Bioshock 2: Eleanor

Eleanor is the Little Sister taken from our protagonist at the beginning of the game, and for much of the game she seems to be relegated to the role of a Mcguffin. Something for the player to chase after, not a person in her own right. There's elements even relatively early on suggesting the contrary, with her managing to psychically-or-something communicate with you, including that if you choose to Rescue Little Sisters it's Eleanor who informs you that a gift has been left for you periodically, but I didn't credit these much at the time. Talk is cheap, and dialogue is often disconnected from how a character is handled when it comes to Stuff That Matters.

Then you get to the last hour or so of the game, and to my pleasant surprise Eleanor is catapulted forward into being a significant individual in several respects.

Part of this is the Vita Chamber reveal I covered last post: it's not until near the end of the game that you learn that Eleanor arranged for your revival, and that changes things quite a bit. Eleanor isn't a damsel in distress, waiting for her knight in shining armor to rescue her. I mean, she is, but her knight in shining armor was dead up until she jumped through hoops to revive him from inside her not-entirely-metaphorical cell. That's a considerably more active role in her own ultimate escape than I would've expected, and a very strong indicator of just how strongly Eleanor has been rebelling against the villain's attempts to shape her.

Another part is that once you're captured, Eleanor once again bends the rules and arranges for a Little Sister to get a Plasmid to you to help you escape. The details are a bit of an amazing choice thematically -you've spent the entire game playing a Big Daddy, now it's time to close the circle and play a Little Sister- if a bit lacking in implementation, but the relevant bit here is that the focus in the escape process is actually arming and armoring Eleanor. Once she's fitted with Big Sister gear, Eleanor is a full-fledged combatant, more than able to take care of herself: where Bioshock 1 forced an inane and insane escort mission on you late in the game, Eleanor in Bioshock 2 is invincible, able to one-hit-kill weaker Splicers and fight on even footing with more dangerous Splicers, and just generally kind of amazing.

This is great in and of itself, but it shines a radically different light on the story up until now, making it clear that Eleanor's limited ability to act was evidence of the oppressive nature of her imprisonment. Not, for example, a refusal to show initiative on her part. It more starkly illuminates that Eleanor's bits and pieces of help over the course of the game, the psychic advice and the Plasmid gifts she arranged for you, really were all she was able to slip by her captors. That this was the best she could do due to circumstances, and not personality, not an unwillingness to help herself.

What complaints I do have about the endgame with Eleanor are linguistic quibbling, that eg she really ought to be saying things like "Be sure to use the Plasmid to call for me if you need help, Father," rather than "Use the Plasmid, Father!" Which... seriously. It's minor. The endgame is amazing regardless of language wonkiness.

The other great thing about the endgame is that it doesn't go too far with this almost-reversal-of-roles. It would've been easy to make Eleanor too able to take care of herself such that one would be left wondering why she needed our help at all. The only extent to which this is a concern at all is that Eleanor can teleport, which seems like it would make it difficult for the villain to contain her, and this can be waved off as a game design simplification, allowing the game to pull Eleanor out of the ether anytime you use the Plasmid to call her or the plot needs her to do something. Not a capability truly available to Eleanor in the plot proper. Otherwise, the game does an excellent job of making it clear that Eleanor did need help to reach this point, that your aid was vital even if the endgame is more of a father/daughter partnership rather than the father-rescues-daughter sequence one might've been expecting going in.

It's seriously amazing.


Next time, I talk a bit about Bioshock 2's approach to morality and multiple endings, and compare this to Bioshock 1's equivalent.


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