Hi, hey, how's it going. I've just started in on my second play through of Bioshock 2, because I forgot to research thug splicers. Not something that I'm complaining about, but as I went through and reached Ryan's Amusement park I realized something about this game. Something that had bothered me the first time I played through but only then understood. It was so powerful that I actually stood up, wrote down my thoughts, then came here (where I lurk like a creepy loner, but only because I'm a creepy loner), registered an account, and am now writing this so that I may share my views with you.
Soo, just for those that haven't played and will, or aren't into it that far, there are some spoilers, and the thing is a couple of paragraphs, so if ya ain't likes the readin' skip this post.
Rapture in slavery
In Bioshock 1, you play a slave trying to awaken from his prison and free himself. In bioshock 2, you are a slave that does not even realize he is helping to imprison himself.
Johnny topside, a man that came to rapture on his own, through daring and force of will found rapture against all odds and perfectly exemplified the traits of humanity that Andrew Ryan extoled. In turn he is betrayed to and imprisoned by Andrew Ryan out of fear of those very same attributes.
He is made a near mindless beast. He is twisted into some sub-human automaton without memory or thought, mentally and genetically manipulated and conditioned to respond to environmental conditions, his body destroyed and remade to be able to adapt and respond without care for itself. Even the very essence of his free will is removed, the supposed choice and capacity to love, and is replaced with an artificial version that enforced its parameters with death. This condition is even worse that the character Lamb's perfectly selfless utopian, because this person has no choice at all, moral or otherwise, but to 'act for the common good'.
At no point does your character address this fact in the game. In Bioshock 1, even though your character is told and demonstrated the fact that he is a helpless slave by Andrew Ryan, you able to free yourself of this conditioning, it is only through providence, deus ex, and the logical assistance provided by one of your creators, Tenenbaum. You do not free yourself, you are made free, and then choose vengeance.
The Truth
In Bioshock 2, You die a slave, having never freed yourself from the manipulations and devices of those forces around you.
Remember all those choices of love you make? Your endless search for your daughter? Remember that your search is a result of Elenor's desire to be free, not your own deliberate choice to do so?
Johnny, now Delta, is hypnotized into killing himself by Susan Lamb. At this point he has suffered grievous mental and physical damage, has no memory, free will or independent thought, and has just been once again subjected to a mind altering event. He is then resurrected, not through his own intentions or some accident, but deliberately by the hands of your very own little sister, now herself free of mental conditioning, but still a prisoner. And she brings you back, though her exterior motivations appear to be love, so that you may liberate her from her prison, her mother, and Rapture as a whole. Free her from her World, as it was. She has not resurrected you so that you may live, she has done so that you may free her.
The mistake it to assume though that your quest to free her is one of a thinking individual. It is not. At no part do you demonstrate any capacity for independent thought or any sense of self.
To begin with, you do not choose to begin this quest, you are told to seek out this little sister that you have been programmed to mentally and physically require, by the very same little sister. She is already primed to control you, now she merely asserts this. As a fact, you are told that you will die if you do not find her. Since you know nothing of yourself beyond you must protect this person without thought, where is the decision, where is the choice? There is none. Even if you were able to refuse the command, you would still die.
Secondly, any so called moral choice in the game can be pointed out to ass animal instinct. The player chooses to harvest or rescue the little girls, either can be reasonably explained by survivor mechanisms or protector mechanisms, consume all available resources so that you can achieve your preset goal, or protect this semblance of something that is familiar and deeply ingrained as a control object.
When you are provided the opportunities to take revenge on the three central antagonist characters, that as well is not a moral choice. An animal will fear and/or attack a person or object that has harmed it, a passive unthinking being will ignore a person or object as it does not matter. Jellyfish snare anything that comes within radius. They are living beings but can't be considered sentient or free willed.
You are instructed to find Grace in the game by your little sister. You do so and she offers you no direct physical confrontation. The Same goes for Stanley and Gil. Perhaps if these characters threatened you more directly, offered a more immediate threat to you, would these be justified as moral choices, to harm or not at the expense of yourself. But either killing them or not is no sign of free will or independent thought. A reaction to something that has harmed you, or ignoring something that offers you no threat
Only perhaps the deliberateness of Gil Alexanders request for you to kill him out of mercy could be considered a moral choice, But Gil Alexander is also one of the programmers and developers responsible for Johnny's condition. Gil has helped turn him into Delta, and perhaps as demonstrated by Bioshock 1 and 2's underlying usage of mental programming, such as Andrew Ryan's pheromone gases, and Dr.Sujong using the 'would you kindly' phrase to have the character's child-self kill his puppy, and then the manner of his unexpected death, Gil Alexander has a form of influence on Delta's mind. After all, only a big daddy would have been able to gain access to those airlocks in Rapture, and Gil inferred that only the right genetic type would be able to help him.
Thinking for the Future
Lamb's assertion throughout the game that you are not a thinking person is a correct one. You are not. Every action you take is one that you have been ordered to take, every place you go is somewhere you have been told to seek out. And the worst of this, the one condemning fact, is that the one that has kept you a slave, the one that has returned you to your state from the sanctity of death, is the one that loves you.
