![]() | This article was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 17 April 2024 with a consensus to merge the content into the article Rapture (BioShock) . If you find that such action has not been taken promptly, please consider assisting in the merger instead of re-nominating the article for deletion. To discuss the merger, please use the destination article's talk page.(April 2024) |
This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2023) |
Big Daddy | |
---|---|
BioShock character | |
![]() A Bouncer-type Big Daddy alongside a Little Sister (appearance from BioShock poster) | |
First game | BioShock (2007) |
Created by | Ken Levine |
Designed by | Scott Sinclair |
Voiced by | Stephen Stanton |
In-universe information | |
Home | Rapture |
A Big Daddy is a fictional character in the BioShock series of video games. Big Daddies are heavily spliced (genetically engineered and altered with ADAM) human beings who have had their bodies directly grafted into heavily armored, steampunk-inspired atmospheric diving suits. They are armed with a rivet gun, heavy drill, rocket launcher, or ion laser. Alpha series Big Daddies are equipped with any of several other weapons as well. Though they make low-pitched groaning noises similar to whales, their vocalizations were performed by voice actor Stephen Stanton. Designed by Irrational Games (then under the supervision of 2K Boston/2K Australia), they first appeared in BioShock and were promoted heavily. A six-inch Big Daddy action figure was included in the limited edition version of the title. In its sequel, BioShock 2 , the player controls a prototype Big Daddy.
They roam the underwater dystopian city of Rapture, mentally conditioned to protect the Little Sisters—little girls who harvest a substance called ADAM from corpses—thanks to a series of plasmids stripping them of their humanity and free will. The player's interactions with Big Daddies and Little Sisters have been described by developer Ken Levine as the cornerstone of the game, due to the player's need for ADAM in order to gain strength in the game. [1]
Conceived of early on as a man encased in a diving suit, the Big Daddy was designed to have "that hulking metal feel of an underwater protector, so solid not even a shotgun blast could knock him off his feet." [2] While the concept remained the same of an AI character that protected the "gatherer" AI characters in the title, [3] [4] many ideas were considered for their mobility and execution, including a wheelchair mounted version. [5] As the designs for the individual types evolved, intricate details of the actual diving suit were worked out piece by piece, using the concept that the suits would be constructed from salvaged parts of the city. [2] Developer Ken Levine noted that with the concept of the gatherers as little girls, it allowed the team to explore the protector role of the character and demonstrate it in a way to appeal to a real-world relationship for the player. [3]
Two versions of the Big Daddy are present in BioShock: the 'Rosie' and the 'Bouncer'. Initial drafts of the Rosie model featured it encased in a light atmospheric diving suit with a singular hole for viewing through the helmet, as well as missing its left forearm and hand, replaced with a hook and pulley supported by cables attached to the stump. [6] Later designs restored the arm, adding a rivet gun, heavy oxygen tanks mounted on both shoulders and a squid-like tentacle extending from each shoulder. The completed design remained similar, removing the tentacles and reducing the oxygen tanks to a singular one positioned on its back, angled towards its right shoulder. The Rosie's rivet gun itself went through progressive design improvements, with the intent of making it "more fleshed out and threatening". [2]
The Bouncer model of Big Daddy featured it encased in a heavier diving suit than the Rosie, with the helmet more heavily armored and having multiple smaller holes for viewing. Several ideas were considered for weaponry, originally consisting of a wrist mounted fan-blade on the right arm and a hand-held double hook in the left hand. These were replaced by hand mounted grinders attached to each arm and an added oxygen tank angled over the left shoulder. [7] The weaponry was changed in the finalized design to a heavy drill over the right hand, with an engine and exhaust for it positioned over the right shoulder. [2]
A third model, dubbed "Slow Pro FUM" by the development team, was excluded from the game. Standing for "slow-moving, projectile-shooting, f'ed-up-melee", this Big Daddy was intended as a slow, ranged type that would center itself and fire a heavy projectile at enemies via a large arm-mounted cannon. Despite being designed for range, the developers noted its melee attacks were intended to be just as powerful. In an interview with GameTrailers' "Bonus Round", BioShock designers Bill Gardner and Hogarth De La Plante highlighted it as an aspect cut from the game late in development, and one they would have most liked to have kept out of all the cut content for the title. [8] BioShock 2 formally introduced the opponent as the "Rumbler", its weaponry altered to include a rocket launcher and the ability to deploy mini-turrets around an area.
