Bioshock > Bioshock Levels > Welcome to Rapture
During your introduction to this city of the might-as-well-be-dead, you will learn the basics of the game:
Are you ready? Let the adventure begin.
Your bathysphere rises as you hear talking between two men, one of whom, Johnny, is waiting to meet you. But as you reach the surface you see Johnny backing towards you, trying to beg away a woman with a meat hook in each hand. Suddenly she slashes Johnny across the belly, grabs him by the throat, gives him the coup de grace, and throws his body into the water. Then she notices you: Is it someone new?
She lets out a scream and attacks the bathysphere. She leaps away after trashing the ship.
No, you are not going back.
Out of the radio comes the voice, a voice with an Irish brogue, of the man Johnny was talking to: Would you kindly pick up that radio?
You do so. The guy says,
I don't know how you survived that plane crash, but I've never been one to question Providence. I'm Atlas, and I aim to keep you alive. Now keep on moving … we're gonna have to get you to higher ground.
Now, take a deep breath and step out of the bathysphere. Don't worry. I won't leave you twisting in the wind.
You're out of the ship onto the dock with its red carpet. The windows in the room open to let in some light. You can hear the mutterings of the woman in the air.
We're gonna need to draw her out of hiding. But you're gonna have to trust me.
You walk down the carpet, looking at scattered suitcases and trunks. There are also placards with messages like Rapture Is Dead
, Ryan Doesn't Own Us
, We Are Not Your Property
and Let It End. Let Us Ascend
. But there are no people to go with the luggage or the signs. They certainly did not escape by bathysphere (posters announce all such travel is denied). You sense that what happened to Johnnie happened to them. That sense becomes deeper as you hear the woman say, I'm going to wrap you in a sheet.
As you approach a barrier just under the timetable, the woman jumps down from the ceiling. Suddenly a bright light shines down on her from a security camera. How do you like that, sister?
shouts Atlas as a flying security robot fires on her. She flees into the wall; the bot flys away.
Atlas addresses you:
Now, would you kindly find a crowbar or something? Bloody splicers sealed Johnny in before they … goddamn splicers.
Evidently people like that woman are the ones called splicers. You will find out just what they are in due time.
Jump over the barrier and walk into the camera light. In front of the door is a wrench; pick it up as your first weapon. Use it to break up débris under the door. Crawl under the gap, but keep to the left. Someone at the top of the stairs shoves a flaming couch down at you; stay to the left, and it will not hit you. Stand up and climb to the top to meet your first enemy.
Your opponent is a thug with a club, screaming about his lack of a sex life despite his big balls. (His deformed face might have something to do with it.) Whack him in the head to take him out, taking care to dodge to the left or right to keep him from hitting you.
You next hear a saccharine advertisement from the balcony over the lobby.
My daddy is smarter than Einstein, stronger than Hercules, and lights a fire with a snap of his finger. Are you as good as my daddy, mister? Not if you don't visit the Gatherers Garden, you aren't! The Gatherers Garden: Smart daddies get spliced at the Garden!
The Garden can wait. Search your late enemy and the lobby for first-aid kits, Eve hypos, Pep bars (chocolate-coated Eve supplements) and potato chips (for that health boost). Notice the heads-up graph on the upper left corner of your screen: First aid is in red, Eve in blue. Look at the giant poster marketing plasmids: Citizens are shown shooting heat and electricity from their hands, lifting a load of bricks without a drop of sweat, and moving a brick with mind over matter. Other posters advertise Teleportation and Security Beacon. Those plasmids are powered by the Eve in those hypos and Pep bars. You will need Eve as much as you will need first aid.
At the top of the stairs is the Gatherers Garden: Something that looks like a creepy old Coca-Cola machine with, on each side, a metal statue of a little girl with an oversized head standing among metal mushrooms. That in itself should be a warning of bad things to come. But to progress you have to pick up the hypo of Electro Bolt and inject yourself with it. The veins in your hands glow blue and sparks shoot across your hands as Atlas reassures you: Steady now! Your genetic code is being rewritten — just hold on and everything will be fine!
as you scream, fall off the balcony and land hard on the floor.
You pass in and out of consciousness as two thugs look you over. This one looks like his cherry's just been popped. Wonder if he still has some Adam on him?
