Please note that this review is really long, because BioShock Infinite is a complex game that I actually find interesting and worth talking about, so I've divided it into convenient sub-headings. Also this review is full of spoilers and assumes that the reader has played, finished and understood the game. If you want a non-spoiler review: I think it's good and you might like it.
Introduction
 |
The citizens of Columbia: immune to altitude sickness
and uninhabitable cold. |
If you've played System Shock 2,
which I have, even if only for a few minutes because I had no idea
what was going on due to non-functional cutscenes, the visuals have
aged really badly and it's extremely hard, or BioShock,
you'll know that Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games have a
bit of a thing for story driven action in imaginative environments.
This is certainly true of the latest instalment in this tradition,
BioShock Infinite.
It's hard to know where to start talking about BioShock
Infinite, because for me at
least it was one of those haunting experiences that has lingered with
me for a long time and extended its parasitic tentacles into my
thoughts. The game is not perfect by any means; the story isn't paced
as well as it could be, the combat is a bit rough around the edges,
the visuals, while extremely impressive in some ways take some very
obvious short cuts in others, and overall the whole experience is
possibly a little too short considering its protracted development
time and the potential of some of its elements for greater expansion.
This doesn't mean that BioShock Infinite
is bad, either, but I feel like it suffers somewhat from being
overhyped and overexposed during development and falls a little short
of the absolutely medium-revolutionising experience it quite possibly
could be. I'm not sure it entirely lives up to its potential. That
being said, it has an extremely atmospheric setting, for the most
part is very well written, it looks good, the story is intriguing,
the combat is interesting and several major characters are depicted
very well with the support of some top notch voice acting.
 |
One of the most mature things you can do if you
disagree with someone is represent them as the Devil. |
The
premise of the game is deceptively simple. You play as private
investigator, former Pinkerton and general man with a troubled past
Booker DeWitt, who has been tasked by forces unknown to travel to the
flying city of Columbia to collect a girl named Elizabeth who is
sealed in a tower. The action involves BioShock's
now traditional combination of gun-and-power based gameplay, with the
Plasmids of past BioShocks
now known as Vigors.
From the start, however, the most notable divergence from previous
Shock games is the
fact that you are playing as a voiced protagonist who has an identity
and personality more or less entirely independent of the player, and
you are not merely an apparent victim of circumstance: you are on a
mission. The game opens with a now-familiar sight: a lighthouse
rising from a stormy ocean, although now instead of a crashing plane
leading you beneath the waves it's a rowed boat directing you into
the sky. In addition, while combat is very important to the game,
this is not the game to play if you're interested primarily in
instant, pulse-pounding action. Indeed the first hour or so of the
game can be spent before you even acquire a weapon to use, and at
several points the game toes the line delicately between first person
shooter and interactive story with shooting at several points not
only optional but occasionally impossible. It very much establishes
itself as a story-focused experience, especially to allow you to
interact with Elizabeth eventually but at first to simply experience
the arrival in Columbia.
 |
| Action! Mystery! Lying on the ground! |
The first part of the game is
excellently presented to hook you into this new environment, and I
can't help but feel that Booker's panicked ascent via rocket to the
spectacular city in the clouds followed by his assumption into the
cathedral-like Welcome Centre is probably more impressive even than
the first arrival in Rapture in BioShock,
and not simply as a result of improved graphics. When we arrive in
Rapture, of course, we almost immediately know something is wrong;
from the outside the city looks somewhat lifeless, and upon entry
we're instantly presented with a murderous Splicer. In Columbia, by
contrast, our realisation of the city's dystopian heart is a gradual
process. At first the city seems whimsical and quaint with its
welcoming robed worshippers and grandiose religious imagery, full of
light and hymnal music. It's unsettling, but only becomes somewhat
sinister upon Booker's accidental near-drowning in the baptism he's
forced to undergo, although elements of this are played for humour
rather than horror. This is compounded with the vaguely absurd scene
of the citizens venerating images of Washington, Franklin and
Jefferson in a manner reminiscent of Catholic saints as Booker mocks
them under his breath. It's particularly impressive in its use of
awe-inspiring visuals to embellish a satirised depiction of American
patriotism and its corresponding evangelical Christian beliefs, which
are here combined into a one-nation-under-God “manifest
destination” with no separation of Church and State; the “Prophet”,
Zachary Comstock, is both the religious Father and the President of
Columbia. The airy vistas of the city with its boater-wearing
gentlemen, hot dog stands, shoe-shiners and airships all evoke an
image of American Exceptionalism as Utopia in a way which contrasts
overtly to the dingy, storm-swept surface and the distant lights of
Portland visible from the lighthouse below. The first signs of
unwholesomeness, however, derive not from mutterings about dissident
'Vox Populi' but rather posters warning inhabitants to beware of a
demoniac “False Shepherd” who has come to abduct “the Lamb”
of Columbia. It reinforces the notion that any dream of Utopia relies
on some form of oppression, in this case fear and the belief that the
authorities and state are the only defence against some sinister
external force. This is supported with the propagandist
entertainments which function as Vigor and gun tutorials, with prizes
to be won for defeating the Vox, and culminating in Booker's arrival
at a 'Raffle' which is actually raffling the opportunity to hurl
baseballs at an interracial couple. No matter what you choose to do
you are caught and uncovered as the “False Shepherd”;
appropriately enough it's at this point that the combat starts. I've
never myself been able to throw the ball at the couple, and the sense
of outrage you are encouraged to feel is deliberately frustrated;
even if Booker finds the event distasteful you have no opportunity to
grandstand to the civilians about Columbia's appalling racial
prejudice. Your identity is discovered, you retrieve your first
weapon, the Skyhook, in the brutal
murder of a police officer (one of whom admittedly was about to tear
your face off with an industrial tool based on rather circumstantial
evidence) and off you go.
 |
| There is no way kids wouldn't throw up here. |
Gameplay
Combat
in BioShock Infinite
is a complex experience rather different to the cramped, in-your-face
brawls of the original BioShock.
