There's been a lot of discussion online recently about moral choice in Bioshock. Or, really, the one moral choice in Bioshock and how it's disappointing. In the same breathe as they speak their disappointment, many people cry out that Bioshock could have done better. I actually think they couldn't have without making the game unrecognizable.

Bioshock is a first-person shooter with a very strong story. You survive a plane crash to find yourself in a mysterious underwater city create by an Ayn Rand-ish character. Unfortunately, everyone in the city is crazy and hopped up on drugs that give them (and you) magic powers. Later in the game, you come across "Little Sisters," which are the only non-dialog characters that don't attack you on sight. The moral choice under discussion is whether you kill them (and immediately get a reward) or you save them (and get a smaller immediate reward and a larger long-term reward).

It certainly seems like a moral choice on the surface, albeit a pretty ham-handed one. Do you kill these little girls or not? Although, when you put it that way, it seems pretty obvious that almost nobody would kill the little girls. The big difference, the thing that makes it not a moral choice and also explains why many people might kill the kids, is that the game is based on the premise that killing is okay (in the context of the gameworld).

Players are trained from early on to kill everything as fast as they can. If they can kill someone before that person sees them, then they'll take less damage. There isn't any possibility of hurting allies either, so that doesn't make you cautious. In fact, the game shows you early on that even people who seem sympathetic (a woman crying over a baby carriage) are still best killed quickly (the "baby" is actually a pistol).

How can a world centered on killing indiscriminately really ask moral questions about killing? I can think of a couple of ways, but none of them involve introducing an arbitrary character that you "shouldn't" kill.

Personally, I think the big moral issue that Bioshock failed to address at all is the concept of drug use. It's driven an entire city insane and yet, as soon as you can, you start taking them like candy. Luckily for you, there aren't any real drawbacks.

To really deal with the moral issue of killing, you have to set it up in a context that doesn't make the answer a foregone conclusion. Moral questions about killing aren't really going to get answered in a relatively generic shooter. Instead, let's see a stealth game deal with it. Or a roleplaying game. Or even an alternate reality game...