[Note: I haven’t completed the game yet, so my comments are based on my current state of completion, which is about ¾ of the way through. Also, there really aren’t any spoilers below, so you don’t have worry about me revealing anything.]

The advertised moral choice in this game is whether to save Little Sisters or harvest (i.e. kill) them. The girls exist in a trancelike state and are doomed to roam the halls of Rapture endlessly unless you free them of this condition. The player gets more “Adam” for harvesting a Little Sister, (Adam is the currency with which the player buys new abilities), though you are occasionally rewarded Adam for saving the girls, so it pretty much balances out in terms of the “economics” of the game. That in itself is a mistake in my opinion, since it somewhat diffuses the honorable burden of doing the right thing. Still, more immediate gains result from harvesting the girls, and the player has to decide if he is willing to face a tougher fight in the game to do the right thing.

Much has been made of this injection of moral decision making into the gameplay, but I think the moral choice lies less in our belief systems, and more in our perceptions of what the gameplay experience is. I think few people would “harvest” a defenseless child in reality, but this is not reality, it is a game with textures and polygons. If a player invests himself in the reality of the game and decides to play as if it were “real” it seems likely he would save the Little Sisters. But if the player simply views the experience as a game, he will possibly conclude that harvesting the girls provides more abilities which in turn provides richer gameplay, and so wouldn’t particularly care that a fictional character is “dying” to provide him with more fun (aren’t the enemies in the game doing much the same?).

In the absence of differing perceptions of what gameplay should provide, that core moral choice is pretty basic. Killing a child for your own benefit is obviously wrong. For me the real moral question lies in the killing of the Big Daddys that protect the Little Sisters. Big Daddys will push you away if you approach them, but will not actively try to kill you unless you hurt them first. But you cannot save a given girl unless you kill her Big Daddy guardian. So the question is: what is the moral action to take when you have to kill a sentient being that bears you no ill will to restore a little girl’s humanity (assuming you want to save the girls, if you want to harvest them you probably have no qualms about destroying the Big Daddys as well)?

Watching the two together, there is definitely implied kinship between them. The Big Daddy NEVER abuses the Little Sister, and in fact will offer his hand and at times pat her on the head. These few animations really build sympathy for the Big Daddy. But what exactly is his background? Is he protecting the girl because he cares about her, or because he cares about the Adam she retrieves? Did he have a hand in her creation, or is he as much a victim as she is? Without knowing these things, it is difficult for me to attack him without incurring a sense of guilt. Still, the game provides no means of rescuing a Little Sister without killing her associated Big Daddy. Does the end justify the means? Is there more value to her humanity than to his existence?

I kind of wish there was a third option in that I could distract or detain him long enough to rescue the girls without harming any Big Daddys. But that would probably be very difficult to set up without providing an easy “out” for the player, both emotionally and physically. In short, there’d be no reason to risk your life to defeat a relatively benign being.

I decided that without sufficient justification for killing Big Daddys, I would not do so and have played the game accordingly. Not receiving the benefits of either rescuing or harvesting the Little Sisters has made the game more difficult, but it is still very playable. The game did force me to kill a couple Big Daddys at one point, so I will never know what the outcome would’ve been had I been allowed to finish the game without killing any of them (I hear there is both a good and bad ending, and I was curious to see which the game would’ve given me if I hadn’t actively saved any girls).

Some people might not even see the point in discussing any of this. “It’s just a game, right?” It’s true that right now the game industry still has a hard time producing characters with truly lifelike behavior. Even in Bioshock, lines of dialogue are repeated, animations are repeated, and there’s no interface for actually communicating with the artificial beings of that world. But we are getting better, and the issue of morality, or perhaps simulated morality, will become more and more a genuine aspect of thought-provoking games.

Another interesting “moral” choice revealed itself to me after I had already made it. There is a point in the game where you reach the end of a ventilator shaft that opens to a room you don’t actually have to enter to progress in the game. As you approach the cover to the shaft, through it you can see a splicer quietly sitting on a couch with her head slung low, clearly depressed, as if contemplating her twisted fate. I knocked off the cover with my wrench, hoping she would not attack, but knowing full well that she would. She did, I killed her, and my game progressed. Thinking about it later, I knew that the door to that room (locked from the side) simply opened to an area I had already explored. I wasn’t in need of any keys or special objects to proceed further in the game’s narrative, so entering the room was an act based on the desire to explore every nook and cranny of the game world available to me. But to what cost was this exploration? I killed a character that, while not friendly to me, was not an immediate threat and would only become so once I entered that room. In that sense I felt guilty afterward. The presentation of her as depressed is simply the choice for what animation cycle was created for her “idle” animation, but it had a powerful effect on my response to her character.

I think it would be really interesting if there were a few Splicers here and there that don’t immediately seek to hurt you. Maybe they just go about their business unless you hurt them. Some may ask you for help. Would you give one a medical kit if they claimed to be injured? Would you give them an eve hypo? That right there is a nice microcosm of moral choice. Plus, their responses to this could be quite interesting. Maybe they give you a gift in return. Maybe they attack you if you don’t help, or maybe they don’t do anything except mutter to themselves about how selfish you are. Hell, maybe if you help one, they will fight by your side much as the hacked sentries do. I think the game would benefit from a greater sense that not all those living in Rapture have become monsters (the game does point out that your nemesis, Andrew Ryan, is exerting a level of mind control over the splicers, but we all know that game makers are using that explanation to justify the reason they all attack you on sight, and I believe there’s room to plausibly argue that Ryan could manipulate many or most of Rapture’s inhabitants without being able to control all of them).

So anyway, those are today’s thoughts on Bioshock. I’m still in the process of finishing the game, so I’m sure I’ll have more!

-Jason