A while back I wrote a review on the game: BioShock. If you haven't seen it already, do take a look at it here:
ta-da!
This is part two of that, where I talk about the second half of the BioShock series.
I am aware that I am not speaking specifically about BioShock 2, but thats because this entire review was started off as a comparison between the original, and the latest.
Since then, rumours have surfaced that a new BioShock game is expected to show up in 2020. Lets see, lets hope, and lets get on with it.
BioShock, by the time of the release of Infinite (or rather since the time of announcing Infinite) is known for a couple of things primarily: The Underwater city of Rapture, and the Big Daddies. Both have become entirely synonymous with the series.
So when we were shown a trailer for something entirely different, it blew the minds of almost everyone watching. Since then, there have been many trailers, each one seemingly different to the last, almost like a new story was being planned at each and every junction.
So what was it that set this game apart from its predecessors?
Everything.
BioShock Infinite features a whole new world for the player to explore. We begin the game on a rowboat, as we're transported to a mysterious lighthouse by two people who have a peculiarly similar way of speaking. However, unlike the one from BioShock, the stairs go up instead of down. The lighthouse resembles a normal lighthouse this time, and all we can do is follow the instructions given to us by the people who dropped us off.
On reaching the top, and getting into a frankly dodgy looking chair, we're taken to the main location that the game is based in: The flying city of Columbia.
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| One of the first scenes we see on reaching the flying city. The large angel statue is called Monument Island, an important location for the duration of the game. |
The first thing that we notice here are the visuals. BioShock Infinite was one of the first games to be made using Unreal Engine 4, which, in layman terms, is a huge deal as it allows for high levels of graphical qualities. We also notice how it is a stark contrast to the setting of Rapture. Columbia boasts a wide open space lit up brilliantly, and with people around you who have their own dialogues that you can eavesdrop on as you walk by them. In rapture, everything was artificially lit, and anything or anyone you met was trying to murder you at some point or the other. This change of pace was welcoming, like the morning sun on a cold day.
But then you get to one of the first major events in the game, where the control of the character is taken away from you and the bloodbath begins, in a style true to BioShock. However, instead of attacking Splicers and other insane members of society, we end up fighting real people, in the way of police.
As we progress through the game, we notice more and more about what makes the flying city so unique. Columbia takes on a steampunk appearance for the most part, and the story of the game is set in 1912's America. The date is significant, because the 1910's are known for many things: The KKK became known for lynching and other violent acts during this period, race riots had started spreading and were the precursor to many other race related problems that the USA would face in decades to come. Moreover, America refused to enter the Great War (as it was then known, also the war to end all wars), driven partially with having to deal with Mexico in the southern border.
The game stays true to the theme of the time period it is set in, albeit to a much greater extent than Rapture's in the 1960s. The instant mentioned above can be best described with a single screenshot taken from the game.
Honestly, the stark depictions of racism on this scale did put me off on my playthroughs of the game, and I was glad to be in areas where none of the propaganda was staring at me right in the face. I however, also recognise, that for all the discomfort I face while seeing these images and themes in today's life, the people living in that decade were treated ridiculously and it is well represented in the game.
Doing the research on what 1910's America was like certainly... well, it was illuminating.
The imagery is pretty on the nose, and I'm assuming that it would have been so in the the actual 1910s, especially in the south, with the increase in Jim Crow laws.
As mentioned earlier, the setting has a heavy dose of steampunk, and it does blend in well, adding to the world the players are exposed to much like the many elements from BioShock adding to
its setting. We can see these things in the first few minutes of the game itself:
There are many other significant events from history, which are actually touched upon in game, and the players get to hear about them from the NPC's who were in those events directly.
The overall approach to the world is vastly different from Ryan's Rapture. Where there was an abhorrence to religion, Columbia takes on an almost fanatical approach to it, merging aspects of christianity and the founding of America so that we get "biblical" figures such as the Angel Columbia, showing the main villain of the series, a self professed prophet, Zachery Hale Comstock, the way to "new Eden".
Where Rapture was based around two ideas: One of Objectivism, and one of a city not bound by Governmental and religious interference, Columbia takes the exact opposite approach and developed a militant pseudo christian utopian society, although considering that there is still deep rooted institutionalised racism and elitism, it's more a dystopia in disguise.
There are so many elements that cement it as a member of the BioShock series, in more than just name. We still have powers, albeit in a much less varied manner. Instead of them being injection based like Plasmids, we have them in the form of Vigors. Overall, the city of rapture changed, or rather evolved it entire society around the usage of plasmids, but in Columbia, vigors were never used commonplace, and only few enemies ever used it, and the world never seemed to care about them all that much, despite what the lore would have you believe.
