The names are unmistakable. You don't call something ADAM by accident. That happens for a reason. ADAM, in game, is the raw, unstable stem cells that are found in sea slugs on the sea floor. Gross, right? But it's not just about that, because Adam is what drives the plot forward. In the world 
ADAM and EVE. You'd have to be napping to miss that this is a Biblical reference, a direct one, but what is it saying to us? Well, to begin with, it's talking about creation, really. About remaking creation, and starting again.
Remember the story of the flood? Sure you do. When big budget Noah and his Darren Aaronofsky family drifted away in a CGI Ark (I haven't seen the movie yet, so be nice) and took two of every kind of animal on board? Well, creation started again after that flood, what with all the animals having to get to work to repopulate, and what with all the human beings having to do what human beings do to repopulate. But when God either made people in the garden of Eden, or when he saved them through the Ark, he told them to be fruitful and multiply, because they were made in the image of God.
Well, imagine if you had the chance to improve on that design. Imagine for a moment if you had the ability to improve on what God had given to you as a human being, and you had the chance to augment yourself. That's the essential plot of Deus Ex (which we will get to, promise), that there are choices out there to improve on God's design, and to make something new, and perhaps better. The slogan of the plasmid advertisements is 'EVOLVE TODAY,' giving the not so subtle promise that evolution, the system that makes you faster, taller, stronger over thousands of generations, is available to you all at once, all in one injection.
The allure of ADAM in Bioshock is that it rewrites your genes, and makes you stronger, faster, more dangerous. It gives you superhuman powers, lets you freeze your foes, trap enemies, use telekenesis, and much much more. In other words, it takes the human, and makes it superhuman. But at a terrible cost.
What you realize when you walk around the ruined city that is Rapture, is that if there ever was any Rapture in that city, it was a long time ago. Given the ability to remake creation exactly as we want, given the power and authority to reach into creation and remake ourselves into what we would want to be, we can't stop. The collapse of the city is neatly summed up in the idea that ADAM is what everyone wants, but only as a means to an end. The end being human, even superhuman perfection. But as people kept on swapping parts in and out, as they kept on modifying themselves to make themselves greater, better, faster, something happened, which should have been obvious. They became less human. I know, who would have thought that spurning your humanity would make you less human, but here we are. And as they became less human in appearance, their personalities degenerated as well, and they became monsters, only living to modify themselves again. And so they all wear masks, to hide what they've all become, and even as they know that they're ashamed of what they're turning into, they can't seem to stop.
So, why are you wearing a mask? Not a real one, obvy, but a spiritual, moral, ethical mask. Why are you wearing it? What are you hiding.
The people loved darkness rather than light for their deeds were evil.
People have been falling short of God's glory for quite a while, and this is no exception. The further you fall, the more you have to cover and hide. And the funny thing is, most of our falling from grace was done to improve ourselves, it was done to make us better, it was done so that we might be more than we are. Our sins are usually committed for our own benefit, because we feel as though that will make us better. and you know, it usually doesn't. We do so many things to try to improve on God's design for our lives, what he would have us do. We add more rules, we add more ethics, we bend his rules, we decide to break them, and as that goes on, we add more and more and more, and we can't seem to stop ourselves, until one day we wake up, and realize that we can't let anyone see us the way we are. This goes double for those of us in the church, because Christians can't EVER let other Christians see them for who they are. The level of scandal attached to that would be immense and intense. Your only hope as a Christian is to hope that none of the other Christians around you ever figure out what you have turned into. And so We all wear masks, and the longer you wear masks, the more difficult it is to take them off and walk away.
The beginning of the Christian walk, though, is understanding that although you wear a mask, although you love darkness so that nobody can see your deeds, they're still obvious as all get out. Everyone knows. Your mask is not convincing at all. It sticks out a mile. From the very beginning of Bioshock, the very first splicer you see is obviously not a normal person, and none of them are. The mask can cover the face, but it can't cover that the face is messed up, and needs help. The Christian experience is predicated on the notion that you can't hide your sin behind a mask. Not only can your peers tell, but Jesus can tell. And what he wants to give you is not a new mask, but to restore your face to the point that you won't need a mask anymore.
And that was the one thing that the splicers couldn't have. They couldn't go back, they couldn't go back to be human again. Every new splice drove them further and further down the pit, and further away from what they desperately wanted after a while, just to be normal. Just to be human.
This is where the story of Bioshock turns around a human element. ADAM and EVE work together to create a new world, in which you're not bound by anything, no laws, no rules, no morality, and no limits on what you can do to yourself. You can be whatever you want to be. And the following of ADAM, of the old Adam, always leads to the same path. If you can choose whatever you want, you habitually choose nonsense. If you've ever wondered (and you probably haven't) about the old Norse gods, the old Greek or Roman gods, whoever was in the pantheon, you'll find that they are just human beings writ large. The gods of the ancient world were capricious and rude; dangerous as enemies, and perhaps even more dangerous as friends. When the ancient people sat down and mused on the possible personalities of the gods, they did so imagining what they would be like if they had unlimited power and could not die. How would they behave? What would they get up to?
