When you see Rapture through the eyes of a Little Sister in BioShock 2 for the first time, you see the evolving grandeur of the Shock games, an evolution that began with System Shock and has culminated in BioShock Infinite. As the Little Sister, you see an idealized reality, including a steep and long ascending staircase lined with teddy bears and some alphabet blocks, the surrounding white drapes lit brilliantly from above—all of this, of course, being interrupted by the occasional flashes of a much darker reality. Then there is Columbia, the breathtaking world of Infinite, a world that grows more mysterious as the gameplay grows more interactive.
It’s not just the artistic complexity of the settings that makes the BioShock games an enthralling and immersive experience. The characters and storylines fascinate us as well. Center stage is Andrew Ryan, creator and ruler of Rapture. A male counterpart of Ayn Rand, Ryan was deeply dissatisfied with Soviet rule and left for America at a young age to seek something that the “parasites” could not corrupt. Even the mobs with less complicated backstories capture our attention: no player can forget the Motorized Patriots of Columbia, huge malevolent robots with wings that look like George Washington (no, this is not a Vigor-induced hallucination). Those are only a couple of examples. From the God complex of SHODAN to the Big Daddies to Elizabeth’s tears to Comstock’s self-proclaimed prophecy, the Shock games deliver compelling characters and absorbing plots.
The BioShock series pushes the genre of first-person shooters forward by expertly weaving role-playing elements into the game design. Ken Levine has rightly been hailed as a visionary, and the games have deservedly won numerous awards. Levine’s attention to detail in developing worlds and weaving stories results in a series ripe for philosophical speculation. Players might wonder whether BioShock really does serve as a legitimate critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, or whether Booker ever had free will, or whether humans in the real world will ever be able to shoot lightning out of their hands. These questions and more are explored in this volume alongside the theories of not solely Rand but Aristotle, de Beauvoir, Dewey, Leibniz, Marx, Plato, and others from the Hall of Philosophical Heroes. The answers go beyond mere musings on a message board.
You shall know the false philosopher, like the false prophet, by his mark: a claim to knowledge without justification. But you will find no false philosophers among the authors of this volume, each of whom is not only a philosophy expert but also a BioShock connoisseur. After reading this book, you will never look at BioShock in the same way again. Indeed, if this book leads you to read more philosophy, you will graduate from Little Sisterhood and you will no longer look at life the same way either. So, would you kindly turn the page and continue reading until the end of the book?