And as with all games in the BioShock series, there was an incredible plot twist that gave players pause. Unlike with the two previous games, the major plot twist was set in the later half of the game, as a pivotal point for the character to get through and learn from. In BioShock, it was "Would You Kindly?", and in BioShock 2, it was the story of how Eleanor Lamb became a Little Sister, and how the main character came to become the Big Daddy, Delta.
With BioShock Infinite, it was the twist that the hero of the story, Booker DeWitt and Zachary Comstock were never different to begin with.
Slightly confusing I suppose. Lets start at the beginning, with the who and the what.
You play as the main character: Booker DeWitt, an ex-Pinkerton agent, who has emotional scars and trauma from his acts in the battle of wounded knee, and someone with an immense amount of gambling debts. To settle his dues, he is told to "bring us the girl and wipe away the debts".
The girl you're looking for can be found on this massive angel statue (scroll up for the image) island, and her name is Elizabeth. The player then discovers that she has the ability to open tears.
One of the most important aspect of the world are these tears, small rifts between worlds, that allow you to bring into the world things that would otherwise not exist. Where the couch was once striped, it now had a beige solid colour; where the floor was empty before, a tear can be used to bring in a barrel full of weaponry and ammunition for the player to use.
But thats not all the tears can do. These tears can open windows into the future, into the past, and into full blown alternate realities. Much of the setting of BioShock infinite has been proven to be deliberately anachronistic; in the middle of the area known as Finkton, you head Cindi Lauper's "Girls just wanna have fun", coming through a tear, and near the beginning of the game, you see a quartet singing "God only knows" by the Beach Boys, released in 1983 and 1966 respectively.
Thats where the other main characters come in: the antagonist, Father Zachery Hale Comstock, and Rosalind and Robert Lutece. Rosalind Lutece is the scientist who discovered the lutece particle, which allowed her to help build the flying city of columbia through quantum levitation. It also allowed her to communicate with a then unknown entity using the changes in energy states of the particle as dots and dashes of morse code, only to discover that the entity was none other than herself from an alternate reality, with some minor changes. Born a man, instead of a woman, this entity was known as Robert Lutece in his own world. He was brought to the world of Columbia by Rosalind Lutece, one of the first known instances of opening a tear. Since the general public wasnt to know about the alternate realities, they simply went about as "twins".
Now, these tears, as mentioned above, also showed glimpses into the future. Comstock used these to dub himself a prophet and came to rule over all of Columbia. However, due to the overuse of these he is aged rapidly with many cancers, and rendered sterile. Fink, another character you encounter later on, uses these tears to steal music and technology.
Comstock, in desperate want of an heir, and rendered sterile due to the tears, steals the child of an alternate version of himself, and raises her, hoping to groom her into his successor when he dies.
Make no mistake, Comstock is no benevolent god-man. His purpose is to rule from above the clouds, and burn the cities of man below who stand against him.
The player discovers a few key details: Comstock's alternate universe counterpart is Booker DeWitt, the main character we've been playing as, and that Elizabeth, raised as Comstock's daughter, is DeWitt's daughter.
Deep in debt, Booker gave his daughter to Robert and Rosalind Lutece, who were at the time working with Comstock, but grew to regret it instantly. On catching up with the Luteces and Comstock, a struggle ensued resulting in Anna, Booker's daughter, being pulled into Columbia, without the tip of the little finger on her right hand.
Simultaneously existing in two realities at the same time, had Anna, now Elizabeth gain the power to open tears, although as the years went on, her powers were curbed by a siphon made by the luteces.
The luteces eventually come around, enlist Booker, and have him save Elizabeth, and take down Comstock.
This is the main plot of the game.
Well I say main.
The inherent racism and elitism over the years has caused a large divide between people in Columbia and the peaceful utopian society we see at the very beginning of the game quickly falls apart as you progress through the story. You end up embroiled in a civil war, you realise that in an alternate universe you were a martyr for the cause, and so on.
The main reason I wanted to mention the plot twist was what it represents: the illusion of choice.
A staple part of the BioShock series, the player is exposed to this in many ways throughout the series. Jack is shown to have been an unwitting puppet to Fontaine, while Delta had been to his conditioning as a big daddy. However, in those games, there was a far deeper element of choice: one of morality.
If the player chose not to save the little sisters or not to attack necessary NPCs, then you get different "bad endings" depending on the severity of the deviation from the moral path laid out in front of you.
It played an important role in deciding the conclusion of the story.
