Bioshock: The Collection – 5 Iconic Moments We’ll Revisit in Bioshock 1

With the return of Bioshock on the 16th of September in the form of a trilogy remaster for current-gen consoles, I’ve been thinking about how excited I am to revisit some iconic moments from the original game’s underwater dystopia, Rapture. The game throws you quite literally in at the deep-end with a plane crash, before allowing our protagonist, Jack, to descend into the sub-nautical depths – where horror and violence await.

So, to celebrate the now-legendary original instalment, and to provide a refresh on some of the moments that made it so memorable, I thought I would note just a handful of scenes in Bioshock that stand out as superbly chilling, horrific, or just downright shocking. Of course, there’s going to be spoilers for the entire game, so don’t read on if you haven’t managed to play this masterpiece yet.

 

1. “I Chose…Rapture”

Anybody who has played even the opening hour of Bioshock will remember this breath-taking reveal at the game’s opening. As you enter the bathysphere, you are treated to a brief sepia-tinted vignette narrated by the enigmatic Andrew Ryan – a man who we later discover founded the city of Rapture. After he establishes his arguably radical views, Ryan utters this haunting line, and the projection stops; replaced by an entrancing view of the decrepit city. As a giant squid swims past your vehicle, the player is forced to take in every rusted detail before them. Yes, a similar moment occurred in Bioshock: Infinite, but the original is always the best – in this case, that’s fairly inarguable.

 

2. First Big Daddy Encounter

Picture the scene: you’re walking across some scaffolding above a lit room, and come across the first child you’ve seen in the insidious city of Rapture. Your Irish-voiced ally, Atlas, tells you to leave her alone. After descending to the level on which she’s sat, you realise that she’s using some kind of syringe to extract an unknown substance from the corpse splayed across the floor. Then, from behind, one of the city’s murderous inhabitants makes an attempt to sneak up on the delicate child. She screams, and you hear one of the most unnerving screeches found in videogames: the little girl’s keeper has awoken. Out of the darkness, a hulking beast donning a colossal diver’s suit is illuminated by stage light, and rushes the intruder with his rotating drill aimed at the assaulter’s torso. Piercing him into the wall, he then takes the man’s head, and slams it against the glass window that separates you from them. And then he does it again. And again. Suddenly, the glass cracks, and the assailant’s bleeding head is shoved through; his mangled expression free for you to examine, almost presented as some kind of warning.

From this moment on, you know that these ‘Big Daddies’ are not to be messed with lightly. It’ll be a little while before you’re forced to take one on, and you’ll be dreading that moment after seeing this unparalleled display of brutality. But you’ll persevere, and in doing so, truly appreciate what makes Bioshock an incredible game.

 

3. Dr. Steinman’s Surgery of Horrors

The first real boss character you’ll encounter in the game; Dr. Steinman is a genuinely despicable character. The build-up to your meeting is long and tense, with Atlas telling you once you enter the surgery: “Just follow the blood”. The plasmids of Rapture (the things that give everybody superhuman abilities) have affected its residents in numerous ways, and for this surgeon, it has made his pursuit of beauty impossible and deadly. Leaving a wake of tortured and sliced corpses in his wake, Steinman’s surgery is one of the most graphic areas in the whole game.

The inevitable encounter with the doctor is just as scary as its gradual escalation. Stood behind a thin sheet of glass, a dim light reveals Steinman as he laments over the appearance of his latest victim. After hacking away at her with a scalpel, the doctor gestures to the ceiling while shouting how others were “too fat”, or “too thin”; all the while, numerous spotlights uncover hideously mauled victims who have been literally crucified for their lack of perfection. Suddenly, Steinman notices Jack, the protagonist, and screeches that he is ”ugly, ugly, UGLY,” before producing a machine gun and firing blindly towards the glass. The ensuing boss fight isn’t quite as memorable as the introduction to Steinman, but his character is an almost perfect representation of why the idyllic hopes of Rapture could never reach their proposed potential.

 

4. Sander Cohen’s Masterpiece

We are introduced to Sander Cohen during his torture of a wayward Rapture citizen named Fitzpatrick. The young man is sat at a grand piano on-stage, and the commanding voice of Cohen booms overhead, as he instructs Fitzpatrick to simply “play”. The captive then goes on to perform part of a complex melody, but he falters, and then launches a profanity-fuelled tirade directed at the maniacal musician. This results in the entire stage erupting in a fiery explosion before Sander Cohen instructs you, Jack, to take a photograph of Fitzpatrick’s corpse. He then forces you to continue murdering people he deems necessary, and demands that you bring back the photographs to be placed on an eerie diorama which now occupies the stage.

Once all of the photographs have been attached (except one), Cohen convinces himself that you don’t agree with his methods – no, you downright hate his artwork. This pushes him to descend a glorious staircase to reach you; a glaring spotlight following his every step. A fight them erupts between you and Cohen, before you finish him off, and complete his masterpiece with a bleakly ironic photograph of his deceased body. It’s hard to pick the most memorable character in the first Bioshock, but Sander Cohen would definitely be a safe choice. Well, a safe choice behind the iconic founder of Rapture, Andrew Ryan. Which brings us on to…

 

5. “A Man Chooses, a Slave Obeys”

We all knew that this would make the list. The culmination of everything you’ve learnt about Andrew Ryan from your buddy Atlas is thrown aside when you finally meet the man himself. The seemingly innocent “Would you kindly?” instruction throughout the game takes on a much more sinister meaning, and your world as Jack is turned upside-down. I thought that this showdown would be at the game’s conclusion on my first playthrough, and that it would be far more dramatic in terms of action. But nope: Andrew Ryan is simply a man putting golf balls when you come across his small, luxurious office tucked away in a corner of Rapture, and he lays on revelation after revelation before forcing you to take his club and strike him down. Everybody remembers the “Would you kindly” mantra as a staple of the first Bioshock, but for me, nothing is more haunting than the gargled way Ryan repeats his ideas about men and slaves until he chokes on his own blood and collapses in a bloody and bruised heap on the floor.

So those are my five moments in the first Bioshock game that I absolutely cannot wait to live all over again come September 16th. And that’s only the first game; while the other two Bioshock titles don’t top the outstanding first visit to Rapture, they’re both full of stunning moments and excellent gameplay that make them well worth a trial.