Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Enraptured
I’m playing through Bioshock. Again. Bioshock 2 comes out in February, so I want to relive the experience before it’s old news.
For those of you unacquainted with Bioshock, here’s a quick intro.
Creator of Rapture, a city at the bottom of the ocean where men and women are free to pursue their professional and artistic visions without the oversight of Government or Church. Think Ayn Rand with balls.
“It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea, it was impossible to build it anywhere else.”
“On the surface, the Parasite expects the doctor to heal them for free, the farmer to feed them out of charity. How little they differ from the pervert who prowls the streets, looking for a victim he can ravish for his grotesque amusement.”
“A man chooses, a slave obeys.”
Smuggler, criminal mastermind . . . biotech entrepreneur?
“A gun in every home, peace on every street.”
“Hate to see you this way, kid. Hell, I was there when you were born. You ever have a dog you gotta put down? Breaks your heart.”
Not one of the game’s major characters, but a fave of mine nonetheless. What happens when a cosmetic surgeon decides to get really creative?
“When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I’ve spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?”
Who says Nazi scientists have a lock on crazy.
“Why children take so long to grow? They eat and drink like pig and give nothing back. Must find way to accelerate process.”
Remember Joel Grey from the movie Cabaret? Feed him a steady diet of acid, nurture his homicidal tendencies, and you’ll have Sander Cohen.
Just don’t doubt him.
“I could have been the toast of Broadway, the talk of Hollywood. But, instead, I followed you to this soggy bucket. When you needed my star light, I illuminated you. But now I rot, waiting for an audience that doesn’t… ever… come… I’m writing something for you, Andrew Ryan…it’s a requiem.”
And last but not least,
Have I mentioned that Rapture is patrolled by about two dozen small girls accompanied by drill-wielding behemoths in ancient diving suits? What the girls (and their bodyguards) are up to is one of the game’s creepiest early discoveries, so I won’t spoil it for you.
“Get up Mr.Bubbles, please get up! Why won’t you get up?!”
There. It’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally written a Bioshock post.
D.
