BioShock 2 Review — IGN
Take a moment to consider how bizarre this game world really is. It’s set in an underwater sprawl of surface-style skyscrapers, a city called Rapture. Filling the pressurized space is a society founded by an industrialist named Andrew Ryan with the notion that there’d be no limits on what the individual could accomplish. It was all a spectacular failure as the civilization that developed on the ocean floor turned to genetic modification. Gradually their sanity was devoured by their unrestricted experimentation as they ripped each other to shreds and withdrew into private pockets of insanity. It was a city so rotten and morally oblivious it spawned Little Sisters, girls who roamed Rapture’s leaky halls performing the repulsive task of plunging needles into the dead and extracting and ingesting genetic material. Between all the twists of plot was woven an entertaining style of gameplay in the first BioShock, making for a mix of powerful play mechanics, mood, and joy of exploration rarely seen, and one that wound up resonating with the public, making the game a critical and commercial success.
To those who’ve been playing games for years now, it wasn’t exactly surprising that Irrational Games made a great title. The studio had been doing just that since System Shock 2. The bigger unknown was how the folks at 2K Marin, founded with members who worked on the original, would handle the sequel. As it turns out, they did a damn fine job. It’s a rare thing for games built with this kind of big budget to take seriously a thematic cohesion between setting, story, and gameplay, yet that’s exactly what we get here.
BioShock 2, unlike its predecessor, is split into single-player story and multiplayer competitive modes, so in that sense it’s a bigger title. The gameplay, at its core, is largely the same. You use a combination of weapons and special powers called plasmids to battle your way through freakish enemies on a quest that leads you deep within Rapture’s recesses, uncovering all manner of ghoulish secrets on the way. The progression structure remains intact as well, so you’ll move through a number of discrete stages where you’ll be assigned tasks unique to that area before getting back on the path to the story climax.
While it’ll feel initially very familiar, it won’t be long before you start to run into some of the changes 2K Marin has made, all of which are welcome and help refine the gameplay formula to make for a better play experience.
What a weird world.
The story picks up 10 years after the events of BioShock. Jack, the unfortunate soul from the first game, is out. This time you play as a totally different character, a Big Daddy that’s searching for a specific Little Sister. It’s a tale that lacks some of the bite-your-tongue chaos and panic of the first and, because Rapture is a familiar place now, some of the mystery. But it makes up for that by being more tightly wound and digestible. While Rapture’s still packed with lunatics, a lot of what you encounter, from the audio logs stuffed under soaked refuse to the hastily scrawled messages on the walls, for the most part directly refer back to the main events of the game. For the sequel, where there are fewer questions about what a splicer is and why the city failed and more about who you are and what you’re doing, it turns out this kind of approach works well, driving the action with a more coherent momentum.
That’s not to imply Rapture’s lost its endearing madness in transition — far from it. Dedicated players who are willing to wander and pick up all the audio tapes will find plenty of details to absorb, which I won’t spoil. Throughout the experience you’ll find a more clear-eyed approach to bringing the player to moral crossroads in several ways, one of the more obvious examples of which has to do with the Little Sisters. Big Daddies, in case you aren’t familiar with BioShock’s fiction, were created to protect the girls. Since you actually play as one of these giant armored monsters in BioShock 2, the connection is strengthened. You’re no longer an outsider looking in at an inexplicably strange relationship dynamic; you’re the overprotective parent of the pair. In that sense, it makes harvesting the sisters for their Adam (killing them so you can upgrade yourself), even more reprehensible, again reinforcing a sturdier system of moral choice.
The weapons of BioShock 2.
If you don’t want to harvest, you can choose to adopt one of the Little Sisters instead. This leads into defense sequences where you’ll perform the role of other wandering Big Daddies seen in Rapture, standing guard while the girl pulls Adam out of the dead and blasting away all the splicers that invariably try to interrupt the process. With a nice array of defensive options in your arsenal, from hacked security bots to trap bolts and rivets and mini-turrets, in addition to all your regular offensive options, these sequences can be a lot of fun. Alongside the Big Daddy battles and more challenging Big Sister encounters, they serve as yet another opportunity to dig into your deep arsenal of plasmid powers and multiple ammunition types. If the thought of a defense sequence makes you slightly nauseous, it should be reassuring to hear you can skip them entirely, the cost being that you just missed out on a bunch of Adam.
The more you dig into BioShock 2, the more you’ll find to like.
While BioShock was a statement game and served as evidence that creativity doesn’t come at the cost of commercial success, BioShock 2 follows along a familiar path for sequels. It doesn’t take extreme liberties with elements that worked before; it improves them in simple but effective ways. No longer do you have to switch between active plasmids and weapons; they’re just both up at once so you can shoot and shock without an irritating swap. No longer does the research camera require you to dance around avoiding enemy fire while snapping pictures. Instead, it works like a video recorder, and lets you fight as you normally would while it records your actions. Gone is the pipe hacking mini-game, replaced by a real-time variation that keeps the action going as you take over flying robots, turrets, and security cameras. All these changes contribute to a less fragmented flow and, along with the smoother narrative, a more unified experience.
The way weapons and plasmids are upgraded has also been given some attention, as you now upgrade things like your double-barreled shotgun and launcher in more significant ways.
The first two upgrade tiers make the weapon more effective in combat, and the next unlocks a special function, such as fire damage from your rivet gun and cluster explosives with your launcher. It’s not a huge change, but it adds an extra carrot to chase after on your way through the entertaining story. For controlling the action, the default setup puts all your plasmids on the function keys and weapons on the number keys. Weapons can then be scrolled through with the mouse wheel and plasmids cycled with Q and Z, and naturally you can rearrange the individual bindings if you’d like to. Since both weapons and plasmids are active at the same time, you just use left mouse button to fire and right mouse to blast out your special abilities. The effect of this compared to the console versions is that it’s a little more hectic when going into a fight, as you won’t be pausing the action and picking weapons and plasmids from a radial menu, but doing it all in real time.
