BioShock: The Collection Available For Free On Epic Games Store

Written by Brandon Hofer on May 26, 2022

News: You now have the chance to get the award-winning and popular BioShock franchise for absolutely nothing.

BioShock: The Collection has arrived on the Epic Games Store, and it’s free for the first week. The BioShock series has sold over 38 million units and is one of the highest-rated first-person shooters of all time.

Starting today (May 26) through June 2, the Epic Games Store will bring the unforgettable worlds and monumental stories of the award-winning BioShock series to players for free through the remastered BioShock: The Collection. Players will be able to journey to the beautiful, ominous cities of Rapture and Columbia across BioShock Remastered, BioShock 2 Remastered, and BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, as well as all the single-player DLCs for each game!

For those who might not be familiar with this franchise, the premise for each is below.

BioShock takes place in Rapture, a large underwater city planned and constructed in the 1940s by individualist business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control and "petty morality". This philosophy resulted in remarkable advances in the arts and sciences, which included the discovery of "ADAM": a potent gene-altering substance that is created by a species of sea slug on the ocean floor. ADAM soon led to the creation of "Plasmids", mutagenic serums that grant users super-human powers like telekinesis and pyrokinesis. To protect and isolate Rapture, Ryan outlawed any contact with the surface world.

As Rapture flourished, wealth disparities also grew, and conman/businessman Frank Fontaine used his influence over the disenfranchised working class to establish illegal enterprises and attain power—enough to rival even Ryan himself. Together with doctors Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, Fontaine would create his own company dedicated towards researching plasmids and gene tonics. As ADAM became addictive and demand skyrocketed, Fontaine would secretly mass-produce ADAM through slugs implanted in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine was then killed in a shootout with police, and Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets, including control of the Little Sisters.

In the months that followed, a man amongst the poor named Atlas rose up and began a violent revolution against Ryan, with both sides using plasmid-enhanced humans (known as "Splicers") to wage war on one another. To protect the Little Sisters, Ryan created the "Big Daddies": genetically-enhanced humans surgically grafted into gigantic lumbering diving suits, designed to escort the sisters as they scavenged ADAM from dead bodies. Tensions came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958, when Atlas ordered an all-out assault on Ryan and his supporters. The conflict turns Rapture into a war-torn crumbling dystopia, resulting in societal collapse, countless deaths, many Splicers becoming disfigured and insane from ADAM abuse, and the few sane survivors barricading themselves away from the chaos.

BioShock 2 takes place in the fictional city of Rapture, an underwater metropolis hidden from the world. Rapture was founded in the 1940s by billionaire Andrew Ryan to establish a city free from religious influences and government regulation. The city's citizens soon began "splicing"—genetically modifying themselves using ADAM, a substance derived from sea slugs. ADAM is used to create "plasmids" that enable superpowers, such as the ability to create lightning or control fire. Class conflict and civil war were exacerbated by the harmful side effects of ADAM abuse. Modified and conditioned children, called "Little Sisters", collect the now-scarce ADAM from corpses and recycle it,[4] under protection by "Big Daddies".[5][6] Rapture descends into civil war and becomes a crumbling dystopia populated by Splicers, the spliced remains of the citizenry.[6][7] After Ryan is killed by his son Jack (the player character in BioShock 1), the dissident collectivist Sofia Lamb and her followers, known as "the Rapture Family", assume control of the city.

BioShock Infinite is set in 1912 and takes place in a fictional steampunk city-state called "Columbia"—named in homage to the female personification of the United States—which is suspended in the air through a combination of giant blimps, balloons, reactors, propellers, and "quantum levitation". The city of Columbia was founded by self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Hale Comstock, who used his connections in Congress to have the American government fund the floating city. The government intended Columbia to serve as a floating world's fair and as a display to the rest of the world of the success of American exceptionalism. Initially seen as the pride of the United States, tensions eventually rose between Columbia and the US government after the city intervened in the Boxer Rebellion, and Columbia ultimately seceded from the United States and disappeared into the clouds. Free from outside influence, Comstock now had complete control over the city, transforming it from a floating world's fair to a theocratic police state, with Comstock worshipped as a prophet, and the Founding Fathers of the United States venerated as religious icons. Institutional racism and elitism are widespread in the city, with minorities serving as a labor underclass of Columbia.

By the time of the game's events, racial tensions have risen to the point where Columbia is on the verge of revolution, instigated by the insurgent "Vox Populi" against the government institutions and the counter-revolutionary "Founders". The Founders, led by Comstock, are the prevailing political faction in the city and are the rulers of Columbia. The Vox Populi (Latin for "Voice of the People"), led by Daisy Fitzroy, is a rag-tag anarcho-communist resistance group that fight to give the rights of Columbian citizenship to people of all races and religions. However, years of bitter struggle have driven them to fight the opposition more out of blind hatred, resulting in more violent and brutal methods.

Columbia is also home to "Tears" in the fabric of space-time. These Tears reveal alternate universes and allow for interaction with them.[18] Some individuals have exploited the insight offered by them to create radically new weapons and technologies, while several others have replicated futuristic music and songs heard from the Tears, bringing anachronistic elements into the Columbia of 1912.

BioShock: The Collection is a permanent addition to the Epic Games Store and will be available for purchase after the first week. Check out the trailer below and then tell us what you think? Are you going to download the BioShock Collection for free?