A man chooses, a slave obeys.

I completed Bioshock last night, and I’ve got to say, that, despite all the high scores its getting in magazines and on well respected websites, and all the hype that had built up behind it over the past year… I still wasn’t ready for how amazing this game is, and how it forces you to become emotionally invested in it. It isn’t a good game because it has realistic water effects or a deep and interesting combat system, but because, like a great book or a classic film, it forces you to examine your own humanity, and how fragile it is.

There are many nuanced examples of how the game does this, but the most glaring occurs when you capture a little sister. You’re given the choice of destroying her, or saving her. Its hard to explain how having a six year old girl in your arms and her life in your hands makes you feel, knowing that you can prove yourself a monster or a man with a touch of a button. This single aspect of the game is as manipulative as it is genius, and sets the tone for every encounter and interaction I had in Rapture.

The poor deranged souls infesting the under water city have lost their minds, their beauty, their everything. Killing them is merciful, and atones for all their sins, which in many ways, they aren’t even responsible for. They were mothers, businessmen, dancers, actors, scientists, doctors – the best and the brightest the world had to offer. The entire society’s addiction to what they thought was a harmless drug that granted them instant personal happiness turned them all into murderous, hideous psychopaths. Despite all the horrors that occurred at their hands against each other, the game still stirs sympathy for these citizens of a godless Eden. They were all good and noble humans who became slaves to their body chemistry, not monsters driven to destroy without purpose.

Even the game’s main antagonist, Andrew Ryan, proves himself a hero. At first seeming like a paranoid objectivist spook, his genius becomes more and more apparent as the game goes on, and his honorable intentions and magnificent accomplishments render him even more heroic than the character you play. His claims that the culture he built around Ayn Rand’s writings on the Virtue of Selfishness failed due to the society’s weakest members. This seems arrogant at the time, but, two thirds of the way through the game, you may come to agree with him, and perhaps even admire his heroism more than his lack of tact.

Overall, Bioshock is a brilliant and beautiful game. It is a sweeping and moving experience throughout, and is never, ever tedious or boring.

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