The joys of genetic modification.
Plasmids have been given an overhaul, as they now alter in function as you purchase additional tiers. For instance, your Insect Swarm plasmid will initially daze and injure enemies. Upgrade it all the way and anyone killed by the bugs will turn into a kind of living bomb, spewing out more stingers at any enemies that pass by the corpse. These added wrinkles to the upgrade system, in addition to the wide array of tonics you can find and equip for passive bonuses, give you a better sense of progression and achievement as you move forward. They may even be enough to get you to play through again while following different upgrade tracks.
Like many sequels, what you get with BioShock 2 is a number of tweaks and improvements to gameplay. When it comes to story, unfortunately, none of the characters introduced in BioShock 2 are quite as fascinating as Andrew Ryan, though you will still hear from him quite a bit through audio tapes. A new lord has taken over Rapture named Sofia Lamb.
She’s obsessed with bringing into existence a utopian society in which compassion is the keystone, where the sense of self is entirely snuffed out and where everyone instinctually strives to act in accordance to what’s beneficial to the whole. In practice this meant the development of a cult following in Rapture diametrically opposed to Andrew Ryan’s belief in progress through the ambition and determination of the individual. It’s a simple but effective foil for the game, and if you’re picking up the audio recordings you’ll hear more detail of how Ryan worked to silence Lamb and the ways in which your story is wrapped up in the power struggle and your origins.
BioShock 2 has an online multiplayer mode?
While the new personalities in the game aren’t as captivating and the setting doesn’t possess the kind of mystique that was established so powerfully in the original, the way in which your actions affect the world is handled more effectively. Lamb tracks your progress through Rapture, and due to her influence she’s managed to whip up the splicers into a religious froth.
No longer do they seem as broken and pathetic as they once did. Instead they’re linked by a purpose loosely associated with a warped take on traditional family values, which again ties into your role as you relate to the Little Sisters. There are more moments in BioShock 2 where you’ll be forced to ask yourself a question not too often considered when playing a AAA first-person shooter. Are you a single-minded killer, or are you capable of empathy? Do pause to consider how your actions might affect those around you, or do you obliterate everything in sight?
You’ll see a lot of familiar enemies here as splicers surge at you with guns and melee weapons while shrieking and giggling, but you’ll also find a few new opponents. Bulky brute splicers take far more damage to bring down and you’ll see new types of Big Daddies as your struggle with Lamb progresses towards its climax. Then there are the Big Sisters. These skinny diving suits fight with ferocity unmatched in Rapture, and in addition to charging directly at you, they’ll also resort to plasmid use to try to put you out of commission.
Overall this means you’ll be squaring off against a wide variety of foes with a nice mix of offensive behaviors, something those who played the first game with its more limited range of enemy types are sure to appreciate. Should the combat prove too challenging, death in BioShock 2 works similarly to BioShock, as there are Vita-Chambers that serve as respawn points throughout the game. If those bother you, however, there is the option to turn them off at any time and rely more on reloading your save files. I’d also recommend veteran gamers bump the difficulty up to hard, which can be done at any time during play.
Rapture’s halls aren’t quite the visual spectacle they were when we saw them back in 2007, but the subaquatic city is still a terrifically detailed and engrossing setting. Water ripples down walls and pours from ceilings, blurring your vision, a reinforcement of your precarious position and foggy understanding of events within a city that, from the looks of things, should have imploded long ago.
It’s a reminder of the fragility of the human condition and how philosophical ideals, no matter how well-intentioned, will crack and seep into nothingness when put up against the eternal advance of the forces of nature. If you’ve got hardware that’s powerful enough, it also shouldn’t be too surprising to hear that this version of the game is noticeably sharper than on consoles and loads levels more quickly. I was running the game on a rig with a Core i7 960 3.2 GHz CPU, 2 GeForce GTX 260s in SLI, and 6 GB of RAM with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (obviously quite a bit of power) and the game was running smoothly with maxed out graphical settings at 1920 x 1200 resolution.
The sound meshes well with the rest, as the creaking and groaning of the city mixed with muted shrieks makes for a backdrop that establishes the idea that there’s much more going on in Rapture than what you can see. Your existence as a Big Daddy is also effectively conveyed by the heaviness of your footsteps and the clangs of bullets as they plink into your armor.
Strong voice acting lends believability to characters you interact with mostly through audio logs, an excellent score underscores the mood, and a diverse range of distinct audio effects like the alarm triggers and high pitched whistle of security bots all feel right at home in this decaying dystopia.
Did you miss out of the first BioShock? Here’s a quick recap.
And let’s not forget about the multiplayer, which is actually set before the events of the first BioShock while a civil war was raging in Rapture. There are story bits built into this as well, and people familiar with the fiction will be pleased to see how the Modern Warfare-style leveling and unlock structure is bookended by cinematics. As you dive into battle against others, you’ll be able to rank up and unlock a variety of weapons, plasmids and tonics to customize your character loadout during a match. Depending on whether you’re doing free –for-all deathmatch or playing defense in a team-based mode, the styles of loadouts you bring with you can be swapped around to play most effectively.
A number of new weapons and plasmids have been added here as well, and the simple interplay between shocking, igniting, and shooting is actually a lot of fun, even if it isn’t the primary draw of the product. Whether or not it’ll have much staying power remains to be seen, but if you buy the game for the single-player, Digital Extremes’ well designed online suite should easily provide hours of entertainment beyond the core single-player story. The multiplayer suite isn’t as robust as what PC gamers are going to be used to, but it’s still a fun addition to a stellar single-player mode. I should also point out the PC version of BioShock 2 uses Games for Windows – Live, so you’ll need to log into an account if you want to save or participate in the multiplayer.