In BioShock 2, players are given control of Subject Delta, the first Big Daddy to be successfully paired with a Little Sister. The designs wanted it to have a rough-draft appearance and look like a "work in progress", while incorporating elements of the later models. As a result, several concepts were considered, combining the parts of the Rosie and Bouncer models, before the developers settled on an appearance more akin to the former, but retaining the heavy drill of the latter. [9] In the Protector Trials DLC, the player plays as an unknown Alpha Series Big Daddy and in the Minerva's Den DLC the player plays as Subject Sigma.
Big Daddies are mentally conditioned armed escorts to the Little Sisters, [10] little girls who gather ADAM from corpses. The girls in turn interact with the Big Daddy, referring to it as "Mr. Bubbles" or "Mr. B" as they talk or sing to it gently, and mourn for them if they die. In order to gain higher level powers, the player must kill the Big Daddy escort and recover the ADAM from the Little Sister. [11]
If the title screen of BioShock is left to idle, the game's initial launch trailer will play, [12] which graphically shows the violent nature of Big Daddies and Rapture itself - a splicer pulls a Little Sister out of an escape vent, and corners her with a wrench, in order to kill her and harvest her ADAM. A Big Daddy saves her by intervening, which follows a close-quarters melee, in which the splicer has his hand drilled through when he raises it to defend himself - he then injects himself with the Insect Swarm plasmid and attacks the Big Daddy with a swarm of red hornets. The splicer then rams a shotgun directly into one of the Big Daddy's helmet viewports and fires, sending it off a balcony, where it lies immobile on the floor below. As he looks down, a drill is rammed through his back and appears from his stomach, directly in his line of sight. The second Big Daddy then engages the drill, causing the splicer to scream in agony. The Big Daddy then removes the drill, spins the splicer round to face it and punches him in the face with the drill. The scene cuts to black, and then cuts back to the little sister crying on the floor, until the Big Daddy walks up to her. With blood dripping off its drill onto the floor, it holds out an enormous hand, which is taken by the tiny hand of the Little Sister, and the sequence ends.
Outside of protecting Little Sisters they rarely interact with anything else. They are incapable of speech and can only communicate via groans and grunts and roars. If a Big Daddy comes across the player character or a splicer it will not attack unprovoked. However, if either the player or a splicer gets too close to a Little Sister, the Big Daddy will assume an aggressive stance in attempt to scare off the transgressor. If either the Big Daddy or the Little Sister is attacked (intentionally or accidentally), the Big Daddy will retaliate against the attacker until it or the attacker is dead. A 'Hypnotize Big Daddy' plasmid can be obtained to hypnotize Big Daddies into protecting the player, but the Little Sister will be abandoned, so the player loses the chance to obtain ADAM. The lights on the helmet indicate their moods: Yellow indicates that the Big Daddy is indifferent to the player's presence, red indicates rage towards the player, and green indicates that the Big Daddy is hypnotized and friendly towards the player.
In BioShock 2 , the player takes on the role of Subject Delta, previously known as "Johnny Topside", who is an early Big Daddy prototype known as the Alpha Series that had his mind and free will restored by Tenenbaum. He is the first Big Daddy to be successfully "pair-bonded" with a single Little Sister. The Alpha Series are a streamlined and agile type of Big Daddy - they are not as heavily armored, but are faster and more maneuverable: they bear a resemblance to the Rosie model, with minor alterations and additional features, such as a differently-shaped helmet with a solitary viewport, a diving knife worn on the hip (never used in-game), and the ability to mount a Bouncer drill. Alpha Series were not grafted into their suits like the later production models, but are still heavily spliced, being able to use Plasmids. However, the Alpha Series suffer from a major flaw: If the Little Sister they are pair-bonded to dies, is rescued, or is simply too far from them, then the Alpha will eventually fall into either a coma or a berserk rage - subsequent Big Daddy generations removed the specific pair-bonding in favor of Big Daddies protecting any Little Sister in general. Unlike in the previous game, Little Sisters will not run away from the player when they meet, but instead greet them, able to be "Adopted" to collect ADAM or "Harvested" on the spot to collect greater amounts of ADAM at the cost of their lives. [13]
In the downloadable content for BioShock 2 called Minerva's Den , the player takes on the role of Subject Sigma, previously known as Charles Milton Porter, on a mission to recover the Thinker from Reed Wahl, Porter's former partner that betrayed him to Andrew Ryan and leading to his transformation into Subject Sigma. The Thinker uses Porter's likeness to guide the way for Sigma, and at the end of the storyline, Sigma is returned to his original form as Porter. A new type of Big Daddy called the "Lancer" is introduced in Minerva's Den as opponents for Sigma. It is equipped with a beam weapon called the Ion Laser, and can also send out a flash that blinds the player.
