Recently I played my way through Bioshock, a thoughtful, disturbing critique of Objectivism. Atmospheric, rich in detail, intelligent, and frightening, it’s a great example of the potential of video games to deal with dark, mature themes in an engaging and thought-provoking manner.
The story goes that the protagonist, Jack (no last name), is on an airliner that crashes somewhere in the Atlantic circa 1960, just outside the surface entrance to Rapture: an Objectivist Utopia built under the sea. Descending in a bathysphere, the player is treated to a short propaganda film (“Is man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”) and an awe-inspiring first look at the city under the sea, which consists of huge, water-tight art-deco skyscrapers connected by tunnels, looking as though New York or Los Angeles had been submerged so quickly that the neon lights still glow in the depths (among the many striking images of this scene is a huge whale gliding lazily amid the buildings).
Rapture, we learn, was the creation of a man called Andrew Ryan, who desired to create a haven for the intellectual and scientific elite of society, a place “where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small…” In short, a land of totally free industry, with no laws or Religion, only unbridled creativity. No gods, no kings, only Man.
Once inside the city, however, Jack and the player quickly learn that Rapture is no Utopia. Devoid of any restrictions, man’s baser nature rose to the surface with a vengeance, leading to the rampant drug abuse and nightmarish practices (the very first level deals with a surgeon who determined to push the boundaries of human beauty after the manner of what Picasso did with painting. And yes, that means exactly what you think it means).
See, the scientists of Rapture, freed from ‘petty morality,’ discovered the drug ADAM, which causes semi-controlled mutations. The trouble is that ADAM, together with its stabilizing supplement EVE, is highly addictive and mind-altering, resulting in alarming ‘Splicers’ roaming the derelict city in a paranoid frenzy, attacking anyone who crosses their paths. Andrew Ryan, the city’s administrator, refused to regulate the drug or do anything to stop its spread due to his belief in total autonomy and freedom of market.
So now Jack, guided by the friendly-sounding rebel leader Atlas via a two-way radio, has to make his way through the city to find a way out of there, or, failing that, a way to take down Ryan and his mad dream for good. Along the way, he has to splice himself with the ADAM, which is found in “Little Sisters:” little girls with ADAM producing sea-slugs growing inside them, who are in turn protected by the hulking “Big Daddies:” spliced giants in massive diving suits who have been conditioned to protect the Little Sisters (the Big Daddies are some of the game’s most impressive creations, and are fittingly its most famous element, featured prominently on the box-art). Here we have one of the primary elements of the game: the moral-choice system. In each case you can choose to rescue the Little Sister (by removing the slug and returning her to normal) or you can ‘harvest’ her by killing her and taking the slug. The latter grants you more ADAM, but the former…well, doesn’t involve butchering a helpless little girl. The game has two endings depending on which choice you make.
The above element may be of moral concern to some, understandably so. I believe, however, that the system is necessary for the story the game is telling. The question is “was Ryan right when he said that the only thing that matters to you is you? Will you do whatever you need to survive, or will you show compassion and humanity?” Most people, I think, tend to choose the latter option (in part because you receive more than enough ADAM to proceed either way, so the choice isn’t really that hard). Nevertheless, having the option to murder children, even if it is presented as wrong and evil, is a legitimate moral concern, and the player must decide for himself whether it would spoil the story for him.
On the whole, however, I think Bioshock is one of the more morally rich and worthwhile games on the market today. It’s a story of the dangers of pride and greed, of the horror that lurks in men’s hearts, and of the importance of kindness, family, free will, and (perhaps most importantly) altruism. In short, it’s an utter rejection of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, and that can only be a good thing.
Rapture, we learn, had problems even before ADAM and EVE. For one thing, with everyone set free from any obligations or regulations, maintenance problems quickly began to emerge…which no one wanted to fix. No one was willing to do the menial jobs like plumbing or janitorial work, since they were all supposed to be ‘society’s elite’ and so above such tasks, so the buildings are filthy. The tunnels leak, the bathrooms are frequently swimming, and whole sections of the city are flooded or in ruins.
Then there’s the fact that, once released from ‘petty morality’ the result isn’t brilliant strides in science and art, the result is a nightmarish hell-hole. Artists and scientists pursue their visions with a single-mindedness that leads them to sweep others unwillingly along with them, grinding up their fellow citizens in their own pursuit of happiness. They make some incredible discoveries, but then, rather than trying to find the best, safest, or most worthwhile use possible, they dump them on the market in the most petty, carnal, and unstable form.
