Just a small collection of Big Daddy and Little Sister alt art images I’ve stumbled across somewhere on the internet recently. In honer of how much I absolutely loved the original Bioshock, I’m going to incorporate these as my current background and header themes for a while.

Note: I have found most of these images on various image sharing boards on the internet. I have noted the original artist on images where known. If you are the creator of one of the “unknown artist” images, send me a link to your works and I will be happy to credit you.

Going through these images has reminded me about how truly amazing this game was and how much I miss it. The whole Big Daddy and Little Sister saga from the original Bioshock was one of the elements that gave that game some of the awesome  feel it had. Now, I’m not going to go into a full review of the game here but the basic premise of these guys, if you are unfamiliar with the series is this:

The game is set in the 1960’s where the player Jack, after barely escaping with his life in a violent plane crash over the mid-Atlantic ocean, swims to an estranged lighthouse, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Once inside he discovers a subversive pod that transports him to the underwater city of Rapture.

Rapture, a city on the ocean floor founded in the 1940’s by a man named Andrew Ryan, where “the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small“. Without restrictions, science here has flourished however, not necessarily by humane methods. The discovery ADAM, a mutant substance found in certain previously undiscovered Sea Slugs that reside at the bottom of the ocean, has lead to the development Plasmids, a substance that can genetically alter and mutate a person to give telekinetic “magical” control over elemental powers such as fire and lightning. Having this power however, comes at a costly price as the ADAM slowly deteriorates the body and mind leading the citizens of the city who consume it to slowly become insane and distorted unless they can keep consuming more ADAM. The people of the city were slowly becoming crazed mutated versions of themselves, called Splicers.

The need to mass produce ADAM became ever more a necessity. Experiments, done rather curly, found young girls had the proper metabolism to be able to regenerate new ADAM – and even recycle ADAM from the dead – by ingesting the Sea Slug, basically turning them into living ADAM producing machines. A geneticist by the name of Brigid Tenenbaum gathered many young girls from around the city, infused them with the slug and mentally conditioned them to harvest ADAM and thus creating the Little Sisters.

The effects of ADAM were twice as hard on the Little Sisters though, and forever locked their minds and bodies in a twisted childish state, never growing old and becoming more creepy in apprentice over time.

As they years went by, Rapture eventually fell into a Civil War due mostly to a policital fude between Andrew Ryan and rival Frank Fontaine, who wanted to overthrow Ryan and seize power in the city. During this time, the Little Sisters were set loose upon the streets of Rapture. At first, most of the citizens found the girls to be creepy and distrusting and would have nothing to do with them. The girls took to creating small tunnels throughout the city to travel and hide in. However as the city started to turn in on itself due to the chaos of the war and once people found out the girls were basically walking ADAM factories, they took to hunting them down and killing the girls for their precious ADAM. In order to protect them, Dr. Tenenbaum created the Big Daddy: A human fused inside of a giant armor suite and genetically programmed to protect the girls at all costs.

By the time Jack (you, the player) reach the city, everything has turned to chaos. The citizens, almost all now splicers and so far gone that just about no amount of sanity is left, are all out for themselves. You are befriended by an unknown voice on a radio box, named Atlas, who pleads you to help him rescue his family and in turn he will help you. In order to do so however, you will have to splice yourself and get more powerful by consuming ADAM. The only way to get ADAM is to kill a Little Sister and her protective Big Daddy.

Luckily for the girls however, Dr. Tenenbaum meets up with you early on in the game and gives you a special Plasmid that, at the price of obtaining less ADAM, you can actual set the girl free from the curse of the Little Sister, transforming her back into a normal girl. You do though, still have to first fight the Big Daddy, which is no joy ride that’s for sure.

There’s allot more to the game than than the Little Sister saga, and is really only a taste of the ultimate bizarre creepiness that is Bioshock. The saga adds a moral choice to the game: weather you become as evil as the rest of the citizens by going around killing the girls to get more powerful or show some compaction at the cost of ultimate power by freeing them. Below is a video showing off various ways of defeating a Big Daddy and freeing the Little Sister. It’s really better to see than to try and explain.

This video shows just how creepy the Little Sisters are and also how violent and in most cases, extremely tough it can be to defeat a Big Daddy (although the player in this vid uses some tactical tricks), who always accompanies one.

Anyway, like I said, although the Big Daddy / Little Sister saga is a big part of the game, it is only a fraction of the overall creepy awesomeness that is the original Bioshock. I am sad that this is the only one of the series that I’ve been able to play all the way through due to recent lack of decent hardware. Sigh…

If you haven’t ever played it, I highly recommend it! Check it out!

Most images and expanded content links courtesy of the Bioshock Wikia page.