BioShock is generally considered an important and influential video game series – bringing players to dystopian worlds filled with controversy and conflict Each entry housed interesting narratives (of varying quality) courtesy of the teams at Irrational Games and 2K Marin that carried players on a journey filled with mystery, violence, and intrigue.
Players will have a chance to experience it all again starting next week with BioShock: The Collection, which includes each game and all of their single-player DLC remastered for the Xbox One and PS4. Why not prepare yourself for another trip to Rapture and Columbia by looking at the best moments from the BioShock franchise?
(Spoilers ahead).
The Reveal of Rapture
There’s few moments in the BioShock trilogy that hold as much significance as the introduction of Rapture from the original game back in 2007. It was here, following our brief introduction to Jack — the protagonist of the first game — that we crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and swam through burning plane wreckage to a lighthouse in the middle of the sea. And, from there, took a bathysphere straight down into the world of Rapture.
Created by the business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the 1940s, Rapture was built to serve as a haven for mankind’s greatest thinkers and artists where their work wouldn’t be oppressed by government intervention. Naturally, this ultimately resulted in a civil war that left the city in shambles. When we first see Rapture in BioShock from the outside, it’s simply a beautiful and marvelous underwater city — which will forever hold its place as one of the best experiences within the trilogy.
Elizabeth Dancing on the Beach
Whether you’re hitting Splicers over the head with a pipe wrench or thrusting your drill into their gut, BioShock has always been a franchise that includes a heavy dose of violence in order to keep the adrenaline pumping and the theme of chaos fresh in your mind. This approach is one that truly makes you appreciate the little slices of paradise scattered throughout the world, such as when Elizabeth is first freed from captivity by Booker at the start of BioShock Infinite.
Locked away for most of her life, Elizabeth is a gifted individual with the ability to manipulate time and space through dimensional tears. These tears allow her to transport items between her current and alternate universes as well as travel between them — making her a valuable tool that many people want to control. Once freed, however, she immediately begins taking in the the city around her and interacting with other humans simply enjoying themselves on an afternoon off. If only for a moment in time, we get to witness one of the last innocent days Elizabeth enjoys before the rest of the wicked world catches up with her and Booker.
Finding Your First Little Sister
Little Sisters are one of the core characters behind the BioShock franchise. These young girls have been genetically altered and mentally conditioned to collect a substance known as ADAM from around Rapture — which is then used for genetic modification by many of Rapture’s inhabitants. Due to their value, they are almost always accompanied by a Big Daddy, but provide Jack with a significant amount of ADAM to boost his abilities in the original game.
Early on in BioShock, Jack encounters his first Little Sister and is immediately faced with a choice: Save her and collect a small amount of ADAM for his own use, or consume her and collect a large amount of ADAM instead. As a player, this decision was yours to make — and depending on your choices with each Little Sister you encountered, alters their future as a group. The first presentation of their plight remains the most memorable, however.
Elizabeth’s True Identity
Throughout most of BioShock Infinite, there’s subtle hints to one of the biggest reveals the game has to offer — but in true BioShock fashion, nothing is as it seems. During your first time playing through, odds are you picked up on some sort of connection between Booker and Elizabeth while the two worked their way off of Columbia. Well, turns out that connection was just a little more than, “Get the girl, wipe away the debt.”
See, Elizabeth is actually Booker DeWitt’s daughter, Anna. When she was born, Booker lost his wife during childbirth. Following an issue at his job with the Pinkerton Agency that ended with him being expelled, Booker descended into gambling and drinking — where he racked up an insurmountable debt. When someone by the name of Zachary Comstock, who’s Booker from an alternate reality (it’s a long story), offered to pay off all of his debt for Anna, he happily accepted. But when it came time to hand Anna over? He changed his mind and he fought to keep her, but Comstock took her through a tear, leaving only her pinky behind as it closed up.
It’s one hell of a realization for both Booker and players alike that comes at the end of Infinite.
Learning the Activation Code
Following the original release of BioShock Infinite, two pieces of downloadable content came out which continued the story. Known as Burial at Sea, each of these put players back in Rapture — this time as Booker and Elizabeth in order to tie the entire BioShock trilogy together with one mind-blowing revelation.
At the end of the second chunk of the Burial at Sea DLC, Elizabeth encounters our friend Atlas from the first BioShock. Hoping to bring down Andrew Ryan and his rule over what remains of Rapture, Atlas is looking to activate Ryan’s genetically engineered son Jack (the protagonist from the first game) through the use of a special phrase. To that end, Elizabeth hands him the phrase, “Would you kindly?” on a sheet of paper before being killed herself — which he then uses to activate Jack via a note on top of a gift box. Upon being activated, Jack opens to the box to find a gun — looping the BioShock series all the way back to the beginning.
