My name is William H. Douglas and I’m here to ask you a question:
Why is the storytelling in Bioshock Infinite so stupid?
Don’t get me wrong, the game contains some powerful storytelling moments. But that is exactly the problem. They’re only moments. Scenes like Elizabeth dancing on the pier or Booker playing the guitar or being led through the endless Sea of Doors all stand out so much exactly because everything around them is such drivel. Combined with the storytelling problems of the original Bioshock it becomes really clear that Ken Levine, writer and director of both games, is really good at creating memorable moments – the confrontation with Andrew Ryan and those listed above are prime examples – but he is really bad at creating a cohesive and meaningful story with well developed characters. This is very obvious with Andrew Ryan’s character in Bioshock and it is a huge problem with every character in Infinite. As a result, Infinite has some holes in its plot big enough to drive a truck through.
In this article will address the storytelling issues of the game in general. I’ll look at the stuff that doesn’t make any sense, the massive plot holes in the narrative, and the poor characterization that handicap Infinite, turning what could have been a great game into just another good first-person shooter game. In next week’s companion article to this one I will address how, in the examples of Jeremiah Fink and Daisy Fitzroy/ the Vox Populi, Infinite addresses both the propaganda of Socialism and how it actually works in the real world.
Spoilers will be liberally sprinkled throughout, for both the game and its DLC, Burial At Sea, Episodes 1 & 2.
The Story of Bioshock Infinite
The story of Bioshock Infinite begins with Booker DeWitt, a private investigator who is hired to travel to the flying dieselpunk city of Columbia. There he is trying to rescue Elizabeth, a girl held prisoner by the mad (or just plain evil) self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Comstock. Once Booker is discovered he has to fight his way through Columbia, using a combination of superhuman powers and advanced technology to first rescue and then defend Elizabeth while they try to escape Columbia. It is revealed that Elizabeth actually has immense powers that allows her to, at first, pull helpful objects – weapons, medicines, ammo, etc. – in from neighboring alternate realities through tears in realities and, later, the ability to travel to other realities at will.
As they try and escape, Booker is forced to fulfill a mission for the Socialist revolutionary Daisy Fitzroy, getting guns for her rebellion, the Vox Populi, in exchange for an airship to escape with. Booker and Elizabeth end up travelling across multiple dimensions in an attempt to obtain these weapons and end up fighting both Comstock’s and Fitzroy’s forces as they attempt to annihilate one another. Daisy is killed by Elizabeth and Comstock is killed by Booker. As Elizabeth comes into her full power at the end of the game it is revealed that she and Booker are actually from the same alternate dimension and that she is his daughter Anna who Booker sold when she was a newborn in order to pay off some gambling debt. And, and that Booker and the self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Comstock are actually just alternate reality versions of the same person.
In order to defeat Comstock before he is ever born, Elizabeth causes all the Booker DeWitts from across all of the multiverse had or would turn into Comstock to collapse into a single Booker who is then drowned by Elizabeths from across the multiverse at a moment in time before the events that would create Comstock would occur. The game ends with an after credits scene suggesting that the timeline of the Booker we have been playing has been reset and maybe he didn’t trade his daughter away to pay a debt, the amount of which we never learn nor to whom it is owed.
It is really in the last part of the game, maybe the last hour, that the whole thing absolutely falls apart.
The Problems of Bioshock Infinite
Booker DeWitt
Booker DeWitt, the man who literally fought his way through two armies and killed thousands of people in order to retrieve Elizabeth when he thought he was merely doing a job couldn’t think of a better way to pay an old gambling debt then selling his firstborn daughter to a stranger? Nonsense. Booker would have destroyed whoever the bookie he owed money to was and then walked away with his baby. Or just done some job for him. Selling his child contradicts everything we know about the character. It is the worst solution to an easily solvable problem and contradicts everything we know/learn about Booker himself.
There is also the problem of the nosebleeds. The game establishes that when you cross into a new reality your mind fabricates memories to help you understand what is happening to you while, at the same time, the memories of the version of yourself in this universe get dumped into your mind. This latter process causes nosebleeds as it overwhelms your body. We see this happen when Booker and Elizabeth crossover into an alternate reality where Booker is already dead. The Booker we are playing gets nosebleeds and starts remembering the events of the Booker in this universe’s life.
So why doesn’t this ever happen with him and Comstock?
