BioShock 2: Minerva's Den Remastered

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den Remastered

released on Sep 15, 2016

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den Remastered

released on Sep 15, 2016

Minerva's Den Remastered is a single player downloadable content for BioShock 2. This additional campaign is a self-contained narrative experience that puts players in the role of another Alpha Series Big Daddy in a previously unexplored section of Rapture. Minerva's Den shows another vision of Rapture within Minerva's Den, a high-technology center of the city, and explores the backstory of the Thinker, a supercomputer responsible for the control of many automatic devices and systems in the underwater utopia, and its creator Charles Milton Porter.


Reviews View More

The story was actually better than the main game. The gameplay was also fun and I appreciate the addition of a new plasmid and new weapons.

The craziest thing is that this DLC is more stable than the main game, I didn't have one single crash or any technical issues while playing it while BioShock 2 Remastered crashed frequently.

Played on Linux

Amazing short and sweet thought provoking DLC. DLC done right. It gives you the good stuff you expect from the base game, and adds a bit more experimentation and new tools to play with.

This review contains spoilers

I now understand why people say Minerva's Den is such a great DLC for Bioshock 2. In this one, we are playing as subject sigma another big Daddy BUT it was revealed to us at the end of our playthrough that we were Porter all along. It actually did say that we were Porter based on one of the audio logs you can find and you listen to in the game but it absolutely flew over my head because why would Porter be a big Daddy now if he was still speaking to us through radio comms, and that's where the Thinker comes in. With it's function to copy a person's personality and the way they talk was well executed to the storyline telling how the Thinker was impersonating Porter all along and that it was speaking to us as if it was really Porter but the truth is that we "Subject Sigma" is Porter from the beginning. It was actually pretty smart and I liked the twist. Lastly, It absolutely crushed me to listen to the last audio recording we can hear at the end part of the game where Porter had the Thinker replicate his deceased wife Pearl and speak to him as if the Thinker is his long lost wife. I felt Porter's pain when he realized that it wasn't right and tried to immediately stop the Thinker from proceeding further of the Thinker speaking to him as if it his dead wife. You know same thing is possible in today's modern world with Artificial Intelligence, you can literally make something like the Thinker and possibly hurt yourself emotionally by creating an Ai replica of your loved ones. The ending cutscenes Porter was telling us a valuable lesson, It is to let go.

This review contains spoilers

Minerva's Den is a heartfelt and touching story that takes the best parts of Bioshock 2's gameplay and encapsulates it in a short and sweet story about human emotion. Hearing Porters desperation as he tries to recreate Pearls personality with The Thinker as he realises he's gone too far is heart-breaking, and the revelation that subject Sigma was Porter the whole time was great, though slightly predictable as the end nears.

Solid art, S-tier weapon design, and a fairly moving storyline about love and loss. I would place it above Bioshock 1 and just below Bioshock Infinite in terms of my overall enjoyment (I haven't actually played Bioshock 2). The pacing of this game is perfect whereas those other two games outstay their welcome a bit. The commentary on human voice being "spoofed" by AI is weirdly relevant to this exact period in history. A really great game but didn't change my life or anything; I'll probably play it again some time.