You’re in a plane. It’s 1960. Suddenly, the Atlantic Ocean is swallowing you whole. You swim toward a lighthouse—looming, lonely, and impossible—and step inside a spherical pod that drops you into the dark. Then, the lights flicker on. You see it. An Art Deco metropolis shimmering at the bottom of the sea. This is Rapture. It’s the moment most people realize that asking what BioShock is about isn't just a question about a video game; it’s a question about how we choose to live.
BioShock isn't your standard "shoot the bad guys" adventure. Honestly, it’s a philosophical cage match disguised as a first-person shooter. Developed by Irrational Games and led by the creative mind of Ken Levine, it arrived in 2007 and basically broke the mold for what mainstream gaming could achieve. It’s a story about the death of a dream. Specifically, the dream of Andrew Ryan, an industrialist who grew tired of "the Parasite"—his word for governments and religions—and decided to build a world where the great would not be constrained by the small.
The Guts of the Story: Rapture and the Fall
So, what is BioShock about at its core? It’s about the collapse of an Objectivist utopia. Andrew Ryan built Rapture on the seafloor to escape the surface world's regulations. He wanted a place where the scientist wasn't bound by "petty morality," where the artist didn't fear the censor, and where the businessman wasn't shackled by the taxman. It was a libertarian’s fever dream.
But things went south. Fast.
The discovery of ADAM—a substance derived from deep-sea slugs—changed everything. ADAM allows for "Plasmids," which are basically genetic modifications that give you superpowers. You want to shoot lightning from your fingertips? There’s a Plasmid for that. Want to incinerate things with a snap? Done. But ADAM is addictive. It destroys the mind. It turns the citizens of Rapture into "Splicers," mutated husks of their former selves who haunt the leaking, crumbling hallways of a city that was supposed to be a paradise.
By the time you, playing as a man named Jack, arrive in Rapture, the party is over. The civil war between Andrew Ryan and a mysterious challenger named Atlas has turned the city into a graveyard. You’re just trying to survive, guided by Atlas’s voice over a radio, clutching a wrench and hoping the next flickering shadow isn't a Splicer waiting to rip your face off.
The Philosophy Nobody Can Stop Talking About
Ken Levine didn't just pull these ideas out of thin air. He was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. If you look closely, the name "Andrew Ryan" is almost an anagram of "Ayn Rand." The game serves as a brutal critique of her philosophy. It argues that a society with zero regulation and total individual selfishness will eventually devour itself.
🔗 Read more: Steam Most Wishlisted Games: What Most People Get Wrong
It’s messy. It’s dark. It’s fascinating.
In Rapture, there are no social safety nets. If you can’t afford the cure for your genetic mutation, you just rot. If a company wants to exploit children to harvest ADAM—creating the iconic Little Sisters—there’s no government to stop them. This leads to the game's most famous moral choice: do you "Save" the Little Sisters, or do you "Harvest" them for more power? Your choice changes the ending. It’s a literal test of the player’s own internal "Parasite" or "Objectivist."
The Big Twist: "Would You Kindly"
You can’t talk about what BioShock is about without mentioning the "Would You Kindly" reveal. If you haven't played it yet, look away. Actually, don't. It's 2026; the game is nearly 20 years old, and this twist is essential to understanding the game's meta-commentary on player agency.
Throughout the game, Atlas asks you to do things. "Would you kindly head to the medical pavilion?" "Would you kindly find some ADAM?" You do it because that’s how video games work. You follow the objective marker. You obey the voice in your ear.
Then comes the confrontation with Andrew Ryan in his office. He reveals that you aren't a random survivor. You’re a biological weapon, conditioned from birth to obey any command preceded by the phrase "Would you kindly."
"A man chooses," Ryan shouts as he forces you to beat him to death with a golf club. "A slave obeys!"
It’s a gut punch. It’s the game calling you out for being a "slave" to the mechanics of gaming. You thought you were the hero making choices, but you were just following a script. This meta-narrative layer is why BioShock is still taught in university courses and discussed by critics like Clint Hocking, who coined the term "ludonarrative dissonance" partly in response to how games handle story versus gameplay.