Indeed, the city was so heartless, so hostile to any kindness, generosity, or charity that the swelling underclass became willing to follow anyone who would show them any kindness at all. A man who expressed any altruism in Rapture, therefore, would have an army ripe for the taking…
At the entrance to Rapture is a banner proudly summarizing its philosophy: “No God, No Kings, Only Man.” Well, they got Man, alright, and it turns out that there’s a reason we have God and kings in the first place. As C.S. Lewis once noted, “all get what they want. They do not always like it.”
The problem is that an exultation of the Will above all else (“A man chooses, a slave obeys”) is a self-defeating philosophy, because the dominance of the Will always means, eventually, the subjugation of the Will; of someone else’s Will (this point is emphasized a number of times, most notably in the story’s key twist). Saying ‘Will is the supreme good’ means, in practical terms, ‘my Will is the supreme good,’ which is the same as saying ‘I get to do whatever I want.’ It’s the philosophy of the two-year-old in a clever sounding-package.
One of the most interesting details in the game is, typically, one that takes some thought to fully understand. In a world built around self-interest, where every carnal pleasure is encouraged and the needy are dismissed as ‘parasites,’ religion is obviously banned (one of the many ‘regulations’ that undermines Ryan’s broad claims of ‘liberty’). In one level, in which Jack explores a wharf, you find boxes of contraband: Bibles and crucifixes. As time goes on, you discover more and more; hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Often you discover an executed body marked ‘smuggler’ nearby.
Here the game acknowledges the fact that man is not naturally satisfied with himself: man needs God. The people of Rapture, cut off from God and kings and told to be free, freely decided that they would rather like to have God back, thank you very much. They wanted God so much that they were willing to risk Ryan’s wrath to have Him. They wanted Him so badly that thousands and thousands of Bibles and crucifixes were smuggled in, the warehouses on the wharf are chock full of contraband Bibles (interestingly enough, this is the only contraband we see). And these are just the ones that were discovered. The game shows an unusual grasp of human nature in this detail: wherever government has tried to quash religion, it has only flourished. The atheist, much as he may hate to admit it, is always the oddity. The people of Rapture, we see, were almost literally starving for God. Ryan’s perfect vision could not satisfy them.
Rapture’s motto, “No God, no Kings, only Man” is ironic in another way: what, exactly, does Ryan think kings are? Does he think they are some kind of separate species distinct from man? No, kings are nothing more than men, men who, if he were consistent, Ryan would more often than not respect by his own philosophy. Kings are men of strong will who create. There is no distinction between “Kings” and “Man,” as if one were contrary or outside the other. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget that God became a Man as well…
But Ryan isn’t consistent. He is stubborn, unrelenting in his ideals, but he is inconsistent. He praises liberty and free-will, yet more than once he murders people who do not conform to his will (including imposing the death penalty for smuggling and other offenses). He insists that he despises laws, yet bans religion, free-speech, and other such basic human rights.
The truth is that Ryan is everything he supposedly hates: he imposes his will upon others, constraining and depriving them of “the sweat of their brow” just as much or more so than any of those people he so despises. It might be that he was a man of ideals who utterly failed to live up to them when it came to the point, as so many of us do. Maybe. Or the truth may be that perhaps Ryan never actually believed in freedom or liberty or any high ideals like that, despite what he told himself. Maybe he chaffed at laws and regulations merely because they prevented his doing exactly what he wanted. Maybe he built Rapture, not as a place where anyone could be free, but where he specifically could be free to do as he liked. I rather suspect it’s the latter, but it’s clearly a point where there isn’t a solid, easy answer. All we can say is that Ryan’s mouth said one thing while his actions said another. At one point Ryan recounts the story of how he once bought a forest, only to have the state insist he allow the public to have access to it. In response, he burned it to the ground. All that matters to him is himself.
Again, for such an imposing, dignified, sophisticated figure he bears a striking resemblance to a toddler.
He himself, at one point, seems aware of this contradiction. As he watches the utopia he created collapse into anarchy, he asks himself whether he might have been wrong, whether his ideals might be mistaken. The moment of grace is opened for merely a moment before he slams it shut again, declaring that “to question is to surrender. I will not question.” He so determined in his own will, his own chosen course, that he will not allow even the question of truth to interfere. He’d rather win than be right.
As you can probably tell from the fact that I just spent three paragraphs discussing him, Ryan is a fascinating and three-dimensional character; expertly written and wonderfully brought to life by voice-actor Armin Shimerman. If I had the time or inclination, I could probably write a whole essay just about this one character. He may be a heartless, monstrously self-centered hypocrite, but his personality is so forceful and his idealism so absolute that he becomes fascinating. Like a black hole, he’s empty and void, but he draws you in nonetheless. His final scene will probably go down in history as one of the most memorable and remarkable video-game villain show-downs of all time.