Due to the airy environments many battlefields have multiple layers
or are surrounded by hooks and skylines which allow rapid travel
around areas. Unlike BioShock's
pipe-and-pistol wielding basic Splicers, many opponents in Infinite
are soldiers with long-ranged weapons, and often I found myself
utterly bewildered as to where I was being shot from, because it can
often be hard to distinguish where enemies are in the huge rooms
which serve as many of the game's main combat areas. The AI for
enemies is inconsistent; sometimes they will be frustratingly clever,
quietly flanking you and attacking you from the side or rear. They
take cover when under fire and to reload, and space themselves out so
as to not be in vulnerable clusters. At times, however, they get
stuck in the complicated areas, standing passively behind terrain
features without ever attempting to attack, or standing around doing
nothing besides hurling abuse at you. At one point a guard and a
couple of his accomplices in Finkton started attacking me because I
crossed his line of aggression in a different room
which was separated from him by a wall. He couldn't actually see me,
but this action caused him to attack me anyway, and there are
occasional issues like this. It's less of a problem in later battles
but is noticeable for whatever reason in several earlier ones, many
of which feature multiple building interiors, rooftops and stationary
flying vehicles as a single area. I'm not a huge fan of the Unreal
engine and Infinite's
combat maintains what is in my view some of its most consistent
faults, mostly that guns feel like they have limited impact when
shooting enemies, who tend to just keep on coming, and that movement
occasionally feels a little imprecise. The game has a dizzying array
of weapons as well; there is a somewhat extravagant arrangement of
pistol, heavy pistol, machine gun, heavy machine gun, rifle, sniper
rifle, shotgun, grenade launcher and rocket launcher, and of these
the machine gun, rifle, shotgun and grenade launcher all have
“Founder” and “Vox” varieties with different properites, all
of which amounts to thirteen possible weapons. Some of them,
especially the Vox weapons, feel a little superfluous, however, with
most of them only appearing about halfway through the game. Unlike
BioShock, weapon
upgrades can be purchased without restriction at vending machines
throughout Columbia to improve range, damage and accuracy, reduce
recoil and so on as long as you have enough money to pay for them,
although they lack a lot of the quirky boosts and amusing visual
improvements which occurred in BioShock's
upgrade system.
 |
You should make a Discworld reference because
you're so well-read. |
Another
major difference which many will find frustrating is that in addition
to the Skyhook which has its own melee hotkey Booker can only carry
two weapons at a time and most guns have relatively limited
magazines, which means that in large firefights, especially against
foes with lots of hitpoints, it becomes very easy to run out of ammo
and have to scour a battlefield for a new weapon, often one you don't
have upgraded or aren't very familiar with using. BioShock
Infinite's toughest moments are
when the game denies you a combat comfort zone for whatever reason,
due to number or type or placement of enemies, and you have to
improvise in order to keep control of the action. This is where
Vigors are important because they drastically effect how battles play
out. If you're like me and tend to panic when the stakes are high
you'll struggle to do the right thing in combat – I often
accidentally swapped my gun instead of looting a body, or used a
Vigor instead of switching to iron sight aiming, and it's worth using
the smaller fights to practice for the larger ones. My personal
favourite Vigors in the end were Shock Jockey and Murder of Crows,
both of which stun your enemies and make them take more damage. Other
useful items include Charge and Undertow, which have different ways
of helping you to close the distance with the enemy. It's worth
experimenting with Vigors, which can be used in combination and to
create traps, so that you can find a method which suits one's
individual style.
Booker also
receives a rechargeable shield in the game, which feels like a
concession to mainstream modern game design, and serves little
purpose beyond taking a few extra hits and encouraging you to take
cover and placing a distracting graphic on the screen to show damage;
it's worth noting that Health can be upgraded much more quickly.
Scattered throughout Columbia, mostly in secret areas, are Infusions,
consumables which you can choose to use to improve your Health,
Shield or Salts, which are used to power Vigors. I'm not sure if
there are enough Infusions in the game to fully upgrade everything,
but there are definitely enough to fully upgrade at least two items –
Health and Salts are definitely the two to go for first. I can't say
everything about the combat, however, without mentioning Elizabeth.
 |
It's forbidden to look at this and not imagine unsettling
carnival music playing. |
Compared
to BioShock, Infinite
has even less of an inventory, and the only swappable items besides
weapons are Gear which operate in four specific categories of which
one per slot can be equipped at a time for a variety of effects –
shocking enemies, improving reload times and so forth. Their
placement in the game is partially randomised and they serve mostly
as a wild card factor more than being reliable elements of gameplay.
Similarly, there are no collectable first aid kits or EVE hypos like
in BioShock; you can
only consume recovery items directly from the environment. As long as
she's present, however, Elizabeth will regularly keep you supplied in
combat with health packs, salts and ammunition, so usually it's not
too great a concern.
Elizabeth can also open tears in reality, in one of the game's
stronger blendings of storytelling and gameplay, allowing for
battlefields to be modified: you can produce spare weapons and health
kits, automated turrets to fight for you, cover, distractions, traps
and hazards from parallel universes to help to turn the tide of
battle in your favour. They can't be relied upon – mass enemies
will quickly overwhelm summoned turrets, for instance, but they can
definitely tip the balance in frantic circumstances. Having a full
box of health kits to run back to, for instance, can certainly make
things more manageable. Alternately, you can bring into being a
hovering gun turret before anyone's aware of you, and pop out of
cover to take out your opponents while they're distracted.
