I didn't read too much into the whole Adam/Eve thing, beyond the obvious edenic references, i mean. Rapture was a utopian society and the Garden of Eden is the best known symbol for this in western culture. The notion of a "Fall" lends itself readily as well: in Genesis mankind fell from grace due to our lust for power, and in Rapture, mankind fell from grace due to...our lust for power.

The character name that intrigued me the most was Atlas. In Rand's book, one of the characters suggested that the best thing Atlas could do for the world would be to shrug. The implication was that it was time for those who carry the world on thier shoulders through their intelligence and work ethic to stop propping up the losers. Time to shrug them off and let them collapse under their own weight. What I found interesting about this was that

My take on the whole parent/child thing was probably not as cynical as the game designer's. I actually found the Big Daddies to be somewhat admirable. They didn't know they were peretuating a corrupt system, and their selfless devotion to their little sisters had a cool samurai vibe to it. Probably the most disturbing thing in the game for me was

I'll add one of my own to the list:

Really? That's it?

I wanted to kill that son of a bitch. Then I found the rigged one and hated it even more.

Not quite on the same vein of thought but not worth putting in its own thread:

Did you notice how there was a lot of thought/action about life persevering against the odds? Humans surviving adversity.

First off you have the player surviving the explosion - no idea how he did this and considering Fontaine sent him up there with the notion of doing so doesn't seem like a very good plan.

Then you've got the little sisters being able to survive - despite having their slugs inhibited or disabled or something.

Next you've got the trees, they're dying therefore Rapture is dying - no oxygen... but even though the scientist dies the trees are saved and Rapture is saved. (If the trees had died then there probably would have been enough oxygen for the player to survive and exit the city.

Then you've got Fontaine, surviving his apparent death and adapting.

Next you've got your (the player's) survival and ultimate freedom from control, your close brush with death at the hands of Fontaine's conditioning.

Finally, you and the little sisters (if you have the good ending) escape the city itself and move to a new life.... they themselves prospering and surviving even though they have the slugs and no experience of normality. The player survives his genetic code being rewritten numerous times and eventually dies of natural causes, an old man.

Not being an Enlgish lit or language man i'm not really qualified to analyse this but it seems that another message - perhaps secondary to the main one of political and industrial freedoms - about humanity's (or life in general) ability to overcome the odds and prosper.

Really cool thoughts there wordy.
You're right about the parasite aspect of it. I mean, you can hack all the machines and vendors - just like Ryan was complaining about - but you don't have to. It makes it a lot easier to get along than if you don't though... just like in real life. Those "parasites" in the real world who live on the coattails of the genii find it easier to live by being like that, no doubt about it.

I'd argue that if Jack(?) is a virus then the big daddies and the little sisters are the antibodies and white bloodcells. The little sister is the type that attaches to and "digests" the foreign cells and the big daddies are the attacking ones. They were ultimately the lifeline of Rapture, keeping it living while those parasite viruses tried to pull it down (not intentionally of course).

[edit] Notice the comparison with the virus/bacteria parasite of the smugglers and cheaters and the symbiote parasite of the little sisters. Not all parasitism is bad for the host and as such some parasitism is actually good for life - i.e. the little sisters healing immediately.

I think it would be interesting to go through the game and not touch the little sisters - though for difficulty and not for the ending (as it wouldn't affect the outcome anyway). I believe that the first little sister decision is forced because a door doesn't open - much like using your first hypo....

Yeah, I knew there were more of us in here somewhere. I'm surprised I played it so soon after release, myself, though. Perhaps they are related personality traits.

Duo, thanks for helping round out some of that. I'm thinking about how it might tie back into the whole Eden parallel. Maybe I'll have more after lunch.

If I remember correctly, it was almost all motherly stuff, wasn't it?

There was a lot of stuff going on about motherhood in the game. I know that for certain.

This was the exact same thought I had, but I think Jack, kind of transcends the typical role of the Big Daddy and becomes something more. The Big Daddies just protect the Little Sisters from immediate threat while Jack saves them from Rapture as a whole and I guess releases them from their macabre duties. And while the game talks to you about motherhood a lot I think it speaks more about fatherhood, but you just got to look a little deeper.

The most obvious example of fatherhood in the game is the big daddies. To me, this says that with fatherhood comes an instinct to protect what you are fathering (any real dads speak up against or for me, I'm not exactly experienced in that field). And that's as far as I can see the big daddies relating to parenthood.

I didn't notice this until my second playthough (I know I'm kind of slow), but Jack, the player character, is the actual birth son of Andrew Ryan. The two ghost images and the diary in Eve's Garden show that Andrew and a fling with a showgirl and the bastard child of that relationship was given to Fontaine and in turn to Suchong who made Jack. Along with Andrew saying things like "my own flesh and blood," and also Fontaine messages you on the radio saying he needed someone with a very similar genetic code to Ryan or else Rapture's security and all that would instantly kill you.

This leaves Jack with essentially fantastic dads who obviously care about him. Ryan who calls you "his greatest disappointment" and Fontaine who uses you as he would a wrench. This begins the theme that fatherhood is a clear choice. Both Ryan and Fontaine have opportunities to take you in, but only Fontaine talks about that after he views you as a threat, clearly a selfish act, and not at all caring. But while Papa Ryan and Stepdad Frank neglect you, the player has the opportunity to become the caring father of the Little Sisters, but only by choice, and you do it selflessly for less Adam. This is foiled by Tenebaum becoming a caring mother despite her greatest efforts not to be. So thus the game says that it's natural to be a caring mother, but a very conscious choice to be a caring father.

