Sep 17 2007
BioShock Pwned
I beat BioShock last Friday. I’m already playing it again, since there is a high replay value and you notice a lot more detail the second time around. It occurred to me that I have been playing it alot over the last two weeks, which may explain why I haven’t done much updating of my blog. My good friend Swavek got a copy about a day before I did, so we exchanged notes almost daily about our progress.
In retrospect, I wrote a small book on the subject via email. I meant to put the more interesting bits of it here and there in my blog, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the game to do it. So, I’ve compiled the emails that I sent out below, along with hindsight commentary in brackets. If you’re at all interested in information about BioShock gameplay or links to cool BioShock stuff, then read on. Beware of spoilers!
8/24/07
The code to the first locked door in the game is “0451″. “451″ was also used as the code to the first locked door in the original System Shock and again in Deus Ex. “0451″ was also the door code to Looking Glass’ offices and is a reference to the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I didn’t know that. 
8/24/07
Download a free copy of the BioShock art book in PDF format. Very cool.
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/artbook.html
8/27/07
I was about to turn in my pictures of the Spider Slicers to Peachy, the guy at the freezer door of the Fisheries, but the game says “don’t go in here until you’ve finished with the little sisters”. I’m thinking that I don’t want to die repeatedly, but I might as well give it a try. I didn’t have any Adam, and it sounded like I wouldn’t be able to go back to get it afterwards.
I took some pictures of the Big Daddies and the research said to use anti-armor rounds on them. I surrounded one with promimity mines, then took a few shots at him with the anti-armor rounds. He started towards me and hit all the mines. Sucker! I finished him off with the rocket launcher, but not before he killed me once.
When you’re about to find the camera, there’s a jail cell area that is littered with rocket launching security turrets. I managed to hack three of them, and then hung out there for a bit while they nuked Splicers in the hall. Later, I noticed a Plasmid bottle up in the shattered window (it must appear after you jump down from there the first time), so I went back up to get it. Lo and behold, there was a Big Daddy near the jail cells. I took a shot at him (to make him an enemy) and then all the rocket launchers went off on him. He was mostly dead by the time he destroyed the turrets, but he still managed to kill me at least twice before dying.
After I cured that one, Tenenbaum called on the radio and said that the Little Sisters that I saved had left me a present by the Gatherer’s Garden. I headed back to see what it was. Unfortunately, there was a heavy-duty Spider Slicer nearby, guarding a Plasmid bottle. When I took it, she screams “give me back my rose!” and attacked me. It took me a while to kill her (I retreated several times to the freezer door and refilled at the medic station), but she eventually went down with anti-personel rounds. She was chock full of goodies, but I think she was supposed to be a boss-level baddie.
Once killed, I checked the Gatherer’s Garden and found a Teddy Bear. It glowed yellow like a GOAL item, so I grabbed it. It had 200 Adam, a few bottles of EVE and a unique Plasmid that you can only get from Tenenbaum, “Hypnotize Big Daddy”. You cast it on the Big Daddy, and he’ll protect you like a Little Sister. I can’t wait to try it out! I now had 440 Adam, so I upgraded my health and my EVE, then got the Enrage and the bandage boost tonic. I’m all leveled up and still have 100 Adam to spare.
As far as I can tell, you need to rescue five [three, actually] Little Sisters to get a Teddy Bear reward. And I read that if you rescue them all, you’ll see a different ending once you beat the game. I think that I’m going to try to save them all. I’d like to see what other unique Plasmids there are too.
8/28/07
I found the weapon upgrade vending machine ["Power to the People" machine] at the end of the Fontaine Fisheries level. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to upgrade though. I thought I might want to upgrade the pistol, since that’s what I use most often. I saved the game and went back to try different upgrades. I ended up going with the machine gun damage upgrade instead.
It’s too bad that you can’t upgrade your wrench, since that’s what I’ve been using most often. I do a lot of sneaking, and I have the “extra wrench power” and the “wrench lurker” tonics activated. They should let you add big spikes on the end of your wrench, or a bigger handle for heavy-torque swinging!
I’m wandering around Arcadia now. I followed the stream first and then backtracked to the beginning along the walkways. Did you find the hidden stash at the beginning of the level? There’s a crypt in the graveyard with just one torch burning — light the second one with your fire Plasmid and the door opens. I’m wondering how many of these that I’ve passed up already. Every time I see a sparking door control, I’m tempted to zap it with my lightning Plasmid just to see if the door will open (but I don’t want to waste my EVE…). [It turns out that almost every sparking door opens a hidden room if you hit it with the Electro Bolt.]