 |
| "Booker, it says here that you suck." |
Things aren't all
in your favour, however. The armies of Columbia can dispatch a
variety of Heavy Hitter opponents at you to keep you from becoming
too sure of yourself: incendiary-lobbing Firemen, teleporting
sword-wielding Crows, relentless Motorized Patriots and brutal
Handymen. Each of them is immune to certain Vigors and has a weakness
of some kind, and their presence does serve to shake up combat a bit,
although perhaps not as much as it could, since fights tend to fall
into the category of dealing with the ordinary grunts before taking
on the Heavy Hitters. Motorized Patriots feel a little overused
compared to the others. The most frustrating enemies in the game have
to be the armoured rocket and grenade launching soldiers who are able
to sustain enormous amounts of punishment. Handymen can be difficult
to escape from but only appear sparingly, although the game's
technique of simply resurrecting you nearby with a small money
deduction and health restoration for enemies whenever you die makes
the whole situation feel a little arbitrary at times. This can often
mean that there isn't quite enough punishment for being lazy as there
possibly should be if you're willing to just slog your way through
fights with little variation in Vigors and weapons at the cost of
risking a few relatively painless deaths. The Skylines, similarly,
are not used enough to have the major impact on gameplay that they
could, and given that enemies can get stuck or be difficult to find
even when they can definitely see you occasionally it does feel too
cover based, relying on sprinting around from wall to wall to
scramble for weapons and let your shield recover, which is often a
deterrent to using Skylines or the more unusual items Elizabeth can
produce through tears. This feels like the kind of thing that could
have been playtested to perfection but as it is the elements don't
quite combine into the most satisfying experience. It can be fun, but
there's often a healthy amount of frustration mixed in.
The other side of
things is exploration. Between battles you'll scavenge environments
for food to replenish lost health and Salts, hidden money and secret
gear and Infusions. Sometimes I must admit this feels a bit
excessive, because if you have an obsessive streak like me you'll end
up scouring every room, pouring over enemy corpses and through
shelves, desks, barrels and bins for every last cake, bullet and
coin. It encourages you to take in Columbia's environs but does
become rather repetitive and frankly comes across as slightly surreal
after a while.
 |
Giving children oranges you don't own that were sitting
right there anyway; what a charitable gal. |
Graphics and Sound
Another area in
which BioShock Infinite both hits some marks and misses others
is in the matter of presentation. Visually, Columbia is well-designed
and looks very unique and spectacular; most of the time the image of
a huge sky city is well-realised, although I must admit that
occasionally the areas feel a little limited and don't perhaps have
the full sense of enormity that they necessarily might. The
backgrounds do represent an image of areas of the city we never see
but for what they're meant to entail a number of areas do feel rather
small and linear. It's not an open world game, so linearity is not
necessary, but the illusion of space, possibly achievable through
more streets and back alleys, multiple entry points and accessible
buildings might have helped liven things up a tad. That being said,
it does feel more like a city than Rapture ever really does at any
time besides exterior shots. The distant images of Columbia visible
from a distance often look rather papery and two-dimensional, and in
one peculiar moment a backdrop representing a large section of the
city with about a hundred buildings in the distance appeared to bob
up and down rapidly in one big piece like it was picture being
dangled on a string. That's not always the case, but the backgrounds
on the open city do occasionally look rather cheap and fake. The
artwork all looks believable and fits in place, especially the
posters and propaganda, which are appropriately reminiscent of
political cartoons and advertisements of the period. What I did think
diminished some of this, however, was the re-use of art assets. The
same half-dozen or so portraits and painted scenes are repeated
endlessly throughout Columbia. I'm sure some excuse could be made to
associate this with the city's circumstances, but when I see the same
picture of a ship in a stormy sea on the wall of Comstock's cabin on
his airship as I did on the wall of an anonymous building somewhere
it does spoil the illusion a little. Building signs are repeated in
different environments, so the same shops appear to exist both in
Soldiers' Field and the upmarket shopping district in Emporia, for
instance, and often seem to be placed in some cases arbitrarily
without much thought as to the content of the buildings they
indicate. I also found myself absolutely sick to death of seeing the
same, identical image of Lady Comstock everywhere. I realise she's
meant to be a martyr figure of near-religious devotion whose visage
is embedded in Columbia's culture but there is no variety whatsoever;
it's always the same painting modelled after one of Alice Roosevelt
Longworth, and occurs absolutely everywhere virtually
indiscriminately. A similarly lazy occurrence can be found in the
Friends of the Negro building, which features two identical paintings
of Abraham Lincoln in different rooms, which is a bizarre contrast to
the Order of the Raven house which has two unique paintings of
Lincoln portraying him as a warmongering demon. Similarly in the
Emporia cemetery numerous headstones on the tombs are identical down
to the names. For a game which is so interested in visuals and
uncovered details to tell its story and flesh out its setting it's a
shame that its artwork is also so obviously padded in places.
 |
| Accidentally become a Socialist god. |
This trait is
further compounded, sadly, in the game's use of NPC models. Those
enemies whose faces are visible tend to look somewhat distinct where
relevant, and the soldiers are appropriately uniform. Similarly
important characters like Comstock, Fitzroy and Fink all have unique
models. In contrast to the original BioShock, however,
Infinite supports a large number of neutral NPCs to enhance
the city's sense of reality in the non-combat sections. Yet most of
them look identical. Apart from a few changes of hat and facial hair,
it's not uncommon to see three of the same men standing around having
a conversation. Women barely get even that, with virtually all of
them having the same smooth-cheeked, large-eyed expression. There are
other NPC faces and models in the game, such as in the Welcome
Centre, but they don't get mixed in enough at other times and it
similarly limits the immersion. Another issue is with textures. I
played the game on Ultra settings and still had issues with numerous
high resolution textures 'popping in' only on close inspection, and
looking vague and muddy at all other distances, even when still
relatively near. I can't help but wonder with some of these graphical
limitations if the game shows signs of being restricted due to the
need to be functional on the passing generation of increasingly tired
consoles. It's a shame, because it holds back something which could
have been visually staggering into a product which is often
impressive but inconsistent.
 |
| Stealing food from other universes; that's fair. |
Sound is strong
overall. The game doesn't have a huge amount of music, and possibly
could have used a few more “danger” themes in combat, but the
voice acting is very naturalistic and believable. I had a few
scratchy moments, although that might be a problem with my hardware.
