Depending on when this article goes online, BioShock is either about to turn 17 or has just celebrated its anniversary. Either way, many of us will fondly remember the 2007 first-person shooter that helped advance the history of video games. We may also wonder if the franchise will ever make a comeback.
With its spooky atmosphere and stunning imagery set in the underwater city of Rapture, the first game in the series is nothing short of a modern classic. BioShockThe most memorable feature of is undoubtedly the mind-blowing twist that made us think about what it means to be a free agent in a video game world.
While the Cloud Chamber studio is gaining momentum with talks of a new installment on the horizon – not to mention that 2K is reportedly working on a remake as well as the long-awaited Netflix adaptation – BioShock it looks like it’s coming back soon. However, after more than a decade and a half, I finally can’t keep quiet anymore. Something about the original game bothered me and I think we need to talk about it.
Bio-Shocked, that was never mentioned
If you have played before BioShockyou are already well aware of the game’s major twist. If not, this will all come as a surprise to you. To sum it up: About halfway through the story, it is discovered that the player character Jack has only been following the orders of a certain Atlas because of a trigger phrase.
Throughout the game, you’ve noticed that Atlas always prefaces his requests to do something with “Would you mind?” It’s a casual politeness, or at least it seems that way at first. However, it turns out that this is part of a brainwashing tactic used when Jack was a toddler.
The fact that you – as a player – seem to only progress in Rapture because you’re told to was a huge mindf**k when we were first presented with it. It meant that, at least from a narrative perspective, we had to think about whether our actions were truly our own or simply the endgame of mental conditioning.
This twist pushed the boundaries of what was possible in video game storytelling, because it almost pointed the finger directly at us, making us question how much agency we have when we play any game and are given instructions (perhaps through the objectives or level design) about where to go and what to do.
One problem with this idea. Watch the clip below. If the timestamp doesn’t work, skip forward to the 3:00 mark. That’s the crucial part.
That’s the big reveal. Andrew Ryan, the creator of Rapture, finally lays it all out. It’s all part of Jack’s conditioning. Nothing he does is part of any sense of free will. What strikes you about this scene, though? Watch it again.
Watch as the character immediately follows Ryan’s instructions, even before he utters the phrase “Would you please?”
“Stop!” he says and the player does so… “Would you be so kind?”
“Sit!” he barks – and again the player does what he is told… “Would you be so kind?”
He’ll even run when told to, without Ryan having to say the trigger phrase.
This is something that others apparently have not noticed. If the whole point of BioShockThe infamous revelation is that the player is supposed to feel like they have accomplished something just because of the conditioning of the story, and then Jack follows orders before The trigger feels like a giant plot hole. It feels like it was never necessary in the first place.
Look, maybe it can be explained away. Maybe Andrew Ryan, who is responsible for Jack’s early conditioning, is so authoritative that he doesn’t need to say “Would you please.” Maybe Jack is so far gone at this point in the story that he almost expects the phrase and so simply resorts to following orders before he’s even heard them. There might well be a canonical reason why he runs, sits down, stops, etc. without the “Would you please” prefix, but that somehow diminishes the immense impact of this otherwise shocking twist.
If this scene was put together slightly wrongly by the studio, then it feels a bit like an oversight. We now know that Jack’s motives were part of a brainwashing scheme, so to see it fall apart at this crucial moment is a specter I’ve carried with me for some time. Now I’m going to throw it at you.
Someone out there may be able to explain. When I saw that cutscene, I didn’t realize the plot hole. The revelation alone had such a reverberation – both in me and in the gaming industry as a whole – that any discrepancies either went unnoticed or ignored. It didn’t matter at the time.
I still love you, BioShock
This is absolutely no criticism of BioShock or its story elements. It was – and still is – a brilliant game. Even with how much praise BioShock Infinite (only two points behind the original game’s score according to Metacritic), the 2007 version is considered the best of all.
But I understand that this comes across as just an aging gamer trying to make an outdated and, frankly, irrelevant point. There’s a very good chance I’m just completely wrong, but after watching this clip many times, it seems odd to me at least that no one else has pointed it out. Or if they have, it’s been reserved for the deepest recesses of the most obscure parts of the indexed internet.
I just find it fascinating that one of the most infamous plot twists in the video game world has this gaping hole. Like I said, it doesn’t quite undo the shocking reveal that comes halfway through. BioShockPlot. But there may be room for further discussion. On the other hand, the game is now 17 years old. We have come a long way since then.
I love BioShock. I loved it then and I love it now. I really hope we get a fourth installment or at least a remake of the first game. It went down in history as one of the most successful releases of the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, standing alongside Red Dead Redemption, Halo3and Valves Orange Box. There’s a very good reason it frequently appears in lists of the best video games of all time, plot holes notwithstanding. Could you please be a little more forgiving with me in the comments?