I made short work of the two Big Daddies in Arcadia. Or rather, they made short work of each other. I’m not sure how, but two Big Daddies were in the same hall, right next to the Gatherer’s Garden. Only one had a Little Sister with him. A female Splicer came into view, so I took a shot at her with the pistol. She then shot at me and must have hit a Big Daddy. I didn’t exactly see it, but I’m assuming that the Big Daddy hit the other Big Daddy while returning fire at the female Splicer. The Big Daddies fought to the death, leaving one Little Sister by her lonesome and the victorious Big Daddy near death.
Once I rescued the first Little Sister, Tenenbaum called me on the radio and left another “gift” for me. This time, I actually saw the Little Sister carry it over to the Gatherer’s Garden, drop it off, look around and then dash back into her hole. Neat. A little while later, I found the second Big Daddy again, this time with a Little Sister. I lined up proximity mines again (which were in the crypt secret area) and then fired on him. He hit all three mines and then fell before my mighty rocket launcher. So I got the two Little Sisters in Arcadia without breaking a sweat.
The Houdini Slicers are hard to kill. I put the camera to good use on them though. I keep trying to sneak up on them, but they always see me coming. After they re-appear the first time, they’re not as perceptive though. And then I whack them with my un-upgraded wrench. I seem to be hacking and swinging more than using my Plasmids. I’m trying to figure out which slots to open up — should I get one of each, or just go with hacking and health tonics?
8/30/07
IGN has a buttload of awesome video attached to their BioShock review. Nice.
http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=800105
9/7/07
I already rescued all three Little Sisters in Hephaestus, but I’m starting to realize that the only way to get the R-34 junctions needed to build the EMP device is to pull them out of dead Big Daddies. I’ve only got two, which sucks now because I’ll have to kill two more Big Daddies without any Adam payoff afterwords… Unless you know where I can get some free R-34 pieces? I was hoping to find some in a desk in the workshops… [Nope, you have to kill more Big Daddies, unless the bodies of the ones you killed for Little Sisters are still around.]
Speaking of Adam, I’ve got close to 1000 now that I haven’t used yet. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to expand on, so now I’ve got all sorts of Adam stored up. I think I might buy Wrench Lurker 2 and an extra health slot to put Bloodlust into [Bloodlust give you health and EVE every time you use the wrench]. I’m all about the wrench. Remember when I was aggravated that I couldn’t upgrade the wrench? Now I’ve got the ice-wrench, and I might buy ice-wrench-2 in the Gatherer’s Garden.
Dying has become a viable strategy. If I’m getting clobbered by three guys and it doesn’t look like I’m gonna make it, it’s easier to die and respawn than to eat up all of my health packs. This can get aggravating when fighting a Big Daddy and the respawn point is a mile away, but usually I’m glad for the ability to retreat (almost unharmed). They should take away a single health pack and an EVE pack when you respawn — at least then it wouldn’t be such a viable choice to not dying.
9/10/07
While you’re in Arcadia, look for that hidden door in the ceiling. When you first enter the Farmer’s Market, go left until you hit the door (you’ll pass the cheese store on your right). Now turn left again and enter the meat store. The hidden sliding door should be right over your head. You have to jump up into the rafters, then make a jump over the doorway (without falling) to get to the sliding door near the ceiling. It has some hacker tools and some ammo.
I got some health and EVE upgrades by taking pictures of the Little Sister by accident. I’ve been taking pictures of the Big Daddies, but they always said “Multiple subjects”. I didn’t realize that I could take a picture of just the Little Sister until I accidentally took a picture of one when she ran ahead of the Big Daddy a little. Good call, since I got the health and EVE bonus. I just found Electric Eel 2, so I felt compelled to replace the Shutterbug 2 tonic with it.
I noticed that the Gatherer’s Garden purchases are cumulative. It’s the ones that aren’t sold at the Gatherer’s Garden that you have to go back for. Like Booze Hound and Blood Lust, you can only buy those at certain U-Invent booths in Fort Frolic. I played with Scrounger for a while, but the ability to “re-loot” things never panned out [You never got better stuff, just different stuff]. It seemed like a waste of a tonic slot.