Then a low deep moan and a thud floats in the air. One thug flees at once; the other screams at his companion, but realizes the futility of staying and leaves, too. Next, you see something hugh in a strange diving suit with a conical drill for a right hand stomp up to you. A little girl with red glowing eyes and an evil-looking syringe walks up. Look, Mr. Bubbles, it's an angel! I can see light coming from his belly. Wait a minute! He's still breathing. Don't worry, Mr. Bubbles; I'm sure he'll be an angel soon.
Both leave.
You finally recover as Atlas radios, You all right, boyo? First time plasmid's a real kick from a mule. But — there's nothing like a fistful of lightning, now, is there?
Time to use your plasmid: Zap the lever next to the airlock door to open it. If you keep missing and run out of Eve, Atlas will send you more through the Pneumo Tube, part of what passes for the postal service in Rapture.
Once the door is open, walk into the glass tunnel. Watch out! The tail section of the airplane smashes into the tunnel, causing a major flood. Walk through the flood of seawater into the tail section, then out into the tunnel again, do a right, then straight to the door.
You are in a smaller lounge divided in two by a corridor. The right room has food, cigarettes (gain Eve, lose health), wine (gain health, lose Eve), and a corpse with first aid and Eve. The left room has an Eve hypo, some wine, a trash bin and a storage box. It also has a Vita Chamber next to a dead cat. You've also seen a Vita Chamber near the bathysphere. If you should die, you will be reconstituted in one of these, with all your weapons and ammo but without half a health level and without one Eve hypo. So save often (press F8) and try not to die.
While you are in the left room, another aggressor runs past. Atlas warns you: Splicer! Give 'em the combo: zap 'em then whack 'em. One-two punch! Remember, the one-two punch!
Walk into the hall, wait until the fellow comes out with club swinging, zap him and bang him on the head. The airlock door on the other end opens to reveal another thug; give him the same treatment. As you climb the stairs you hear all or part of the following from one of the mezzanines above: Tell Ryan I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Wait! Please! Don't do that!! The whole thing will go.
Then it does go, with a boom and crash down in flames into the elevator lobby beyond pearl-and-mahogany double doors. The doors opens, and a flaming thug comes at you. Zap and whack. There is nothing in the room between the stairs and the elevator lobby, so pass through the doors and take the only working elevator in the lobby.
As you ascend to the topmost mezzanine, as you view more seawater flood in, Atlas tells you his story:
Listen — I've got a family. I need to get them out of here. But the splicers have cut me off from them. If you can reach them in Neptune's Bounty, then maybe, just maybe — I know you must feel like the unluckiest man in the world right now, but you're the only hope I'll ever see my wife and child again. Go to Neptune's Bounty … find my family … please!
Okay, you are being recruited as a savior.
You get off the elevator. To your left is a gated door on which a memorial shrine has been placed. The poor fellow no longer needs his first-aid kit or Pep bar. (No, you can't take the teddy bear or the flowers.) On the other side, in front of the entrance to the Kashmir Restaurant, is a woman singing disturbingly and cooing over a baby carriage. Don't be fooled: The carriage holds a pistol. Be thankful that the woman won't use it. Zap and whack her, then take the pistol. Search the woman and trash can. Atlas explains briefly what has happened to the city.
Plasmids changed everything. They destroyed our bodies, our minds. We couldn't handle it. Best friends butchering one another. Babies strangled in cribs. The whole city went to hell.
Thanks for telling me, now that I have a body jacked up with the stuff.
You walk into the restaurant. It has all the trappings of a masquerade party celebrating New Year's Day 1959, mixed with blood and damage. Soon you hear an argument between a man named Charley and a woman named Brenda, who has locked herself behind a door to keep her Adam. As he bangs away at the door, go to the telephones to collect some money. If you hear banging coming from a vent nearby, it's another of those girls with the glowing eyes peering at you for a moment before crawling back into the vent.
At this point you have a choice. You can continue into the men's room to follow the goal; or you can go into the lower level of the restaurant first.
If you choose the latter, shoot Charley with your pistol. As Brenda comes out screaming, zap and shoot her — and be quick about it because she is a leadhead who's as tough as shoe leather and spry on her feet. Rummage through the kitchen, with its empty pots and rotting food, for money and Eve. When you come out of the kitchen, there will be two aggressors in the flooded dance floor on the other end of the room. Zap the water to electrocute both, as Atlas suggests.
