Bioshock 2 Story & Premise Guide
Bioshock 2 - Story & Premise Guide
Video game narratives can often be infuriating, full of holes and logical fallacies or puerile to an almost satirical extent. The release of 2007‘s Bioshock was heralded for both its great story and premise along with the Randian themes it explicates through the course of the game. The Bioshock 2 story takes the familiar setting of Rapture and carves out a deep and intelligent civil war between two opposing social philosophies. This article will give further analysis and details on the Bioshock 2 story as well as investigating the premise and setup going into the second canonical game of the series set some ten years after Fontaine’s uprising.
In Bioshock 2, story thematically mimics that of the first game while playing off the events of the ending to its predecessor. This is done on purpose as a means to enthuse the player with some of the same feelings and rich sense of place the first game espoused. Furthermore, the Bioshock 2 story and set of characters are interwoven into the lore of the first game, to further their agendas and in-world realism. The biggest addition to the world of fiction is perhaps the antagonistic driving force behind the narrative to the second game – the Nietzschean social cultist Sofia Lamb.
The All Improved Bioshock 2 Story
Although she is retconned into the turmoil of the first game and Rapture’s ultimate downfall, she is the perfect antithesis and foil for much of Andrew Ryan’s philosophising. In the years following Jack’s story, Sofia Lamb began to take control and cultivate an army of devout splicers under her banner, aiding her in trying to create the first “utopian” person. It is during the ten years of her ascent and dominance over Rapture that the Big Sisters were created – along with Rumbler Big Daddies – and were tasked with kidnapping and protecting new Little Sisters found on the surface.
This is where the first working Big Daddy, known as Subject Delta, comes into play as the main protagonist of the Bioshock 2 story. Being awoken from a ten year long slumber – albeit by being remade in a vita chamber by Eleanor – Delta tries to familiarise himself with the rundown aesthetics of apocalyptic Rapture yet again. He quickly discovers that Eleanor – his bonded Little Sister and Sofia Lamb’s daughter – is helping him telepathically while under duress from her mother. The quest is set. Delta needs to rescue Eleanor and save or harvest the Little Sisters he finds. Eleanor will also leave gifts for Delta in the form of mew plasmids.
Finale of The Bioshock 2 Story
During the mission to save Eleanor and find some resolution with Sofia Lamb and her utopian ideology, Delta travels across a wide variety of different locations in Rapture while meeting a cast of characters who act as both enemies and friends. There are multiple times in the game where the player can choose to either save or kill a certain plot specific person, which can impact the games numerous endings. These foes are usually cultists and allies to Lamb and her prophetic proclamations. One such example is Grace Holloway, a blues singer turned adoptive mother to Eleanor Lamb during Sofia’s incarceration at the hands of Andrew Ryan.
The biggest ally in the game is Augustus Sinclair who, unlike Atlas from the first game, isn’t revealed to be some mega-villain and instead provides the player with important information on locations and some of the cities inhabitants. Unfortunately for him, he is turned into Subject Omega – a new Big Daddy – towards the end of the game and Delta will be forced into killing him as he loses control of his bodily actions. This occurs in the secret Persephone prison building, which Lamb uses as her base and ultimately the final destination for the player. After rescuing Eleanor, players finally escape the doldrums of Rapture and its worn out society.
