Big Daddy (BioShock)
Encyclopedia
A Big Daddy is a fictional character
in the BioShock
series of video games. Designed by 2K Boston/2K Australia, they first appeared in BioShock
and were promoted heavily. A six-inch Big Daddy action figure
was included in the limited edition version of the title.
Big Daddies are heavily spliced (genetically mutated and altered) human beings who have had their skin and organs directly grafted into antiqued, heavily-armored atmospheric diving suits. They are armed with a rivet gun
, heavy drill, rocket launcher, or ion laser. Alpha Series Big Daddies are equipped with any of several other weapons as well. Though they make low-pitched groaning noises similar to whales, Big Daddies have no voice actor attributed to them.
They roam the underwater dystopia
n city of Rapture, mentally conditioned to protect the Little Sisters—little girls that harvest a substance called ADAM from corpses—thanks to a series of plasmids stripping them of their humanity and free will. The player's interactions with Big Daddies and Little Sisters have been described by developer Ken Levine as the cornerstone of the game, due to the player's need for ADAM in order to gain strength in the game. The protagonist of BioShock 2
, known as Subject Delta is a prototype Big Daddy who possesses free will.
mounted version. As the designs for the individual types evolved, intricate details of the actual diving suit were worked out piece by piece, using the concept that the suits would be constructed from salvaged parts of the city. Developer Ken Levine noted that with the concept of the gatherers as little girls, it allowed the team to explore the protector role of the character and demonstrate it in a way to appeal to a real-world relationship for the player.
Two versions of the Big Daddy are present in BioShock: the 'Rosie' and the 'Bouncer'. Initial drafts of the Rosie model featured it encased in a light atmospheric diving suit with a singular hole for viewing through the helmet, as well as missing its left forearm and hand, replaced with a hook and pulley supported by cables attached to the stump. Later designs restored the arm, adding a rivet gun, heavy oxygen tanks mounted on both shoulders and a squid-like tentacle extending from each shoulder. The completed design remained similar, removing the tentacles and reducing the oxygen tanks to a singular one positioned on its back, angled towards its right shoulder. The Rosie's rivet gun itself went through progressive design improvements, with the intent of making it "more fleshed out and threatening".
The Bouncer model of Big Daddy featured it encased in a heavier diving suit than the Rosie, with the helmet more heavily armored and having smaller but multiple holes for viewing. Several ideas were considered for weaponry, originally consisting of a wrist mounted fan-blade on the right arm and a hand-held double hook in the left hand. They were replaced by hand mounted grinders attached to each arm and an added oxygen tank angled over the left shoulder. The weaponry was changed in the finalized design changed to a heavy drill over the right hand, with an engine and exhaust for it positioned over the right shoulder.
A third model, dubbed "Slow Pro FUM" by the development team, was excluded from the game. Standing for "slow-moving, projectile-shooting, f'ed-up-melee", this Big Daddy was intended as a slow, ranged type that would center itself and fire a heavy projectile at enemies via a large arm-mounted cannon. Despite being designed for range, the developers noted its melee attacks were intended to be just as powerful. In an interview with GameTrailers
's "Bonus Round", BioShock designers Bill Gardner and Hogarth De La Plante highlighted it as an aspect cut from the game late in development, and one they would have most liked to have kept out of all the cut content for the title. BioShock 2 formally introduced the opponent with a different name ('the Rumbler') and alterations (the ability to fire rockets and deploy mini-turrets around an area).
In BioShock 2, players are given control of Subject Delta, the first Big Daddy to be successfully paired with a Little Sister. The designs wanted it to have a rough-draft appearance and look like a "work in progress", while incorporating elements of the later models. As a result, several concepts were considered, combining the parts of the Rosie and Bouncer models, before the developers settled on an appearance more akin to the former, but retaining the heavy drill of the latter. In the Protector Trials DLC, the player plays as an unknown Alpha Series Big Daddy and in the Minerva's Den DLC the player plays as Subject Sigma.
In the Minerva's Den DLC for BioShock 2, a new Big Daddy called the "Lancer" is introduced. It is the only Big Daddy type featured in Minerva's Den. It is equipped with a new weapon, the Ion Laser, and can also send out a flash that blinds the player. It is the only Big Daddy capable of defeating a Big Sister singlehandedly.