It’s going to be a familiar experience for anyone that played the original, but BioShock 2’s improvements to gameplay and its more focused storyline make for a game that’s more playable and easier to digest. Some of the sense of awe and mystery is lost in transition, but the strength of the setting and more interesting implementation of moral choice make for an experience that’s more consistent and rewarding.
Anyone looking for a first-person shooter that offers more than flat, stereotypical characters and copy-and-paste supersoldier plots, one that attempts to establish a sense of right and wrong and loops you into the decision making process, and one that’s set in one of the most vividly realized settings around should pick up BioShock 2. It’s a game in which story, setting, and gameplay are expertly blended to create an experience that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
BioShock 2 is one of the boldest sequels ever made
(Image credit: 2K Games)
Reinstall
(Image credit: Future)
This article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 361 in September 2021, as part of our ‘Reinstall’ series. Every month we load up a beloved classic—and find out whether it holds up to our modern gaming sensibilities.
When BioShock 2 was released back in 2010, it had only been three years since we last got our feet wet in briny depths of Rapture.
I remember feeling like the undersea dystopia was still relatively fresh in my mind, and had little desire to return. However, this sequel that nobody really wanted turned out to be confident, intelligent, and imaginative, matching the quality of the original, and in some ways bettering it. It’s the story of a Big Daddy, Subject Delta, searching the decaying, leaky corridors of Rapture for his Little Sister, and butting heads with Sofi a Lamb, the psychiatrist turned cult leader who betrayed him.
Rapture was in a bad way in BioShock, but a decade later it’s in an even worse state of disrepair. Entire districts of Andrew Ryan’s monument to hubris are now completely submerged in ice-cold Atlantic seawater. The once lavish ballrooms, bars, and department stores are damp and rotten, crusted with barnacles. It’s a vivid depiction of a place losing a battle with nature, and a highly effective setting. Still identifiably Rapture, but grimmer, dingier, and more hopeless.
It’s also more dangerous, thanks to the presence of brute splicers—grotesque ADAM-powered giants—and the Big Sisters, an agile, powerful, and terrifying new kind of protector you have to contend with.
When the ocean swallows this place up, it’ll be doing it a favour…
Daddy Cool
Stepping into the clunky boots of a Big Daddy gives you a uniquely interesting and more intimate perspective on the city. You aren’t an outsider (or someone who believes they’re an outsider) like Jack in the original game, but a key part of Rapture’s bizarre ecosystem. Subject Delta, a prototype model, is different from the lumbering, groaning Big Daddies who stomp around the city protecting the Little Sisters.
(Image credit: 2K Games)
He has rather more free will, and a special, lifelong bond with one Little Sister in particular, Eleanor. If she dies, he dies, which gives him extra motivation to track her down, beyond just gene-induced fatherly love. From a story perspective, playing as a Big Daddy is actually an inspired idea. But in terms of actually moving around Rapture, you don’t really feel like one.
There’s very little weight to the controls. No real sense of being a towering, heavy figure clad in an iron diving suit.
Even the drill, a trademark weapon of the Big Daddies, feels curiously feeble when you swing it. The first-person controls are basically identical to Jack’s in the original game, which detracts a little from the sensation of being a Big Daddy.
The game might not have been much fun if you spent the whole playtime slowly clomping around the expansive city of Rapture, but just a little more weight would’ve helped the illusion. I do like how you can hear the tap of water on your helmet when you stand under a leak, though. And occasionally, if the light hits you just right, you catch a glimpse of your hulking great shadow, which reminds you that, oh yeah, I’m a Big Daddy, aren’t I?
Harvest Boon
You might not move like a Big Daddy, but you do occasionally act like one. At certain points in BioShock 2 you have to protect a Little Sister as she goes about her rounds, sucking ADAM out of splicer corpses and recycling it. This is a neat way of making you a part of a dynamic you observed countless times back in the original game.
When the Little Sister begins the harvest, waves of splicers descend on her, which brings the sequel’s improved combat to life. Being able to simultaneously wield a gun (or drill) in one hand and a Plasmid in the other is the most significant change, dramatically increasing the pace and aggression of battles, and letting you pull off power/weapon combos more fluidly.
(Image credit: 2K Games)
Cold, calculating villain Sofia Lamb is the polar opposite of Andrew Ryan. He worshipped the ideal of the self, an objectivist, while Sofia believes in the power of the many. A communist, basically—exactly the kind of person Ryan feared might one day invade and conquer his city. She’s an influential figure in Rapture, but why no mention of her in the first game? The real answer is, she hadn’t been written yet. But in the game there’s a hand-wave about her being imprisoned by Ryan and all traces of her teachings being hidden away from the masses. As an antagonist she doesn’t have the charisma or zealous fi re of Ryan, but her quiet ruthlessness does a good job of setting her apart.
One of the sequel’s cleverest tricks is how your morality affects not only your own conscience, but Eleanor’s story too. At several points in the game you’re given the opportunity to kill or spare a character, and how these decisions play out can result in one of several different endings.
If you have a callous attitude to life and death, Eleanor will notice, using you as her moral compass. But if you show compassion, she’ll ultimately become a better person. This is so much more interesting than just saving or harvesting the Little Sisters in the first game, and has a higher emotional stakes for the protagonist. There are multiple endings – or rather, around six variations of the two main endings—and the outcomes of each can be drastically different based on the decisions you make and, by association, the influence you have on Eleanor.
