting one of his own principles: "A man chooses. A slave obeys." He asks Jack "would you kindly" kill him with the golf club, and Jack is compelled to do so.
[22] As Ryan dies Jack becomes aware that the phrase "would you kindly" has preceded many of Atlas' commands as a hypnotic trigger forcing him to follow Atlas' orders without question; a flashback reveals Jack himself was responsible for crashing his plane near the bathysphere terminal after reading a letter containing the trigger phrase. Atlas reveals himself as Fontaine, having used the Atlas alias to hide himself while providing a figure for the lower class to rally behind. Without Ryan, Fontaine takes over control of Ryan's systems, and leaves Jack to die as he releases hostile security drones into Ryan's locked office.
Jack is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters who had previously been rescued. Dr. Tenenbaum helps Jack to remove Fontaine's conditioned responses, including one that would have stopped his heart. With the help of the Little Sisters, Jack is able to make his way to Fontaine's lair to face him. Fontaine, being cornered by Jack, injects himself with a large amount of ADAM, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack is aided by the Little Sisters in draining the ADAM in Fontaine's body and eventually killing him.
The ending depends on how the player interacted with the Little Sisters:
- If the player has rescued all of the Little Sisters (or harvest only one of them), Jack takes them back to the surface with him, and Tenenbaum happily narrates how they go on to live full lives under his care, eventually surrounding him on his deathbed. This ending is considered canon in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.
- If the player harvests more than one Little Sister, Jack turns on the Little Sisters to harvest their ADAM.[23] Tenenbaum sadly narrates what occurred, condemning Jack and his actions. A submarine then comes across the wreckage of the plane, and finds itself suddenly surrounded by bathyspheres containing Splicers who attack the crew and take control of it. The submarine is revealed to be carrying nuclear missiles, with Tenenbaum claiming that Jack has now "stolen the terrible secrets of the world":[24] the more Little Sisters are harvested, the harsher and more furious Tenenbaum's narrative becomes.[25]
Gameplay
A
Big Daddy defends a Little Sister (both on right) from two Splicers, while the player watches.
BioShock is a
first-person shooter with
role-playing game customization and
stealth elements, and is similar to
System Shock 2. The player takes the role of Jack as he is guided through Rapture towards various objectives. The player collects various weapons and plasmids as they work their way through enemy forces. The player can switch between one active weapon and one active plasmid at any time, allowing them to find combination attacks that can be effective against certain enemies, such as first shocking a Splicer then striking them down with a wrench. Weapons are limited by ammunition that the player collects; many weapons have secondary ammo types that can be used instead for additional benefits, such as bullets that inflict fire damage. Plasmid use consumes a serum called EVE which can be restored using EVE syringes collected by the player.
[26] The player has a health meter that decreases when they take damage. The player can restore their health with medical packs found throughout Rapture. If the player's health reduces to zero, they will be regenerated at the last Vita-Chamber that they passed with limited amounts of health and EVE. A patch for the game allows players to disable these Vita-Chambers, requiring players to restart a saved game if the character dies.
[27]
The game provides several options for players to face challenges. In addition to direct combat, the player can use plasmids to lure enemies into traps or to turn enemies against each other, or employ stealth tactics to avoid detection by hostiles including the security systems and turrets.
[28] The player can
hack into any of Rapture's automated systems; the hacking process is done via a mini-game similar to
Pipe Mania where the player must connect two points on opposite sides of a grid with a limited set of piping within a fixed amount of time, with failure to complete in time costing health and potentially sounding alarms.
[29][30] Early in the game, the player is given a research camera; by taking photographs of enemies, the player will cumulatively gain knowledge about the individual foes which translates into attack boosts and other benefits when facing that enemy type in the future.
[31]
The player collects money by exploring Rapture and from the bodies of defeated foes; this money can be used at vending machines to restock on ammunition, health and EVE, and other items; like security cameras, vending machines can also be hacked to reduce the costs of items from it.