If the title screen of BioShock is left to idle, a video sequence is left to play, which shows graphically the violent nature of Big Daddies and Rapture itself - A splicer pulls a Little Sister out of an escape vent, and corners her with a wrench, in order to kill her and harvest her ADAM. A Big Daddy saves her by intervening, which follows a close-quarters melee, in which the splicer has his hand drilled through when he raises it to defend himself - he then injects himself with the Insect Swarm plasmid and attacks the Big Daddy with a swarm of red hornets. The splicer then rams a shotgun directly into one of the Big Daddy's helmet viewports and fires, sending it off a balcony, where it lies immobile on the floor below. As he looks down, a drill is rammed through his back and appears from his stomach, directly in his line of sight. The second Big Daddy then engages the drill, causing the splicer to scream in agony. The Big Daddy then removes the drill, spins the splicer round to face it and punches him in the face with the drill. The scene cuts to black, and then cuts back to the little sister crying on the floor, until the Big Daddy walks up to her. With blood dripping off its drill onto the floor, it holds out an enormous hand, which is taken by the tiny hand of the Little Sister, and the sequence ends.
Outside of protecting Little Sisters they rarely interact with anything else. They are incapable of speech and can only communicate via groans and grunts and roars. If a Big Daddy not escorting a Little Sister comes across the player character, he will not attack unprovoked. This also goes for the non-player Splicer enemies. However, if either the player or a Splicer gets too close to a Little Sister, the Big Daddy will assume an aggressive stance in attempt to scare off the transgressor. If either the Big Daddy or the Little Sister is attacked (intentionally or accidentally), the Big Daddy will retaliate against the attacker until it or the attacker is dead. Big Daddies can be hypnotized into protecting you with the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid. The lights on the helmet indicate their moods: Yellow indicates that the Big Daddy is indifferent to the player's presence, Red indicates rage towards the player, and green indicates that the Big Daddy is hypnotized and friendly towards the player.
In BioShock 2
, the player takes on the role of Subject Delta, previously known as "Johnny Topside", who is an early Big Daddy prototype known as the Alpha Series that had his mind and free will restored by Tenenbaum. He is the first Big Daddy to be successfully "pair-bonded" with a single little sister. The Alpha Series are a more streamlined and agile type of Big Daddy, meaning they are not as heavily armored, but are faster and more maneuverable. Alpha Series were not grafted into their suits like the later production models, but are still heavily spliced. Unlike the subsequent versions of Big Daddies, he is both faster and able to use Plasmids. Despite minor alterations and additional features, Delta looks similar to the Rosie model. However, Delta and his fellow prototype Big Daddies,the Alpha Series, suffer from a major flaw: If the Little Sister they are pair-bonded to dies, rescued, or simply is too far from them, then the Alpha will eventually either fall into a coma or go berserk. Subsequent Big Daddy generations removed the pair-bonding in favor of Big Daddies protecting any Little Sister in general. Unlike in the previous game, Little Sisters will not run away from the player when they meet, but instead greet them, able to be "Adopted" to collect ADAM or "Harvested" on the spot to collect greater amounts of ADAM at the cost of their lives.
described the Big Daddy as "a freight train of a man-turned-monster", noting the moral dilemma of attempting to fight it or not. PC Gamer
called them "bizarre and compelling to watch" and added "I've never seen anything in a game look so angry as a Big Daddy when provoked." 1UP.com
called it "the soul of BioShock" and its "moral centerpiece", adding "He doesn't choose to fight you; you have to make the decision to terminate him...You may fear him, but you have no reason to hate the Big Daddy. When he's defending a Sister from a pack of splicers, it's hard not to root for his rivet gun. And when he bends to one knee to allow her to retreat to the safety of her hiding hole in the wall, it's a legitimately touching moment."
IGN
described the Big Daddy as one of their favorite video game monsters of all time, and in another article stated "Few enemies inspire such a combination of wonderment and sheer terror in gamers as the colossal Big Daddy". In an article discussing the character in terms of a BioShock film, editors Phil Pirrello and Christopher Monfette attributed IGN's high review score for the game to the character, and stated "No character so fresh out of the gate claimed iconic status as quickly as BioShock's baddie did...Our hero is only as good as our villain. Lucky for the filmmakers, they have themselves a potentially great one in Big Daddy." Despite their praise, in a later article they were ranked by readers as the eighth most overrated video game characters, which IGN attributed to their feeling that as the game progressed the Big Daddy became less an imposing threat, and the ability to disguise oneself as a Big Daddy at the end of BioShock removed the "scary image" the character held for players.
