Moral choices came late to BioShock

By Rob Fahey Published 30 July, 2008

Little Sisters not in original plan.

Ken Levine has revealed that the moral choice behind harvesting or saving the Little Sisters in BioShock was a relatively late addition to the game.

The 2K Boston boss was speaking at the Develop conference in Brighton this morning, discussing the evolution of BioShock and how the these moral decisions were implemented as a result of creating the Little Sister character.

Although the game initially started with the idea of both protective characters and gatherer characters, only the Big Daddy concept was retained from early in development. The gatherers, on the other hand, didn't become Little Sisters until late in the day - having earlier taken on forms including insect- and worm-like creatures, according to lead technical artist Nate Wells.

Wells explained that the girls were originally created to create a meaningful relationship between the gatherers and the Big Daddy characters - with this strange, twisted "father / daughter" relationship being easy for players to understand.

By turning the gatherers into Little Sisters, Levine expanded, the team created a moral choice - and that choice, in itself, informed much of his later thinking on the kind of capitalist utopia Rapture was.

"We ended up with a game where we had to confront this moral choice, rather than setting out to create that choice," Levine explained.

According to technical director Chris Kline, the Little Sisters also solved a major gameplay problem - gatherers at one point were slug-like creatures, and players tended to kill them for no reason, since "that's what you do to slug-like creatures".

Other elements of the game, too, emerged at a later point rather than being in the design from the outset. Among them was the concept of telling the stories of key characters in each level - the first of which to emerge was that of Dr Steinman, the insane plastic surgeon.

"We can't tell the story of everyone in Rapture, all these thousands of people," reasoned Wells, "but we can tell eight or nine of them - and let that encapsulate the whole story."

Steinman's story is built gradually throughout his level, thanks to various pieces of art and tableaus set up on the level itself, along with audio logs the player picks up (Levine is somewhat disparaging about these, describing them as "old technology that we used to fill in the blanks"). By the time you meet him at the end of the level, Levine says, "you know who he is... Without that, he'd just be another puppet on strings, another boss you need to put a DoT or crit on".

Picture of Rob.

About Rob Fahey

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • andromeda #1 4 years ago

    why all these post-bioshock revelations? are they trying to redeem themselves or something?
    It was a great game, forget about it and make us something new!

  • Santino #2 4 years ago

    oh my, will i press this button or this button that has no effect but to change the shortest of short cutscenes at the end?

  • DFawkes #3 4 years ago

    Andromeda +1

    We get it, development was hard but the results were great. Now more with the greatness. Please.

  • johnnybrn #4 4 years ago

    Can you catch lightening twice though?



  • penhalion #5 4 years ago

    Someone clip him around the ear and tell him to make System Shock 3 using a different name. Let's face it, he's the only one who can.

  • DuTraveller #6 4 years ago

    We wait for Bioshock 2??

  • Raz76 #7 4 years ago

    How is it a moral choice if the morals are already laid out beforehand?

  • Erinan #8 4 years ago

    Funnily enough, I finished Bioshock yesterday evening (the game had been lying for almost a year on my shelves) and... what a disappointment. I harvested all the little sisters, defeated the final boss in less than a minute and watched the shortest ending ever.

    The game was a good 8/9, but maybe not a 10.
    Edited by 1 at 30/07/08 @ 12:03

  • johnnybrn #9 4 years ago

    Erinan,

    'what a disappointment'

    Well then your wrong then because according to Levine its the second coming! (mejokes)

  • Skooch #10 4 years ago

    Moral choices are more or less defunct IMO as an idea for us in videogames because to concern oneself with the morality of a decision requires empathy - and who has empathy for computer characters?

    Games like GTA do so well because they allow you to be the rebel and allow you to carry out moral atrocities with a smile and laugh, because you know it isn't real. I am betting that the vast majority of people didn't really care about whether they harvested or not, their decision was based on how to get the most EVE, not whether it is the right thing to do.

  • Azazel #11 4 years ago

    Moral choices are more or less defunct IMO as an idea for us in videogames because to concern oneself with the morality of a decision requires empathy - and who has empathy for computer characters?

    Having empathy for a fictional character!? What madness is this.

  • siro #12 4 years ago

    I started the game recently and didn't feel morally challenged in any way (even though I'm always a do-gooder in games where you've got the choice). That doctor Rubinstein or whatever woman said I get treats if I save them, so I did. It might have been a choice if you wouldn't have been promised anything. Of course everyone would harvest the sisters then. Maybe, that's why they put her in.

  • Jellybob #13 4 years ago

    Skooch, I may be the only person who felt this, but the first time I got asked whether I wanted to harvest a Little Sister, I did sit and think about it for a little while. It was certainly a good call to change them from being generic slimy things, since I think the relationship between the Big Daddies and Little Sisters is one of the things that really made the game for me.

  • Azazel #14 4 years ago

    The games that succeed at this kind of thing are the ones that take time to invest you emotionally in their characters before landing the tough decisions on you.

    A game like Planescape Torment for example.

    I didn't feel much of that with the little sisters in Bioshock as I hadn't developed much of a connection with them by that early stage. Making them into 'little girls' in some ways feels to me like a kind of a shortcut to my empathy.
    Edited by 1 at 30/07/08 @ 13:42

  • RedSparrows #15 4 years ago

    I disagree Skooch, I have empathy for a character (aside from the quite blatent fact we DO have empathy for fictional characters, given we feel emotion in film, game, novel form etc...) simply because I don't like being a bad guy. I find being a good guy (i.e. Paragon in ME) to be much more rewarding than bad. Just the way I am, a virtuous boy (who headshots people regularly ;( )

  • kangarootoo #16 4 years ago

    There is a bunch of concept art here, showing some of the early stage stuff. It countains spoilers, obviously.
    [link url=http ://www.bioshock-online.com/media/conceptart/
    ]http://ww w.bioshock-online.com/media/con...[/link]

    There is also a PDF for download here;
    http://ww w.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/art...

  • Nocturne #17 4 years ago

    The moral choices came late to BioShock, and its shows. I harvested two little sisters at the beginning of the game, but then stopped when I realised what they were and how they came to be that way, and thereafter played the good guy until the end. The ending cut-scene then depicted me as an evil and powermad tyrant... Huh!? I later learned that harvesting any more than one little sister results in the bad guy ending. It was a real disappointment and something that clashed considerably with the rest of my experience, ruining the story's finale. I think that with more time and more playtesting perhaps this flaw would have been dealt with, and it shows that the moral choices came late, or at least it did for me. A real disappointment in what otherwise was an exceptionally good example of the medium.
    Edited by 2 at 30/07/08 @ 15:52

  • bushwod #18 4 years ago

    I find the current video game obsession with morality really dull, specially seeing as most games fail to make you care about the actual characters.

    I actually think that the ability in Fable 2 to kill your spouse and orphan your child may be one of the better examples, because you have chosen them and created them and once they're dead they don't come back. But even then it's all a little hollow.

  • bodypopper #19 4 years ago

    Are they going to apologise for the cheesey boss battle at the end which contradicted all the clever and thoughtful gameplay that led up to it?

  • thewolfiv #20 4 years ago

    Now would you kindly stop all this talk and get on with the sequal.....

  • coojam #21 4 years ago

    The choice of morality was irrelevent in Bioshock because, although you could choose whether to rescue or harvest the little sisters, you were not afforded the same choice for the relatively innocent survivors of rapture. You're evil if you harvest soulless creatures that were bred to retrieve Adam but it's ok to slaughter thousands of Rapture's citizens so long as you rescue the little girls? Where's the morality in that?