Booker and Comstock are the same person. Comstock just changed his name when he became a religious figure. So, why doesn’t Booker ever have Comstock’s memories “downloaded” into his (Booker’s) own mind? Some theorize this only happens when one of the versions is dead, but the game doesn’t ever suggest that. And it actively implies otherwise with how Robert Lutece when he comes to the reality the game starts in and starts bleeding from his nose and has a mental breakdown, signs we learn later that his mind was trying to deal with getting the memories of his alternate self. His alternate self was still very much alive and he was still getting his alternate’s memories. But even if we accepted the “have-to-be-dead-first theory it still doesn’t explain why Booker doesn’t get Comstock’s memories immediately after he kills Comstock.
Further, when we kill a character in our universe and then crossover into the next we see that version of the character hemorrhaging from their nose and having a complete mental breakdown as they “remember” dying in the other universe. Why a person living in one reality would know about and experience the death of their alternate in an entirely different reality is never really explained. But it raises another major issue. Our Booker explicitly travels into a reality where he has died and has the memories of that dead man downloaded into his brain. He remembers dying. So, why doesn’t this happen to our Booker? Shouldn’t he remember death/dying and be having a mental breakdown while hemorrhaging from his nose himself? This whole detail makes no sense all on its own and the fact that it never happens to Booker is makes the entire thing contradict the rest of the story for sake of gameplay. Which just shows how bad the writing was in some parts of this game. Otherwise, why include a big detail that doesn’t impact the story, but which leads to massive contradictions and forces you to ignore it in order to not destroy the playability of the game itself?
Zachary Comstock and Religion
Speaking of Comstock, how did he know about the debts of another version of himself in an entirely different reality, anyway? Further, how was he able to pay off the debt? After all, the bookies never came to break Booker’s legs, so the debt must have actually been assumed by Comstock at some point before he takes Baby Elizabeth as payment. So, how did Comstock know? How did he pay? Why not just kill Booker and take his daughter? Why go through the silly and nonsensical act of paying Booker’s debts and the forcing Booker to pay him, Comstock, in return? And, if he is so worried about Booker coming to get Elizabeth, why not just murder Booker when he is open of his drunken stupors? Why even give him the chance of being able to come for Elizabeth? We never find out. The whole thing is overly contrived, avoids the most obvious solutions, and makes everyone involved look like idiots.
We also learn that Comstock was selling himself as a prophet apparently long before Columbia was launched. But how? Because he (well another character working for him) didn’t develop the technology that allowed him to guess the future by looking at alternate realities until long after Columbia launched. So, where did his prophetic abilities come from? I suppose you could argue that it was merely charisma beforehand, but this really ignores how religion works. You don’t just declare yourself a prophet and immediately draw a cult following. You have to provide something for your followers that reaffirms the spiritual nature of your claims and helps them fill the emotional, mental, and spiritual voids in their lives.
Moses freed the Israelites and gave the Ten Commandments. Jesus taught about redemption and salvation while providing the Sermon on the Mount. Muhammad proved his calling by defeating his enemies and producing the revelations that would become the Qur’an. Buddha realized the greatest truths of all reality under the Bodhi tree. Lao Tzu gave the greatest treatise on human liberty and social harmony ever delivered. What did Comstock do? Before he could use technology to fake revelation, how did he prove his claim to prophethood? How did he provide for the needs of the people who followed him? Why do they care enough to abandon everything they’ve ever known, secede from the United States, and come to Columbia? Who is he to them and what does he do that matters to them?
What really motivates Comstock in taking Anna beyond some vague motivation to fulfill his own prophecies? Why go through the trouble of crossing into alternate realities when you could just take some random child from the world below and pretend it is your own? We already know he is a total liar, why wouldn’t he lie about the child, too? It would be far easier and would prevent Booker from ever coming for him.
We never find this out. And the reason is because Comstock is merely a one dimensional construct. He, like Andrew Ryan, is a caricature of religious people, not an actual character himself. Comstock doesn’t have motivations of his own, he is merely a shallow plot device for the writers to get to the next thing. As is the religion Comstock constructs.
I have seen comparisons online between Comstock’s religion and Mormonism, but they’re all exceedingly superficial. People make a lot of the fact that Comstock and Columbia secedes from the United States and compare that to the Latter-day Saints settling in Utah. This comparison ignores the fact that the Saints didn’t settle in Utah, the fled to Utah in order to escape the genocidal acts of extermination carried out against them in the United States. And when the Civil War broke out, and Utah could have seceded from the Union, the territory, and the Saints, stayed loyal to the United States. Some compare the racism in Columbia to Utah and argue that the Saints in Utah legalized slavery in 1852. In reality, what the Saints actually did was pass antislavery laws that made Utah Territory into an official free territory. If Columbia had been in Utah the Black and Irish people of the city would have been free.