As great as the various elements of Bioshock were, I get the feeling that the story and game dynamics got away for the designers.

I was particularly bothered by having to hunt and kill the big daddies, the one set of entities in the world that wasn't trying to kill me and which seemed to be playing a protective and productive role (in at least one scene, a big daddy is shown doing repairs and maintenance) in the world. That, coupled with their dying elephant noises and the little sisters' anguished responses made me feel just awful each time I took one down.
The decision to hunt and kill the big daddies may be the real moral core in the story. But, it's a false choice because if you don't do it, you probably can't survive the game and certainly don't get to see much of the game's content.
While I'm sure the designers wanted the player to have a strong emotional response to the big daddy/little sister dynamic, I just don't think the designers quite got the outcome they intended.

Also, at first, I was really bothered about killing the splicers - especially taking out the ones who hadn't yet seen me. They weren't like zombies (unreasoning vessels of hate with no sense of self) or declared enemies. They were merely innocent people who had been driven mad by their enviroment. Ultimately, this characterization did work fairly well for the game, adding to the creepiness of the environment and the player's choices in interacting with it. But it would have been so much more effective if not all the splicers were immediately or automatically hostile. It would have lent a much stronger moral dimension to the decision to try for that concealed headshot.

Reading into Bioshock? More so than all of the in your face imagery?

Uh, ok. I got one!

*Even though the thread title says it, these are spoilers, big ones*

Before you crash in the beginning you fall asleep, then you wake up in the water. Water in dreams is commonly representative of sexual problems. You swim out of the water to the only land structure, a giant phallic lighthouse. You then enter the shaft, walk down its stairs and sit in a giant ball to get hurled back into the water.

Then, you find yourself in a world under the water, populated by characters filled with rage but so ashamed of what they've become that they hide behind masks. The city is full of red velvet and theaters. Your biggest enemy is a "Daddy" whose soul purpose is to keep you away from anything "girlie", and he does so by physically beating you.

As the game progresses you find yourself killing the owner of your watery prison with his own sports equipment, deciding that the only way to succeed is to become the "Daddy" figure you've been fighting this whole time, and using Eve to get by but really just wanting more Adam the whole time.

Oh and you fight a giant naked man, whom you have to impale repeatedly to defeat, as the final boss.

Basically this game was about a man working out his own repressed homosexuality in an elaborate dream.

You're. Welcome.

I kind of see it as representing the gamer himself enslaved to the game - you go through the whole game just doing what you are told to do. Of course most games are like this, but BioShock has these subtle digs at the meta player-as-slave idea - as when you kill Ryan, you have no real control at all (and they make that explicit by literally taking your control away) - A Slave Obeys.

Ken has in fact enslaved you and you will go through his game obeying ... the one token choice you have being the treatment of the Little Sisters.

The name Rosie is from the old "Rosie the Riveter" campaign to encourage women to help out in the factories in WW2. At least, thats what I assume since the Rosie is armed with a giant Rivet gun and rapture was built in the late 1940's.

Yep! To you the honors.

I agree with you here, Duo, except in that Jack doesn't really fully think for himself. I can certainly see that happening "behind the camera," but I'm not sure we can say for certain, given the inability to control himself.

On another level, Ryan could use the "magic words" to save his own life, but chooses not to. In fact, he hands the murder weapon to Jack. What does that say about Ryan?

Nit pick: Al Capone was a Prohibition-era mobster. He spent the 1940s in jail. I'd see Fontaine as more like Hoffa, who combined organized crime and organized labor, and who was eventually killed by his colleagues.

The Big Daddies, like Jack, aren't fully in control of themselves, if I recall correctly. I think they were brainwashed to the point where they were more like a mother grizzly protecting her young.

It is curious, though, that Rosie is used as a name, since that's such an obvious allusion to female empowerment. I remember that at least at first I thought of the Sisters as much more in control -- a feeling that returned when Jack donned the Big Daddy suit. Frankly, following the Little Sister and protecting her while she did her business reminded me of some of the resentment I had when I dated a girl who lead me on.

I, too, have issues.

Yeah, i was drunk when i wrote that... my inner ego trying to escape obviously....

I don't know... what do you think that says about Ryan?

I'll have a go:

My reading of it was that Ryan saw that he had lost the philosophical battle. It seemed to me that hitherto he considered Rapture to be the sweat off his own brow and therefore had the right to defend it. Ryan could clearly have killed Jack himself if he had wanted to, but chose to die and implant the ideal of free will and free choice in Jack. I think Ryan perceived how he had failed Rapture and the Randian ideals he was aspiring to, but that Jack could defeat Fontaine (maybe he had already discussed it with Tenenbaum) whilst holding on to those ideals. Choice could be seen as a simpler meta-law to the wordier "don't be a parasite on the work of the worthy". Ryan indirectly gave power to Fontaine by banning outside contact and making black-marketeering so profitable for Fontaine, and so maybe he realises that this decision led to the failure of Rapture, and so he failed in the way he thought he'd succeed: he'd lost the ethical battle.

It isn't clear to me at what point Ryan worked out the "Would You Kindly" thing, and Jack's lineage and mission, but that could also be the point at which he realises that Atlas is Fontaine, and that Fontaine has outmanoeuvred Ryan. Ryan then understands the extent of his own failure, both tactically and ethically, and passes the mantle onto his son to look after Rapture starting with the ethos of Choice, rather than Ryan's misguided ethos of Insularity.

An alternative explanation could be if you're Ryan it would be rather unpleasant to see what had happened to Rapture, so maybe he had given up the fight at that point, and craved oblivion.