Love is an interesting concept, as much as some of us try to resist it we can never truly live without it, it is human nature that draws us to each other. Except love is not as simple as a relationship between two people, love is an element to life that makes us whole and completes our lives, it is the love for your child, the love for your parent, the love for a sibling. How does this all work, its simple we choose to love one another, it is the world’s most powerful source and one that is decided by our needs to allow us to have someone to care for. In fact it the words shared by Eleanor Lamb in Bioshock 2 that made me start thinking about this very idea as Eleanor shares:
Love is just a chemical, no matter the origin we give it meaning by choice.
Eleanor Lamb, Bioshock 2, 2010
This quote is shared by Eleanor towards the end of a game while she is talking to Delta, her direct meaning is related to the connection she shares with Delta. They share a father and daughter bond and the key element of the game itself is in their shared love, but they love each other by choice and nothing more, as Eleanor says love is just a chemical and that is all it is, love is an element we choose to share and we decide its meaning by how we think and feel.
In further terms of Bioshock 2 this quote is a relation to the key story at hand, it can be suggested that when young girls are turned into little sisters they are implanted with a chemical that causes an attraction to their guardian big daddies. Furthermore this chemical amplifies the pre-existing chemical that is love and puts it to a new level, in a sense this is part of the connection that ties the two groups together and by extension Delta and Eleanor.
The chemical has been amplified but in a sense what does it really mean? This is what Eleanor explains, it does not matter about the origin and how it is formed we give the idea of love meaning by our own choice. This is the connection of Delta and Eleanor, it extends far beyond the nature of the forced relationship and as Eleanor regained her former self she created a true feeling of love for her father, one that can be considered desperate for obvious story based reasons. It is because of this that Sofia Lamb struggles to understand her obsession with Delta, she fails to understand just how smart her daughter was and the choices she had made, Bioshock 2 is all about choices and the additional details that are born outside of our main story that we see have to speculate about such as this.
The key reason this quote is so memorable is because of how truly intelligent and deep it is, the choice of words and philosophical groundings show a deep understanding for the concept. This of course is obvious in Bioshock 2 but it does extend further like other quotes I talk about it has power that really forces thought. This quote can live with you in your mind as you reflect upon the true nature of love and the way our minds process the idea and choose to share it. We may often say that we love somebody because we have to, but the truth is we choose to love those we care for, and we choose to fall in love with that special person or people.
The very idea of a crush is untrue, there is obviously if we consider this quote something about that person we like and the chemical that is love we choose to share and feel. We give meaning to how we feel, whether obsessively or on a basic level, in the end love is even more meaningful then we often give it credit for, it does not just happen we choose its meaning.
It is incredible the amount of interesting thought we can put into the Bioshock franchise, and on the whole I consider the writers for each game to be true geniuses to provide such deeply thought compelling quotes. This is part of why the franchise is just so great, there is so much to explore and consider at a deeper level then the developers intend.