But you dont see that in this game. There IS no moral choice that has long reaching effects into the game. There are minor ones, but these only change certain aesthetics of the game, is all. There are little to no benefits to choosing either option provided to you, and in this way, I feel that the gameplay of BioShock Infinite is lacking, especially considering how important the whole aspect of choice is to the narrative of Infinite.
Booker DeWitt, on receiving baptism, arises "as a new man" and becomes Zachery Hale Comstock. Chen Lin, the gunsmith, marrying a different woman in different universes, results in a vast difference in the story told, between whether he is dead or alive. Booker choosing to help the Vox Populi creates a new timeline and reality altogether.
There are many other instances that can be found in the game, that can, or will result in many different changes to the timeline, even creating new ones altogether. Yet none of that is in the gameplay elements, only in the lore and narration of the story, unlike with BioShock.
Another aspect of the game, returning from the previous two games are some of the in game mechanics. Namely the AI of Elizabeth, our companion for most of the game, and how the lore of the world is told. Once we rescue Elizabeth, our game turns into more or less an escort mission, one of the most dreaded aspects of any game till date.
Except Infinite changed the formula altogether. Elizabeth is actually incredibly useful, constantly finding supplies to help us, and money lying around. Not only that, but the way her features were so expressive.
She is also one of the characters to undergo massive developments as a character for the duration of the game.
Design of this calibre was unheard of and unseen for the most part in games those days, often seen only in rare instances and in pre rendered cutscenes than in actual gameplay.
One really has to appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this.
Overall the game is phenomenal with incredible graphics, a riveting story and a cast of characters that make the world of Columbia truly lifelike, for better and for worse.
But the game doesn't end there.
At the end of the game, Booker and Elizabeth make their way to the underwater city of Rapture. We find it in the state of disrepair that we're accustomed to, and head not into the city, but towards the entrance to the lighthouse. Here, the player enters the final area of the game, and the main message of the whole world starts to present itself: Constants and Variables.
It is best said in these words:
The world that you exist in is made up of the choices you make and the events that take place. Small minor changes can affect the whole of reality and change the course of history altogether.
We see this best with the Lutece "twins", as in one reality they are born Robert, while in another, they are born Rosalind, the difference between them being a single chromosome.
We consider these as "Variables". Sounds simple enough.
On the other side, you have "constants". Events and choices that will be made, regardless of everything preceding them. We're not talking about trivial things such as "If I toss a coin it WILL come back down", rather events on a grander scale.
We get small glimpses into this with events within the game itself. The first time you meet the Lutece twins on Columbia, they ask you to flip a coin.
Judging by their board, it seems to always come down heads. THAT is a constant (although in reality that would be a variable)
But when you look at the overall story of the series, you are reminded of the quote said by Elizabeth at the end of the game.
"There is always a lighthouse,
there is always a man,
and there is always a city."
We started both BioShock and Infinite's journey with the lighthouse, and we went to an impossible city. This is one of the biggest themes of BioShock Infinite, and it hits home every single time you play through it.
We apply the constants and variables principle to the game for a moment and we see the parallels from these two realities.
So now we return to Rapture for a moment.
A thing to remember: Infinite's story takes place in 1912, and BioShock's story takes place in 1960. In the second downloadable content, the story continues from the end of BioShock Infinite, with the main characters still being Booker and Elizabeth, however this time they're in Rapture, BEFORE the New Year's Revolt, before Rapture fell into ruin.
The player gets to witness Rapture in its glory days, when it too shone as brightly as Columbia did, when there were no leaks in the walls, when there weren't splicers trying to kill you at every turn, and when the city was properly a utopia as designed by Andrew Ryan. We get to see pre-revolt rapture only in the introduction of BioShock 2, and that too, only briefly.
The DLC, titled "Burial at sea" comes in two parts. Part one deals with Booker and Elizabeth trying to find a girl named Sally, who had been missing for a few days, and we have to searching for her. In the process, we revisit some old favourite characters, such as the Houdini Splicers, Sander Cohen, and Atlas.
The DLC, both part 1 and part 2 are incredibly important to the whole storyline of the franchise, but from the perspective of deep lore. In this DLC we get into details from the three games about how the little sisters were made and how the big daddies were conditioned to be fiercely loyal to the little sisters, while in Rapture. We also make a momentary return to the wide open spaces of Columbia after dealing with the claustrophobic environment of Rapture, where we learn how Vigors were made, how Fink stole technology, and the major background for how events of BioShock Infinite play out.
Overall, the player finds out how the events of Rapture ties in with the world of Infinite. Its a touching tale but one tinged with sadness.
