Bioshock is about family as a motivator. The game is noted for it's Objectivist ideals but you are not motivated by personal gain. Throughout the game, family is your primary motivator.

Spoilers

The game starts with a picture of a family, as he opens a present from his parents. Then you are told a family that you have never met is trapped and you must save them. Not for a reward or for some boost in personal power but just because they are someones family. As you move through the game, familial names are given to characters. They aren't little girls, they are Little Sisters. The protectors are not guards, thugs, or monsters, they are Big Daddies. When the family you were trying to save is apparently lost, you must avenge them. As you move forward the truth about your family is revealed and you confront your father and visit the corpse of your mother. Many of the recordings talk about the familial relationships. The most touching and motivating usually are the thoughts of a parent about their children, Little Sisters. Your Little Sisters, changed in the same lab and by the same people as you were.
In the end you not only free them, you become their protector, a Big Daddy to the Little Sisters. You must protect this helpless, suicidally out of control child. You do this to stop their oppressor, who has promised to destroy their home "brick by brick and brat by brat". The threat against you is not important but this threat against your new family is enough push you toward your final confrontation. As you approach the final confrontation, the final appeal to you is not a bribe, or a threat, but the claim that he should be credited as your father and that is why you shouldn't fight him.
A lot has been written about the emphasis on the idea of choice in a game that is actually very linear. There is a choice that you make that does change the whole game. It is not whether you save or rescue the Little Sisters. This choice is set up so that what is best for the Little Sisters is best for you as well. So it is more of a choice between smart and stupid than between right and wrong. The real choice you make is why you are doing it. When I played, the entire purpose of the game was to save the Little Sisters. Everything else was just to fulfill that goal. The alternative was to do it just because you were told to do it. Do you choose for yourself why you do it, or do you just follow orders? Are you killing for a higher purpose or do you just kill because they are can be killed and may have loot? Are you a man or a slave? Family is what they used to point you toward the answer.

Sooo, is this a review? because if it is it's in the wrong section.

It's a commentary, not a review.

Wow, welcome to the Escapist where your clever insight into an already magnificent game are well received by those old an--

INTERNET PICTURE TIME!

Do you know what was in the gift in the intro?

I think Bioshock is usually criticizing Objectivist Ideals, so really it's not surprising that the Main Character isn't motivated by Objectivism. Everyone around him is, and look how bad they fucked everything up.

Though in theory Rapture is still not that bad of an idea.

I always thought it odd that a bunch of Objectivists would wipe out the sea slugs that produce Adam. It was in their own Rational self interest to protect that species. Just as it was against their rational self interest to fight one another in the first place.

Rather poor Objectivists on the whole.

What about the bad ending? Do you kill everyone while screaming "who's your daddy?" - because the "good" ending seems to be more about family. Though, I think they blatantly say it too.

I love this game. There are so many ways to look at it.
Bioshock is about family: see above
Bioshock is about politics: Obvious
Bioshock is about relgion: Ie, Rapture, Adam, Eve, etc, etc.

You can view it in so many different forms of style.

Boober the Pig:
It's a commentary, not a review.

ah, my mistake then.

PurpleRain:
I love this game. There are so many ways to look at it.
Bioshock is about family: see above
Bioshock is about politics: Obvious
Bioshock is about relgion: Ie, Rapture, Adam, Eve, etc, etc.

You can view it in so many different forms of style.

Someone holds my joy for multiple view points! Alas if everyone had the same joy...and for no apparent reason: alas, poor yorick.

Abolished:
Do you know what was in the gift in the intro?

A revolver, that you use to hijack the plane

PurpleRain:
I love this game. There are so many ways to look at it.
Bioshock is about family: see above
Bioshock is about politics: Obvious
Bioshock is about relgion: Ie, Rapture, Adam, Eve, etc, etc.

You can view it in so many different forms of style.

I'm pretty sure that if you read too far into anything, then you can get a lot out of it. Like how people think Gears is a play on Medieval times.

(Though most of Bioshock's things were intentional).

ElArabDeMagnifico:

PurpleRain:
I love this game. There are so many ways to look at it.
Bioshock is about family: see above
Bioshock is about politics: Obvious
Bioshock is about relgion: Ie, Rapture, Adam, Eve, etc, etc.

You can view it in so many different forms of style.

I'm pretty sure that if you read too far into anything, then you can get a lot out of it. Like how people think Gears is a play on Medieval times.

(Though most of Bioshock's things were intentional).

And there are people who claim that Resistance 2 is about the horrors that get committed in the name of stopping terrorism. You have to admit, that does have some weight behind it.

ElArabDeMagnifico:

I'm pretty sure that if you read deeper than the popular consensus into anything people hastily categorize, then you can get a lot out of it. Like how people think Gears is a play on Medieval times.

(Though most of Bioshock's things were intentional).

Fixed that for you ;-D

Very interesting idea, TC. And I agree, Bioshock is a fantastic game for analysis. Instead of making kids read "Catcher in the Rye" or whatever in high school, they should make them play Bioshock.

Wow, never thought of it that way before. Lots of anaylsis going on around this game and Portal, so it really shouldn't be a suprise.

Indigo_Dingo:
And there are people who claim that Resistance 2 is about the horrors that get committed in the name of stopping terrorism. You have to admit, that does have some weight behind it.

Alien Terrorists?

juandonde:
Wow, welcome to the Escapist where your clever insight into an already magnificent game are well received by those old an--

INTERNET PICTURE TIME!

Bad juandonde!

Anyway I'd never thought about the family aspect of it, guess I'm still stuck on the relgion.

Cheeze_Pavilion:

ElArabDeMagnifico:

I'm pretty sure that if you read deeper than the popular consensus into anything people hastily categorize, then you can get a lot out of it. Like how people think Gears is a play on Medieval times.

(Though most of Bioshock's things were intentional).

Fixed that for you ;-D

I knew you'd come to sabotage me. What's weird is you sabatoged it to say the exact same thing in different wording...

(Also, just in case you were wondering, you aren't the only one who thinks Gears is a play on medieval times. I still don't see it though, just weapon similarities.)

personally I think you're reading too much into it, since the family aspect is pushed on you purely as a device to move the story along, and has been a device used in most stories involving a creation of somesort. religious imagery is used in so many things it's pointless to start a list, and there was no penalty to murdering the kiddies, other than missing out on a couple of plasmids, since the amount of adam you got made up for the lack of gifts.

The bad ending shows you grabbing the LS who gives you the key in the end, followed by a bunch of spider splicers poppingout of bathysperes and hyjacking what looks like a typhoon submarine, included with an angry voiceover from Tennenbaum about how you let yourself be ruled by your greed. Then there's a short pause followed by another speech in a more sad tone about how ryan built rapture to prevent the world from learning his secrets but that you now know the most terrible secrets of the world. Then the camera shows an open missile hatch with a trefoil logo on it. There's also a neutral ending which has the same video as the bad one but the entire speech is sad instead of angry.