The auditory sting used to tell you when all enemies in the area have
been defeated is useful, although it occasionally becomes a little
repetitious. One quirky feature of the game is the use of tears to
access different time periods, so that it is possible to hear
renditions of much more recent popular music, particularly from the
late Seventies to the early Nineties, done in the styles of the turn
of the century, such as the much-publicised barbershop version of the
Beach Boys' “God Only Knows” or the ragtime arrangement of Tears
for Fears' “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. One audio-only
narrative is the obnoxious radio announcer whose voice can be heard
regularly throughout the game, originally spouting off propagandist
news about the state of things on the world below and eventually,
forgotten about in the midst of the Vox uprising, pathetically
lamenting his misfortune before slavishly continuing to play the
game's still-present music of the actual time period. There are also
a couple of original tracks unique to Columbia rendered in the style
of turn of the twentieth century music. The game also uses
Voxophones, the equivalent of Audio Logs from BioShock, to
permit insight into characters' thoughts while playing, which was
well-implemented, although I feel that there could be a few more.
Some way into the game the Voxophones become heavily plot-focused and
there aren't quite as many “flavour” items as there could be.
They also mostly tend to involve the same handful of characters – I
personally think there were just too many from Rosalind Lutece, or at
least that the concentration of them should have been broken up with
Voxophones from other characters. There are also more than a few
instances in which Voxophones occur at crucial points so you'll start
listening to them only for them to fade out when Booker and Elizabeth
have a conversation, requiring you to play them again afterwards. It
does feel at times as if various story elements get in the way of
each other.
Story
 |
| Thank you. |
To move onto story,
BioShock Infinite maintains its precursor's commendable focus
to a strong narrative and solid characterisation, with Elizabeth and
Booker in particular being well-realised characters. Both characters
go through some serious and well-established development, with
Elizabeth rapidly progressing from a cheerful, sheltered innocent to
a melancholy and weary adult, and Booker from apathy and
self-interest to genuine determination and concern. That being said,
the finale in which parallel universes and time travel are used to
prevent any of the game's events having ever come to pass potentially
fail to give a particularly satisfying resolution for better or worse
regarding either of these crucial characters, with only a brief post
credits scene suggesting that maybe in some way they've finally
improved their lot. I feel that the Luteces, the game's main
supporting duo, were well developed in the same way. It's interesting
that Robert, who is from Booker's universe, is more concerned with
reuniting Elizabeth with Booker, her real father, while Rosalind,
from Comstock's universe, needs more convincing. What's also curious
is that Robert and Rosalind are the same “person” (as it were)
but of different sex in the two different universes, which seems odd
given that they seem too old to have been conceived after the baptism
where the two universes diverged, which leads me to think that Robert
possibly isn't from Booker's universe at all. I feel like their role
in events could have been better explained – personally I think
they were far more at fault for everything than the young Booker who
became Comstock. In that regard no major character really gets much
resolution besides maybe Comstock, who is killed in a confrontation
prior to being erased from existence, or possibly actually Lady
Comstock, who is surprisingly well developed considering she's a
rather tertiary character and spends most of the game dead.
 |
| "Booker! Giant floating instructions at twelve o'clock!" |
The way in which
we are teased about Lady Comstock's past, particularly that she was a
merciless heartbreaker and deeply manipulative, and was taken in by
Comstock's forgiveness and his fervour, paints a subtle picture,
especially the way in which she can be observed to have threatened
Comstock's authority through her own belief: that she ultimately took
his religion more seriously than he did himself, lost faith in him
and had to be murdered to hide the truth of Elizabeth's origin. The
melodramatic memorial to her in the Hall of Heroes I found to be one
of the most disturbing parts of the game, but she's a character whose
mystery is slowly unravelled over time, something not done with the
other characters. Too much of the same delicacy is applied to the
presentation of major personalities like Comstock himself who in my
opinion isn't sufficiently developed and has too much revealed in a
single plot dump right at the end. There is a suggestion of some
self-hatred arising as part of Booker's apparent Native American
ancestry, but there really isn't that much detail. I realise his
biography is meant to be shrouded in mystery, but is that important
after the foundation of Columbia? Similarly information about Daisy
Fitzroy, who is name dropped all over the place, is severely limited
and I believe consigned largely to spin-off material. I feel that a
longer, better paced game could have explored all of these characters
in more depth. Booker never tells Elizabeth anything about her real
mother besides the manner of her demise, for instance, in what I
think is a missed opportunity in the game. That being said, Elizabeth
is well-implemented as a gameplay element even out of combat,
providing you with free money and opening locked doors assuming you
have enough lockpicks. She also has numerous remarks and
conversations with Booker, although I feel as if there could have
been more and the way they interacted throughout the game in combat
and so on could have changed more overtly. There were a few too many
times when Elizabeth would bitterly lament the truths of her
childhood, only to seconds later pleasantly inform me that she'd
found some money to send my way. Nonetheless she's still an effective
and welcome addition to the game, so that you really feel like you're
operating in a partnership as the game progresses, even if to avoid
any kind of “escort mission” element she's invulnerable and
enemies completely ignore her despite her being the most powerful and
valuable person in Columbia.