In Comstock’s religion people literally worship him and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin and people say Mormons do the same. The Latter-day Saints do respect these figures from America’s past and the inspired wisdom that guided them, but we do not worship them, pray to them, or treat them as religious figures in any way. Nor do we pray to any man, not even the current prophet. The only being we pray to is God the Father. For all of Comstock’s references to “the Lord” and usage of the title “the Lamb,” he never once actually talks about Jesus Christ nor do we ever see a single Bible in Columbia. They are not Christian in any sense of the term. Yet, the Latter-day Saints speak endlessly of Jesus Christ. The name of the church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Book of Mormon talks about Jesus in every other verse on average. And the Bible is a work of holy scripture that we use in all our worship services. There are no legitimate comparisons between Comstock’s religion and Mormonism nor between Comstock’s religion and Christianity. That people seem to think otherwise is a testimony to just how shallow the writing is of Comstock’s character, the religion of which he is the head, and the average person’s understanding of Mormonism.
Plasmids and Vigors
Why are there no splicers? The game explicitly tells us that Vigors are the exact same thing as plasmids from the first Bioshock. Vigors aren’t like plasmids. Vigors are plasmids. Vigors come from the exact same universe of the first Bioshock and use the exact same sea slugs from that setting to create the same thing. In Burial At Sea Episode 2 we even see some of these slugs taken from Rapture and brought to Columbia to be used in experiments to develop plasmids. So why then don’t we see the same results?
In the first Bioshock we see that plasmids drive you insane because they both rewrite your genetics completely, making you mentally imbalanced in the process, and are extremely addictive. And that happens fast. In the first Bioshock, Frank Fontaine goes from never having used plasmids to a full blown splicer to a giant, mutated, plasmid addicted freak of nature within the space of a few hours. Plasmids are more addicting than drug ever invented and take from zero to tweaked out meth addict with three teeth, no hair, and jabbering insanity within a matter of hours. Not months. Not weeks. Not days. Hours. Yet, Columbia seems to have no problem with them. People ingest Vigors freely with no side effects of any kind – no insanity and no mind bending addiction. This undermines the entire intended message of the first Bioshock, which was that unrestrained capitalism was bad and could lead to, among other things, rampant destructive drug addiction. But in Columbia it doesn’t. Vigors don’t even seem to have any side effects despite being widely available. But why? Plasmids absolutely annihilated Rapture, but Columbia has no problems with them whatsoever? Nonsense.
The Lutece Twins
Another problem are the Lutece “siblings.” I put sibling in quotation because Rosalind and Robert Lutece are actually just alternate reality versions of the same person, with Robert leaving his reality to come to Rosalind’s reality. Both are super geniuses. Rosalind is responsible for inventing the Lutece Field, which uses a Lutece Particle to enable levitation and flight. They invent the Lutece Device, which allows them to open portals to alternate realities. They allow Comstock to use it so that he can look into the future of other realities and use what happened there to predict what would happen in his own, further cementing his claim to be a prophet in the eyes of the ignorant public. It is Rosalind who comes up with the plan to take Anna from an alternate reality and Robert who carried out the act itself. The Lutece siblings also build the Siphon, the machine that drains Elizabeth of her powers and allows for Comstock to control her, imprison her, and carry out human experiments on her.
So, the Lutece siblings help Comstock build his autocratic, totalitarian, segregationist fiefdom in Columbia knowing he is lying about everything, willfully deceive the masses and exploit them, expand his power, provide him the means of stealing advanced weaponry, knowledge, and other technology from other realities, and enforce white supremacy, the violation of every human right, and brutal racial segregation. And these are the good guys? Or at least, as presented in the game, constantly on the side of the protagonist – and then only because Robert feels bad about what happened to Anna and wants to fix it by reuniting Elizabeth with her father. Rosalind couldn’t care any less and only helps to appease Robert. But free the thousands of people held in brutal oppressions or reveal the truth to tens of thousands of people manipulated into obeying a tyrannical madman? Nah. Can’t be bothered with that, no matter how responsible they are for bringing it to pass.
The Lutece siblings are not good guys. They’re sociopathic monsters. And in a game obsessed with the brutal murder of any with any degree of culpability in the evils that occur in Columbia, the Lutece siblings walkaway not only without any consequences but with the ability to cross and manipulate time, space, and reality seemingly at will. They get rewarded for their evils.
