Definitely a moment I had during the first Bioshock.
Fort Frolic is a truly amazing level, a crumbling ruin of what was once Rapture's ritziest entertainment district presided over by a homicidal artist who rants at you over the radio, encouraging you to kill and enshrine his proteges in his latest piece. Truly the grimmest fetch quest I have ever set out upon. My favorite moment here is actually twofold. After you have killed two out of the three former students and put them in Cohen's macabre masterpiece, (a triptych of photos of their bodies) he asks you for your opinion. Jack looks at the grisly work silently, Cohen takes this for criticism and, well. . . he doesn't take criticism very well. "Fly away little moth, fly away!" He shouts as he sends for his minions (the gruesome spider splicers) and cues up his music (waltz of the flowers). A spotlight comes on, the others dim, Jack is picked out by the light, standing halfway up a crumbling, though elegant, stairway, shotgun at the ready. I hear the music begin to crest, a horrible chuckle sounds over my right shoulder and I turn, barely managing to send a tight grouping of buckshot into the chest of the deranged lunatic trying to tear at me with meathooks. There's no time to rest, more come, dropping from the ceiling or skittering down the walls. I pirouette and twirl, my shotgun dancing with me, up and down the stairs I dance, killing all the way. Waltz of the flowers plays while my waltz of death puts paid to life after life. Before long the music fades and Jack is left to contemplate the glorious carnage around him; bodies litter the stairway and plaza, some draped over bannisters, others crumbled against walls, all with large, bloody holes in their heads or chests. Sander Cohen comes back on over the radio, he apologizes for his. . .outburst, and chalks it up to his artistic temperament. I forgive him, for now.
Later on, I am exploring the area more thoroughly before I leave, the entire time I have been here I've been haunted by Cohen's grisly work, the bodies of splicers covered in plaster and posed in disgusting dioramas around Fort Frolic. I never know when I'm going to come upon them, these disturbing statutes seem to inhabit every inch of Fort Frolic. Before long my exploration takes me to a liquor and fine spirits shop, perhaps thinking that Jack could use a little absinthe for his frayed nerves. More gruesome statues inside, this time lining the entryway, kneeling as if in supplication. I walk between the two rows of kowtowing plaster monsters, briefly feeling like some sort of macabre monarch, presiding over his dead, silent subjects. The absinthe removes the notion quick enough, and my search for more libation takes me behind the counter. While rifling the register I notice a small button underneath the counter, curious as always, I press it. A panel on the far wall slides up, revealing and stairway down to what looks like a wine cellar. I cautiously venture down the stairs, the cellar is dark, and one of Cohen's statues is sitting in a chair, facing the far corner, lit up by a flickering spotlight on the floor, the cellar's only means of illumination. There is a small passageway leading away from this creepy scene. And however loathe I am to turn my back on that statue, a glimpse of a Power to the People machine at the end of the passageway provides me with ample convincing. I walk down the short passageway and use the machine, I admire my shiny revolver, now more powerful, and go to turn around and leave. As soon as I turn my heart leaps into my throat as the statue that was previously sitting is now standing two feet away from me, frozen in a parody of a ballet pose. It retains this pose for a moment, then attacks. After that initial shock my reflexes kick in and the plaster monstrosity falls with a gaping hole in its head. I climb the stairs up from the cellar and find that no statues remain, the only proof of their existence being flecks of plaster and drops of blood on the floor where they once kneeled. For the rest of my time in Fort Frolic I am attacked by silent white shadows, scampering along the ceiling or flinging themselves wordlessly at me, these now animate plaster creatures give me no rest. I am chased into the lowest level of Fort Frolic, a large flooded basement with only some spare boxes and store mannequins. It's not long before I realize that I have trapped myself down here, there is no exit save where I came from, and I swear the mannequins get closer every time I turn my back. I back up, soon there's nowhere left to go. My back is pressed against a massive glass window that separates Rapture from the cold sea.
I see an advancing tide of silent white figures, moving with an eery grace through the knee-deep water. My shotgun is spent, my pistol and rifle too weak for so many, there are at least ten of them. I steady my plasmid hand and ready myself to give a good accounting. I let them get close, just as they pounce I electrify the water we're standing in, over and over I shock it, killing the unnatural creatures even as my body burns. In the end I am left with a sliver, my healthpacks all spent earlier in the running battle that my flight from these creatures had become. But I am alive, I limp to a healing station and restore myself. Seeing more white shadows in the distant corridors provides me with all the incentive I need to leave, I hop a bathysphere and head to Hephaestus, putting the horror of Fort Frolic behind me.
