Dr. Tenenbaum, the caretaker of the Little Sisters, presents these options to the player. It is in her interest that the girls be freed, and she offers an extra incentive to the player if enough Little Sisters are rescued. Remember the media fervor over this feature of the game? I suspect most journalists who decried the immorality of allowing players to make such a “barbaric, inhuman” decision never played the game in the first place, let alone paid enough attention to understand Dr. Tenenbaum’s offer.
Is it selfish greed that drives players to harvest the Little Sisters in order to earn more ADAM? Perhaps, but it’s a foolish decision. If the player frees all Little Sisters in the game, their ADAM plus Dr. Tenenbaum’s gifts (which often include bonus ADAM) handily outweigh the benefits of harvesting the girls.
It’s an interesting concept to me because the truly selfish decision is to rescue the Little Sisters since the payout is better, but this is the path that’s cited as “good” whereas harvesting would be considered “evil.” The “evil” path is not particularly selfish - it’s just short-sighted. As BioShock points out, “selfish” and “good” are not necessarily at odds.
My only complaint with BioShock is the fact that this one choice that is left to Jack is so blatantly simple to make. At the time you come across the first Little Sister, the player is not acclimated enough to the game to truly understand the ramifications of harvesting more ADAM at the cost of sacrificing a poor, helpless little girl. In fact, the first Gatherer's Garden only pops up _after_ the first Little Sister is dealt with, so the player has no idea of how much ADAM one really needs. Besides, once the player gets the first gift from Tenenbaum, it because immediately clear that there isn't really any benefit for the player to harvest the Little Sisters.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I had to look up what the other endings were because I could never make myself harvest one of the Little Sisters, even to see the extra ending. As you say, the benefits were better than the unnecessary extra ADAM during my second playthrough; that compounded with such an obvious moral choice kind of ruined the idea of Jack's one remaining choice left to him.