Further, if they’re really intent on saving Elizabeth, why not simply travel back to Booker’s reality at a time before Booker sells her to Comstock, warn Booker of what is coming (maybe pay off his debts), and thereby prevent it from occurring altogether? They can be anywhere, anywhen. This wouldn’t be difficult for them. Instead they developed an insanely convoluted plan to liberate Elizabeth that requires travelling across multiple alternate realities and an insane civil war? For people who are supposed to be geniuses, they chose the stupidest possible solution to their problem.
While we’re talking about Elizabeth, there are some parts of her story that completely contradict one another.
Burial At Sea and Elizabeth
When the Siphon is destroyed, why does all the stored energy magically return to her? That isn’t how energy works. Just go out and smash your cellphone battery. The energy doesn’t just leave the battery and return to the wall socket the electricity originally came from. It dissipates in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Instead of all here energy returning to her, the destruction of the Siphon should have produced an explosion like a nuclear bomb going off as unquantifiable amounts of energy was suddenly released all at once in a violent manner. But, for some reason, here it all flows back to her. And she becomes unstoppable. With her new powers she immediately banishes a massive, building sized robot with a wave of her hand and starts reality hopping at will. All of time and space are at her beckon call.
So, of course she gets killed by a Big Daddy.
No, I’m not joking.
At the start of Burial At Sea Episode 2 an Elizabeth is killed by a Big Daddy even though she can instantly control all of time and space on whim and instinctually.
And yes, I said an Elizabeth.
I refuse to believe it is our Elizabeth as I don’t see her intentionally torturing children in order to achieve any goal, but this Elizabeth does. One of the alternate reality Elizabeths might, but to insist that ours would is another complete violation of character that totally contradicts everything we have ever learned of the character and is absolutely horrendous writing. The Burial At Sea Elizabeth has to be an Alternate Reality Elizabeth as that is the only thing that makes sense. And yes, the fact that she is wearing the same pendant our Booker chose for her in the game is meaningless. There were only two choices for the pendant- the bird or the cage. In an infinite multiverse there are an infinite amount of Elizabeths that have the same pendant we chose.
One of those decided to visit Rapture as a vengeful, murderous femme fatale, work for Sander Cohen (because even though she can know anything she wants at will she still needed to learn about Rapture by living there for some unknown reason), and torture children by burning them alive. Our Elizabeth did not. Our Elizabeth would not. Even if she became more willing to accept the idea of killing (as some argue she does in the game) there is still a huge difference between killing dictators or mass murderers and torturing children and burning them alive. Our Elizabeth reset her own timeline and became a baby again so she could be raise by her father in the after credits scene.
Now, back to her death.
This all-powerful Elizabeth is killed by a Big Daddy, which makes no sense at all. The same Big Daddy killed the player character at the end of Burial at Sea, Episode 1. Then, in a flashback at the start of Episode 2 it is shown that the Big Daddy charges and murders Elizabeth. But this is completely idiotic. Maybe if taken completely unaware Elizabeth could be killed by a Big Daddy. But she wasn’t unaware at this point. Episode 2 shows that Elizabeth dies in the exact same that Episode 1 ended in and the room was unharmed for the most part at the end of Episode 1 but is a wreck at the start of Episode 2. The wreckage appears to have been caused by a battle between Elizabeth and the Big Daddy, a battle which drove Elizabeth across the room, with her dying in a completely different part of the room from where the player character dies in Episode 1.
All the evidence, including the flashback scene which shows the Big Daddy charging Elizabeth head-on, suggests that there was a large battle, that ranged across the room with drill gouges repeatedly shown in the walls where the Big Daddy repeatedly missed trying to kill her, all testify to a prolonged battle in which Elizabeth wasn’t surprised and was able to defend herself at least for a little while before dying. And that is what makes Elizabeth’s death nonsensical, contradictory to everything established in the story, and ultimately stupid.
A fully empowered Elizabeth simply and absolutely could not lose such a fight. Her first move would have been to use her powers to banish the Big Daddy in the same way she banished Songbird, which she threw across realities on a whim. Maybe you could assassinate her from miles away, but any extended fight with her would have been over in mere seconds with her destroying whosoever or whatsoever was attacking her. All she would have to do is have the mere desire to get rid of the Big Daddy and it would have happened. Her instincts alone would have stopped the attack at any time, even moreso as part of a battle. She would not have died. She wouldn’t even be hurt.
