The first encounter with a Little Sister in BioShock has always stayed with me. As the young girl cowers away from you, you're pulled in two directions: do you take advice from Atlas, your guide through Rapture, who tells you to take their Adam in the name of survival, or do you listen to Doctor Tenenbaum who beseeches you to free them? Then the decision is put in front of you - one that you'll have to make several times throughout BioShock - "choose whether to rescue the Little Sister or harvest her". I came to the game a handful of years after it originally released in 2007, and knowing very little about it at the time, I can still remember sitting on this choice. I had no way of knowing what this would do in the long run, and the words of both characters, who seemed to have different motives I couldn't yet discern, hung over me.
Despite Altas' words to the contrary, everything in my gut told me that harvesting them was cruel, and I could never bring myself to do it. But from that initial instance onwards, I never stopped questioning where I was headed or what the outcome might be, and the mystery and atmosphere of it all constantly propelled me forward to discover where my path would lead me. By the end of my time in Rapture, I was ready to jump into BioShock 2, and later, BioShock Infinite. While the choices weren't always so subtle, and some may have felt more impactful than others from game to game, it was always the characters and choices you're faced with that kept me coming back to the BioShock series.
-copy-29e15046.jpeg?w=600)
