Levine explains Little Sister behaviour

By Tom Bramwell Published 21 August, 2007

On new blog by EG chums.

Irrational Games' Ken Levine has been explaining why you can't just bump off Little Sisters - the vulnerable children who collect Plasmid-enabling Adam in BioShock - in regular combat. Happily, he does this in an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, which gives us just the excuse we want to link new blog Rock Paper Shotgun, put together by Eurogamer contributes John Walker, Kieron Gillen, Alec Meer and Jim Rossignol. Rock Paper Shotgun. Sneaky, eh? Rock Paper Shotgun.

Speaking to RPS (Rock Paper Shotgun), Levine said that not being able to kill Little Sisters randomly actually upset some of the team's audience. "They viewed it as impacting the amount of choice they had in the game," Levine explained, "but for me - and I speak for myself personally as a game developer - I'm a strong believer that artists should be able to make art. And the big difference between art and reality is... guess what? Art is not reality."

"I'm a huge believer in other artists making what they want to make and what they're comfortable in making...for me [killing them randomly] was personally distasteful and irrelevant to the story we were trying tell." What's more, he said, no matter how good your AI is, they're never going to avoid the odd random death. As Kieron Gillen (prosecuting) noted, "An acrobatic Little Sister wouldn't need a Big Daddy."

For more from Levine, including lots on how Rapture came to be, the challenges of balancing the experience so it wasn't too much too soon or too little too far away, and even the odd bit about System Shock, check out the rest of the interview on whatever blog it was we were talking about.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • SomaticSense #1 5 years ago

    Rock Paper Shotgun
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/07 @ 11:21

  • DUFFKING #2 5 years ago

    Sock Raper Potgun

  • absolutezero #3 5 years ago

    What a cop out explanation.

    Art is blah blah blah, I need to offer no further explanation.

  • jack_klugman #4 5 years ago

    OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T KILL LITTLE GIRL CHILDREN?! WTF?!?!?!!?! OMG!!!!

  • zuljin #5 5 years ago

    Hmm, that does seem a little strange. Maybe it will make more sense when I get to play it. Maybe there'll be a patch out for it...

    Either way, come on preorder!

  • BremXJones #6 5 years ago

    How it handles in the game, in terms of the fiction, is actually really good, randomly.

    KG

  • absolutezero #7 5 years ago

    SPOILERS!!! MAYBE.


    Actually you choose to "harvest" them.

    If you choose "yes" the screen goes white, theres some squishy noises and when the screen returns to normal the adam reward tots up in the corner and theres no little sister.

    If you choose "no" the screen goes white, theres some squishy noises and when the screen returns to normal theres no little sister.

    You neither see the act of removing the sea-slug to "save" them nor the removal of the adam in harvesting. Theres also no consequences as they run away when saved and melt when harvested.

    This is'nt about OMG killing little girls, its about claiming that your game is hard hitting and adult. Boasting about all these features that will put you in real moral quandrays and then pulling a Peter Molyneux and not using any of them.

    The Daddies and little Sisters are a small part of the over-all world of Rapture though, but they've been made the main push of advertising and marketing. That CGI trailer video with you holding up the Sister at the end becomes pointless really.


    I am however a misrable bastard and you should most likely ignore me.
    Edited by 2 at 21/08/07 @ 11:49

  • BremXJones #8 5 years ago

    You finished B-shock, absolute?

    EDIT: In other words, if you think there's no consequences, you're just wrong.

    KG
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/07 @ 11:47

  • kangarootoo #9 5 years ago

    First off, its all about the game. If this way of doing things fits and makes the game better, then its ok by me.

    Second, absolutezero, you should have probably put a spoiler alert at the head of your post. I'm not so fussy (though to be honest, I'm starting to get that way over this game) but some people don't want to know anything in advance and you are giving some stuff away.

  • SomaticSense #10 5 years ago

    I don't see what the fuss is about really. He didn't want people going around randomly killing Little Sisters. It's his game, and he didn't feel that it would fit in.

    I see his point. Imagine going round looking for a Little Sisiter so you can boost your Adam count, but finding that a Splicer has randomly taken her out, thus you missing out on the Adam. In a game where the Adam from the Little Sisters is so important to the gameplay dynamic, it could potentially break the game to a minor degree. This could potentially happen a lot in a game where there is a constant ecosystem in the game world.

    If you've played Oblivion and had the Skingrad mansion bloke fall from the cliff, you'd know exactly what I was talking about.

    Plus there's the fact that he didn't feel it would be right for allowing people the opportunity to just go 'Little Sister Hunting'. Imagine how the ignorant non-gaming press would see that.
    Edited by 1 at 21/08/07 @ 11:49

  • absolutezero #11 5 years ago

    Please don't hurt me, I have the C.E. on order but I d-loaded the 360 game and played it on a flashed 360.

    Im not done yet, I think I want to wait and play all the way through on my main.

    If things come good in the end, then i'll be a happy chappy.

    EDIT: What I meant was the immediate guilt over taking this things life is removed as it melts. All the other splicers are left lying about burnt to a crisp and shot to bits, you can throw dead cats about with TK. Yet they melt. :/
    Edited by 2 at 21/08/07 @ 11:52

  • BremXJones #12 5 years ago

    I think they do, anyway.

    Avoiding spoiling anything, but there's at least one point part of the way through where people who've played it all have swapped from their initial choice to the other choice.

    KG

  • Machetazo #13 5 years ago

    Gamersyde has a new Bioshock interview to read, too. With regard to the EG excerpts, though, I can understand the reasoning behind not having Little Sisters able to be destroyed with regular weapons. They're a key partb of Rapture. They're also valuable, as the narrative of Bioshock conveys. That's all shot to bits if you can just gun them down. They've no more worth than any of the other inhabitants, in that event. Bosses have to be defeated, and its perfectly reasonable that the BDs can be, but a Little Sister is just trying to do its job. Its a non-combatant. It never poses the player harm. So, why elect to attack it, anyway?

    I think it's a good call, for the sake of narrative integrity and immersion.
    Edited by 2 at 21/08/07 @ 12:22

  • InsoFox #14 5 years ago

    Seems like a perfectly decent explanation to me. I'm fed up with comments and reviews of -any- game blindly criticising for NOT being able to do something, when the inability to do it is a design decision.

    Of course, you can disagree with the design decision all you like, but what most people don't get is that it's not a mistake, or an oversight, it's a -choice- on the part of the developer.

    I get annoyed when people say things like 'It's so stupid that you can't do and kill anything you like, whenever you want!' because that's describing a DIFFERENT GAME to the one they're playing. It's like saying 'This banana milkshake is okay, but it would be much better if it was chocolate!' It's banana. Get over it.

  • afghan_jones #15 5 years ago

    Insofox you loser, everyone knows Chocolate is teh real nexxt gen!

    Chocolate pwns b@n@n@ hard! LOLZ FAG!

  • kangarootoo #16 5 years ago

    @InsoFox

    "It's like saying 'This banana milkshake is okay, but it would be much better if it was chocolate!' It's banana. Get over it."

    Thats good, I'm going to nick it for future use.

  • Darren #17 5 years ago

    I think it was a wise decision personally because I reckon if you had been able to kill the Little Sisters in "random acts of violence" that the game would certainly have been banned or refused a rating in this country at least.

  • bdc #18 5 years ago

    So basically, he didn't want to be compared to a brain-dead unimaginative piece of shit like Manhunt. Which is totally understandable. Bioshock is a masterpiece, and especially shows when they don't need to resort to redundant 'controversies' like these.