 |
| Use the multiverse to check yourself out. |
The plot follows a
structure of roughly five acts: Booker's arrival up to his rescue of
Elizabeth from Monument Island, the escape from Soldiers' Field
culminating in the confrontation with Cornelius Slate at the Hall of
Heroes, the journey through Finkton as Elizabeth's powers are
explored and the Vox uprising occurs, the battle across Emporia as
the truth is discovered about Elizabeth's parentage prior to her
recapture and Booker's transportation to the future, and finally the
return to rescue her, confront Comstock on his airship and discover
the truth behind it all. As I've already stated, and will again, the
first chapter is probably the best in terms of sheer novelty and
atmosphere even if the gameplay is limited at the time, and an
extension of this kind of gameplay including Elizabeth would, I
think, have improved the game. Segments like the Comstock Center
where you can ride skylines, enter various buildings and battle
enemies in one continuous map make Columbia seem real in ways that
other parts of the game don't. The Soldiers' Field section is
interesting and unsettling with its propaganda for children but at
times the creepiness can seem a bit laboured for the sake of satire,
and the fact that your encounter with Slate revolves solely around
retrieving a Vigor seems like a pretty arbitrary plot device; you
basically need to get an in-game upgrade to advance the story, and
finding it is too big a focus for this otherwise character- and
idea-driven narrative. It's worth noting that Vigors aren't really
explained in the game, besides a Voxopone suggesting that Fink used a
tear to steal the idea from Rapture. In BioShock the Plasmids,
genetic engineering and ADAM were all part of the story as well as
the game, but here they're just sort of there like it's not
BioShock unless you're shooting coloured lights out of your
hands. The Finkton section feels like a bit of a digression where
Booker and Elizabeth are happy to abandon their own universe for
alternate ones without the slightest compunction and in which Fitzroy
and Fink's interlocking agendas feel rather meaningless and bland.
Similarly, the way Fitzroy turns on you, despite intending to
emphasise the fallibility of all extremists, just seems like a cheap
way for the game to force you to fight the Vox as well as Comstock's
troops. The Emporia section is largely a return to form, especially
through the partially-ruined upmarket shopping district which really
evokes the fragility of “civilisation” compared to destructive
forces, although an apocalyptic thunderstorm to go with the civil war
seems to arise out of nowhere purely to layer on the mood. I think
the game could have used more scenes like the one scenario where
evacuating pampered civilians genuinely struggle to choose between
letting more people escape or holding onto their excessive valuables.
The three-part battle with Lady Comstock, the closest thing the game
ever has to a real boss battle, is challenging and can be
frustrating, but compared to other parts of the game exploring the
city after the society has crumbled feels too much like trying to
evoke the same atmosphere as BioShock, and there is a little
too much backtracking.
 |
| "What? You can't deny it looks like one." |
I similarly feel that the Comstock House
section in which Booker is transported to a future where Elizabeth
has become Comstock's successor and is waging war upon the surface
was a little too digressive consdering its length and the overall
length of the game, as well as the fact that it wasn't the most
subtle character study with Columbia becoming even more Dystopian.
The game's final section is quite a satisfying conclusion in terms of
action, but until the very end little is done to progress the story.
The final battle can be incredibly confusing, feels a little hollow
given that it's against the Vox who never really feel like the true
villains of the story, and while it puts your skills to the test, and
certainly did for me on Hard mode, it also shows the limits of the
engine as you are forced to fend off waves of enemies. On my Hard
playthrough I felt like I finished it after numerous failures largely
through luck. The finale is barely interactive, and mostly serves to
bombard you with plot revelations. I've heard the complaint that
BioShock's twist being revealed three quarters of the way
through the game is anticlimactic, but I think it's important that
the game also takes time to work through its revelations, while in
this it's through jumping scenes and limited dialogue. I don't
believe everything needs to be explained step by step – Booker and
Elizabeth are already not nearly subtle enough in the way they
condemn Fitzroy as identical to Comstock in her extremism in the
middle of the game – but when the writing in this section struggles
to convey some of the game's more complex metaphysical ideas it
lapses into quasi-poetical and metaphorical stylings which are not
generally the greatest strength of video game writers, and to a
significant extent serve to obfuscate some of the game's revelations
and ideas rather than elucidate them.
 |
| And to think that all the janitors are practically slaves... |
I'm willing to accept that Booker and
Comstock are alternate universe versions of the same person. Indeed
one of the most potentially confronting things about a multiverse is
that in one reality we might very well be someone whom we despise.
What I do take issue with, however, is how this is presented. The
impression we get from Booker's refusal of the baptism is that his
cynicism and guilt made him unable to go through with the ceremony
because he was unable to see it as any more than a placebo for the
conscience. It is implied, however, that in the alternate sequence of
events he accepted baptism and was “born again” as the
ultra-nationalist, racist, Christian fundamentalist Comstock. What we
don't see is how this was the tipping point, except that Comstock's
consequent obsession with forgiveness seemed to give him an excellent
psychological defence with which to rationalise both his past crimes
and those which he would later commit. There's no real explanation
for how he managed, however, to abandon his depressive personality
and become the charismatic zealot he later is. During the game
Comstock biographer Ed Gaines laments in a Voxophone recording that
he is unable to unearth any information about Comstock's past prior
to his baptism besides propaganda of the like displayed at the Hall
of Heroes. This implies that the events of Comstock's life afterwards
are a matter of public record, but virtually
everything we learn occurs after
Columbia is founded, and we don't even really hear that much to
progress his narrative once he started ruling things in the sky.
 |
| A simple diagram of the game's plot. |
We know that Comstock allegedly had an
angelic vision, and later lobbied Congress for the construction of a
flying city to impress the world, and that it was built through the
research of Rosalind Lutece. Yet the game never explains how Comstock
managed to wield such power and influence with the government when,
as both the timeline in the Hall of Heroes and
Booker's own personal information reveals, he was only a
nineteen-year-old soldier in 1893 when Columbia was launched.
Similarly, although we know that Comstock has been prematurely aged
by his exposure to the tears, as well as having developed cancer and
sterility, no justification is given for how Comstock rationalises to
Columbia his looking like he's in his late sixties at best when it's
publicly displayed that he was born in 1874 and is only thirty-eight
years old. We really needed, I feel, more exploration of the events
of Comstock's life following his baptism but prior to the foundation
of Columbia, because his transformation from a jaded young killer
into an extremely influential religious leader and statesman comes
across as an unjustified leap purely for the sake of having the twist
that the player character and the main villain are different versions
of the same person.
 |
| Comstock keeps cool and hydrated while napping. |
This is perhaps my
biggest issue with the game's twist: it relies far too much on
hand-waved plot elements which rely on an entirely arbitrary set of
rules which are foreshadowed but not explained until the last minute
in order to make the twist more shocking. Booker conveniently doesn't
realise he's in a parallel universe because apparently
trans-dimensional travel causes amnesia and you invent false memories
to justify your presence. Similarly, upon travelling to the third
universe in the game, Booker suddenly has two memories: the one he
had, and the one of that universe's “original” Booker (himself a
dimension-traveller). However, entering the Columbia world in the
first place doesn't cause Booker's memories to merge with Comstock's.