Level Up
BioShock 2’s level design is also a step up from the first game. The overall themes of the districts aren’t quite as striking—there’s nothing here to rival Fort Frolic, for example—but the maps themselves are more complex, multi-layered, and spatially imaginative. In our first trip through Rapture we saw the lives of the rich and influential, but here we get a glimpse of what it’s like to be down and out in Ryan’s city. Pauper’s Drop, a rail maintenance facility turned slum, is the best example of this. The dense, detailed shanty town is bursting with little stories, showing an even uglier side to the city than we’d ever seen previously in the original BioShock.
We also get some flashes of life on the other side of the tracks, including the Adonis Luxury Resort, a spa for the wealthy and pampered. And the trip to Ryan Amusements—a propaganda theme park—is a clever way of giving Andrew Ryan and his philosophies a presence in the city, despite him being dead for many years.
(Image credit: 2K Games)
While BioShock 2’s improved combat, nuanced approach to morality, and more interesting level design makes it functionally a better game than BioShock, I do still think that the original is the superior experience. Descending into Rapture for the first time, learning about the city and its collapse, and the big reveal at the end are difficult to beat.
Returning to Rapture in BioShock 2, it still has impact as a setting, but that feeling of beguiling, wondrous mystery just isn’t quite there. This at least makes sense in terms of the fiction. Subject Delta was created in the city and lived there for some years, which gives our familiarity with the setting as BioShock players some in-universe logic.
Thanks to the 2016 remastered re-release, BioShock 2 runs perfectly on a modern gaming PC. That being said, you shouldn’t expect much from the ‘remaster’—it looks basically the same as it did when it was first released back in 2010. The main reason to play this version is improved compatibility with Windows 10, a 4K-friendly UI, and built-in support for modern gamepads. And you get both DLCs—The Protector Trials and the superb Minerva’s Den—bundled in, making it a complete singleplayer package.
Sadly, the game’s excellent, largely forgotten multiplayer mode is nowhere to be found in the re-release, and no longer possible to play in the original version.
That’s a real shame, but it’s the singleplayer that really makes BioShock 2 special, and it remains one of the best, and boldest, sequels ever made.
If it’s set in space, Andy will probably write about it. He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, weird sims, Alien: Isolation, and anything with a good story.
Bioshock 2 — review and retelling of the plot — Games on DTF
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Good evening DTF, today I would like to talk about Bioshock 2 and also talk about Minerva’s Den DLC.
I got acquainted with the Bioshock series back in 2008, and of course I liked it
In 2010, Bioshock 2 comes out, but by coincidence, I did not play it until the release of Bioshock Infinite in 2013.
Before how to start in Inifnite, I read that the first and second parts of the game are not interconnected and decided to go through it.
I was very impressed with both games, the plot and atmosphere, especially infinite, I remember after the ending I could not go to bed right away, and digested all the information for a long time until the Burial at Sea DLC came out, where they gave us all the answers to questions, combined both city, and a wonderful story came out about the fate of people who seemed to fall into an ideal society for them, which eventually fell into decay.
Bioshock and Bioshock infinite met perfectly, but Bioshock 2 seems to be simpler against their background, due to a separate story and the absence of similar twists with Booker (infinite) and Jack (Bioshock) , and the fact that Thu o Ken Levin, the man who gave Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, didn’t work on it.
Almost immediately after the end of Infinite, I installed Bioshock 2, and surprisingly, this is a game rich in the history of Rapture, in which there are many new and already familiar characters, and most importantly, this story is about what happened to the city after the fall of Fontaine and Ryan.
I went through all parts of the series 3-4 times, discovering something new, noticing it in audio recordings or notes on the walls.
I decided to write an article about the story of Bioshock 2 and the Minerva’s Den DLC because I thought there were a lot of interesting plot twists and a lot of information about Rapture that you probably wouldn’t get in the first part.
Before reading, I would like to notify you, my reader, that all material consists of plot spoilers.
And.. Be kind — sit back and drink coffee.
Straight to the bottom
Bioshock 2 begins with a casscene set in 1958, 2 years before the events of the original.
You act as Big Daddy as «Subject Delta» — one of the first big daddy prototypes in the Alpha series, who has a strong mental connection with a little sister named Eleanor.
Wandering around the underwater city on New Year’s Eve, in search of ADAM, the girl momentarily runs ahead of her companion, and is ambushed by 4 masked bandits, who even then began to mutate from taking ADAM (a special substance that gives a person the ability to let go lightning from fingers, or attract objects, there are a lot of modifications, they were called plasmids)
Little sisters are almost invulnerable, but they are still small children and need protection.
Jan Suchong, Geneticist
Having reached the girl, Delta kills three bandits, and the fourth manages to inject himself with a plasmid called «Hypnosis» and stops the big man.
Delta couldn’t move, Sophia Lamb appears in front of him, declaring that the little girl is her daughter — Eleanor Lamb, and under the influence of hypnosis, orders Delta to kill himself with a shot in the head.
10 years later (after the end of the events of the first part, 8 years pass) Delta is reborn from Vita Chamber
Vita camera — a device for restoring the body from human DNA after injuries.
Can be coded to a specific personality.
It turned out that Eleanor hadn’t forgotten about Delta, and she was able to set up a camera on Delta’s DNA and revive him with the help of Bridget Tenenbaum and her little sisters.
The protagonist gets up from the floor, and does not understand what happened, how he gets in touch with Bridget Tenenbaum — a doctor who discovered the extraordinary properties of mollusks and their release of the ADAM substance, soon took part in the development of plasmids and came up with a way to increase the production of ADAM, by implanting shellfish in little girls.
She created the Little Sisters.
Even with these creatures implanted in their stomachs, they are still children. They play and sing. Sometimes they look at me without stopping. Sometimes they smile.
Bridget Tenenbaum
Sophia Lamb — head of the Rapture Family
Sophia originally only wanted to help the people of Rapture, until Ryan locked her up in prison, where she began plotting her revenge.