When you finally get to the top of the Mercury Apartments complex, you get the “Lot 192″ in Fontaine’s apartment. This cures your diminishing health problem. By the time I got it, my health was down to where I started the game and I would die after one or two hits. I was pretty fragile, and I was very happy to get all my health back. The downside is that your cure is incomplete and you lose the ability to choose your plasmids. In fact, every five minutes your vision goes blue and you end up with a different, completely random, plasmid. I didn’t use a lot of plasmids, since I liked my wrench better, but the random plasmids include ones that you don’t currently have. So I get Incinerate 3, Bug Swarm 3, Target Dummy regularly. I haven’t seen Teleport yet, but it’s fun to test out plasmids that I haven’t bought yet. [It turns out that Teleport didn't make it into the game.]
Something bothers me — I haven’t been able to get into any of Sander Cohen’s secret areas. There is an area in Fort Frolic that was blocked. At the end of the main walkway, bottom floor, there is a staircase that goes down into the ground, but it is covered with a grating. I couldn’t open it, and I couldn’t find another way in. You can see the room it leads to on the map, but it was left unexplored. Secondly, there is a locked door in Sander Cohen’s apartment in the Mercurial Apartments, and it leads to another room on the second floor, but I can’t figure out how to get in there either… So even in death, Sander mocks me…
I don’t think that Ryan knew who Atlas really was. I think that Fontaine adopted the “Atlas” disguise after he faked his own death, for two reasons, 1) to continue to make Ryan believe that he was dead, and 2) to give the unwashed masses a figurehead to rally around, thus engineering the fall of Ryan. Fontaine wants to build an army of splicers with his plasmid line, then sic the army on Ryan. He created the “Atlas” persona to act as a leader for his army, in order to insure his control over them. You can see the “WHO IS ATLAS?” posters whereever proletariat workers can be found (in the crawlspaces of the garden areas, etc.). They worshipped him, and were ready to rise up in revolt — I think that they did on New Year’s Eve. That’s my guess from the different recordings that I’ve heard so far. So no, I don’t think that Ryan knew who Atlas was, or even if Atlas was even a real person, but he did know all about the player though, most likely through Suchong.
9/11/07
[Swavek said, "Do you think that Andrew Ryan might have been your father? He raped Anna Cullpepper in the back room of the strip club in Fort Frolic. He later had Chief Sullivan kill her. Additionally, as you're making your way to his office in Hephaestus he says something about 'nostalgia'."]
I had assumed that you were a test-tube baby. When you get to Ryan’s office, there is a tape from Suchong that talks about the super-growth of the subject baby (plus there is the loading hint quote from Suchong that complains about why children can’t grow faster and be less useless). But that does make sense.
Anna Cullpepper was the stripper in the backroom of Eve’s Garden? I thought her name was Jasmine? I listened to the tape in there, that said she was pregnant, but I didn’t see anything in her apartment. However, I think that Ryan mentioned “nostalgia” as a hint that you actually came from Rapture, not Kansas. He also mentions that building a city underwater is a marvel, but your predicament is closer to a miracle (hinting that it was all set up ahead of time, as Ryan is an aetheist).
9/11/07
First off, here is how to get into the basement area in Fort Frolic:
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=931329&topic=38165842
I might try to go back there in the bathysphere and try to find the button, but I might wait until I play the game again.
About Cohen, I read that he comes back or something in his apartment if you don’t kill him in Fort Frolic. Or at least, there is a tape in there from him. I’m going to assume that he has to be alive when you get into the apartment in order for his door upstairs to open. It was locked for me, but I had already killed him.
[Swavek wondered how you were able to see the ghosts in the game.] The ghostly appearances were explained in one of the earlier tapes. It’s a side effect of the ADAM [something about shared memories in the genes]. I also just read that you are the child of Ryan and the stripper [Jasmine Jolie]. Apparently everyone knows but us. 
9/12/07
This is interesting… It’s a collection of BioShock backstory, for those who didn’t listen to all of the audio diaries during the game. Very cool.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/file/931329/50049
9/13/07
I just finished Prometheus Point. I still don’t know why I needed to become a Big Daddy. I know that I need to be able to gather up the Little Sisters, but I don’t see how that is supposed to help me defeat Fontaine. It’s hard as hell to see in that diving helmet, but I like the 25% armor bonus from the suit. I made sure to get the helmet last.
I haven’t been battling many Splicers in Prometheus Point — I’ve pretty much just shot Enrage at them and let the Big Daddies kill them. There are three Big Daddies and very little room, so there seemed to be one around every corner. Now that I’m done with the area, I have to go back in and save the three Little Sisters. I already followed one into the airlock to the Proving Grounds [the next level], but a sign came up and warned me to gather Adam before I go.