[30] The player will also receive rewards in the form of ADAM from completing some tasks, as well as from either saving or killing the Little Sisters after defeating their Big Daddy guardian. ADAM is used to purchase new plasmids from Gatherer's Garden machines scattered around Rapture.
[32] In addition to plasmids, the player will also collect and buy tonics that provide passive bonuses, such as increasing Jack's strength, using EVE more efficiently, or making Jack more resistant to damage. The player can only have a limited number of plasmids and tonics active at any time, and can swap between the various plasmids and tonics at certain stations located throughout Rapture.
[13]
Development
Game design
Lead developer Ken Levine had created Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from
Looking Glass Studios. Their first game was
System Shock 2, a sequel to Looking Glass'
System Shock, and was met with critical success, though it did not prove a financial one. Levine had attempted to pitch a sequel to
System Shock 2 to
Electronic Arts, but the publisher rejected the idea based on the poor performance of the earlier game.
[33] Irrational would proceed to develop other games, including
Freedom Force,
Tribes: Vengeance, the cancelled title
Deep Cover, and the completed
The Lost which was never released due to legal complications, but at this point, Levine wanted to return to a game in the same style as
System Shock 2, a more free-form game with strong narrative.
[33][34]
In 2002, the team had come up with a core gameplay mechanic idea based on three groups of forces; drones that would carry a desirable resource, protectors that would guard the drones, and harvesters that would attempt to take the resource from the drones; these would eventually bear out as the Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and splicers in the final game, but at the time of the concept, there was no set theme.
[34] They began working on creating a setting for the game as to be able to pitch the idea to game publishers.
[34] A 2002 demonstration version was based on the Unreal Engine 2 for the first
Xbox.
[33] This demonstration was primarily set aboard a space station overtaken with genetically-mutated monsters; the main character was Carlos Cuello, a "cult
deprogrammer"—a person charged with rescuing someone from a
cult, and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to a normal life.
[33][35] Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does: "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were."
[36] This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by a
Senator.
[36] The team collectively agreed that this game was not what they had set out to make, and were having trouble finding a publisher.
[33]They considered ending development, but as news about their efforts to make a
spiritual successor to
System Shock 2 began to appear in gaming magazines and websites, the team opted to continue development, performing a full revamp the game.
[33]
By 2004, 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take Two, offered to publish the game primarily based on the drone/protector/harvester concept, giving Irrational the freedom to develop the story and setting.
[34] By this point, the story and setting had changed significantly, taking place in an abandoned World War II-era Nazi laboratory that had been recently unearthed by 21st century scientists. Over the decades, the genetic experiments within the labs had gradually formed themselves into an ecosystem centered on the three groups.
[37] This version of game included many of the gameplay elements that would remain in the final
BioShock, themselves influenced by concepts from
System Shock 2. These elements included the use of plasmids and EVE, the need to use stealth or other options to deal with automated security systems, direction through the environment from a non-player character relayed over a radio, and story elements delivered through audio recordings and "ghosts" of deceased characters.
[38][39][40]
While the gameplay with the 2004 reveal was similar to what resulted in the released version of
BioShock, both design and story underwent changes, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first.
[35] These areas were also issued due to some internal strife and lack of communication between the various teams within Irrational, part of the result of having to expand the team from six to sixty members for the scope of the project.
[33]The environment was considered bland, and there were difficulties by the team's artists to come up with a consistent vision to meet the level designer's goals.
[33] A critical junction was a short experiment performed by level designer Jean Paul LeBreton and artist Hoagy de la Plante, setting themselves aside to co-develop a level that would later become part of the "Tea Garden" area in the released game, which Levine would later use as a prime example of a "great
BioShock space", emphasizing the need for departments to work together.
[33] Levine also found that the cyberpunk theme had been overplayed considering their initial reject from Electronic Arts for
System Shock 3, leading towards the underwater setting of Rapture.
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