Enchantment under the Sea / Bioshock 1 & 2

I enjoy playing video games.  They’re fun and you get to kill far more people than you get to in real life… and you can do so without messing up the carpet.  Furthermore their stories often go places you’ll never be able to go and as Jack Burton from ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ you can see things that no one else can see, do things no one else can do.

That said, I just got through playing Bioshock 2.  The second installment of the story of the wacky adventures you can have under the Atlantic if indeed a guy goes ahead and makes an underwater metropolis based on the question:

‘Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?’

“No!’ says the man in Washington, ‘It belongs to the poor.’ ‘No!’ says the man in the Vatican, ‘It belongs to God.’ ‘No!’ says the man in Moscow, ‘It belongs to everyone.’ I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.”

So the thing I thought that was quite interesting about the plots of both Bioshock 1 and 2 is the fundamental philosophies of the antagonists.  Andrew Ryan builds this sweet Art Deco styled city on the concept of pure capitalism coupled with no religion or rulers.  ‘No Gods or Kings.  Only man” is the banner phrase that meets you upon your entering the city in the first game.

Now, this philosophy of a city of unbridled ambition and no petty morality (pfff* morality, who needs it?), we find the wheels fell off this plan long before you enter the city in the first game.  The problems that grip any city grip this city:  Poverty, Greed, Corruption, Power Struggles…the usual.  And so the city becomes this sort of tower of Babel where the great ambition is met with ruin.
A creepy ruined underwater city with crazy people all hopped up on genetic modification things.  Yep.  Kinda like Detroit only underwater.  Oooo burn.

Detroit, lift up your weary head. – sufjan stevens – good song

The second game continues the story threads, further uncovering other struggles rapture faced before it’s fall.  This time, rather than unbridled capitalism it’s good lo’ Socialism being pushed by  psychologist Sophia Lamb.  Her goal is to create a Utopia and the first perfect utopian though any means necessary.  She worked to destroy Andrew Ryan and those like him and to use this underwater city as the birth place for her dream.  Equally a crappy idea as Ryans’, just a different end of the spectrum.  Rather than the strong not being constrained by the weak, it’s equal misery for all under the sea.

Aaaannyway, Great couple of games i gotta say. Now what is the moral of the story you may ask?  Easy!  Don’t build a city underwater, dummy.   For your health!