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The characters are the strongest part of Bioshock 2.

My major issue with the characters of Bioshock and Infinite is that they tend to be very one-dimensional. Ken Levine seems to be in love with the theme that "power corrupts" and so literally every character who gets even a hint of power in 1 or Infinite becomes a crazed, evil supervillain. Hell, the original ending was going to always be "Jack becomes addicted to ADAM and murders all the Little Sisters" before executive meddling made him put in a "good" ending.

So where Bioshock 1 treated everyone in Rapture as crazed ADAM addicts who fell under the weight of their own hubris, Bioshock 2 takes a lot of time to treat some of them as people. 2 underscores the tragedy of Rapture by focusing on how many good people were caught in its wake: the kindergarten teacher who sacrificed herself for her kids, the railway engineer driven to suicide, the worker conned into assembling needles.

Hell, Bioshock 2 treated Andrew Ryan as a better character. The first game doesn't offer him one ounce of sympathy, unless you count the audio log where he hires a plumber. In Bioshock 2, he's worrying about how his workaholic lifestyle is neglecting his family, thinking about having a child, and is openly disturbed by the propaganda museum he was convinced to build. There's even an audio log where Sofia Lamb, the main villain, is lamenting her own choices because there are lines that even she does not wish to cross.

And I think this humanisation passes to the companions too. Elizabeth is a good partner but I cared more about Eleanor. There are a lot of parallels between them, but... Eleanor feels more important and active in the plot. She's a damsel in distress (like Elizabeth), but unlike Elizabeth the entire game is her taking positive and proactive steps towards freeing herself from her own captivity. Booker doesn't meet Elizabeth until one-third of the way into the game; Eleanor is providing instruction and plasmids to Delta from the very start.

And you can change her. You can change things in Bioshock 2! A recurring theme in Bioshock 1 and Infinite is providing the illusion of choice but then reinforcing the idea that you have no choice or control. You can't disobey Atlas, and it doesn't matter whether you choose the Bird or the Cage. Meanwhile, in Bioshock 2 you can spare or kill three key characters, change how the entire endgame plays out, and access up to six endings (if you count the two variations of the three). That's actually awesome and gives both feedback and replayability.

Sorry, I can't go on enough about how much I love this game.

I love you, anon. I swear I could've written this in my sleep.

You fucking nailed it. Stuff like Ryan's audio diary about his legacy or the diary where he finds out that Joelene sold his DNA have stuck with me just as much as his big winding speeches in Bioshock 2. The "boss" characters in BS1 and Infinite (Steinman, Cohen, Slate, Fitzroy, etc.) are basically circus clowns, but Holloway, Poole and even Alex the Great, the hammiest fucker ever, were actual people with backstories and motivations and complexities to them that make you pause and think hard about what you wanna do with them.

It's unfortunate that most of the stuff related to the main plot is Bioshock 2's weak point - they don't gracefully insert Lamb into the overall lore (lol no really dude she totally owned Ryan in public once, it was so cool!!!!) and her "master plan", even after reading Jordan Thomas' explanation for it on the 2K forums so I fucking understood what she was actually trying to accomplish, frankly is just a bunch of nonsense.

But the character writing makes up for it and the game does exactly what BS1, Infinite and Burial at Sea screw up, it totally sticks the landing. Everything from the beginning of the last level on is brilliant and the endings in particular are great because of how they vary and how the player influences them. Personally I think the neutral ending perfectly, perfectly suits the tone of the game, but that's up to interpretation.

And that's not even touching on Minerva's Den, which basically hits it out of the park in every way possible.

Okay

OP

Re: OP

+a bajillion