The Visuals: Why It Still Looks Incredible
Even today, Rapture is a masterclass in environmental storytelling. You don't just read the lore; you see it in the neon signs for "Circus of Values" vending machines and the propaganda posters peeling off the walls. The Art Deco aesthetic—all gold leaf, geometric patterns, and towering statues—clashes beautifully with the rust, seaweed, and blood.
The sound design is equally haunting. The creak of the hull under the pressure of the ocean. The distorted 1940s jazz playing over speakers. The terrifying thud of a Big Daddy’s boots. Big Daddies are the game’s "tanks"—men fused into heavy diving suits, tasked with protecting the Little Sisters. They don't speak; they just groan and roar. They are tragic figures, symbols of the city’s willingness to sacrifice humanity for utility.
The Evolution: From Rapture to Columbia
While the first game is the gold standard, the series expanded in ways that deepened the "What is BioShock about" conversation. BioShock 2 put you in the suit of a Big Daddy, exploring the city from a different perspective and introducing Sofia Lamb, a collectivist villain who was the polar opposite of Andrew Ryan.
Then came BioShock Infinite.
Infinite swapped the dark ocean for the bright, cloud-swept city of Columbia. It moved from 1960 back to 1912. Instead of Objectivism, it tackled American Exceptionalism, religious extremism, and racism. You play as Booker DeWitt, a man sent to "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." The girl is Elizabeth, a woman who can tear holes in reality.
The connection between the two? "There’s always a lighthouse. There’s always a man. There’s always a city."
BioShock turned out to be a story about constants and variables. It’s a multiverse story before the MCU made everyone sick of them. It suggests that certain patterns of human greed and the desire for power are universal, whether you're at the bottom of the sea or ten thousand feet in the air.
Common Misconceptions
People often think BioShock is just a horror game. It’s not. Sure, it’s scary, but the horror is a vehicle for the ideas.
Another misconception is that it’s purely an anti-capitalist screed. It’s actually more nuanced. It critiques any "perfect" system that fails to account for human nature. Whether it’s Ryan’s extreme capitalism or Sofia Lamb’s extreme altruism, the game argues that any ideology pushed to its limit becomes a cage.
How to Experience BioShock Today
If you’re looking to dive in, you shouldn't just watch a "movie version" on YouTube. You need to play it. The BioShock: The Collection remastered versions are available on basically every platform—PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.
💡 You might also like: Outer Wilds: Why the Eye of the Universe Still Haunts Our Dreams
- Play in the dark. The atmosphere is half the experience. Turn up the volume so you can hear the Splicers muttering to themselves in the vents.
- Read the diaries. The "Audio Diaries" scattered around the levels are where the best writing is. They tell the small, personal stories of the people who lived and died in Rapture.
- Don't rush. If you just sprint to the end, you’ll miss the nuance. Look at the architecture. Read the labels on the bottles.
- Think about the "Harvest vs. Save" choice. Don't just do what gives you the most points. Think about what it says about Jack—and you.
BioShock remains a landmark because it respects the player's intelligence. It assumes you want more than just a power fantasy. It wants to haunt you. It wants you to walk away wondering if, given the chance to build your own world, you’d end up exactly like Andrew Ryan.
The real genius of the game is that it doesn't give you a clean answer. It just leaves you standing in a leaking city, holding a wrench, wondering where it all went wrong.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Start with the original: Grab the 2016 Remastered version of the first BioShock to see the definitive vision of Rapture.
- Explore the "Burial at Sea" DLC: After finishing Infinite, play this expansion—it directly links the two worlds in a way that will make your brain melt.
- Check out the "Museum of Orphaned Concepts": Included in the remastered collection, this digital gallery shows the bizarre enemy designs and ideas that didn't make the final cut.
- Read "Atlas Shrugged": If you want to see exactly what Ken Levine was deconstructing, skim Rand's work to see how the game mirrors and mocks her "Galt's Gulch" concept.