If I look like a Big Daddy (and have to smell like one too…), then why don’t bad guys run away from me? They just ignore me now, but I want to see FEAR! It must be the missing gloves! I have a feeling that you were also supposed to be able to get the gloves, since I’ve seen them lying around, but I figure that they couldn’t get the gloves on the hands and still make the plasmid powers show through. It’s a shame, since I don’t think that the effect is complete without the gloves. Too bad you can’t look in a mirror.
So once I save the Little Sisters, how much more game is left? I know that there is one more section after the airlock, but I haven’t read anything about it. Will it be like Andrew Ryan, where the area is very small and you don’t actually fight him, or will it be a large arena where you fight Fontaine and a hundred slicers to the death?
9/13/07
This is really funny. [But only if you've played the game...]
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/rapture-classified-ads.php
9/14/07
There is a Gatherer’s Garden machine just before you fight the end boss, but it didn’t have any new plasmids in it. I ended up with 500 Adam that I couldn’t spend. I would have bought Incinerate 3 (I never used it), Ice Fist 3 (that ice one, forget the real name…) and Insect Swarm 3. As it was, I only had Insect Swarm 2 and Electro Bolt 3. I had Incinerate 1, but I used the napalm thrower instead (that thing is damn slow to load and then you have to prime it before it will fire [Should have used exploding buckshot with my double-upgraded shotgun]). I managed to kill Fontaine pretty easily. I just used the chemical thrower to soften him up, then shot rockets at him until it was time to stab him again (took me a little while to figure out how to stab him, since it wasn’t a selectable weapon). I sent insect swarms after the Splicers (along with some Enrage), so they didn’t bother me much.
So I got the good ending, and it wasn’t what I expected. I expected more scenes. I read on the Bioshock boards that the ending was longer than that. [The following is a retelling of the "better" endings found on the forums.] At the end, Fontaine set a self destruct and that Rapture was falling apart. Tenenbaum said that she was heading over to the bathyspheres with the little girls. In the good ending, she pleads for you to come with them. In the bad ending, she says that you can go to hell and die. The whole place collapses around you and floods, but you’re in a Big Daddy suit so you’re ok. Then you see a little sister in a bathysphere, stuck on a fallen girder. In the good ending, you manage to free the girder, sending the little sister to safety. In the bad ending, you blow up the bathysphere, trying to ride it to the surface. In either case, you can’t ride it to the surface (even though in the good ending, the little sister watches you with sad eyes as she floats up and away). You then find half a bathysphere in the rubble and use it to get to the surface.
In the good ending, Tenenbaum and the little sisters welcome you to the surface and you raise them to adulthood. You see them grow up, graduate and get married. Then at the very end, you see a mantlepiece with pictures on it. There is a graduation picture with you, Tenenbaum (now both old and gray) and a bunch of girls surrounding you both in graduate robes — it says “congratulations class of 1970″. In the bad ending, you wake up in a mental ward and scream at the walls until orderlies come in to settle you down. Tenenbaum enters, shoots you up with something, and berates you for being a “bad boy” again. I think she kicks you or something too, just to show you that she hasn’t forgotten. These sound like much better endings, and this is what I was expecting. So yeah, I was disappointed.
I tried to find the post that I read this on, but I couldn’t find it again. The BioShock board is getting 50 posts a day, mostly for the same questions (“how do I get in Cohen’s room” and “how do I get the good ending”). Some are interesting, but I don’t think that the older ones stick around. I couldn’t find very many “how many endings are there” posts at all this time around…
9/14/07
I’m hearing that there are three endings. The first is the good one, which you only get if you save all the Little Sisters, then there is the bad ending that you get if you harvest [kill] all the Little Sisters. The third, which you get if you kill some and then save some, is supposed to be the same as the bad ending, except the tone of voice is less harsh. So you’re not Hitler in the third ending, but you’re not going to the surface to raise the girls, either.
9/15/07
Here is that post on the BioShock boards. I guess it was just a representation of what a “better” BioShock ending would look like. I had just started playing Apollo Square when I read this, so I was thinking that it was the real ending.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=931329&topic=38145748
It would have been cooler that way… Anyway, Chrissy has been feeling neglected lately (she wants help with the housework), so I’ve got to give the game a little rest. I do plan to play it again, but I want to use the plasmids more this time. I was a wrench jockey the first time around, so I want to attack more with Telekinesis. I read that there are other tonics like Human Inferno (sort of like the Electric Shock tonic except with fire), but I don’t know if those are for the XBOX 360 only…
The XBOX also has an online component. You get “Achievements” for doing certain things in the game. For example, you get a “Prolific Photographer” achievement if you complete all of the research in the game, or a “Tonic Collector” achievement if you get all of the tonics available. XBOX online assigns you a score from 0 to 1000, and you need to get all of the achievements (collect all the radios, etc.) in order to get a perfect score. Other people online can see your score and comment. Sounds neat, but not enough for me to want to buy an XBOX.
