10 Times Video Games Made You Feel

The big twist in Bioshock is that we are being manipulated by the game’s true villain into killing its apparent one.

Andrew Ryan, the founder of the right-wing disaster that is the city of Rapture, is set up as a dictatorial monster responsible for untold horrors in his underwater domain. When we finally encounter him he is fully aware that we are being controlled by a posthypnotic suggestion, and yet he does not run.

Ryan is a man driven by principle. Even though we cannot agree with him, we cannot deny his devotion to an ideal, a philosophy of how life should be lived. It leads to the disastrous downfall of Rapture and many lives ended or destroyed by madness, but it also leads to Ryan refusing to run when he realises he is facing his death at our hands. As we close on him with his own golf club, he tells us we are a free man, capable of making our own decisions. Though, as this leads to shattering his skull with our first blow, he sticks to his guns, telling us that "a man chooses, but a slave obeys."

He tries to stay our hand not by begging or threatening, but by appealing to our nature as a human being.

And as we proceed to beat him to death, it is impossible not to feel an uncomfortable note of admiration for this man, this monster, in a rare moment of video game regret.