Would you kindly explain these plot points to me?

July 19, 2012 6:25 AM

I just finished playing Bioshock for a second time, and I have some questions about the story. Massive spoilers inside.

The first time I finished the game, I was left with some confusion about certain aspects of the plot, but I wrote it off to me either not paying enough attention or having a buzz on some of the time while playing. This time, I played much more intentionally and paid careful attention. But there are still some things about the plot that don't make sense to me, and I'm wondering if they're actual plot holes or if I just missed something:

* Andrew Ryan, the ultimate self-made man, allows himself to be beaten to death just to make a point to a creature he despises? This makes no sense at all. What am I missing here?

* How old am I (my character), and how long ago did my story start? There's one sequence where you encounter the little girls in their hiding place, and it's intimated that I'm no more than a few days old, and that everything I thought happened to me was an implanted memory. But at the end, Atlas says something like "I sent you out into the world." Two possible explanations come to mind: (1) I have never seen the outside of Rapture, am only a few days old, and everything (including the plane crash) is an implanted memory. (2) I have seen the outside of Rapture, the plane crash happened. #2 seems ridiculous, but if #1 is true, when do the implanted memories stop and my "real life" begin?

posted by jbickers to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 answers total)

I don't know about the character's age, but I took Andrew Ryan's death as an admission that his utopian dream and, indeed, his entire ethos, had failed. He gave up. (although I was convinced right up to the end that Ryan would be reincarnated by the regeneration machines, and this was why he was unconcerned about his death)
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 6:56 AM on July 19, 2012

According to both Wikipedia and my memory, Ryan explains that you are in fact his kidnapped and brainwashed illegitimate son. Apparently he does feel something for his child.
posted by contrarian at 7:12 AM on July 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Andrew Ryan's dream had collapsed. He had already activated the self-destruct mechanism for Rapture and turned off his Vita-Chamber; he fully intended to go down with the ship. The only thing left for him to do was to prove the correctness of his philosophy: A man chooses, a slave obeys. By his standards, he dies a man while his son lives on as a slave.

In any event, he had no intention of returning to the surface once he realized the degree to which everything had gone to shit. But this way, he gets to die believing that he was right about everything.

Your character is about four years old. He has been a sleeper agent living a normal life outside Rapture for about two years. The plane crash is not an implanted memory - you caused it. Blink and you'll miss it, but the note on the gift box starts off with the phrase "Would you kindly," and then the plane goes down (because you hijacked it and forced it to crash land at Rapture's coordinates).

This scenario becomes less ridiculous if you factor in that your existence is Fontaine's doing - you are Ryan's illegitimate son but you were stolen as an embryo and Ryan had no idea what happened to you until he pieced it together during the events of the game. You were sent out into the world so you wouldn't be in Rapture at all until Fontaine needed his secret weapon.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 7:16 AM on July 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

1. You're Ryan's son, stolen or bought as an embryo by Fontaine Futuristics. He's disgusted with you because you are everything he's not: you have no free will and are the slave of any master with your passphrase. When he commits suicide by protagonist, it's him taking back control from Fontaine. Ryan knows damned well that Fontaine has sent you in and Ryan has decided to die on his terms, under his command.

2. You've left Rapture and returned. Fontaine had you smuggled out and then used your passphrase to command you to hijack the plane, crash it near Rapture and descend in the bathysphere to the city.

Some of this is made much more clear in the second game.
posted by Sternmeyer at 7:18 AM on July 19, 2012

Jack (the protagonist) is a more-or-less real adult, IMO. The plane crashes because he reads a note that begins with "would you kindly".

To ascribe a metaplot of implanted memories and "is any of this real?" is to dive too far down the rabbit hole on something that can't support it.
posted by mkultra at 7:18 AM on July 19, 2012

The Bioshock wiki that Contrarian linked to will provide the most concrete answers you're going to get to your questions. Anything beyond that is speculation and/or personal interpretation.