A Bouncer-type Big Daddy appears as a playable third-party character in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale . [14]
Big Daddy, specifically the Bouncer type once again, appears in BioShock Infinite and its downloadable content, Burial at Sea . The Bouncer in Burial at Sea is slightly different in that it has a launchable drill arm in which the Bouncer can "fire" the drill out to a short distance away. It is later revealed why this feature was not included in BioShock's Bouncers as the launchable drill head is unreliable and liable to break away completely when fired, Dr. Yi Suchong recommended a fixed drill with the Bouncer able to simply rush the player as a compensation.
To promote BioShock, 2K Games released a six inch tall immobile Big Daddy figurine packaged with the limited edition release of the game. [15] However, many of the figures arrived broken, resulting in 2K Games announcing in November 2007 that replacement figurines would be distributed, accompanied with a printed artbook for the title. [16]
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review described the Big Daddy as "a freight train of a man-turned-monster", noting the moral dilemma of attempting to fight it or not. [17] PC Gamer called them "bizarre and compelling to watch" and added "I've never seen anything in a game look so angry as a Big Daddy when provoked." [18] 1UP.com called it "the soul of BioShock" and its "moral centerpiece", adding "He doesn't choose to fight you; you have to make the decision to terminate him...You may fear him, but you have no reason to hate the Big Daddy. When he's defending a Sister from a pack of splicers, it's hard not to root for his rivet gun. And when he bends to one knee to allow her to retreat to the safety of her hiding hole in the wall, it's a legitimately touching moment." [19]
IGN described the Big Daddy as one of their favorite video game monsters of all time, [20] and in another article stated "Few enemies inspire such a combination of wonderment and sheer terror in gamers as the colossal Big Daddy". [21] In an article discussing the character in terms of a BioShock film, editors Phil Pirrello and Christopher Monfette attributed IGN's high review score for the game to the character, and stated "No character so fresh out of the gate claimed iconic status as quickly as BioShock's baddie did...Our hero is only as good as our villain. Lucky for the filmmakers, they have themselves a potentially great one in Big Daddy." [22] Despite their praise, in a later article they were ranked by readers as the eighth most overrated video game characters, which IGN attributed to their feeling that as the game progressed the Big Daddy became less an imposing threat, and the ability to disguise oneself as a Big Daddy at the end of BioShock removed the "scary image" the character held for players. [23]
In 2007, IGN featured the character in their "Badasssss!" awards, [24] in which he took third place, directly below Master Chief and Samus Aran. [25] X-Play placed it at number three on their "Top 10 Greatest Videogame Monsters of All Time" list, describing it as "Blending lightning quickness and murderous tenacity, in an outfit that implies a tortured dive to Hell." [26] GameDaily listed the character as one of their "Top 25" scariest monsters in video gaming, placing it at number three on their list. [27] Later articles named his role as the protector of the Little Sisters as one of the greatest duos in video games, [28] and additionally ranked the Big Daddy as the best non-boss enemy in a video game, stating "He's one bad mother that we wouldn't want to run into in an underwater city, or anywhere, for that matter." [29] GamesRadar listed him as one of the top 25 best new characters of the decade, describing him as "scary and sad", "overwhelmingly alien and yet disturbingly human", and "brutally vicious to strangers while lovingly gentle to Little Sisters". [30] In 2016, Glixel staff ranked the Big Daddy the 8th most iconic video game character of the 21st century. [31]
System Shock 2 is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during production into a sequel to the 1994 game System Shock. The alterations were made when Electronic Arts—who owned the System Shock franchise rights—signed on as publisher.
Kenneth M. Levine is an American video game developer. He is the creative director and co-founder of Ghost Story Games. He led the creation of the BioShock series and is also known for his work on Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2.
BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.
2K is an American video game publisher based in Novato, California. The company was founded as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in January 2005 through the 2K Games and 2K Sports sub-labels. The nascent label incorporated several development studios owned by Take-Two, including Visual Concepts and Kush Games, which had been acquired the day before. Originally based in New York City, 2K moved to Novato in 2007. A third label, 2K Play, was added in September 2007. 2K is governed by David Ismailer as president and Phil Dixon as chief operating officer. It operates a motion capture studio in Petaluma, California.
