Bry Meister, What I Didn't Know Before

Bry Meister

What I Didn't Know Before

is that the little sisters from Bioshock weren’t meant to be human – instead they were drawn to squelch along as sea slugs, or tick across the ocean floor as crabs. The idea of crafting them as wheelchair-bound canines existed as well at some point. (But we can all understand why that hadn’t been done, right?) The decision of what design to use had been made in order to create an ethical dilemma for the player: granting them the ability to choose if they would take or save the little sister’s lives in the simple click of a mouse. (It should be a hard choice to take a little girl’s life, right?) When I was twelve, I held a blade to my wrist, watched my skin split along a seam, and flattened my tongue against the trench to taste what living was meant to be like. Crimson copper and iron flooding against my teeth, coating my gums, and slipping along the roof of my mouth reminded me of cut grass, split ends, a sheared sheep and cotton sweaters. (You have to destroy something to find a little growth, right?)

I spent hours looking into the mirror questioning if I still wanted to play, if I needed a power-up or boost, in order to keep going. There were nights I stayed up too late, eyes burning from looking at the bright screen game over flashing over and over and over, until all I saw was puckered pink scars lining my wrists like the 8-bit hearts that kept Link fighting Ganon for decades. (Because we all know wars aren’t won in a day, right?) So, I took my time, playing on easy for a while and building up experience points, until one day I switched on the console and found Peach had escaped the castle all by herself. When I play Bioshock today, at twenty years old, I don’t hesitate to save the little sister’s lives, and I question why it was so easy to almost give up my own.