Keeping an eye on our local BioShock sidebar poll here, I'm actually fairly surprised at what an overwhelming percentage of you are Little Sister rescuers. I think the SVGL audience skews more empathetic than the average core gamer, judging by the discussions we have here -- but even still!
I find the results especially surprising because of all the talk I've heard around the Little Sister choice in the games -- people always say it's not really a "choice" since you receive a gameplay benefit in either case, or because it doesn't change much about the story save for the ending; people find them creepy AIs, not cute little people at the crux of a meaningful moral conflict, blah blah. If all that is so, why do so many of you care?
I killed all the Little Sisters in the first BioShock. To me, to do so seemed to suit the narrative better -- I was a faceless stranger in a man-eat-man world. I liked the repellent desperation that made Rapture so lawless, and so amoral was its world I thought I'd play along. Did I feel good about doing it? Not exactly, but to make my decisions based on a hunger for power felt appropriate for the story.
And I've always maintained I had a better experience in the first game because of it. When the things I was led to believe came crashing down, having to face what I'd done made the story's later revelations more of a gutpunch. Arriving at Tennenbaum's safehouse as a Little Sister killer was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I'd had that year. One thing I wish is that the game could have given me the opportunity to redeem myself, to start handling the little sisters as fellow victims instead of as prey once I knew what the real deal was -- but then, that might have violated the game's message of "no real agency".
I am hesitant to say much yet about BioShock 2 because I'm doing a review for Paste, but I'll say that the choice felt much different to me this time. Although the harvest-or-rescue decision is more nuanced and complex from a gameplay perspective, it seems not a decision at all from a narrative standpoint -- in the first BioShock, it felt equally realistic to take either path. In the second, I personally find it implausible to do anything but rescue. But maybe that's just me.
It does bring me to an interesting point: What's your motivation when you play a video game that allows you some agency? Are you writing a story and creating a character? Or are you using the medium of interactivity to express your own self -- and see how the environment responds to you?
What determines your harvest-or-rescue decision, for example -- something inside the game, or something inside of you?
Bonus Content: Header image is this wallpaper.
August 2007, I write my Aberrant Gamer column for GameSetWatch on the original Little Sister choice and what creates emotional impact versus basic cost-benefit analysis.
August 2007, I write a different Aberrant Gamer column on the Little Sisters themselves, and the use of creepy girlchildren in survival horror.
September 2007, Aberrant Gamer deals with one of my favorite things about original BioShock: the character of Sander Cohen.
July 2008, at Kotaku EA boss John Riccitiello tells me that he, too, was a Little Sister killer.