Your little sister, Elenor does in fact act out of love. Her references to you as father, her gifts to you, her resurrection of your body, all can be argued as selfish manipulative acts, and they are, but they are still done out of love.
Recall seeing Hurry Daddy and so forth scrawled childishly across the ground? Doesn't Elenor call you Father in your head? What tugs on the heart more? The clean script of a young woman, or a child's scribbled and uneven letters. Certainly the little sisters write these messages, but as directed and apparently by the character's own admission, by possibly controlling the particular little sister's body, as does Delta near the end of the game, where he assumes complete control of a little sister's body to seek out the parts of armor he has been told to find.
Her gifts, framed in wagons and nestled in with jars of fireflies, are ones of necessity. Weapons and plasmids so you may survive and find her. Childish settings for lethal and poignant toys. She wants you to succeed, but for her sake. She is not a child, but she wants you to view her as one.
She loves you as a child loves the gentle protector. She needs you there for that presence, and Lamb is right when she says that Elenor's love is selfish. She loves you for the way it makes her feel. She herself was conditioned to love you beyond all things, and where is the demonstrative proof that either she or Lamb have broken that conditioning? Certainly she can think for herself, act independently, but what says that her love for you is anything more that the programming that still remains?
I Wuv U!
Though Love is the theme in this game, it is overwhelmed by man's inability to recognize free will from preconditioning. It leaves every character in some quagmire of unresolved emotions and traumas. Many of them, like yourself, are made slaves either directly; as Stanley is turned into an Alpha series, or by environment; as many of the tragic tales of the people in Rapture, and your character's own story, or by psychological imprisonments of their own devising, as the examples of childless Grace and the guilt-wrought Tenenbaum.
Bioshock 2's ending tries to uplift the player with it's message of Love Conquering All, but is made pale by the truth of it, you have died even now a slave, still at the command of others. Even Elenor's abortion of your essence is selfish. You yourself do no live on, but she gains the comfort of your presence always being with her, her selfish love taking even after you have died, which is the only true escape in this game.
Now Alpha, what life would you have had? Who would have restored ADAM removed memories or reversed the surgeries and procedures that not only are completely foreign, but involve processed and materials almost assuredly to be completely unknown to conventional science.
In essence the story of Bioshock 2 is a sad one, one that does not redeem' any character, but only reveals the terrible fact that every person is flawed, and not even through selfless action do we set ourselves apart or achieve even some inner sense of freedom. We are reduced to manipulated genetics and chemicals and strange psychology, every aspect of emotion or thought twisted in some way to reflect back a distorted image of the world.
Soo, just for those that haven't played and will, or aren't into it that far, there are some spoilers, and the thing is a couple of paragraphs, so if ya ain't likes the readin' skip this post.
Rapture in slavery
In Bioshock 1, you play a slave trying to awaken from his prison and free himself. In bioshock 2, you are a slave that does not even realize he is helping to imprison himself.
Johnny topside, a man that came to rapture on his own, through daring and force of will found rapture against all odds and perfectly exemplified the traits of humanity that Andrew Ryan extoled. In turn he is betrayed to and imprisoned by Andrew Ryan out of fear of those very same attributes.
He is made a near mindless beast. He is twisted into some sub-human automaton without memory or thought, mentally and genetically manipulated and conditioned to respond to environmental conditions, his body destroyed and remade to be able to adapt and respond without care for itself. Even the very essence of his free will is removed, the supposed choice and capacity to love, and is replaced with an artificial version that enforced its parameters with death. This condition is even worse that the character Lamb's perfectly selfless utopian, because this person has no choice at all, moral or otherwise, but to 'act for the common good'.
At no point does your character address this fact in the game. In Bioshock 1, even though your character is told and demonstrated the fact that he is a helpless slave by Andrew Ryan, you able to free yourself of this conditioning, it is only through providence, deus ex, and the logical assistance provided by one of your creators, Tenenbaum. You do not free yourself, you are made free, and then choose vengeance.
The Truth
In Bioshock 2, You die a slave, having never freed yourself from the manipulations and devices of those forces around you.
Remember all those choices of love you make? Your endless search for your daughter? Remember that your search is a result of Elenor's desire to be free, not your own deliberate choice to do so?
Johnny, now Delta, is hypnotized into killing himself by Susan Lamb. At this point he has suffered grievous mental and physical damage, has no memory, free will or independent thought, and has just been once again subjected to a mind altering event. He is then resurrected, not through his own intentions or some accident, but deliberately by the hands of your very own little sister, now herself free of mental conditioning, but still a prisoner. And she brings you back, though her exterior motivations appear to be love, so that you may liberate her from her prison, her mother, and Rapture as a whole. Free her from her World, as it was. She has not resurrected you so that you may live, she has done so that you may free her.