In 2007, IGN featured the character in their "Badasssss!" awards, in which he took third place, directly below Master Chief
and Samus Aran
. X-Play
placed it at number three on their "Top 10 Greatest Videogame Monsters of All Time" list, describing it as "Blending lightning quickness and murderous tenacity, in an outfit that implies a tortured dive to Hell." GameDaily
listed the character as one of their "Top 25" scariest monsters in video gaming, placing it at number three on their list. Later articles named his role as the protector of the Little Sisters as one of the greatest duos in video games, and additionally ranked the Big Daddy as the best non-boss enemy in a video game, stating "He's one bad mother that we wouldn't want to run into in an underwater city, or anywhere, for that matter." GamesRadar
listed him as one of the top 25 best new characters of the decade, describing him as "scary and sad", "overwhelmingly alien and yet disturbingly human", and "brutally vicious to strangers while lovingly gentle to Little Sisters".
Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the BioShock
Bioshock
BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...
series of video games. Designed by 2K Boston/2K Australia, they first appeared in BioShock
Bioshock
BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...
and were promoted heavily. A six-inch Big Daddy action figure
Action figure
An action figure is a posable character figurine, made of plastic or other materials, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, video game, or television program. These action figures are usually marketed towards boys and male collectors...
was included in the limited edition version of the title.
Big Daddies are heavily spliced (genetically mutated and altered) human beings who have had their skin and organs directly grafted into antiqued, heavily-armored atmospheric diving suits. They are armed with a rivet gun
Rivet gun
A rivet gun, also known as a pneumatic hammer, is a type of tool used to drive rivets. Nearly all rivet guns are pneumatically powered. The rivet gun is used on the manufactured head side of the rivet and a bucking bar is used on the buck-tail side of the rivet...
, heavy drill, rocket launcher, or ion laser. Alpha Series Big Daddies are equipped with any of several other weapons as well. Though they make low-pitched groaning noises similar to whales, Big Daddies have no voice actor attributed to them.
They roam the underwater dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n city of Rapture, mentally conditioned to protect the Little Sisters—little girls that harvest a substance called ADAM from corpses—thanks to a series of plasmids stripping them of their humanity and free will. The player's interactions with Big Daddies and Little Sisters have been described by developer Ken Levine as the cornerstone of the game, due to the player's need for ADAM in order to gain strength in the game. The protagonist of BioShock 2
BioShock 2
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....
, known as Subject Delta is a prototype Big Daddy who possesses free will.
Conception and design
Conceived of early on as a man encased in a diving suit, the Big Daddy was designed to have "that hulking metal feel of an underwater protector, so solid not even a shotgun blast could knock him off his feet." While the concept remained the same of an AI character that protected the "gatherer" AI characters in the title, many ideas were considered for their mobility and execution, including a wheelchairWheelchair
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Often there are handles behind the seat for someone else to do the pushing...
mounted version. As the designs for the individual types evolved, intricate details of the actual diving suit were worked out piece by piece, using the concept that the suits would be constructed from salvaged parts of the city. Developer Ken Levine noted that with the concept of the gatherers as little girls, it allowed the team to explore the protector role of the character and demonstrate it in a way to appeal to a real-world relationship for the player.
Two versions of the Big Daddy are present in BioShock: the 'Rosie' and the 'Bouncer'. Initial drafts of the Rosie model featured it encased in a light atmospheric diving suit with a singular hole for viewing through the helmet, as well as missing its left forearm and hand, replaced with a hook and pulley supported by cables attached to the stump. Later designs restored the arm, adding a rivet gun, heavy oxygen tanks mounted on both shoulders and a squid-like tentacle extending from each shoulder. The completed design remained similar, removing the tentacles and reducing the oxygen tanks to a singular one positioned on its back, angled towards its right shoulder. The Rosie's rivet gun itself went through progressive design improvements, with the intent of making it "more fleshed out and threatening".
The Bouncer model of Big Daddy featured it encased in a heavier diving suit than the Rosie, with the helmet more heavily armored and having smaller but multiple holes for viewing. Several ideas were considered for weaponry, originally consisting of a wrist mounted fan-blade on the right arm and a hand-held double hook in the left hand. They were replaced by hand mounted grinders attached to each arm and an added oxygen tank angled over the left shoulder. The weaponry was changed in the finalized design changed to a heavy drill over the right hand, with an engine and exhaust for it positioned over the right shoulder.