Sofia was a brilliant psychiatrist and altruist. She lived in Hiroshima, and was among the survivors of the atomic explosion. Sophia was a supporter of the «Individuals» until the moment when her friends died due to the atomic bombing of the United States.
Andrew Ryan invited her to his utopia called Rapture to work on residents who suffered from lack of sun and other problems of life under the ocean. Sophia began to treat people for their psychological problems and gave birth to a daughter, Eleanor, a child of genius, whom she wanted to raise and leave her legacy to her.
In Rapture, Sofia promoted her ideals, which were at odds with Ryan’s, and he did not like it, he began to hold a debate to weaken the power of Lamb, and regain full control of the city, but this was not enough, and Lamb’s influence only intensified.
People who followed Lamb’s ideals began to identify themselves with the «Rapture Family» community who believed in their leader.
Ryan decides to permanently erase her from the city’s memory by contacting a powerful Rapture businessman, Augustus Sinclair, who infiltrates a spy into the Rapture Family and gathers enough evidence to imprison Lamb in Persephone (a hidden penal colony for Rapture’s political dissidents)
Before being imprisoned, Sophia handed over her daughter to her most faithful follower, Grace Halloway. Lamb’s daughter was later kidnapped and sold to the Little Sister Orphanage, unaware of the girl’s identity, where she was turned into a Little Sister and mentally bonded to Big Daddy.
Lamb was able to get out of Persephone with the help of her followers, and got her daughter back, also killing Delta.
After the events of the first part, Sophia took control of Rapture and created the Big Sisters — an improved version of Big Daddy, but their role was to kidnap little girls from the surface to Rapture.
The Big Sister is the grown-up Little Sisters, incredibly fast and powerful, largely due to the constant intake of ADAM.
Adult sisters could not extract this substance in the same amount as their little sisters, all the extracted ADAM went to support their lives. The dependence on this substance was extremely high, and it was impossible to cure them at that time.
Sophia had a plan to accumulate the DNA material of all the inhabitants of Rapture, and imprison it in one person, creating a perfect mind with the memory of all the inhabitants of the city.
Taking ADAM, a person received the memories of the one in whose veins he was present earlier.
The first implantation attempt was made on the geneticist Gilbert Alexander, the one who made her daughter a Little Sister and the first Big Daddy named Delta.
After injecting huge doses of ADAM, Gilbert began to rapidly mutate into a formless mass. Sophia orders the mutant to be placed in an armored tank from which he cannot escape.
At the same time, Sophia switched to her daughter, and thinking that the little sister did not suffer from an overdose of ADAM, she locks her daughter up and accumulates the substance for another experiment to create an ideal person.
After returning her daughter to herself, Lamb was able to heal her, but it was not possible to extract the mollusk, and the daughter also retained a connection with other little sisters, she could control them, which later helped her with the revival of Delta
The return of Bridget Tenenbaum.
Upon learning of the kidnapping of the little girls, Bridget decided to rescue them, and traveled back to Rapture and, with Delta’s help, put an end to Sophia and the Little Sisters’ Orphanage.
Sophia Lamb found out about the fact that Bridget came back almost immediately, and interfered with her in all sorts of ways, at the same time Eleanor contacted her, and together they were able to collect Delta’s DNA and reprogram the Vita Chambers.
Tenenbaum asks to help Delta, in return promising to tell him about his past. Tenenbaum tells Delta that although he is the strongest of the Big Daddies, he could die or go insane from being separated from his little sister (Eleanor) for too long.
Delta vs. Big Sister.
Over the course of the game, Delta will save many little sisters, and Bridget would like him to continue to do this and end Sophia, when the station where they met is attacked by a group of mutants, and Big Sister.
Tenenbaum loses contact with Delta and no longer communicates with him.
Eleanor and Delta
How did the mental connection between two genetically modified people come about?
After the first creation of Little Sister, Bridget Tenenbaum did not worry about the fate of people.
But at some point, unable to bear it, she left the company Fontaine Futuristics, then already owned by Ryan, and developed a method for extracting mollusks from girls, gradually returning them to their human form with the help of Jack, then leaving Rapture.
The girl already looks like a healthy person who can return to the surface.
What about Delta? How did Big Daddies come about?
Jan Suchong is a genetic engineer, along with Tenenbaum, being Rapture’s genius scientist. Together they developed the Little Sisters and Big Daddies project. At first, the Little Sisters managed on their own, until they started being kidnapped because of ADAM.
Suchong understood that it was risky to leave the Little Sisters alone in the midst of a war, and he developed the Protector project — a powerful guard who would follow the girls and protect them at the cost of his own life.
Suchong developed an absolute protection modifier at the gene level, and at first the daddies did not pay attention to the sisters, until Suchong hit one of them in a fit of rage, thereby angering Big Daddy, who killed him with a drill.
This was Big Daddy’s first successful mental connection experiment. Later, Gilbert Alexander managed the Protector project and created various modifications of big daddies under the direction of Sophia Lamb.
Object Delta vs Big Daddy Brute.
The alpha series of big daddies, like Delta, were still human-like, they could remove part of the suit and the drill, while the Brute and other elite versions were encased in a single capsule, and no longer had much in common with a person.
Daddy Series Alpha was tied to a specific little sister, while later generations like Brute protected any little sister.
Entrance to one of the branches of Rapture’s ventilation system.
If the alpha series of big daddies lost their little sisters, they would go into a rage or go into a coma, while goons could wander around the city in search of a little sister, hitting Rapture’s ventilation terminals like that, on which the little sisters moved unnoticed.
Sophia Lamb’s fall:
Orphanage of the Poor
After awakening, Delta meets August Sinclair, a powerful businessman and one of the founders of Rapture, he helps Delta in hopes of getting out of town by himself, and accompanies him on the Atlantic Express.
