Looking back at Fort Frolic
Andrew Ryan is in your sights. All you have to do is make your way across Fort Frolic to the Rapture metro station, hop in the bathosphere and take a ride to the hideout of Rapture’s patriarch. Things begin to go off script as you enter to fort, though. Your radio fizzles out and you lose contact with Atlas, your only ally up to this point. As you approach the Bathosphere, it suddenly locks in front of you and sinks into the water. Then, rising from the waves comes a gigantic splicer mask, and the voice of Atlas is replaced by the voice of the tortured artist Sander Cohen as he welcomes you to the greatest video game level ever made.
Fort Frolic is the eighth stage of Bioshock, the 2007 first person shooter by Irrational Games. It is the exact midway point in the 15 chapter story, and while this level technically does not contribute to the overall plot at all, it is a masterpiece in storytelling and game design.
After you are locked out of the bathosphere, Cohen begins to talk to you and explain to you where you have arrived. You are in his world now, and he wants you to join his twisted art project. You are welcomed to a theatre to watch a pianist perform. Everything feels…off, though. The pianist is crying, the theatre is empty and he is very clearly distressed. After making a mistake, Cohen punishes the pianist by blowing him up and killing him.