Is it because they're both alive at that point? That's the only
explanation I can see. Similarly it's not clear whether the second
and third universes during the Finkton section of the game are
travelled to or merged with the prior one. Why isn't Comstock in the
third universe surprised to find Elizabeth there when in that
universe she was safely locked up in Comstock House, necessitating
Booker working with the Vox and being martyred to their cause? Indeed
where is that universe's Elizabeth? Or if they went back to the first
universe, why is the Vox uprising happening and how is Elizabeth in
Comstock's clutches? Why is Songbird's eye cracked in the third
universe where he never had to chase Booker into the bay? Again, are
these universes entered or merged? Why couldn't the Luteces just go
back and drown Booker any old time; why did Elizabeth have to do it?
Surely Elizabeth drowning Booker would mean that she would never be
born, hence being unable to drown him. Is it Booker's consciousness
which returns to a prior point in time? How come the tears are
sometimes just parallel universes yet sometimes they also feature
time travel?
 |
| New pants for fanboys needed. |
My point with all
these questions is to suggest that while I think the game's plot is
interesting and admirably ambitious, I also think that it needlessly
overcomplicates itself for the sake of a shocking twist. The
conclusion is also rather conflicted, because it appears that Booker
is being drowned before he can make a choice – which is to
say, before he can choose to either be baptised or to walk away. The
fact that some Booker seemingly survives, however, appears to turn
that idea on its head, so it may well be that some of the language
used towards the end of the game is a little misleading,
intentionally or otherwise, for the sake of a shocking moment of
protagonist demise; I suppose we really just have to accept that for
the final pre-credits scene Booker has “quantum leaped” into the
Comstock-reality, after choosing to be baptised but before it
actually happens. It still makes Elizabeth's presence seem
paradoxical, but I think the game just hand waves some of these
niceties. It could have been a little more unambiguous, because it
feels like it is vague due to sloppy language and presentation rather
than a deliberate intent to leave interpretation up to the player,
and it doesn't really conform to the strictest application of logic
due to having certain rules of its own. Overall my greatest objection
to the twist ending is still that it relies on Booker being amnesiac
and constructing false memories upon his arrival in the Comstock
universe which I think is a cheap way of delaying the plot's
revelations. I think the story could have been paced a little better
without the deluge of information which is provided in the closing
minutes of the game and might have strengthened its ideas without
subsuming others.
Analysis
 |
Ships are definitely not going to crash here.
Except maybe into all the lighthouses. |
Nonetheless
I appreciate the game's sentiment regarding the idea of choice within
games themselves: that for all the propounding of “choice” in
modern game design it really only means two or more linear
experiences for the price of one; just as you can choose one course
of action, you're just as free to choose the other; both are equally
existentially valid, which might mean that neither really have any
value at all, certainly not in isolation. The game is indeed fixated
on the idea that our choices don't matter. Whether Booker picks heads
or tails, the coin always lands on heads. Whether you throw the ball
at Fink or the interracial couple or just wait, you get caught.
Choosing the bird or the cage pendant for Elizabeth has no bearing on
the game. You can put Slate out of his misery, or leave him be only
for him to turn up as a vegetable in the dungeons of Finkton.
Choosing to either nag or threaten the ticket seller in Soldiers'
Field still ends in a gunfight. And Booker can accept Baptism and
become the mad, megalomaniac Comstock who oppresses, murders and
tortures, or he can walk away, remain Booker DeWitt, and become a
gambling mercenary who was willing to give away his own child for the
sake of money. It's certainly more ambiguous than BioShock's
suggestion that gameplay requires us to abandon our own agency. In
that, our only choice is how we treat the Little Sisters, which
determines the end of the game. In BioShock Infinite,
by contrast, despite a variety of choices nothing you do changes
anything. As such I am inclined to consider that both games approach
choice from different directions: BioShock
illuminates our contentment with not choosing; BioShock
Infinite reveals the
meaninglessness of choice. It argues that what we perceive as choice
is just a number of linearities separated by an intangible membrane.
Just because you save a Little Sister, it could just as easily have
been harvsted; indeed it was harvested, is being harvested, will be,
because the programming for it is right there – you personally are
simply not experiencing it at this point in time. If video game
environments are in their interactivity a microcosm of the universe
as a whole then really all of their possibilities are largely
irrelevant. Just as we are willing to give up choice to follow a
game's instructions for the sake of our own entertainment, so too are
the choices we are
given within a game largely illusory in terms of the freedoms they
provide.
 |
| Appreciate yourself from every angle. |
In
the same way that BioShock Infinite
questions the meaningfulness of choice, in games or elsewhere, it
also serves as a critique of the First Person Shooter genre in
general. We're repeatedly offered the suggestion that Booker is a man
with a bloodstained past. In the Hall of Heroes he darkly hints that
he participated in the massacre at Wounded Knee because he enjoyed
it, and that as a Pinkerton he was an effective enforcer against
industrial action for a similar reason and because he was ruthless.