Other characters are not as fascinating as Ryan, but are at least well-written and engaging. There’s Atlas, your helpful guide, of whom I can’t say too much without giving away major plot points, but suffice to say he isn’t quite what he seems (there are a number of clever clues to his true nature throughout the proceedings). Dr. Bridgid Tenenbaum, a Holocaust survivor (she was spared because she collaborated with Dr. Mengele), who has since recovered her humanity and acts as the advocate for the Little Sisters. She’s interesting because she is aware of her own former evilness and doesn’t seem to want to escape herself, but only to help the innocent children, basically admitting that she doesn’t deserve or is now incapable of having a normal life. Frank Fontaine, Ryan’s arch-nemesis, who is a criminal mastermind who came to Rapture as a smuggler before deciding that a city that denied all moral and legal regulations would be a true utopia for an opportunistic mobster like himself. Yi Suchong, the brilliant-though-amoral geneticist who created the Big Daddies (and, in a richly deserved moment, discovered for himself just how effective they were). Finally, there’s Sander Cohen, an utterly insane ‘artist’ who does things like coating live people in plaster for statues, murdering his competitors, and rigging pianos to explode if the pianist fails to play his songs right. Almost all of these characters have a surprise or two up their sleeves and only a handful are ever encountered in person: most are met only through radio messages or audio-diaries that are found scattered throughout the levels. For the record, my favorite of the bunch is Dr. Suchong, just for the sheer vindictive pleasure I had in discovering how justice caught up with him.
There are a lot of bite-sized joys in the game: little details that bespeak the care and effort the developers put into it. The way the Big Daddies gently pick up the Little Sisters to put them into their sleeping tubes for a while; the delightfully-annoying vending machines that laugh mechanically when you access them; the incoherent muttering of the splicers before they attack; the way the Little Sisters refer to their Big Daddies as ‘Mr. Bubbles’ and delightfully cheer them on as they try to kill you; the fifties-style cartoons instructing you on how to use each new power. Then there is Rapture itself, which is a triumph of design. Art-deco towers rise out of the ocean floor, gleaming with neon and glowing spot lights, while inside there is nothing but filth and decay as far as the eye can see: rubble blocks doorways, water spills in and pools on the floor, oil puddles every few feet, and charred and disfigured corpses lie every few feet. Everywhere you go is the same sense of ruined opulence, with dim, flickering lights illuminating the plaster-covered corpses inhabiting a rich, beautiful theater, or spacious, sumptuous apartments cut in two by a cave-in from the floor above while the former inhabitants rot on their own dinner tables. The city itself is symbolic of its own history: from the outside, it is beautiful and awe inspiring. Inside, it is a nightmare. Rapture is a whitewashed tomb: inside is nothing but decay and filth.
Bioshock is an excellent game, but it’s not perfect. For one thing, while I appreciate the vast scope and opportunity for exploration, it sometimes becomes all too easy to get lost and hunting through the dark, decaying rooms for the means to proceed can sometimes get oppressive or downright boring. Key information is often delivered via the audio-logs, which can sometimes be almost incomprehensible due to ambient noise, the sounds of combat, or simply the heavy accents of many of the characters, not to mention the fact that the diaries themselves are easy to miss. You can go back and listen to them again, but these can be tedious, especially since the map screen, where they’re found, is rather difficult to navigate properly. Switching between weapons and powers in the heat of battle can be frustrating, and one of the most annoying elements in the game is the need to manually switch between ammo types, meaning that it’s entirely possible to pull up a gun that is out of the selected ammunition, requiring you to switch to a different type while enemies tear into you with machine gun fire. Likewise, guns don’t automatically switch to the next ammo type when they run out of their present type, something that would have been greatly appreciated.
In general, though, Bioshock is a rich, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding experience. The game has a good story, which is told very well. It looks great, has incredible art direction, good writing, and tackles deep, important themes in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. It’s at times smart, scary, and beautiful, while remaining fun to play almost throughout.
Final rating: 4/5
Recommended to anyone who doesn’t mind the gruesome violence and profanity, despite some structural flaws.
Memorable Quotes:
Andrew Ryan: “In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No. A man chooses, and a slave obeys.”
Atlas: “Would you kindly?”
Frank Fontaine: “Life ain’t strictly business.”
Andrew Ryan: “What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks ‘what is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says ‘what will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says ‘watch out, or you’ll step on the toes of God.’”
Andrew Ryan: “There are two ways to deal with mystery: uncover it, or eliminate it.”
Andrew Ryan: “In the end, the only thing that matters to me, is me. And the only thing that matters to you, is you.”
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