A little over a year ago I did what many normal gamers reluctantly do during this time of year; give into the loads of insane game deals on Steam. I was always interested in the Bioshock games since their release; however I never had a powerful enough computer or the money to purchase either of them. Now, with my nifty Alienware laptop and ten dollars I was able to purchase Bioshock 1 & 2 for my gaming pleasure. After that, though, I fell into another stereotype of Steam game purchases; I didn’t touch the games until months after I bought them.
With a little extra free time over the summer, I decided to finally play through the games to see if they were as good as their reviews said. And while this isn’t a game review per say, I can confidently say that I enjoyed both games immensely, if not the first one a little more than the second. However while playing through the games I couldn’t help notice the stark differences in my attitude towards one of the main characters in each game, the Little Sisters.
Their inclusion in the game dictated what was advertised as a sort of “karma” system, which affected the outcome of the game depending on how you interacted with the Little Sisters. Basically you had the choice of harvesting them for more Adam, a sort of upgrade currency in the game, but killing them in the process, or saving the Little Sisters, which led to less Adam but provided other helpful perks. At the time this system of game play was relatively new to the scene, and its effect of the actual game play ended up being minimal in relation, only changing what ending your game followed.
I am not initially a heartfelt kind of guy when it comes to playing video games, alternatively more of a running over hookers in Grand Theft Auto and mercilessly killing NPC’s that give me lip in Elder Scrolls. So, evidently, when I heard that I would receive more of this precious Adam just by killing these little girls that I had no other affectionate connection to, my decision ended up being a no brainer. And after I finished playing through the first Bioshock, harvesting any Little Sister I could get my hands on, I was still relatively pleased with the alternative ending that I received from my heinous actions.
This would be a boring end to the article if I had not continued on to Bioshock 2 after completing the first. The storyline of the second game follows a Big Daddy, the hulking body guards of the Little Sisters in Rapture, who had his Little Sister taken away from him and was left for dead by the heartless Sophia Lamb. This brings me to the first surge of humanity handed down by this game, and it will not be the last. The Little Sisters that I stayed relatively disconnected from in the first game had a new face, one of a cute, helpless little girl who depended on me for protection.
Now in the first Bioshock, my ability to kill these seemingly innocent children was my ability to not become attached to them as characters. It was very easy in the situations the storyline put me in; an outsider looking only to get home, surrounded by a strange and hostile environment. These Little Sisters had what I needed to survive and escape, and it’s not like they were completely helpless. I was destined for multiple trips to the Vita-Chamber as I tried to defeat their bulking protectors. And it didn’t help that when I finally beat the Big Daddy and grabbed the Little Sister for her Adam, I was forced to look at this:
Yes, Bioshock did little to sway me from widespread child genocide. But along came Bioshock 2, and a sign that I might actually have a heart. First of all, the design of the Little Sister was changed significantly between the games, which might have been determined by a better graphics engine or the attempt to make them seem more human, and I struggle to find another way to describe them other than “friggin’ cute”. It didn’t help that when I picked one of them up for the first time, with Sinclair in my ear urging me to harvest her for the copious amounts of Adam, she looked at me with her innocent, yellow eyes and trusting smile, completely oblivious to the internal struggle I had to kill or save her.
One of the reasons why I made my decision is just that; the Little Sisters in this game are just so damn trusting. I mean, here I come, this hulking, metal man running through a deteriorating city, gunning down any living thing I come across, while she watches helplessly while the closest thing she has to a father does mortal combat with me, and after he ultimately falls she runs up to the side of his lifeless shell of a body, probably traumatized for life after seeing him slain in front of her, and I lug towards her, breathless and bleeding, giving this innocent little girl no reason to think I’m not going to rip her head off without a second thought. But then she looks up at me like this:
I mean COME ON. And not only that, but before I have a chance to decide whether I want to harvest or save this adorable, helpless child to sate my bloodthirsty urge for Adam, I can adopt her as my own, carrying her on my shoulders as I escort her through dying Rapture to help gather even more of this Adam for me. I become to her the Big Daddy that seconds before she just watched me destroy, protecting her from the Splicers and giving her just as much agony upon my death as the one before me. And even after that, once I have used her up for my less than admirable purposes, I can still chose to harvest her, as if the Adam she just gathered for me and the little I’ll receive for saving her isn’t enough.
No, I may be a cynic at times, but there are some places when I can draw the line. So, the same person who didn’t think twice about killing innocent children just one game ago can’t stomach the idea now, because damn you Bioshock 2, the Little Sisters are just too cute, and I have some sort of personal view against betraying such a strong sense of trust. And hey, over the course of the game, the lesser Adam I received for saving them was replaced by other perks, such as gifts of more Adam and helpful Plasmids from the grateful little girls. So I was content with my choice.
And then I beat Bioshock 2. And I’m still content; I saved my own Little Sister as well as the others from the underwater grave of Rapture and I felt warmth in my heart. But I had to check, like I did at the end of the game before this one, what ending did I miss by declining to harvest the little sisters? I enjoyed the first games ending even after my terrible deeds, was this ending the same? And lo and behold, *spoiler alert* activated, if I had harvested all of the Little Sisters, my own, older Little Sister would have adopted my heartless world view and used it to conquer the surface world as her own. AWESOME. Thank you, developers of Bioshock, for making me feel again, even if you have stripped away one of my dreams in the process. Damn you and your cute Little Sisters, damn you.
