BioShock is a "genetically enhanced" action-adventure, horror-themed first-person shooter by Irrational Games. While exploring the underwater dystopia, Rapture, the player is urged to turn everything into a weapon: biologically modifying their own body with Plasmids, hacking devices and systems, upgrading their weapons, crafting new ammo variants, and experimenting with different battle techniques are all possible. The philosophy, architecture, and society of Rapture were strongly inspired by the works of Ayn Rand, especially the novel Atlas Shrugged. The game itself is described by the developers as a "spiritual successor" to their previous PC title System Shock 2. BioShock received high praise in critical reviews for its atmospheric audio and visual quality, absorbing and original plot, and its unique gaming experience.
BioShock takes place in 1960 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where Jack, sole survivor of a plane crash, discovers the entrance to the recluse underwater city of Rapture, at the end of a civil war which left most of this utopia in disrepair. Finding himself in an alien world, he has no choice but to fight for his survival against the Splicers, degenerated citizens addicted to the genetic material known as ADAM, and all the traps laid down by the city's visionary founder, Andrew Ryan. His only help lies in Atlas, a revolutionary man seeking to escape safely to the surface with his family.
At the start of the game, the protagonist Jack is a passenger on an airliner which goes down in the Atlantic Ocean in 1960, sometime after ordered society in Rapture has collapsed. After surfacing, Jack finds himself the only survivor of the crash, and swims to a nearby towering lighthouse on an island. He finds there a bathysphere which descends him into the ocean's abyss and the entrance to the underwater city of Rapture. An Irishman, Atlas, assists Jack in making his way to safety via the service radio found in the submarine vessel. Andrew Ryan, believing Jack to be an agent of a surface nation, uses Rapture's automated systems and his pheromone-controlled Splicers against him. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to use the abilities granted by Plasmids, and that he must kill the Little Sisters- accompanied by their hulking, armored protectors, the Big Daddies- to extract their ADAM. Inadvertently crossing paths with Jack, Dr. Tenenbaum urges him to save the Little Sisters instead, giving him a Plasmid that will safely kill the embedded Sea Slugs in each Little Sister, reverting them back into normal girls. Atlas says his wife and child have been hiding on a submarine and directs Jack towards it. Just as Jack and Atlas reach the bay where it is located, Ryan has it destroyed; an enraged Atlas guides Jack on a mission to kill Ryan.
Eventually, Jack confronts Ryan in his office, where the latter is casually playing golf. Ryan reveals a truth that he has pieced together. Jack was actually born in Rapture a mere four years ago, genetically modified to mature rapidly. He is Ryan's illegitimate son by an affair with Jasmine Jolene, an exotic dancer. Ryan further reveals that, after purchasing Jack's embryo, Frank Fontaine designed him to obey orders that are preceded or followed by the specific phrase "Would You Kindly..." Jack was then sent to the surface when the Rapture Civil War started to put him beyond Ryan's reach. When the conflict between Fontaine and Ryan reached a stalemate, Jack was sent instructions to board a flight with a package and to use its contents, a revolver, to hijack and crash the plane near the lighthouse, enabling him to return to Rapture as a tool of Fontaine. Because Jack was Ryan's son, he could freely use Rapture's bathysphere network, which had been locked out to everyone except those within Ryan's "genetic ballpark". Finally, Ryan has Jack kill him, wanting to die on his own terms. With Ryan's death, Jack realizes too late that Atlas has also been using the trigger phrase to control him. Atlas reveals himself to be Frank Fontaine, who faked his death to throw Ryan off his trail and take control of the city, leaving Jack at the mercy of the reactivated security systems. Dr. Tenenbaum and her Little Sisters help Jack escape through the vent system, where he falls and loses consciousness.
When Jack awakens, Dr. Tenenbaum has already deactivated some of his conditioned responses (such as the trigger phrase itself) and assists him in breaking the remaining ones, among them one that would have eventually stopped his heart. With the help of the Little Sisters, Jack is able to track down Fontaine. The mob boss, having been cornered, injects himself with vast amounts of ADAM and becomes an inhuman monster. Jack battles him, eventually prevailing and allowing the Little Sisters to subdue and extract the ADAM from his body, killing him.
Three endings are possible depending on how the player interacted with the Little Sisters, all narrated by Dr. Tenenbaum. If the player rescued all of the Little Sisters (therefore saving their lives), the ending shows five Little Sisters returning to the surface with Jack and living full lives under his care, including their graduation from college, getting married, and having children; it ends on a heart-warming tone, with an elderly Jack surrounded on his deathbed by all five of the adult Little Sisters.
If the player harvested (and therefore killed) all of the Little Sisters, the game ends with Jack turning on the Sisters after defeating Fontaine, presumably killing them all and taking their ADAM. Tenenbaum narrates what occurred, condemning Jack and his actions, voice thick with anger and contempt. Later in the second ending, a ballistic missile submarine[8] carrying a nuclear missile comes across the wreckage of the plane and is suddenly surrounded by bathyspheres containing Splicers. The Splicers kill all hands aboard the sub and take control of it. If the player saved some of the Little Sisters, but killed a fair few as well, the ending is visually identical to the second one, though the tone of Tenenbaum's voice is a sad one, as opposed to an angry one.
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