Indeed we know from background material that he's a disgraced
Pinkerton, which makes his past seem even more deadly. Elizabeth
calls him a monster after the first shootout she witnesses, and
Booker makes no objection; indeed like the player it is not Booker
who becomes more peaceable but in fact Elizabeth who becomes more and
more desensitised to violence. All the outrage we are expected to
feel at the horrific prejudice and religious ignorance of the
citizens of Columbia is contrasted to our willingness to slaughter
unknown numbers of policemen, soldiers and even civilians in an
effort to get the job done. Booker spends most of the game totally
apathetic about anything another than his task; when Elizabeth asks
him why there are segregated bathrooms he responds that there “just
are” and offers a noncommital “sure” to Elizabeth's musings
about the Vox Populi actually helping the oppressed of Columbia. He
even encourages Elizabeth to simply abandon Columbia rather than
bothering to deal with Comstock, considering him to not be their
problem to solve. And in playing BioShock Infinite
we are Booker DeWitt. He reflects the genre's own apathy towards the
source of its entertainment: that we are more than prepared to
simulate killing to progress a narrative, and that we may even
consider it a pleasurable experience. It is a “kill or be killed”
situation, of course, but we are still presented through the
limitation of our choices with violence as the only means of
achieving our ends. This culminates with Elizabeth's complete loss of
innocence after she kills Daisy Fitzroy in an effort to protect a
child; as Booker says “you just learn to live with it.” This of
course culminates in the confrontation with Comstock aboard the Hand
of the Prophet airship. The input is described as “Intervene”
when Comstock is harassing Elizabeth, but beyond any player control
Booker finally loses his temper and angrily, horrifically murders
Comstock, smashing his head against the font before drowning him in
its waters. This is, in the end, Infinite's
most incisive comment about First Person Shooter games; that in the
end “intervention” and “murder” become the same thing –
that the only way in which we are capable of meaningfully interacting
with this world is through violence. Perhaps this statement is most
effectively realised in Slate's frustrated rantings at the Hall of
Heroes, accusing everybody of being “tin men” who don't
understand war. In the end most players are “tin soldiers” -
playing at violence of the most final kind without thought as to its
consequences. This all comes to a head when you navigate the
propagandist Wounded Knee and Boxer Rebellion exhibits in the Hall of
Heroes, where Slate forces you to massacre his own men amid the
twisted, misrepresented history of two atrocities turned into
meaningless caricature, a damning portrait of how violent conflict is
usually presented in games. Here Booker has no choice but to gun down
Slate's forces who wish to die soldiers' deaths rather than face an
ignoble end at the hands of the authorities. Booker repudiates Slate,
reminding him that he has nothing personal against these men; that is
what it comes down to in the end. Violent entertainment becomes
totally depersonalised, divorced from the truth of its own horror and
glamorised, romanticised as being of a nobler nature despite how
arbitrary it renders life and existence.
 |
| Beta footage of the "prayer" mini game. |
This
commentary on gameplay itself is I think what makes BioShock
Infinite more fitting as a
sequel to BioShock
than BioShock 2.
Infinite
is made by Irrational Games of course, the creators of the original,
while 2
was not, which is sort of like someone writing a sequel to someone
else's novel: what genuine authenticity does it have? Beyond that,
however, 2
makes no attempt to deconstruct gameplay, being focused much more on
political and ethical issues, which were only the dressing for
BioShock
and similarly are only part of the setting here. Indeed I can't help
but feel that BioShock
2's
developers didn't really grasp the most unique feature of BioShock
– that it was striving to reflect upon gameplay experience, not
just to explore philosophical ideas. BioShock
Infinite
remedies this, however, with its problematisation of choice. That
being said, I would have liked a little more exploration on the part
of BioShock
Infinite
of its political themes because I thought they were interesting yet
somewhat underdeveloped. The critique of extremism is extended from
BioShock
with the Founders and the Vox Populi of Infinite
being just as bad as each other, but the lack of middle ground and
the fact that the atrocities of both sides are rammed home with no
subtlety whatsoever makes the ideas seem a little shallow. The
problem is that with all its concern over plot twists, parallel
universes and the lives of Booker and Elizabeth, the narrative of
Columbia itself feels more or less unfinished at the end of the game.
I realise, of course, that this is largely the point: that the
conflicts of Columbia dwindle into insignificance compared to the
game's metaphysical revelations, that there were so many Columbias
that it didn't matter what happened in this or that version of its
history, and that the infinite parallelism of Columbia and Rapture
reinforces the notion that fools will dream of Utopia no matter what.
If anything the game seems to argue that even without places like
Columbia there will still be places like Rapture, and even if
Rapture's false economy comes across as somehow preferable than the
zealotry and racism of Columbia we are warned of the persistence of
extremism in all of its forms as a recurring feature of history which
derives from the foibles of human nature. Rapture, however, destroyed
itself: it's already in ruins when Jack arrives (making its continued
even semi-functional operation in BioShock
2
almost totally implausible, incidentally). Columbia, by contrast, is
wiped from existence. While Booker muses that it might be for the
best if it didn't recover from the Vox-Founder war, we never actually
see this implosion culminate. By this point, of course, we're not
even in the original Columbia from the beginning of the game, so the
game's argument largely still seems to be that “it doesn't matter.”
What happens in one Columbia or another or another still isn't
important, which is why the plot is ultimately interested in ensuring
that Comstock never existed so that Columbia didn't either. It
reinforces the game's claims about the arbitrary nature of choice, of
course, but at the same time I can't help but feel like it's almost a
shame that such an atmospheric and well-characterised setting
ultimately only serves as dressing for an entirely different train of
thought altogether, and as interesting as a many-worlds multiverse
can be its not the most dramatically effective way of providing
narrative resolution.
