BioShock
=== Setting ===
BioShock is set in 1960 in the underwater city of Rapture; the city's history is mostly revealed via audio recordings the player can collect during the game. Rapture was planned and constructed in the 1940s by Objectivist business magnate Andrew Ryan who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control. Scientific progress greatly expanded, including the discovery of the genetic material "ADAM" created by sea slugs on the ocean floor. ADAM allows its users to alter their DNA to grant them super-human powers like telekinesis and pyrokinesis. To protect Rapture, Ryan imposed a law that no contact with the surface world was allowed.
Despite the apparent utopia, class distinctions grew, and former gangster and businessman Frank Fontaine used his influence of the lower class to plan a coup of Rapture. Fontaine profited by creating black market routes with the surface world, and together with Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, created a cheap plasmid industry by mass-producing ADAM through the implanting of the slugs in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine used his plasmid-enhanced army to attack Ryan, but reportedly was killed in the battle. Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets including the plasmid factories. In the months that followed, a second figure named Atlas rose to speak for the lower class, creating further strife. Atlas led attacks on the factories housing the Little Sisters, and Ryan countered by creating "Big Daddies", plasmid-enhanced humans surgically grafted into giant lumbering diving suits who were psychologically compelled to protect the Little Sisters at all costs. Ryan also created his own army of plasmid-enhanced soldiers, named "Splicers", which he controlled using pheromones distributed through Rapture's air system.
Tension came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958, when Atlas ordered an all-out attack on Ryan. The battle left many dead, and the few sane survivors barricaded themselves away. What once was a beautiful utopia had fallen into a crumbling dystopia. Some of the events described above are revisited and expanded upon in the downloadable expansion BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, which takes place in Rapture during the latter months of 1958 and leads up to Atlas' assault on Ryan's forces.
=== Plot ===
In 1960, at the start of the game, player character Jack is a passenger on a plane that goes down in the Atlantic Ocean. As the only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse that houses a bathysphere terminal that takes him to Rapture.
Jack is contacted by Atlas via radio, and is guided to safety from the Splicers and the perils of the run down city. Atlas requests Jack's help in stopping Ryan, directing him to a docked bathysphere where he claims Ryan has trapped his family. When Jack encounters a wandering Little Sister and its fallen Big Daddy, Atlas urges Jack to kill the Little Sister to harvest her ADAM for himself; Dr. Tenenbaum overhears this and intercepts Jack before he harms the Little Sister, urging him to spare the child and any other Little Sisters he encounters, providing him with a plasmid that would force the sea slug out of her body. Jack eventually works his way to the bathysphere, but Ryan destroys it before Jack can reach it. Enraged, Atlas directs Jack towards Ryan's mansion through Ryan's army of Splicers and Big Daddies. At times, Jack is forced to travel through areas controlled by Ryan's allies that have now become deranged, such as Sander Cohen, a former musician that now takes enjoyment in watching the death and misery of others.
Ultimately, Jack enters Ryan's personal office, where Ryan is patiently waiting for Jack by casually playing golf. Ryan explains he fully knew of Atlas' plan, and explains that Jack is his illegitimate child, taken from his mother by Fontaine who placed him out of Ryan's reach on the surface, and genetically modified to age rapidly. Fontaine had planned to use Jack as a trump card in his war with Ryan, bringing him back to Rapture when the time was right; Jack's genetics would allow him to access systems such as the bathysphere that Ryan had locked out long ago. With no place to run, Ryan is willing to accept death by his own free will, quoting one of his own principles: "A man chooses. A slave obeys." He asks Jack "would you kindly" kill him with the golf club, and Jack is compelled to do so. As Ryan dies Jack becomes aware that the phrase "would you kindly" has preceded many of Atlas' commands as a hypnotic trigger forcing him to follow Atlas' orders without question; a flashback reveals Jack himself was responsible for crashing his plane near the bathysphere terminal after reading a letter containing the trigger phrase. Atlas reveals himself as Fontaine, having used the Atlas alias to hide himself while providing a figure for the lower class to rally behind. Without Ryan, Fontaine takes over control of Ryan's systems, and leaves Jack to die as he releases hostile security drones into Ryan's locked office.
Jack is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters who had previously been rescued. Dr. Tenenbaum helps Jack to remove Fontaine's conditioned responses, including one that would have stopped his heart. With the help of the Little Sisters, Jack is able to make his way to Fontaine's lair to face him. Fontaine, being cornered by Jack, injects himself with a large amount of ADAM, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack is aided by the Little Sisters in draining the ADAM in Fontaine's body and eventually killing him.
The ending depends on how the player interacted with the Little Sisters:
If the player has rescued all of the Little Sisters (or harvest only one of them), Jack takes them back to the surface with him, and Tenenbaum happily narrates how they go on to live full lives under his care, eventually surrounding him on his deathbed. This ending is considered canon in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.
If the player harvests more than one Little Sister, Jack turns on the Little Sisters to harvest their ADAM. Tenenbaum sadly narrates what occurred, condemning Jack and his actions. A submarine then comes across the wreckage of the plane, and finds itself suddenly surrounded by bathyspheres containing Splicers who attack the crew and take control of it. The submarine is revealed to be carrying nuclear missiles, with Tenenbaum claiming that Jack has now "stolen the terrible secrets of the world": the more Little Sisters are harvested, the harsher and more furious Tenenbaum's narrative becomes.
alternate reality