Along with this, we also see how Elizabeth has grown since the ending of BioShock Infinite, and the start of the DLC. We see how she has become more like the adults that she has known in her life: vindictive, pessimistic, and how her innocence has long since been lost. Her shift in personality, between the beginning where all she wanted was to go to Paris, to having a bleak, albeit partially true, outlook towards life can be seen with quotes such as "The world values children, not childhood" and "time rots everything, even hope" is seen clearly here than it was in the main game, and it does so in an amazing way.
The first part of this review dealt with the events of BioShock 1, and the title reflects it. Jack ultimately wins in the game's canon lore, and if he got the good ending, he got to live a happy life for the remainder of his days, with the little sisters whom he rescued with the help of Professor Tennenbaum.
Lives, Lived, Will Live.
However, in the Infinite story, there is no hope for the future with our main cast. The Luteces are one of the first casualties in the story, but since they died due to the effect of a tear opening apparatus, they were displaced in time, and space. Father Comstock meets his end at the hands of his counterpart, Dewitt, and Booker himself, sacrifices himself to be drowned at the baptism so that the choice of Comstock never takes place, and the world is a safer place.
Even Elizabeth, doesn't make it out alive, but she dies content knowing that Jack will come to Rapture, save the sisters and kill Fontaine through the remnants of her powers.
Dies, Died, Will Die.
The story of BioShock infinite began with a simple glorified fetch quest to bring a girl to a mysterious person, and ended up being one of the strongest stories ever to be told in gaming of that era. Even today, it is considered one of the great tales told.
However, the gameplay was far too short, and the pacing of the game was all over the place in certain instances.
Infinite is a game that tells a story more than it acts as a game, and in its own right it is quite successful, however it still comes second place to its predecessor, a game that acts more like a game than a simple story.
The parallels: It has been mentioned above about how the minor choices make a difference in creating a new world based around that, but the implications of that are a lot more than what meets the eye. On second and even third playthroughs, it will become more obvious what I'm trying to not say clearly, but I want to give an example anyway: The columbian equivalent of the Big Daddies were never the Handymen that you see attacking you at random instances, it was Songbird.
Moreover, the entire series, there are so many fragmented bits of information in the form of audio diaries, recordings, and movie clips, it takes some time for the player to fully appreciate what they're being shown. With Infinite, you can really tell the effort the game makers have put in to make this masterpiece, and on the second playthrough you're able to pick up on subtle nods and small foreshadowing of events. However, it has to be mentioned that there is an entire world, hell, two worlds, available to the player, but only if they look for it themselves. Thus, there is a lot that you miss, in the story that they never told.
Personally I recommend this series to all people, be they new to gaming as a whole, or even veterans. This kind of storytelling isn't something that you come across except in the rare occasions. Now, with the focus being slowly shifted to single round games or battle royale style gaming, we see a lack of new games with compelling storytelling alongside functional game mechanics. I'm not saying they're not there, I'm just saying that these are few and far in between.
If you're going to start this series, then I offer two paths:
1) The classic route: BioShock 1, BioShock 2, BioShock 2: Minerva's Den, BioShock Infinite, BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Part 1 and Part 2.
2) My personal recommendation: BioShock Infinite, BioShock 1, BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea part 1 and Part 2, BioShock 2 and Minerva's Den.
The second path is the path that took myself, not knowing about the series except that the title was recognisable. It also gave me a proper sense of what the worlds were like: a wide open space appreciable to new players, followed by the claustrophobic and dark setting of Rapture, with the contrast between the two settings only heightening the experience.
I havent spoken much about BioShock 2, and I'm aware of this. Personally, it is an amazing game, and adds a lot to the narrative of Rapture, however, my focus during this review has always been about the way that Infinite and BioShock tie into each other, how canonical lore talks about how the two worlds benefitted from the other by way of tears, and how it was somewhat all interconnected.
The whole series is a telling of a horror story. While one part deals with telling it to us through graphic means and with jumpscares, the other part has us exploring the deeper psychological parts of it. Ironically, it is done in the opposite way to the theme of the games. BioShock, based on a philosophy, deals with the visual aspects more than the emotional ones, while Infinite, based on appearances (the over the top pseudo christianity, the blatant racism, and great amounts of violence) showcases the more philosophical aspects of the horror story being told.
For anyone who is interested in the FULL Story of the series, including all the subtle details, and every inch of the story, I have a link for a playlist
here. Do check it out, if you want.
A great series, a great game,
Hoping that people pick it up to play and are just amazed by it :)
Thank you for reading my somewhat longer than usual review.
Let me know what you think :)
