BioShock 2 came out today, and you know what that means: time to question whether it promotes Satan worship. Gazeta Lubuska, a fairly large regional newspaper in Poland, ran an editorial questioning the game’s values, even going so far as to contact Cenega Poland in search of answers to the “allegations” being made by writers on various supposed Internet forums — and, of course, the writers themselves.
Sure, it’s a violent video game, but what got them so worked up about BioShock 2 in particular?
As people familiar with the original BioShock know, a big part of the gameplay is the interaction between Big Daddies, genetically engineered humans in mech suits, and Little Sisters, mind-controlled young girls who gather valuable character growth currency ADAM. According to Wired‘s review of the game, in the original, “Daddies were just monsters for you to fight; Sisters were merely the device by which the game evaluated your morality: Do you kill them for extra Adam, or let them go free? BioShock 2 explores these characters more fully.”
A very sketchy Google Translate of the nut of the Gazeta Lubuska article:
Internet users in the forums claim that the game is promoted anti-Catholic values. Bioshock 2 is happening in the city of Rapture, which is an area devoid of rules and principles. Promoted the idea – God does not exist, you can do whatever you wish, or extreme liberalism. – Did the game promoted Satanism – Internet user asks.
Bioshock 2 is a novelty that comes on the market tomorrow. The game takes place in the country, which was to be a model of ideal society. His idea was based on the fact that there are no rules. You can do everything with no moral brakes. Excellent graphics and game contains scenes of horror, except that the hero is a small girl. With his eyes wander the crazies in search of underwater Rapture drug. Earlier, before the rebellion dragged me there and was jailed for drug research. Wywąchują drugs like dogs. Shock. Does this have to go towards computer games.
Girls using Big Daddy. At any time, can kill them and help them make themselves. The game is very bloody and controversial.
How quickly complicated morality becomes Satanism. Hellforge is brutal in its Gazeta Lubuska rebuttal:
[The Lubuska writer] had learned that in Bioshock 2, some small children extract the drugs from the bodies of dead men, and that the vast majority of the characters consisted of drug addicts (splicers) who attack the Little Sisters to attain what they want. The protagonist is the Big Daddy, who can, as he expresses his disgust, “reportedly use children.” He described the game as consisting of little more than “Drug addicts, lunatics, whose sole purpose is to acquire ‘territory’”.
Further research by the author revealed that the game was also promoting what he calls “Anti-Catholic values”, as the game is set in the city of Rapture, one devoid of rules and principles. Clearly missing the whole point of the story and its critique of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist movement, the writer asks if the game promotes Satanism and “extreme liberalism”.
Well, the United Arab Emirates couldn’t have the monopoly on outrage over one of today’s releases, could it?
Published: Feb 9, 2010 11:05 am