Arriving at the station of the Poor’s Rest, the door to the next station is blocked, and Delta needs to get the universal key, otherwise he will not be able to move anywhere
The key is held by Grace Holloway, a singer at the orphanage, Sophia’s most faithful follower.
They first met when Lamb arrived at the Asylum to help the sick, and Grace was one of them — infertility that hit her hard. Sophia gave her hope for a better outcome, and Grace began to sing songs written in support of Lamb and the Rapture Family.
Blood separates us. Blood makes us strangers to each other. However, thanks to Dr. Lamb, we are now one Family.
Grace Holloway
After Sophia was imprisoned, it was Grace who watched over Eleanor, who was later kidnapped and sold to a little sisters’ orphanage. Once Grace met Delta and Eleanor together, she approached the girl, when Delta immediately hit her, thereby breaking the singer’s jaw. Grace harbored a grudge against Delta and remembered him for the rest of her life.
After 10 years they met again, because Grace had the key, Delta made his way through all the followers of the Rapture Family, and got to her.
Grace opened the door and was about to face her death, but Delta took the key and left. She was surprised as she thought Delta was a soulless machine that was only capable of killing. She changed her mind about him, and about Sophia. She is now an ally of Delta and is trying to help him. Sophia lost her most loyal ally, and then her downfall began.
Siren Alley
In this mini town, there were two main architects of Rapture’s buildings, who were brothers, but one was religious and the other was his opposite.
Simon Wales is a deeply religious man who worried about his work in Rapture, namely because of the city’s constant leaks. Sophia came to this city in time — Simon accepted her faith, moreover, he began to call himself Father Simon, and built a church inside the Alley.
Each of you knows Lamb’s child. Through ADAM, our soul will pass into her holy blood and be reborn as one undefiled body.
Father Simon
Simon’s brother Daniel Wales, on the contrary, opened his Pink Pearl Hotel, and began to deal in drugs, people and soon plasmids. Daniel was angry at Sophia for his brother joining the Rapture Family.
As he progresses, Delta eliminates both distraught brothers who are preventing him from entering Dionysus Park with Sinclair.
Sophia decides to flood the Alley of the Sirens, thereby killing her own followers.
Lamb is trying to stop Delta by any means, even though members of the Rapture Family become victims of her decisions.
The truth about Delta and Eleanor’s theft.
Arriving with Sinclair in Dionysus Park, we meet Stanley Poole at the guard post, who offers to help us if we clear the park of Little Sisters, because because of them, the mutants of the whole city run there in an attempt to take ADAM.
Stanley Poole is revealed to be a spy hired by Ryan to collect evidence of Sophia’s flock in Dionysus Park. Sinclair, our companion, helped him with the introduction, we learn this from the audio recordings on the level. Stanley successfully infiltrated the Rapture Family and betrayed Sophia, after her imprisonment he was appointed head of Dionysus Park, and he threw parties there at the expense of Lamb.
Eleanor was then next to Grace Holloway, and threatened Poole that she would tell Sophia everything, putting an end to his intrigues. Stanley kidnaps Eleanor and sells her to the Little Sisters Home, thus turning her daughter into a genetic monster.
We find all this thanks to a mental connection with Eleanor, who shows us the memories of the residents of the Park when Delta saves little sisters. Afterwards, Stanley decides to flood Dionysus Park to get rid of Lamb’s followers, but to make it seem like a random incident.
Stanley reveals that he knows who Subject Delta is — his name was Johnny Outside.
Johnny was a traveler who discovered Rapture, he was immediately featured in the papers and became popular in Rapture. Ryan didn’t like this, he thought Johnny was a vermin agent, and imprisoned him in Persephone, where he was made into the first big daddy.
After Delta has completed his business on the level, Sophia Lamb informs Delta that he was the one who stole Eleanor and turned Johnny Outside to Ryan, and informs Stanley that she knew what he had done and forgave him. Stanley did not expect this, and was shocked. Sophia Lamb opened the door to the security room, giving Delta the option to kill him or spare him.
Delta’s decisions determine what Eleanor will become, she reacts to all the decisions of the big daddy, and becomes like him.
Fontaine Futuristics — Approach to Persephone.
The prison was next to Fontaine Futuristics, where the Atlantic Express took us.
There was a blockage inside the building. The entire complex was run by a mutated Gil Alexander, who called himself Alex the Great. Before entering the complex itself and in the course of research, Delta comes across holotapes of Gil Alexander — he foresaw such an outcome, and is trying to help, along the way explaining that he wants Delta to kill his mutated body.
Taking the key, Delta can kill this mutant, or let him live.
Persephone — outer level.
The prison was built by August Sinclair, for the prisoners of Rapture, where they were sent by Andrew Ryan. The prison filled up quickly enough that Fontaine Futuristics used the prisoners to experiment with ADAM.
Persephone consisted of the outer part of the complex and the inner one with the prisoners who were experimented on by Suchong and Tenenbaum, where they created Delta and made Little Sister out of Eleanor.
Once inside, Delta entered the room where Eleanor was being held, and Sofia was also there.
After trying to open the door, Delta is attacked by a wave of enemies, followed by two Big Sisters. After fighting off, Delta enters the room, and Lamb begins to strangle his daughter, knowing that his life depends on Eleanor.
Lamb was able to stop big daddy by temporarily stopping her daughter’s heart. Delta was immobilized, and began to die.
Sofia warns the staff not to kill him right away, as he will simply resurrect in the Vita Chamber, he must die a natural death.
Once on the bed, a little sister comes up to Delta and pumps some ADAM out of him. As Eleanor said, Delta will be able to control her little sister and help them both.
The girls saw only an ideal city around. The Big Daddies looked like knights in shining armor, the mutants looked like elegant aristocrats, even pools of blood looked like rose petals to them.