And why did they force such a stupid and impossible death on the character? So that inn Burial At Sea Episode 2 you could play as Elizabeth, except now you’ve been robbed of all the powers and abilities that would make her an interesting character to play. The writers essential wrote themselves into a corner they couldn’t get out of it except with a truly idiotic death scene that robs you of your abilities but doesn’t actually kill you. Because they couldn’t be creative enough to write a story that would work with Elizabeth they depowered and defanged her in the most unimaginative, silly way possible. Worst, it happened in a flashback – they didn’t even have the guts to have it actually happen to the player character as part of a story!
The character you play in Episode 2 may as well be Generic Female Character 2 for all that her character actually bears any resemblance to the character of Elizabeth you saw in the main game. Having deprived her of any ability to defend herself they make up for it by giving her a crossbow with knockout darts. And then you’re relegated to either generic stealth game play (hide and sneak attack) or generic first-person shooter game play (kill everyone you see). Nothing about it is particularly meaningful or interesting.
Even the way you meet your true final death is stupid. You’re trying to rescue the Little Sister you tortured and burned alive in the first game from the hands of Atlas. And knowing that he is going to betray you, you do nothing to stop it from happening. By the end of the playthrough you have plasmid powers, having picked them up along the way. This includes Possession, a power which allows you to possess any other character. Do you use it to posses Atlas, have him attack his allies, and rescue the Little Sister in the ensuing chaos? Of course not. Do you use your power to literally turn invisible and carry out undetectable stealth strikes to knock Atlas and his thugs out to rescue the girl? Of course not. Why would you? Actually giving the player the ability to use the powers the player has built up through the entire gameplay to actually achieve something would make sense, but it would prevent the hamfisted and idiotic ending the writers wanted to occur from happening.
Instead, like an absolute moron, knowing you’re being betrayed, having the powers to stop it, but doing absolutely nothing about it even though it means being killed and having the girl you’re there to save – the entire reason for everything – being trapped with a dangerous, murderous, evil man. Even if it means releasing that man to torture and murder more people! Not that it even matters, because Atlas doesn’t need you. Episode 1 confirms that Cohen has been sending people down to Atlas for an unknown amount of time, meaning Atlas has access to bathysphere and can get out any time he wants! Especially after Episode 1 when the player character and Elizabeth leave a fully functional bathysphere behind when they get off it. So there is literally no reason for the entirety of Episode 2 to even occur! He doesn’t need to force Elizabeth to help him, he could just leave, any time he wanted.
Yes, the story is just that stupid and just that terribly written.
But it doesn’t end there.
Burial At Sea – Rapture
I keep coming across comments on fan boards that the Rapture in Burial At Sea Episodes 1 & 2 is the Rapture from the first and second Bioshock games. It is often claimed that Ken Levine has confirmed this as fact. But, I have, as of yet, not found any statement where he explicitly says that the two Raptures are the same. Even if he did, given his explicit rejection of authorial intent as quoted above, it wouldn’t make it automatically so. In order to decide if it is actually the original Rapture or not we have to look at the evidence in the game and see which conclusion it supports – whether this or is not the original Rapture. When that is done it becomes very clear. The Rapture in the first and second Bioshock games and the Rapture in Burial At Sea Episodes 1 & 2 are not the same place.
First off, the majority of both episodes take place in Fontaine’s Department Store, which has been turned into a prison for Atlas and his men by being sunk into the bottom of a deep ocean floor rift. It is cut off from the main body of Rapture, with no way in or out. But there are a lot of problems with this whole scenario. The most important is why? Why would Andrew Ryan go through all this instead of just killing Atlas outright? At least with Sophia Lamb, the antagonist from Bioshock 2 who was imprisoned in a similar fashion, there was yet no reason to kill her as she had, up until her imprisonment, merely broken the law and therefore she hadn’t “earned” execution. But by the time Atlas is imprisoned in the department store he had already begun riling up an actual revolution to overthrow the government, killing people, and had been carrying out violent raids and seizing property.
This gave Ryan plenty of reason to kill Atlas. Instead, Ryan goes through this massively convoluted plot of sinking an entire department store full of plasmids (losing tens of thousands of dollars in valuable merchandise) and at least one Big Daddy, which is worth a king’s ransom in its own right, just because? That they retcon this into the Rapture Civil War isn’t the worst part, that is fine and happens in stories. It is that it makes no sense for any of the characters involved to do this when much easier solutions presented themselves, like just killing Atlas. Again this is the writers being willing to defy everything we have been told about the characters in order to force their story, whether it makes sense or not. This results in messy, idiotic, terrible storytelling.