A third model, dubbed "Slow Pro FUM" by the development team, was excluded from the game. Standing for "slow-moving, projectile-shooting, f'ed-up-melee", this Big Daddy was intended as a slow, ranged type that would center itself and fire a heavy projectile at enemies via a large arm-mounted cannon. Despite being designed for range, the developers noted its melee attacks were intended to be just as powerful. In an interview with GameTrailers
GameTrailers
GameTrailers is a media website that specializes in video game related content. It provides free access to original programming , game trailers and recorded game play. Along with standard definition , many of the video clips are offered in a higher resolution .Users can upload videos, create...
's "Bonus Round", BioShock designers Bill Gardner and Hogarth De La Plante highlighted it as an aspect cut from the game late in development, and one they would have most liked to have kept out of all the cut content for the title. BioShock 2 formally introduced the opponent with a different name ('the Rumbler') and alterations (the ability to fire rockets and deploy mini-turrets around an area).
In BioShock 2, players are given control of Subject Delta, the first Big Daddy to be successfully paired with a Little Sister. The designs wanted it to have a rough-draft appearance and look like a "work in progress", while incorporating elements of the later models. As a result, several concepts were considered, combining the parts of the Rosie and Bouncer models, before the developers settled on an appearance more akin to the former, but retaining the heavy drill of the latter. In the Protector Trials DLC, the player plays as an unknown Alpha Series Big Daddy and in the Minerva's Den DLC the player plays as Subject Sigma.
In the Minerva's Den DLC for BioShock 2, a new Big Daddy called the "Lancer" is introduced. It is the only Big Daddy type featured in Minerva's Den. It is equipped with a new weapon, the Ion Laser, and can also send out a flash that blinds the player. It is the only Big Daddy capable of defeating a Big Sister singlehandedly.
In video games
Introduced to the player through a cutscene early on in the game, the Big Daddies are mentally conditioned armed escorts to the Little Sisters, little girls who gather ADAM from corpses. The girls in turn interact with the Big Daddy, referring to it as "Mr. Bubbles" as they talk or sing to it gently, and mourn for them if they die. In order to gain higher level powers, the player must kill the Big Daddy escort and recover the ADAM from the Little Sister.If the title screen of BioShock is left to idle, a video sequence is left to play, which shows graphically the violent nature of Big Daddies and Rapture itself - A splicer pulls a Little Sister out of an escape vent, and corners her with a wrench, in order to kill her and harvest her ADAM. A Big Daddy saves her by intervening, which follows a close-quarters melee, in which the splicer has his hand drilled through when he raises it to defend himself - he then injects himself with the Insect Swarm plasmid and attacks the Big Daddy with a swarm of red hornets. The splicer then rams a shotgun directly into one of the Big Daddy's helmet viewports and fires, sending it off a balcony, where it lies immobile on the floor below. As he looks down, a drill is rammed through his back and appears from his stomach, directly in his line of sight. The second Big Daddy then engages the drill, causing the splicer to scream in agony. The Big Daddy then removes the drill, spins the splicer round to face it and punches him in the face with the drill. The scene cuts to black, and then cuts back to the little sister crying on the floor, until the Big Daddy walks up to her. With blood dripping off its drill onto the floor, it holds out an enormous hand, which is taken by the tiny hand of the Little Sister, and the sequence ends.
Outside of protecting Little Sisters they rarely interact with anything else. They are incapable of speech and can only communicate via groans and grunts and roars. If a Big Daddy not escorting a Little Sister comes across the player character, he will not attack unprovoked. This also goes for the non-player Splicer enemies. However, if either the player or a Splicer gets too close to a Little Sister, the Big Daddy will assume an aggressive stance in attempt to scare off the transgressor. If either the Big Daddy or the Little Sister is attacked (intentionally or accidentally), the Big Daddy will retaliate against the attacker until it or the attacker is dead. Big Daddies can be hypnotized into protecting you with the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid. The lights on the helmet indicate their moods: Yellow indicates that the Big Daddy is indifferent to the player's presence, Red indicates rage towards the player, and green indicates that the Big Daddy is hypnotized and friendly towards the player.
In BioShock 2
BioShock 2
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....