While playing as a little girl, we can collect ADAM, and view the location from an alternative point of view. Even more remarkable were the statues inside. Depending on Delta’s decisions, the statues had different appearances.
View of the statue if Delta spares Stanley Poole.
According to Eleanor’s plan, the little sister under Delta’s control was to collect Big Sister’s costume and bring it to her. Then Eleanor will free Delta and they can get out of Rapture.
In the costume, Eleanor was able to use the entire arsenal of the Big Sisters and gave Delta a plasmid to call for help. (Something similar will appear later in Bioshock Infinite)
Internal level — End.
Upon learning of the escape, Sophia decided to blow up Persephone and all its inhabitants, including all the little sisters, prisoners, and also Eleanor and Delta.
Eleanor decided to save her little sisters and her mother, despite all that she had done. She made this decision because of Delta, who became an example for her that mercy can help people change. Even the likes of Stanley Poole and Sophia Lamb.
Once in the lower levels of the building, Delta and Eleanor had to gather the little sisters and sail away on Sinclair’s bathysphere.
Sinclair himself was captured while Delta was chained up and made into a big daddy.
Sophia gave the key to Sinclair to prevent Delta from getting it.
Delta, I’m sorry…they made a big daddy out of me, I can only speak, my body doesn’t belong to me anymore.
August Sinclair
Delta had to neutralize him, he couldn’t help it, and the building was already shaking from the explosions.
Simultaneously, Delta and Eleanor had to rescue the girls and fight their way through Sofia’s monsters. She herself hid in the Bathysphere and blocked it.
Eleanor found a way out, she decided to evaporate all the water under the bathysphere, knocking it up.
The Bathysphere was already ready, as explosions began here, Delta’s last strength was exhausted, but he fought, but Sophia mined the entrance.
Eleanor teleported away, and Delta managed to grab the railing.
During the ascent, the Bathysphere filled with water and Sophia saved her mother. She became merciful thanks to Delta
Delta unfortunately died…… Eleanor drained the ADAM out of him, becoming a receptacle for his memories.
Bioshock 2 has several endings, they depend on Delta’s decisions:0350
Endings may vary, as you can spare one of the characters and kill the other. All decisions will affect the character of Eleanor.
P.S.
Maybe in the future, we will play as Eleanor, dressed as an older sister, but that’s just guesswork.
Minerva’s Den — The brain of Rapture and the end of Tenenbaum’s story.
After founding Rapture, Andrew Ryan built Rapture Central Computing for Mr. Porter Milton Rapture, where he worked with Rhydon Wall.
Milton was a brilliant mathematician who graduated from Lincoln University and became one of the first blacks to graduate in the US. Later Milton met his future Pearl Porter and received a degree
During the Second World War, Milton was invited to England as a decoder, his wife went with him and lived in London. Upon learning of the bombing of London, Milton returned to the house where his wife lived, and found only ashes. Milton lost himself and couldn’t let go of his wife.
After the end of the war, Milton was asked by Andrew Ryan to take over Rapture’s technology center, to which Milton accepted, and moved to Rapture, taking all his possessions and Pearl’s recorded audio recordings with him.
Rapture Central Computering — the birth of the Thinker.
Almost everything we saw in Rapture was developed in this complex, turrets, security systems, weapons, plasmid modifications and big daddies.
All weapon modifications were created inside the complex.
During the experiments, the engineers even tried to provide an alternative to little sisters who did not grow up, did not get tired, and who can be created again and again, but…
The big daddies didn’t get attached to these robots, they didn’t care, they failed all the field tests.
Jack McClendon, Engineer
During the development of Milton and Vol, they managed to create an artificial intelligence supercomputer that could support life inside the city. Maintaining heat, pressure, security systems, turrets, submersibles and air supply.
Milton never forgot his wife, throughout his tenure at Rapture.
Milton tried to humanize the Thinker by playing recordings of his wife’s voice. The Thinker began to take video recordings and speak in the voice of his wife and build some kind of logical questions and suggestions. Milton became frightened and stopped the Thinker’s resurrection.
Minerva’s Lair — Reed’s betrayal.
Reed did not share Milton’s views on the thinker, he saw this machine as a predictor and wanted to use it to make money.
After hours, I used it for baseball predictions and they were incredibly accurate! What if we applied similar equations to the markets of Rapture? Yes, this is the Grail for the extraction of money.
Reed Vol.
Ox decided to take over the entire research complex, and betrayed Milton with the help of his own machine. Ox forged a holotape of him promising support for Fontaine and gives it to Andrew Ryan. Milton goes to Persephone.
I heard him feeding her his dead wife’s notes.
A fool who wants to turn a thinker into a «person». I could not imagine a sadder fate for such a perfect machine.
Reed Wall
Object Sigma and Tenenbaum
Delta was not the only big daddy who was resurrected by Bridget, in order to take the Thinker with her, she activated Object Sigma — Big Daddy of the Alpha series, which was not yet attached to the little sister, and was in a frozen state.
Tenenbaum sends him to Minerva’s Lair — the center of Vostro central computing, where Reed Vol, who was already maddened by ADAM, was in charge. He undermined all external access to the complex. Signe at that moment was in the tunnel in front of the complex. Once at the bottom, Milton contacts him and tells him to go to the underwater lock.
ADAM is a parasitic substance. After its impact on the body, constant application is required, otherwise the user falls into insanity.
Bridget Tenenbaum
Throughout the expansion, Milton helps us and warns about the Will, since he knew who betrayed him. Tenenbaum wanted to take ADAM addiction medicine with her and refine it with the help of a thinker. Delta was already out of reach for her, so she decided to use Signa.
Is he (Milton) here again? A man sent to Persephone cannot easily open the door of his cell and walk home.