 |
The only parenthood simulator where you have to
abandon your child. |
Conclusion
This
probably culminates in what I feel is the biggest issue with BioShock
Infinite:
the game is simply too short. I've played the game twice, the first
time on Normal and the second on Hard. There's also an unlockable
“1999 Mode” with added caveats and difficulty because apparently
games were really hard in 1999. I haven't played it myself because I
know I would get my arse handed to me on a silver platter, I died
enough even on Normal, but it does add a limited element of replay
value. My first playthrough took about thirteen hours with a
medium-to-high level of stuffing around, and while that is
realistically a healthy length where shooters are concerned I feel
like the game could have been longer; a second playthrough will
mostly be to get a better grip on the story and perceive all of the
foreshadowing for what it is. The game has a handful of optional
objectives for extra Gear and Infusions, and they mostly just involve
finding a key or codebook and then backtracking to an area you've
probably already explored. This adds a little extra content to the
game, but it almost feels like procrastination when it interrupts the
game's rippling pace. As I've said above, the ending is extremely
intense while other parts of the game seem practically languid by
comparison. Maybe that's just an issue with pacing, but I would have
relished an opportunity to really plumb the depths of Columbia in
more detail as well as exploring Booker and Elizabeth's psyches and
other characters' stories. Songbird, for instance, only appears in a
handful of instances and the nature of his relationship with
Elizabeth along with the threat he posed was never, in my opinion,
fully realised. One idea which was proposed in the lead-up to the
game was a mechanic where you had to either flee from or fight off
Songbird and the way you treated him would affect your relationship
with Elizabeth. In the final product with its focus on the
meaningless of choice, however, this concept is abandoned. Similarly
the Boys of Silence were relegated to a single brief section of the
game's fourth act. I feel as if the game suffered from overexposure
during development where many fanciful ideas were proposed which
never manifested in the finished product. Perhaps this was
intentional on the part of the developers to make the conclusion more
confronting, but I feel that despite the game's repeated delays there
was a missed opportunity to produce something truly groundbreaking.
There are certainly elements which are more than laudable in the game
in terms of its storytelling and visuals, the realisation of its
setting and particularly the characterisation of Elizabeth and her
implementation into gameplay, but at the same time other elements of
the game feel underdeveloped. The gameplay is fun but not as unique
and polished as it could be, the presentation while lavish
occasionally takes perplexing shortcuts and the narrative's pacing is
very inconsistent. All of these things I feel could have been
remedied with a longer game that took more time to explore its ideas
while simultaneously introducing and refining gameplay elements with
a greater variety.
 |
| The setting of the next game: BioShack. |
It
would have been interesting, for instance, to explore more of the
depths of Columbia: I would have liked to have seen more about the
lifestyle of its inhabitants. I would similarly have enjoyed perhaps
a little time spent beneath
Columbia amid the workings which keep the city afloat with the
quantum particles and other contrivances, and how that was
maintained. It would similarly have been interesting to have explored
more of the particulars of Columbia's history which seem to have been
relegated largely to spin-off material. I realise that the Hall of
Heroes is meant to be a simplistic display design to impress
Columbia's children – that too adds to Slate's insanity – but it
might have been interesting to have seen more than Wounded Knee, the
Boxer Rebellion and the murder of Lady Comstock as far as interesting
events in Columbia's history went. Similarly it might have been
intriguing to examine more closely the attitude of the city towards
the Founding Fathers and its relationship with the United States
proper. Indeed for my own part I found perhaps the most fascinating
section of the game to be the first act from the lighthouse to
Monument Island, because I feel as if there were concepts present in
that sequence which were not necessarily capitalised upon elsewhere
in the game. I realise that Columbia's apocalyptic downfall is
presented primarily to reflect the ongoing crises of the game's main
characters, but I feel like we could have seen more of the actual
living conditions of Columbia's inhabitants, such as occurs in the
first act and all too briefly in Shantytown in the third, so that
there seemed to be less of the 'theme park attraction' segments, such
as Soldiers' Field and Emporia. Indeed Shantytown was a missed
opportunity, because we don't really get to see enough of the living
conditions of the working class in Columbia – a few squalid
environments and that's it. I'll be curious as to what Downloadable
Content is eventually released for the game and whether that alters
its depth.
 |
| The real reason Social Services were invented. |
The
other question I might raise is regarding the game's genre. I can't
help but feel like games with stories as interesting as that of
BioShock Infinite
could be served by something a bit beyond the First Person Shooter,
even if it has a number of combat features which distinguish it from
more conventional gun games. While its exploration of violence does a
good job of questioning its role in our video game entertainment, I
can't help but feel like there could be other elements, without
necessarily lapsing into RPG territory. FPS has its origins in the
enjoyable combination of risk-taking and feeling powerful within the
safe bounds of a simulated scenario, and there's a reason why the
classics of the genre are games such as DOOM
and before that Wolfenstein
3D:
story is beyond secondary to gameplay. They're about blowing up bad
guys with big guns. Goldeneye
64
mixed things up with stealth and espionage elements in a way that was
true to its own narrative. In a game like BioShock
Infinite,
however, the combat and non-combat elements of the game don't always
reflect each other very well, and it's notable that there are at
least two decently-sized gameplay sections where, as mentioned, you
can't or don't have to fight, and so don't do anything but walk
around listening to conversations and looking at things. I can't help
but feel like a game with these ambitions could use some puzzle or
dialogue based aspects as well. I just think that when seemingly
trying to push the envelope Irrational shouldn't have just tried to
shake up conventional gun combat, which the game doesn't fully
accomplish anyway; it might be worth branching out into other
gameplay areas. Even BioShock
had the hacking minigame.
 |
| Disappoint your daughter in as many realities as possible. |
To
put an end to this indulgence, I want to say that BioShock
Infinite
is still a very good game, and that I've made a point of exploring
its weaknesses here largely because I think that's a healthy exercise
for any creative work. Nonetheless the combat is fun, the story is
very engrossing and the setting is well-realised; it's a fitting
successor to the first BioShock
and in my opinion improves on it in certain ways while still being a
distinct and unique game on its own. It is extremely absorbing and
almost haunting; it lingers in the consciousness. I personally have
found myself dwelling upon its story, themes and images for days. I
think maybe with the fulfilment of some of its ideas, regarding both
gameplay and storytelling, to a more involved level, and possibly a
PC focus to avoid making concessions to outdated consoles it could
have been absolutely revolutionary and unequivocally set a new
standard, and in that regard I'm not quite sure that it fully lives
up to all of its potential, but it does set itself among the great
story-based action games of the modern generation, and I definitely
think that if more big-budget extravaganza titles of recent years and
similar resources aimed for the same heights our current video game
culture would be a much richer environment.