, the player takes on the role of Subject Delta, previously known as "Johnny Topside", who is an early Big Daddy prototype known as the Alpha Series that had his mind and free will restored by Tenenbaum. He is the first Big Daddy to be successfully "pair-bonded" with a single little sister. The Alpha Series are a more streamlined and agile type of Big Daddy, meaning they are not as heavily armored, but are faster and more maneuverable. Alpha Series were not grafted into their suits like the later production models, but are still heavily spliced. Unlike the subsequent versions of Big Daddies, he is both faster and able to use Plasmids. Despite minor alterations and additional features, Delta looks similar to the Rosie model. However, Delta and his fellow prototype Big Daddies,the Alpha Series, suffer from a major flaw: If the Little Sister they are pair-bonded to dies, rescued, or simply is too far from them, then the Alpha will eventually either fall into a coma or go berserk. Subsequent Big Daddy generations removed the pair-bonding in favor of Big Daddies protecting any Little Sister in general. Unlike in the previous game, Little Sisters will not run away from the player when they meet, but instead greet them, able to be "Adopted" to collect ADAM or "Harvested" on the spot to collect greater amounts of ADAM at the cost of their lives.
Promotion and merchandise
To promote BioShock, 2K Games released a six inch tall immobile Big Daddy figurine packaged with the limited edition release of the game. However, many of the figures arrived broken, resulting in 2K Games announcing in November 2007 that replacement figurines would be distributed, accompanied with a printed artbook for the title.Critical reception
The Pittsburgh Tribune-ReviewPittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, also known as "the Trib," is the second largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
described the Big Daddy as "a freight train of a man-turned-monster", noting the moral dilemma of attempting to fight it or not. PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
called them "bizarre and compelling to watch" and added "I've never seen anything in a game look so angry as a Big Daddy when provoked." 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
called it "the soul of BioShock" and its "moral centerpiece", adding "He doesn't choose to fight you; you have to make the decision to terminate him...You may fear him, but you have no reason to hate the Big Daddy. When he's defending a Sister from a pack of splicers, it's hard not to root for his rivet gun. And when he bends to one knee to allow her to retreat to the safety of her hiding hole in the wall, it's a legitimately touching moment."
IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
described the Big Daddy as one of their favorite video game monsters of all time, and in another article stated "Few enemies inspire such a combination of wonderment and sheer terror in gamers as the colossal Big Daddy". In an article discussing the character in terms of a BioShock film, editors Phil Pirrello and Christopher Monfette attributed IGN's high review score for the game to the character, and stated "No character so fresh out of the gate claimed iconic status as quickly as BioShock's baddie did...Our hero is only as good as our villain. Lucky for the filmmakers, they have themselves a potentially great one in Big Daddy." Despite their praise, in a later article they were ranked by readers as the eighth most overrated video game characters, which IGN attributed to their feeling that as the game progressed the Big Daddy became less an imposing threat, and the ability to disguise oneself as a Big Daddy at the end of BioShock removed the "scary image" the character held for players.
In 2007, IGN featured the character in their "Badasssss!" awards, in which he took third place, directly below Master Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
and Samus Aran
Samus Aran
is the protagonist of the Metroid video game series. Introduced in the 1986 video game Metroid, Samus is a female ex-army soldier bounty hunter usually fitted with a powered armor suit with weapons that include beams and missiles...
. X-Play
X-Play
X-Play is a TV program about video games, known for its reviews and comedy skits...
placed it at number three on their "Top 10 Greatest Videogame Monsters of All Time" list, describing it as "Blending lightning quickness and murderous tenacity, in an outfit that implies a tortured dive to Hell." GameDaily
GameDaily
GameDaily was a video game journalism website based in the United States. Launched in 1995 by entrepreneur Mark Friedler under the name Gigex and focused on free game demo downloads, The site changed its business model from a flat fee per download CDN distributed service network to an...
listed the character as one of their "Top 25" scariest monsters in video gaming, placing it at number three on their list. Later articles named his role as the protector of the Little Sisters as one of the greatest duos in video games, and additionally ranked the Big Daddy as the best non-boss enemy in a video game, stating "He's one bad mother that we wouldn't want to run into in an underwater city, or anywhere, for that matter." GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
listed him as one of the top 25 best new characters of the decade, describing him as "scary and sad", "overwhelmingly alien and yet disturbingly human", and "brutally vicious to strangers while lovingly gentle to Little Sisters".
External links
- Big Daddy Art Progression courtesy of 2K Games2K Games2K is a global developer, marketer, distributor and publisher of interactive entertainment software games. 2K Games is a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, which also owns Rockstar Games notable for the Grand Theft Auto series...
.