Sea of Nightmares Creatures Guide - Big Daddy Ace

The International Order Of Pawns was founded in 1956 by Orrin Oscar Lutwidge, a man who began to suspect the existence of Rapture after unwittingly providing Andrew Ryan with the lion's share of constructing material to build it. Three years later, Lutwidge arrived at Rapture by himself, leaving the I.O.O.P. leaderless, and later escaped back to the surface as a result of the 1959 Rapture civil war. Years later, in 1967, the I.O.O.P. began to obtain new leads towards Rapture's location as a result of one Little Sister delivering coded messages to her original father through a Big Sister. Due to a rogue member of the I.O.O.P. attempting to blackmail Lutwidge into revealing Rapture's location to him, Lutwidge faked his death and eventually renewed contact with his allies. Lutwidge and his pawns were able to learn of Rapture's current state after the fall of the Rapture Family and saw it as an opportunity to take control of it themselves. Despite their ambitions and high intelligence, the I.O.O.P. found itself one among many factions fighting for control of the underwater city and a participant of the endless genetic arms race; This led to several significant advancements being made in Rapture, from the renewal and completion of the robotic Little Sister project to the creation of an entirely new type of Protector: The Ace.

Named after the unique Ace of Spades, an Ace is the most advanced and most heavily modified type of Protector, whose design appears to draw from not only the creatures of Rapture, but also the Heavy Hitters of Columbia and even sport technological innovations from the early 1970s which were not available in Rapture until the arrival of the I.O.O.P. It has a large, black torso in a shape somewhat resembling an upside-down pyramid, with a single color-changing siren light serving as its "eye" protruding from the top. The Ace has three, spider-like legs, as well as a jet that allows it to hover and fly at the bottom of its body. Most uniquely of all, the Ace has not two, but four large, muscular arms covered in metal armor, each one affixed with a different weapon.

A Big Daddy Ace's top-left arm ends with an Auto-Axe, a weapon manufactured by the I.O.O.P. themselves. As its name suggests, the Auto-Axe is a heavy battleaxe with several blades that spin around one another at high speeds like a windmill. It has immense destructive power and can generate shockwaves and damage Rapture's protective dome of glass. The Electro Axe is an upgraded form of the Auto-Hammer, a massive warhammer which can vibrate like a crushing hydraulic piston.

The Ace's bottom-left arm is replaced by a powerful Spear Gun, a weapon which launches long piercing spears that can impale a human-sized target in one shot. When that isn't sufficient, the Ace's spear can open up to release smaller barbs inside the target's body, further destroying their organs. While most Big Daddies' Spear Guns only shoot regular spears, some can fire modified spear types such as trap spears, which generate electricity even after being lodged in a target and can create tripwire-like cords of electricity when several of them are fired at once, and rocket spears, which release jets of flame from their back that pushes them and their impaled targets and burn those behind them before exploding.

The Big Daddy Ace's bottom-right arm carries one of Rapture's most unconventional weapons, the Radar Range. Originally created as a method of instantly cooking food, the Radar Range has since been modified into a weapon projecting a powerful beam of radiation and heat that can heat up Splicers and humans to the point of exploding into a burst of molten blood and guts that can cause severe burns to those around the target. The Ace wields an "industrial" version, which fires a wide beam that can fry multiple enemies at once.

Unlike the other three, an Ace's top-right arm is not replaced by a weapon. Instead, the Big Daddy's disfigured hand is exposed, allowing it to wield multiple Plasmids. A Big Daddy Ace is always equipped with the same three Plasmids used by the Alpha Series: Devil's Kiss, Old Man Winter and Shock Jockey, which can all be used to fire a constant stream of flames, frost and lightning, respectively. It is not uncommon to see an Ace wielding other Plasmids such as Corrosive Eruption, which generates waves of acid.

More than any other type of Big Daddy, save the Alpha Series, the Ace is used for many purposes besides protecting Little Sisters, and may very well be the most powerful of all Protectors. However, even this unique achievement has in time slipped out of its creators' hands. Many decades since the creation of the Big Daddy Ace, virtually every faction in Rapture has many of them by its side, and many are not shy to use them against the I.O.O.P. itself. Ultimately, their ultimate goal of gaining an advantage against their rivals was, like everything else in Rapture, an exercise in futility.