Reed Wall
In the course of research and listening to audio recordings, one can hear that Sophia Lamb wanted to take advantage of the thinkers for her own purposes and would invite Milton several times for an appointment, but the mathematician never trusted her, and always refused. Leaving the facility was also made more difficult by the fact that even if the bathysphere were launched, Sophia Lamb’s missile guidance system would go off and hit any object leaving Rapture.
Signe needed to reprogram the beacon on the bathysphere, thereby avoiding the missiles.
Abduction of the Thinker and the truth about Milton’s fate.
After completing two levels of Minerva’s Lair, Sigma enters the room with the thinker. At this point, Vol decides to disable it and thereby destroy the entire autonomous system of Rapture.
Signe needs to print out the code (a copy of the Thinker) and leave Rapture on the bathysphere, for this he also needs to undergo genetic identification. And before that, deal with the Ox and launch the Thinker.
Before leaving for Persephone, Milton knew what awaited him, and managed to develop a plan to free the Thinker.
Tenenbaum also says that the Thinker never gave up and could not leave Milton in Persephone, and did not.
Input — protocol for sending from Rapture. Way to get out of the city. Keep on living no matter what happens to me.
Charles Milton Porter
While in the terminal room, reports can be seen showing that Tenenbaum was sending messages to the thinker, and he started the Rapture send protocol. She decided to take Milton with her, even though he was already a big daddy.
Now there are no barriers, and Tenenbaum is waiting for Milton with a copy of the Thinker in a bathysphere.
During his return, Milton listens to audio recordings of his work with the Thinker and photographs with his wife, and memories come back to him.
After surfacing, Milton finally realizes what he’s been through and lets his wife go, now he’s truly free. The further fate of Tenenbaum and Milton is unfortunately unknown.
End
Thank you for your attention, I tried to approach the creation of this material with love and attention, not in a hurry.
I took some material from other resources, for the integrity of the plot. Since he himself could not remember everything that he listened to in audio recordings or read in all 3 games in the series.
Each part of Bioshock provides threads from which we can connect the whole world of the Rapture that we saw. Much about the inhabitants and the Little Sister and Protector programs can be found in the Burial At Sea add-ons that came out for Bioshock Infinite. But the biggest information about Rapture is given in the second part, which makes it special.
I hope to write something similar for Inifinite in the future, or when the next part of this magnificent universe comes out, which has the right to exist even without Ken Levine.
BioShock 2 — Gambling
How did it all start?
The original BioShock came out in 2007 and
made a splash then. The world of a collapsed utopia created by the authors,
backed up by a serious script with rich philosophical overtones and
non-trivial game mechanics, captivated millions of hearts. And although often so
smart and multifaceted projects fall into the category of games «not for everyone», BioShock avoided such a fate. It was solid, monolithic, complete and self-sufficient.
work, and therein lies the problem of the sequel. Direct continuation
seems out of place and sticky on gum simply because it was originally
was completely unnecessary.
What is it about?
The problem, it seems, could be solved with respect to
simply by making the second part a prequel or even a side branch, with
original connected only with decorations. But no, the authors for some reason began to direct
bridges. As a result, with the dexterity of a card sharper, they pulled out completely
new villain — psychologist and communist Sophia Lamb, who, it turns out, is still
under Andrew Ryan, she wanted to reshape the city of Rapture in her own way. Considering,
that in the first part no one said a word about any Sophia Lamb, in
The lady fits the tragic history of the metropolis frankly poorly.
But whether you like it or not, you will have to fight with your aunt,
And on behalf of Big Daddy. This is the new protagonist that Lamb
outlawed. Now ordinary townspeople splicers rush at him, and
other Dads, and the so-called Big Sister. The last authors originally
sort of like they were preparing for the role of the main villain, but in the end they were relegated to the position of annoying
mini boss.
How is it played?
And with all this confusion, game mechanics developers
practically did not change — they did not even add new plasmids to the single mode. The only thing
more or less serious innovation — the ability to simultaneously fire from a firearm
weapons (as an option — drill the enemy with a drill) with your right hand and throw fire or
lightning left. In the first part, the hero could either shoot or use
plasmids, and the need to switch between these modes was pretty annoying.
Now the fights have become more fun and provocative, but the rest …
We end up in the same city with leaking walls,
inhabited by the long-familiar remnants of a brutal bohemia. people in carnival
masks selflessly rush to the drill, waving some pieces of iron or shooting
from pistols. Having repelled the attack in one room, we move on to the next,
then another one, and so on for the first five or six hours. No doubt, yourself
battles can be diversified using various plasmids and weapons, as well as
resorting to the help of hacked security systems. But really strong
exciting moments, like theatrical
shootouts under the opera orchestra from the original game, the authors of the sequel saved
for the last third of the adventure. That’s just to get to them, you need
make an effort and somehow force yourself not to be bored.
trying to somehow stir up the audience. The first reception is the protection of the Sister. Hero,
being a Big Daddy, he can escort babies, protecting them from
Splicer encroachment. At first it’s even interesting, but again and again to protect
girls from gangs of stupid raiders eventually get bored. Second reception —
a fight with the Big Sister, who appears every time the hero tries
forcibly remove Adam from Little Sister or release all the girls on
level. But these fights are not so much entertaining as unnerving. Creators
too clever with the balance, because of which the Big Sister turned out to be too fast,
strong and viable. What’s the point of making a boss that’s physically impossible
destroy from the first «life», no matter how skillful a player you are?
What does it look like and sound like?
Outwardly, the game has not changed much, which serves
both a plus and a minus at the same time. The quality of the graphics is still impossible in the first part
was called impeccable, but stunningly realistic depiction of water in all
her looks made up for everything. The same is true for BioShock 2 though
here it is worth separately warning the owners of the Xbox 360 about
low quality textures in their version.