I think by the time Jack finally catches up to Andrew Ryan, the mind of Rapture's once-great founder has deteriorated. We're talking about a guy who hands a golf club to his son, calls him a slave, and forces his son to beat his brains out: don't look for Ryan's actions to make much sense because there ain't much sense left in his mind. He's been stuck in this power struggle with Fontaine for so long and seen the city he built fall apart. His last dying act is to thumb his nose at the world, a six-kinds-of-distorted upside-down-and-backwards attempt to assert the power of free will.

And I ditto Sternmeyer: The plot line in the first game is fleshed out in the second game, which I also recommend. Once you play the second game, the first one becomes significantly easier to understand.

Bioshock has a very complex plot line. Having a decent understanding of the current events in the game requires an understanding of Raptor's history, the overwhelming majority of which is obtained through the audio diaries. So the best way to understand what's going on is to find and listen to the audio diaries — all of them.

The game's focus on the story of Rapture (Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine/Atlas, Brigid Tenenbaum, etc.) is a choice that some players like and some players don't. I happen to love it — I think Bioshock's story is creative and entertaining, and I would love to see it made into a movie — but keeping up with it does require a more active effort on the part of the player than a lot of other games do.
posted by hypotheticole at 9:10 AM on July 19, 2012

Disclaimer: I worked on the voiceover editing and some minor plothole-solving on Bio 1, but anything below is not canon, official, or an attempt to speak for anyone else involved - merely my own highly faulty personal recollection. Ingest with large grains of salt.

Short version: FAMOUS MONSTER more or less nails it.

Ryan is a man obsessed with his vision and ideology, and (correctly) views Jack as "an assassin" sent by his enemy to enable the corruption of his dream (escape to/contact with the surface). He sees himself as confronted with a choice between destroying that dream (and himself in the process) or seeing it compromised. Unsurprisingly given his character, he chooses to destroy Rapture. It's worth noting here that Ryan's refusal to compromise is ironically hypocritical: he began compromising his beliefs years earlier starting with the raid on Fontaine Futuristics, which is what drove a wedge between him and McDonagh - his only true friend.

With his death impending, he chooses to spend his final moments demonstrating to the son who brought him down just how completely they were an unwitting pawn. He makes the decision to go down still clinging to his beliefs and spitting in the face of his killer.

Because he never pieces together the Atlas-Fontaine connection, he has no reason to suspect that Atlas knows how to disable the self-destruct mechanism within the remaining minutes after his death, the computer for which was (as is labeled in game) originally manufactured and sold to him by Fontaine before they became blood enemies.

Everything Famous Monster wrote in answer to the second question is exactly correct, although for some reason I thought the player was 12 years old, not 4. Honestly can't remember why I thought that, but it's entirely plausible we had to bump the fictional chronology on that point at the last second and I didn't mentally update on that point.
posted by Ryvar at 9:53 AM on July 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

A man chooses, a slave obeys!

You are the slave, forced ultimately to kill Ryan. Ryan is the man, choosing to let himself be destroyed.

The reason vita chambers work for your is that they work for Ryan and you are his clone. The room immediately prior to killing Ryan: spend more time there, it's all on the "Would You Kindly" wall. You are a few years old, were raised in secret by Fontaine, Suchong and Tenenbaum. Lot 111 accelerated development so you are maybe 4 years old. After Fontaine loses to Ryan, you are smuggled out as a sleeper agent, activated in 1960 to return to Rapture and destroy Ryan.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:22 AM on July 19, 2012

Yeah, Ryvar's got it. I was around peripherally for a chunk of Bio1's development and worked on Bio2, and his chronology/impressions seem right to me.

Also I belieeeve that Ryan's supposed to have disabled the vita-chamber nearest him, so that he won't be resurrected.
posted by zusty at 8:05 PM on July 19, 2012

Yeah, the chamber closest to the crazy-wall is disabled.

I always took the "A slave obeys, a man chooses" rant to be almost a last ditch attempt to crack the conditioning. Be a man, Jack, just like your dad. Ryan's got an ego on him the size of the Atlantic, and going down in a blaze of glory is just as good if that gambit fails.
posted by Jilder at 9:38 AM on July 20, 2012