Spoiler Space since the game was just on sale and folks might be playing it for the first time
.
.
.
.
.
Played through it and rescued all the little moppets. I’m assuming Dr. Tanenbaum would be less receptive to me had I just sucked the life out of the girls and tossed their husks over my shoulder. I also wouldn’t have had a bevy of “daughters” at my deathbed in my old age.
I’m not likely to play through it again any time soon so I’m curious how the plot unfurls differently(if at all) if you take the “evil” route.
Gameplay wise, you don’t get the gifts at the Gatherer’s Garden after each 3rd rescue. So you wind up with more ADAM, since a harvest gets you twice as much as a rescue, but miss out on some tonics & plasmids. No real plot differences though.
Ending video - after the Little Sisters kill Fontaine, you grab the genetic key from the one who brings it to you, then grab her arm. Tanenbaum’s voiceover is about what an asshole you are, and how you used your powers to take over Rapture. Scene cuts to a submarine finding the lighthouse, a bunch of bathyspheres surfacing and Splicers taking over the sub, and final cut is a nuclear missile in the submarine.
ETA: Here’s the video.
You take over Rapture and send a bunch of bathyspheres full of splicers to the surface of the ocean to attack the sub dispatched to investigate, while it’s implied that you’ll instigate something with the sub’s nuclear arsenal
Dr. Tanenbaum still rescues you (via the Little Ones) and runs the same plan with you? That seems a little disappointing. Especially since the last map has you saving/draining the ragamuffins even as she’s directing you.
Yep. When you’re in Tanenbaum’s secret hideout halfway through, the Little Sisters there are terrified of you instead of admiring, but gameplay is completely the same.
If memory serves you get about 300 more ADAM in total if you harvest. But the gifts give the rescuer plasmids/tonics you couldn’t get otherwise. This is even more noticeable in the sequel.
From videos of the endings, there are two different asshole endings, depending on how many you harvested–the tone of the voiceover is different, even though the words are the same. I’m a big softy, and saved them all, so I don’t know what the threshold is between the “sad” and “angry” endings.
You probably harvested one of the last two little sisters in the game. You probably had already saved the number you need to save. The game has two spots where two extra little sisters can be spawned. Each is a scripted little sister that a bug in the script can be triggered so that after rescuing/harvesting the little sister you can do it again. The game therefore gives you two bonus sisters, but the state machine for save vs. rescue ends once you’ve dealt with the planned maximum number of sisters. So if you get either one or two extras before the last chapter, the final one or two in the last chapter can be saved or harvested, the game doesn’t even notice which choice you made, other than the amount of “bonus” Adam you get.
I know if you harvest one (barring the situation mentioned above), you get the sad ending. I know if you harvest more than half, you get the angry ending. I’m not sure where in the inbetween the sad vs. angry becomes an issue. I believe, though, that you can harvest at least 3 of them and still get the sad ending. (And if you are going to harvest, you might as well do it in multiples of 3, otherwise you’re better off saving 3 instead. 2 harvests + 1 save is still a worse Adam output than 3 saves because of the bonus 200 adam for each three saves.)
Color me surprised then. I never harvested any myself, but I was always under the impression that any harvest of the first 21 little sisters you encounter would get you the Tenenbaum is sad ending at best. But since I can’t speak from personal experience and you can, this must not be the case. (Or you had a bug.)
According to the Bioshock wiki, you get the good ending if you save 21 Little Sisters, and hitting the extra little sister bug doesn’t affect that target criteria. So if you save 21 and harvest 1 or more “extra” LS’s, you still get the good ending.