Ken Levine continues to demonstrate his total ignorance of Objectivism or how capitalists think when we go through the “Ryan the Lion Preparatory Academy” where children are taught that empathy is evil and for weak people and that the way to properly discipline children is by using plasmids to mind control them into obedience. Both of these go against the most foundational tenets of Objectivism and if Levine had put any time into even doing a Google search on the subject he would know that. Objectivism holds the freedom of the individual to be the greatest good of all and anything that violates it is wicked. Objectivist also believe in empathy. They disagree that state and private welfare programs actually help people. To an Objectivist, the most empathic response to human suffering is to get the person in need work that will make him or her self-sufficient.
On top of these story problems, the actual setting itself makes no sense.
The version of Rapture from Burial At Sea has Vigors. They’re renamed drinkable plasmids, but they look, have the same names as, and act like Vigors. Further, so-called drinkable plasmids appear no where else in the original Rapture. The writing tries to suggest this is because they cost more to make than the original plasmids which you inject and were only being marketed in Fontaine’s Department Store before it was sunk. It is hard to believe Fontaine would have sold them in only one of his stores as opposed to rolling them out to all of his businesses. And we know Andrew Ryan.
Just because they’re more expensive wouldn’t stop Ryan. He would have marketed them as, “Plasmids: Prime – The High Society Man’s Plasmid” or some such nonsense and sold them to Rapture’s elite for a tidy profit. The idea that he would leave millions of dollars in profit on the table when he could have had more completely contradicts his character. Just like he couldn’t resist nationalizing Fontaine Futuristics in order to get its wealth, he wouldn’t resist this either. The mere existence of Vigors in this Rapture prove that this Rapture is not the Rapture from the first two Bioshock games.
Then there is the fact that there are Sky-Lines in Rapture, the rails from Bioshock Infinite that connect the different parts of Columbia together and upon which you can ride. Except here they’re called Pnumeo Lines and, of course, don’t appear anywhere else in all of Rapture. Some argue this is acceptable because they only exist in Fontaine’s Department store, which, if true, would be really weird. One business develops a way to quickly move goods and no other businesses adapt it? That is weird. But it goes beyond weird because the game tells us that the Pneumo Lines aren’t unique to Fontaine’s Department Store. When you first get the Sky-Hook/Air-Grabber the player character explains that, “Kids use them to ride around up on the Pneumo Lines.” (Start at 22:01)
This is the player character’s first time in Fontaine’s Department Store. The line suggests that he has seen kids riding Pneumo Lines in other parts of Rapture and that it is common enough that this is something known generally all through the city. The player character in fact speaks with a tone of dismay that this wasn’t something that Elizabeth, this random person he had never known before now, didn’t know about. This suggests it is a well-known fact and common occurrence throughout all of Rapture, not just in this one single store. But there are no Pnuemo Lines in any of the other Bioshock games. Which tells us this is not the Rapture from those games.
The fact that character actions contradict what we know of them from the first Bioshock games, the fact that Vigors exist as drinkables and by the names from Columbia, the fact that Air-Grabbers and Pneumo Lines (aka Sky-Hooks and Sky-Lines) exist as common features, and yet none of these are common in the first two games or exist in any form, are all signs that the Rapture in Burial At Sea is not the Rapture from the first two Bioshock games. This Rapture, the one people from Columbia have been in contact with and getting advanced technology from, is an alternate reality Rapture from the first two games. This is the only way to reconcile all the differences in it from the Rapture in the other games, which also allows the story to maintain some cohesion. Without it, the whole attempt descends into just the worst form of contradictory, canon ignoring blandness that you expect from the worst stories written.
Final Thoughts
Despite having some serious storytelling problems and major plot holes, the core Bioshock Infinite game is an enjoyable game. The scenes between Booker and Elizabeth are powerful and some of the characters are interesting (if you don’t think too hard about them.) It is an enjoyable time and the game is gorgeous if disappointing because you can’t actually interact with anyone or anything. And the music is fantastic, perhaps the best thing in the game. At least the main game had some big ideas it aspired to realize. But the Burial At Sea DLCs are only disappointing. They’re a terrible “self-masturbatory exercise in linking back to the glory of Bioshock 1” that add nothing to the experience and are only worth playing if you pick up the remastered re-release of the Bioshock Trilogy because it comes with all the DLC included.
Next week, I will look at some of those big ideas that the main game presents in powerfully, if imperfect, ways. Namely, I will be looking at what truths the game has to share about Socialism and how it works in the real world.