By the time that these things were fully thought out, the only conclusion was that if you had unlimited power, then you'd use it to make incredibly bad decisions. You'd use it to be a monster in your own world. And that's what we see happening in Rapture. All the good intentions, the possible uses for Incinerate, Electro Bolt, Telekenesis, the ads that talk about how they'd be useful for household chores, but the power corrupts, and turns the users into monsters.
So the Christian story isn't one of improvement, so much as it is a story about resurrection, and reformation. The central thesis of the Christian faith is that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, and in rising again, restored us to righteousness with God. What does that mean? That means that we are not being re-created, we are being restored to the way things ought to be. The sin in our lives is a major issue, and it is what Jesus promises to take away, and does so. In doing so, he doesn't take the human and make it superhuman, he takes the subhuman, the broken, the corrupt, the smashed, and makes it fully and completely human again. Heaven isn't a promise of something magical, something superhuman, but the promise of a restoration to the way things should be. The Bible ends with a discussion of a new heaven and a new earth, in which people are placed, as they were in the beginning. A restoration to the way things should be, a restoration to what is good and right.
The final moment of the game, the ending, deserves a mention. People didn't really like it, and I can understand why. It seemed like kind of a letdown, but here we go. The game ends with Jack, the protagonist, returning to the surface, and the type of ending you get is dictated by how you treated the little sisters in the game. Did you harvest them, or did you save them? If you saved them, you get the good ending, in which you raise them as daughters, and they achieve normal human lives. If you harvested them, then you find a sub full of nuclear weapons, and threaten to blow up the world. That's it, there's really no middle ground. If you chose to harvest / kill the vast majority of the little sisters, the voiceover will be angry. If you saved most, but killed many, then you will get a sad voiceover. But hidden in there is something notable - you are allowed one kill. If you are moving through Rapture, and you kill the first little sister you find (or the second, or tenth, but it's usually the first), but rescue the rest, you can still get the good ending. Because there is, in the game, a chance for repentance. You can live through doing something horrible, and change your mind, be shocked by your own callousness, and repent, and turn from your sin, and still be welcomed into post-game paradise. The game really only lets you fail if you stop caring, and if you see the weak and helpless as a means to your ends.
Thanks for reading. Tune in next week for Fallout 3, and moral dilemmas in games.
This is where the story of Bioshock turns around a human element. ADAM and EVE work together to create a new world, in which you're not bound by anything, no laws, no rules, no morality, and no limits on what you can do to yourself. You can be whatever you want to be. And the following of ADAM, of the old Adam, always leads to the same path. If you can choose whatever you want, you habitually choose nonsense. If you've ever wondered (and you probably haven't) about the old Norse gods, the old Greek or Roman gods, whoever was in the pantheon, you'll find that they are just human beings writ large. The gods of the ancient world were capricious and rude; dangerous as enemies, and perhaps even more dangerous as friends. When the ancient people sat down and mused on the possible personalities of the gods, they did so imagining what they would be like if they had unlimited power and could not die. How would they behave? What would they get up to?
By the time that these things were fully thought out, the only conclusion was that if you had unlimited power, then you'd use it to make incredibly bad decisions. You'd use it to be a monster in your own world. And that's what we see happening in Rapture. All the good intentions, the possible uses for Incinerate, Electro Bolt, Telekenesis, the ads that talk about how they'd be useful for household chores, but the power corrupts, and turns the users into monsters.
So the Christian story isn't one of improvement, so much as it is a story about resurrection, and reformation. The central thesis of the Christian faith is that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, and in rising again, restored us to righteousness with God. What does that mean? That means that we are not being re-created, we are being restored to the way things ought to be. The sin in our lives is a major issue, and it is what Jesus promises to take away, and does so. In doing so, he doesn't take the human and make it superhuman, he takes the subhuman, the broken, the corrupt, the smashed, and makes it fully and completely human again. Heaven isn't a promise of something magical, something superhuman, but the promise of a restoration to the way things should be. The Bible ends with a discussion of a new heaven and a new earth, in which people are placed, as they were in the beginning. A restoration to the way things should be, a restoration to what is good and right.
The final moment of the game, the ending, deserves a mention. People didn't really like it, and I can understand why. It seemed like kind of a letdown, but here we go. The game ends with Jack, the protagonist, returning to the surface, and the type of ending you get is dictated by how you treated the little sisters in the game. Did you harvest them, or did you save them? If you saved them, you get the good ending, in which you raise them as daughters, and they achieve normal human lives. If you harvested them, then you find a sub full of nuclear weapons, and threaten to blow up the world. That's it, there's really no middle ground. If you chose to harvest / kill the vast majority of the little sisters, the voiceover will be angry. If you saved most, but killed many, then you will get a sad voiceover. But hidden in there is something notable - you are allowed one kill. If you are moving through Rapture, and you kill the first little sister you find (or the second, or tenth, but it's usually the first), but rescue the rest, you can still get the good ending. Because there is, in the game, a chance for repentance. You can live through doing something horrible, and change your mind, be shocked by your own callousness, and repent, and turn from your sin, and still be welcomed into post-game paradise. The game really only lets you fail if you stop caring, and if you see the weak and helpless as a means to your ends.
Thanks for reading. Tune in next week for Fallout 3, and moral dilemmas in games.
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