I think the secret tunnel that Pablo Navarro talked about was actually the crawlspace above the door in the meat market. Did you find that one? I think I told you how to get up to it (you have to jump up into the rafters above the meat market). You’ll miss it if you don’t look up.
The problem with Cohen is that you can’t use his key to enter the apartment stairs if you kill him in Fort Frolic. However, if you kill him in the apartment, you’re able to take the key back to Fort Frolic and open his Muse Box (don’t know if that’s true, but someone said so online). [Sander Cohen's Muse Box is full of garbage anyway, just some health packs and other random items.]
9/16/07
You didn’t catch that crypt in Arcadia the first time around? In fact, I think I mentioned that in an email awhile back… [I did, back on 8/28.] Yeah, you can even rob the corpse in there! I think that I found all of the hidden hidey-holes, but I admittedly wasn’t looking too hard towards the end. In the Tree Store (the one in Arcadia that is covered in bushes until you Ryan kills the trees), you can crawl under the stage in the back. You have to be on either side of the wide staircase (one side is sandbagged off, but you can move them, or just crawl in the other side). There are goodies under there. Also, you can crawl up the bricks in the Tree Store against the wall to find a bunch of goodies along the upper windows (there’s an autohack tool up there too).
I never used the Hypnotize Big Daddy until Lot 192 took my ability to change plasmids away. I had it, since I saved all the Little Sisters (the only way you can get it), but I never equipped it. I used it once, and it scared me since the Big Daddy actually followed me around for awhile, like running after me. I was thinking, damn, why didn’t I use this before?
I’ve heard of people pitting two Big Daddies against each other, then getting the first Little Sister and waiting for the victor to find a Little Sister of his own before easily picking him off. It’s not like you can’t do that with Enrage though. However, you could potentially have a Big Daddy follow you around for the entire game, and all you would have to do is tag someone with a single pistol round to set him off.
I found a copy of the BioShock field guide at Target. It mentioned that there are five levels of research for all enemies. You get autohack ability on every turret when you reach level 5 research on them. All sorts of abilities that I had no clue about, let alone all the nifty tonics that I missed out on. I didn’t do much research at all, in fact, until I became a Big Daddy and getting up close for good shots was easy (and didn’t hurt nearly as much). I’ll take more pictures next time around, for sure (since film is easy to come by).
9/17/07
I started playing BioShock again last night. I completely skipped the downstairs portion of the New Year’s Eve ballroom. I thought that I could get down there from the whole in the bathroom, but I ended up blocked off and watching the Little Sister instead. I don’t think that there was anything interesting down there, but I don’t remember exactly. I only remember all the splicers in the water under the Atlas statue.
I made it to the Medical Pavillion and then saved. I’m faring a lot better than I did the first time around. I don’t cast lightning into puddles that I’m standing in. I know that you only have to light up Splicers in water once to kill them (lightning kills them, no need to hit’em with the wrench). And I know what all the containers look like (I didn’t know to look in certain places before). I can’t wait to get the Telekinesis plasmid so that I can throw dead cats at people. [There's at least one dead cat on every level, and usually they kill with just one hit, let alone setting one on fire first!]
9/17/07
[Pablo Navarro had a diary entry in Hephaestus about a tunnel that links Hephaestus to the Farmer's Market.] I don’t think that there is such a tunnel in Hephaestus. I think that the *end* of the tunnel can be found in the Farmer’s Market though (it’s the sliding door up in the rafters of the meat store). Why else would a small room near the ceiling be chock full of autohack tools?
The game guide at http://guides.gamepressure.com/bioshock/ says that you can attack people with homemade molotav cocktails. How do you do that? There’s a lot of booze in this game, and the proof levels seem to go up the farther you get into the game, so the ability to catch one on fire and chuck it at someone seems pretty cool. I wonder if this works like flaming cats and teddy bears?
Have you tried playing on Hard Mode yet? There’s a funny topic in the forums called “I play with hard on”. One of the replies was “I tried playing with hard on, but the controller kept getting knocked out of my hands!” If only I had that problem.
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