Among the items in this room is the first tape recording you find: Diane McClintock, Andrew Ryan's mistress, bemoans spending another night alone while Ryan is working late again. Suddenly the restaurant is attacked, and Diane finds herself bleeding! If you are lucky, you can hear one of the attackers screaming into the tape LONG LIVE ATLAS!
Ascend the stairs to the upper level. Zap and whack a thug at the top. You can go into the ladies' room, where you will experience your first plasmid hallucination: A woman who regretted oversplicing herself. In the back is a tape from the owner of the Footlight Theater, who demands that Brenda (the leadhead who owned the restaurant) fix the hole in the men's bog. Oh, yeah, and there's a thug hiding in a stall. There is nothing in the men's room except that hole in the wall that takes you into the balcony of the theater.
Atlas advises you to lower your weapon. As you walk along the catwalk over the theater, you see a little girl (like the ones you saw earlier) repeatedly thrusting her syringe into a corpse. Atlas explains what she is about.
You think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface, well, that don't count for much down in Rapture. Those Little Sisters, they carry Adam — the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it; everybody needs it.
You reach the other end, and walk down the stairs. Through the glass into the theater you see a leadhead walk in on the Little Sister has she drinks the corpse's blood. He gestures to her to be quiet; she screams; he strikes her. Suddenly the creature in the old-fashioned diving suit jumps off the balcony onto the floor and runs after the leadhead. The leadhead shoots in vain as the creature grabs him, runs him through with its drill, and smashes him through the window. As the creature escorts the Little Sister out of the theater, Atlas explains, That's the Big Daddy. She gathers Adam; he keeps her safe.
Search the leadhead. Break the lock on the gate with your wrench. Go into the theater to search the corpse. In the hall in front of the Vita-Chamber there is another corpse in the rubble near a damaged vending machine and a poster for Eve's Garden, a strip joint. A woman appears with a gun at the L-bend of the hall; zap and whack her, but don't bother searching her or the nearby trash bin. Lure a thug away from the windows over the transit lobby, and do likewise. There are two more thugs in the water at the bottom of the stairs at the end of the hall; zap them dead. None of the corpses in the hall or in the water have much stuff, if anything. The dead Big Daddy is most fruitful: 33 dollars!
Jump down into the transit lobby. To your left is the entrance to Neptune's Bounty; to your right is that for the Medical Pavilion. Both are gated shut. First go into the men's bog and search for first aid and bandages. There are three storage boxes near the door to Neptune's, but only one has anything useful (three dollars). Now, turn your face to the water and walk backwards slowly to the Neptune's entrance. You will trigger a security alert. (Do not stand in front of the entrance after the alert is triggered, or the gun turret just inside will gun you down.) Now, stand next to the water. A number of aggressors will jump off the ledge into the water; zap the water as they land. Zap and whack at least one of those who may avoid the water.
Atlas cries out, It's Ryan! Goddamn Andrew Ryan! He found us! Dammit! He's shut off all access to Neptune. There's another way to get there. Head to Medical! What are you waiting for? Go!!
No, first you pat down the dead aggressors for any goodies they have. Get the pistols from the leadheads.
You will find that, after a certain length of time, dead splicers not completely scavanged turn into lockboxes. These hold the loot for you to retrieve. Empty splicers and lockboxes will in time fade away.
Those were the last of the aggressors you will confront on this level. Walk into the hall that leads to the Medical Pavilion. At the end of the hall is a room with many video monitors, whose walls are a locked gate, reinforced windows in front of a large screen, a window to the ocean, and an open hatch. When you approach the hatch, it suddenly closes shut on you as the lights go out. Ah, Christ! You're trapped!
, shouts Atlas. Gonna try to override the exit from here!
On the giant screen beyond the windows flashes an image of Andrew Ryan, his eyes obscured by a fedora. Ryan speaks over loudspeakers.
So tell me, friend, which one of the bitches sent you? The KGB wolf? Or the CIA jackal? Here's the news: Rapture isn't some sunken ship for you to plunder; and Andrew Ryan isn't the giddy socialite who can be pushed around by government muscle. And with that, farewell, or do svidaniya. Whichever you prefer.
Several aggressors run up and try to break through the windows. Fortunately for you, the glass is reinforced. More fortunately, Atlas has overridden the lock to the door behind you. I got it! Get out of there! Get out now!!!
Run into the room beyond and open the hatch.
Now you are on your way to Medical.