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 on February 9, 2010; Feral Interactive released an OS X version on March 30, 2012. The game takes place in the dystopian underwater city of Rapture, eight years after the events of BioShock. In the single-player campaign, players control the armored protagonist Subject Delta as he fights through Splicers—the psychotic human population of the city—using weapons and an array of genetic modifications. The game includes a story-driven multiplayer mode that takes place before the events of BioShock, during Rapture's civil war.
Sander Cohen is a character in the BioShock video game series. He debuts in the first title of the series, developed by 2K Boston, as a celebrated polymath of the underwater city of Rapture who has a deranged and sadistic personality. The protagonist Jack is forced to help Cohen with the creation of a macabre sculpture, built around pictures of Cohen's former proteges whom he kills and photographs on his behalf, before he allows him to leave his domain Fort Frolic. Sander Cohen makes another appearance in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, a downloadable content story expansion for BioShock Infinite which sets up the events of BioShock. He is voiced by T. Ryder Smith for all appearances.
Andrew Ryan is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. He is one of the main antagonists in BioShock, and also appears in its follow-ups BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea. Ryan is portrayed as an idealistic business magnate in the 1940s and 1950s, aiming to create an underwater city called Rapture to avoid government oversight and scrutiny. As civil war erupts in Rapture, Ryan's utopian vision collapses into a dystopia, leading him to become reclusive and paranoid. After winning the war, he becomes increasingly ruthless in his control over the city's remaining inhabitants.
BioShock is a retrofuturistic video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin. The BioShock games combine first-person shooter and role-playing elements, giving the player freedom for how to approach combat and other situations, and are considered part of the immersive sim genre. Additionally, the series is notable for exploring philosophical and moral concepts with a strong in-game narrative influenced by concepts such as Objectivism, total utilitarianism, and American exceptionalism.
NBA 2K10 is a 2009 basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K. It was released in October and November 2009 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, and Wii. As the eleventh installment in the NBA 2K series, it is the successor to NBA 2K9 and the predecessor to NBA 2K11. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers is the cover athlete of the game. NBA 2K10 is the first game in the series to be released for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Wii platforms; it is also the first game in the series to be released on a Nintendo console since NBA 2K3 was released for the GameCube in 2002. The game is NBA 2K's last 2000s entry.
Rapture is a fictional city-state in the BioShock series published by 2K Games. It is an underwater city that is the main setting for the games BioShock and BioShock 2. The city also briefly appears in BioShock Infinite, and is featured in its downloadable content, Burial at Sea. The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-late 1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest artists and thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the world's governments and religion. However, the lack of government led to severe wealth disparity, a powerful black market, and unrestricted genetic modification, which turned the city into a dystopia exacerbated by Ryan's tyrannical methods to maintain control. The masses turned towards political activists like Atlas who advocated an uprising of the poor against Ryan and the elite of Rapture; and on the eve of 1959, a civil war broke out, leaving much of Rapture's population dead. The remaining citizens either became psychotic "Splicers" due to the effects of ADAM, a substance that can alter genetic material, or have barricaded themselves from the Splicers to protect themselves, leaving the city to fail and fall apart around them.
Brigid Tenenbaum is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. She is a German Jew who survived the Holocaust due to assisting in Nazi human experimentation, and was eventually invited to the underwater city of Rapture, where she continued human experimentation. She discovered a substance that altered DNA that was highly addictive, using little girls as hosts, before developing empathy for them and attempting to save them from their parasites.
The BioShock series is a collection of story-driven first-person shooters in which the player explores dystopian settings created by Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games. The first two games, BioShock and its direct sequel, BioShock 2, take place in the underwater city of Rapture in 1960 and 1968, which was influenced heavily by Ayn Rand's Objectivism. The third installment, BioShock Infinite, is set aboard the floating air-city of Columbia in 1912, designed around the concept of American Exceptionalism. Though Infinite is not a direct sequel to the previous games, the game is thematically linked; a short scene within the core Infinite game returns to Rapture, while the downloadable content BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea tie in many of the plot elements between BioShock and BioShock Infinite.
BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game in the BioShock series, developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K. Infinite was released worldwide for the PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360, and OS X platforms in 2013. The game is set in the year 1912 and follows its protagonist, Booker DeWitt, who is sent to the airborne city Columbia to retrieve Elizabeth, a young woman held captive there. Booker and Elizabeth become involved in a class war between the nativist Founders that rule Columbia and the rebel Vox Populi, representing the city's underclass. Elizabeth possesses the ability to manipulate "Tears" in the space-time continuum, and Booker and Elizabeth discover she is central to Columbia's dark secrets. The player controls Booker DeWitt throughout the game, fighting enemies and scavenging supplies, while the computer-controlled Elizabeth provides assistance.
Elizabeth is a fictional character in Irrational Games' BioShock Infinite, the third title in the BioShock series. The game is set in 1912 on a floating steampunk city named Columbia which was founded on the principles of American exceptionalism. Elizabeth has been groomed in a controlled environment to take over the reins of the city once its current leader, Father Zachary Hale Comstock, dies. Elizabeth has the power to open "tears" in the fabric of reality; she is able to view every event across all of the infinite timelines simultaneously and effortlessly open doorways to them, allowing her to access parallel universes.
BioShock 2: Minerva's Den is a single-player downloadable content (DLC) campaign for the 2010 first-person shooter game BioShock 2, developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored and genetically modified human, or "Big Daddy"; Sigma must travel through Minerva's Den, the technological hub of the underwater city of Rapture, to download a schematic of the city's supercomputer. Gameplay is similar to that of BioShock 2, with new enemies and weapons.
The development of BioShock Infinite began after BioShock's release in August 2007. The five-year development, led by studio Irrational Games, began under the moniker "Project Icarus". Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine was inspired by events at the turn of the 20th century and the expansion of the concept of American Exceptionalism set by the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. His story took these events to create a tale set in 1912 where the player, as former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, is challenged to rescue a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been kept aboard the floating city of Columbia in the middle of a civil war between its founder Father Zachary Comstock and the Vox Populi, the underclass revolting against him.
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea is a two-part single-player expansion to the first-person shooter video game BioShock Infinite. It was developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games for PlayStation 3, OS X, Windows, Xbox 360, and Linux platforms. Episode One was released digitally on November 12, 2013, followed by Episode Two on March 25, 2014. A retail version was released as part of BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, and later included in BioShock: The Collection for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
BioShock: Rapture is a 2011 science fiction novel written by John Shirley, published by Tor Books in the United States and by Titan Books in the United Kingdom. Rapture forms part of the BioShock retrofuturistic media franchise created by Ken Levine and published by 2K Games and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin. A prequel to the first BioShock game the novel tells the story of how Andrew Ryan founded the underwater city of Rapture. The book follows multiple BioShock characters. The cover art was designed by Craig Mullins, who also produced the cover art for BioShock 2. It was released July 19, 2011.
BioShock: The Collection is a compilation of the BioShock video games, developed by Blind Squirrel Games and published by 2K Games. The Collection features upgraded versions of BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite, with new textures and support for higher resolution displays and framerates. The compilation was released in September 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows; versions for macOS and Nintendo Switch followed in August 2017 and May 2020, respectively.
Atlas is a character in the BioShock video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K Games. He first appears in the first title of the series, where he sets himself up as a benefactor of Jack, the game's player character, upon his arrival in the underwater city of Rapture. During a pivotal scene later in the game's narrative, Atlas discloses that he is actually the crime lord Frank Fontaine in disguise, the main antagonist of the game, and that he had been manipulating Jack to act against the city's founder Andrew Ryan. It is also revealed that he is responsible for orchestrating Jack's mental conditioning during his infancy and later a chain of events that led to his subsequent arrival in Rapture. Atlas/Fontaine also appears in the sequel BioShock 2 through audio diaries, and more prominently in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, a prequel which sets up the events of BioShock.
Suchong: Clinical Trial Protector System Plasmid Lot 255 Dr. Suchong. Client Ryan Industries. Very frustrating day. I can't seem to get the damn Big Daddies to imprint on the little brats. The protection bond is just not forming... / Little Sister: Papa Suchong! / Suchong: Get, get away... maybe if I modify the genetic sequence to... / Little Sister: Papa Suchong! / Suchong: Shush, shoo... sequence to allow for... / Little Sister: Papa Suchong! Papa Suchong! Papa Suchong! / Suchong: Get away you filthy little shit! *smacks Little Sister* *Little Sister cries* ...What? *Big Daddy growls* What are you doing? Get back... Get back!!! Argh!
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)