The mistake it to assume though that your quest to free her is one of a thinking individual. It is not. At no part do you demonstrate any capacity for independent thought or any sense of self.
To begin with, you do not choose to begin this quest, you are told to seek out this little sister that you have been programmed to mentally and physically require, by the very same little sister. She is already primed to control you, now she merely asserts this. As a fact, you are told that you will die if you do not find her. Since you know nothing of yourself beyond you must protect this person without thought, where is the decision, where is the choice? There is none. Even if you were able to refuse the command, you would still die.
Secondly, any so called moral choice in the game can be pointed out to ass animal instinct. The player chooses to harvest or rescue the little girls, either can be reasonably explained by survivor mechanisms or protector mechanisms, consume all available resources so that you can achieve your preset goal, or protect this semblance of something that is familiar and deeply ingrained as a control object.
When you are provided the opportunities to take revenge on the three central antagonist characters, that as well is not a moral choice. An animal will fear and/or attack a person or object that has harmed it, a passive unthinking being will ignore a person or object as it does not matter. Jellyfish snare anything that comes within radius. They are living beings but can't be considered sentient or free willed.
You are instructed to find Grace in the game by your little sister. You do so and she offers you no direct physical confrontation. The Same goes for Stanley and Gil. Perhaps if these characters threatened you more directly, offered a more immediate threat to you, would these be justified as moral choices, to harm or not at the expense of yourself. But either killing them or not is no sign of free will or independent thought. A reaction to something that has harmed you, or ignoring something that offers you no threat
Only perhaps the deliberateness of Gil Alexanders request for you to kill him out of mercy could be considered a moral choice, But Gil Alexander is also one of the programmers and developers responsible for Johnny's condition. Gil has helped turn him into Delta, and perhaps as demonstrated by Bioshock 1 and 2's underlying usage of mental programming, such as Andrew Ryan's pheromone gases, and Dr.Sujong using the 'would you kindly' phrase to have the character's child-self kill his puppy, and then the manner of his unexpected death, Gil Alexander has a form of influence on Delta's mind. After all, only a big daddy would have been able to gain access to those airlocks in Rapture, and Gil inferred that only the right genetic type would be able to help him.
Thinking for the Future
Lamb's assertion throughout the game that you are not a thinking person is a correct one. You are not. Every action you take is one that you have been ordered to take, every place you go is somewhere you have been told to seek out. And the worst of this, the one condemning fact, is that the one that has kept you a slave, the one that has returned you to your state from the sanctity of death, is the one that loves you.
Your little sister, Elenor does in fact act out of love. Her references to you as father, her gifts to you, her resurrection of your body, all can be argued as selfish manipulative acts, and they are, but they are still done out of love.
Recall seeing Hurry Daddy and so forth scrawled childishly across the ground? Doesn't Elenor call you Father in your head? What tugs on the heart more? The clean script of a young woman, or a child's scribbled and uneven letters. Certainly the little sisters write these messages, but as directed and apparently by the character's own admission, by possibly controlling the particular little sister's body, as does Delta near the end of the game, where he assumes complete control of a little sister's body to seek out the parts of armor he has been told to find.
Her gifts, framed in wagons and nestled in with jars of fireflies, are ones of necessity. Weapons and plasmids so you may survive and find her. Childish settings for lethal and poignant toys. She wants you to succeed, but for her sake. She is not a child, but she wants you to view her as one.
She loves you as a child loves the gentle protector. She needs you there for that presence, and Lamb is right when she says that Elenor's love is selfish. She loves you for the way it makes her feel. She herself was conditioned to love you beyond all things, and where is the demonstrative proof that either she or Lamb have broken that conditioning? Certainly she can think for herself, act independently, but what says that her love for you is anything more that the programming that still remains?
I Wuv U!
Though Love is the theme in this game, it is overwhelmed by man's inability to recognize free will from preconditioning. It leaves every character in some quagmire of unresolved emotions and traumas. Many of them, like yourself, are made slaves either directly; as Stanley is turned into an Alpha series, or by environment; as many of the tragic tales of the people in Rapture, and your character's own story, or by psychological imprisonments of their own devising, as the examples of childless Grace and the guilt-wrought Tenenbaum.
Bioshock 2's ending tries to uplift the player with it's message of Love Conquering All, but is made pale by the truth of it, you have died even now a slave, still at the command of others. Even Elenor's abortion of your essence is selfish. You yourself do no live on, but she gains the comfort of your presence always being with her, her selfish love taking even after you have died, which is the only true escape in this game.
Now Alpha, what life would you have had? Who would have restored ADAM removed memories or reversed the surgeries and procedures that not only are completely foreign, but involve processed and materials almost assuredly to be completely unknown to conventional science.
In essence the story of Bioshock 2 is a sad one, one that does not redeem' any character, but only reveals the terrible fact that every person is flawed, and not even through selfless action do we set ourselves apart or achieve even some inner sense of freedom. We are reduced to manipulated genetics and chemicals and strange psychology, every aspect of emotion or thought twisted in some way to reflect back a distorted image of the world.
