BioShock (series)/Heartwarming

• The original's "good" ending, in which you grow old with the Little Sisters you saved, and you finally have the one thing you were denied: a family.
  • Saving each Little Sister is a minor CMOH in itself: you put a gentle hand to their brow and hear them gasp/sigh, along with a few bars of Garry Schyman's achingly sweet violin theme, as everything goes white. When you can see again, she thanks you and scampers off to the nearest vent.
• BioShock (series) 2's ending, in which Delta lives on through Eleanor.
• In Bioshock 2, sparing Grace Holloway's life, and her amazement after you leave.

Grace: You had me under a gun... and yet you just walk away? No monster alive turns the other cheek. No monster does that. A thinking man does that.

• • A man chooses.
• In Bioshock 2, there's a diary whose owner couldn't be more than 5 years old, named Billy Parsan. In it, he tells a Little Sister that he thinks she's cute, her Big Daddy reminds him of a Comic Book hero, that he bought her a gift and stored it someplace that no one else could get it, and said he'll wave to her next time he sees her. I guarantee you will go "D'awwww!"
  • Even more so when you go to where he says he left the gift: It's a rose. Heart: Broke.
• Heck, there was a Crowning Moment in the very first trailer ever shown for the game. We get a savage battle between a Big Daddy and the player ending with the player getting gored to death by the Big Daddy's drill. Then a camera cut to the Little Sister cowering on the ground. The Big Daddy stomps into view towering over the little girl, his drill still covered in blood, and reaches out his huge hand to help her up. That single shot let me know that this game would be different.
• Big Daddies in general draw an inexplicably perfect balance between Nightmare Fuel and CMOH.
  • Even playing as Delta gives you the feeling of being a sort of Frankenstein's monster.
  • Then near the end of the game you can see the world through the eyes of a Little Sister and one of the first things you see is a two story high golden statue of a Big Daddy in a heroic vein looking something like a knight Templar or a paladin. Also all of the other statues you pass during the mission are of Big Daddies being heroic- protecting people and defeating monsters. It's nice to know you're a hero to someone after all.
  • The very FIRST thing you see is Delta, pimped out in gold and white and looking like a comic book superhero. The statues you mentioned are of Delta's actions throughout the game ("Daddy Meets Aunt Gracie", "Daddy Meets Uncle Stanley", "Daddy Meets Dr. Gilbert"). Of course, even if you killed them, the statues depict it as more of a "righteous fury" type of thing (you ARE looking through the eyes of a Little Sister, after all). The entire mission also doubles as Nightmare Fuel for some.
• The moment in Fontaine Futuristics that Sinclair says that he feels sorry for Big Daddies. It was good to know that the current Atlas-analogue was a good person.
• Minerva's Den. We FINALLY get a guy, C.M. Porter, who goes to Rapture who 1) Isn't a complete ass. 2) Smart enough to see through Ryan, Fontaine, Atlas, AND Lamb. 3) Resists one of the primal temptations and shuts down the AI construct he made of his departed wife, knowing that it wasn't her or what she would wanted. At the end we see this poor man's grief, and how he refused to let it break him or twist him like so many others in Rapture. And the best part is that HE LIVES!
• If you've been saving the Little Sisters throughout the first game, you'll see all of them playing in Tenenbaum's sanctuary. They basically start heaping praises onto you and say you're going to save them. That fact alone can give you the fuzzies.
• In Bioshock 2, when you get the Hypnotize plasmid, you see a pair of splicers slow-dancing, acting completely enamoured. It was obvious that you were supposed to use the plasmid to turn them against one another, but it brought back fond memories of this troper's home-coming semi-formal. He just couldn't bring himself to harm either of them, and left the area without killing either of them. It was the sweetest thing he'd seen in Rapture for a long time...
  • One of them even brought a gift!
  • Fridge Brilliance / Horror - after what Lamb did to you with the very same plasmid, years ago, you'd have to be as much a monster as she is to inflict the same on another. "So," the game asks, "are you?"
• In the early parts of Bioshock 2, it's possible to find the audio diaries of an industrialist by the name of Prentice Mill: he apparently founded and owned the Atlantic Express railway, and from what can be heard of him, he was also something of an arrogant jackass. However, private bathysphere travel made his railway obsolete, and the bank crash that followed the New Year's Eve Riots left him completely destitute: his last audio diary mournfully notes that he has no family, no friends, and nobody likely to miss him. So, why is this not a Tear Jerker? Well, you find this last audio diary on a small shrine in Pauper's Drop, one built specifically for him. It's not known if he only stayed in the Drop long enough to kill himself, or if he made some kind of life for himself; all that's known is that someone cared enough to leave a memorial to him.

---

Back to BioShock (series)