This entry is primarily focused on the general feel of the game, what the story is about, introductions to the key character's and so forth, and especially on my thoughts of what the game does right (which is alot). The hope is this to prove especially helpful to people who have yet to play or purchase the game, to further explain why I think this Action-Packed FPS has one of the best crafted experiences of this game generation. (This will contain minor spoilers, but heck, saying anything about the game that wasn't in the trailers is basically a spoiler)
First off, let's start where the game starts, in 1912 with Booker DeWitt, the dude on the box. Part of Booker's history was that he was part of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Wounded Knee. For those woefully unaware of what that battle entailed, it wasn't so much a battle as wholesale slaughter of native americans by the U.S. Military, and upon hearing of the brutality, the President gave certain officers the Medal of Honor. Tormented by what he saw and did, Booker tried to moved on, eventually becoming a Pinkerton Detective, and for anybody who knows about who the Pinkerton's are, you'll know that that wasn't much better. And what's worse, he eventually got fired from that position, and we never find out what he did to deserve being let go from a thug-for-hire firm. But Booker is given the chance at redemption: "Bring us the Girl, and wipe away the debt." as the trailers so often explained. So Booker goes to the previously-unknown-to-him floating city of Columbia, where religious fundamentalism and patriotism gone mad are fused to make a semi-functioning utopia, where George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are deified, with their leader and "Prophet" Father Zachary Comstock taking the place as one step below God (I don't recall Jesus being mentioned very much, if at all). Columbia itself was originally America's pet project to show at the 1900 World's Fair, but after Columbia used it's "defensive" weapons to essentially put down the Boxer Rebellion (against U.S. orders), Columbia, under Father Comstock, decided to secede from the Union because America wasn't "American Enough" for them.
On Columbia, Rascism, Elitism, and a dozen other "isms" abound (just take a look at that photo), while strangely Misogyny is frowned upon, as compared to other places attitudes towards woman at that same time (this becomes clear as things are revealed throughout the game). They also have conjured a form of superpowers in the form of Vigors, potions that permanently give you the ability to do a variety of remarkable things, such as fireballs, enemy levetation, possession, and, of course, a fistful of loighting. The technology of Columbia is that of emediately post-lightbulb New England, with use of steam, clockworks, particle physics and early robotics, often powered by said Vigors. Henry Ford is quoted as saying "when I asked the people what they wanted, they said a faster horse." And that's surprisingly close to what happens in Columbia, when all of the ground transportation are mechanized horses, often with technical failures. The way in which it present's these fascinating techonogies combined with people's general apathy leads to a very interesting feeling of mundane extraordinaries, you've never seen any of this before, and lots of it seems unethical, but the people around are usually just like "meh." Well, needless to say that after a while, some cracks begin to show when the people of the worker's district of Columbia (heh heh), almost entirely populated by blacks, jews and irish, begin rising under the banner of the Vox Populi, an organization built around trying to equalize Columbia led by Daisy Fitzroy, who came to Columbia in hopes of a new life, but only found an even worse version of what's on the ground. And all of this gilded beauty on top of the rippling chaos is swirling around the character of Elizabeth, whom the city refers to as The Lamb of Columbia, but doesn't even know she exists. 
Elizabeth is the girl that Booker is supposed to bring. She has spent the past 20 years of her life locked away in a tower, safeguarded by the Songbird, a Steampunk gargoyle-bird-thing who's relationship has been equated to, by the developers, that of an abusive boyfriend. The reason for her being kept locked away is somewhat unclear, but it quickly becomes obvious that it has something to do with her inate ability to open tears in the space-time continuum, reaching into other dimensions, other worlds, and occasionaly bringing something back. She doesn't know how she can do it, but it's something she does, nonetheless. Throughout the course of the game her true identity becomes more and more clear, as well as what she means to you, but what never grow's any less is how much you're able to care about her, as a charater and essentially as a person. She hasn't spent all those years in a tower moping around; she had a lot of books, and a LOT of time. She's intelligent, fun, compelling, and, most importantly, not helpless. She can actually do quite a bit more than you can, even without the ability to bend time and space. She can pick locks, decode ciphers, and can even ressucitate you if you're near death. And that's not including all that she can do during combat. She doesn't need to be protected in a fire fight (she's either behind cover, not a target, or fending off assailants with a good hit to the junk.) And she actually can scrounge around the battlefield looking for ammunition, medicine bags and Salts to refill your Vigors, and can then throw them to you in the middle of combat with the push of a button. And she can go wherever you can go, even up onto the Skylines, a metal zipline, ridden on by using hand-mounted magnetized hooks. Columbia's unofficial rapid transit system. Not only is Elizabeth one of the most interesting characters to ever appear in a video game (let alone female characters), she also has one of the best companion AI systems ever made. If you'll indulge me, there's a video describing all of the amazing stuff that Elizabeth can do, and is also a great display of her personality.
The only thing that bugged me about how Elizabeth interacted with both Me and Booker was that, in a situation where she was really upset at me for something I did, there was a slight disconnect when she was still being the most awesome companion AI ever created and helping me out, even though what I thought of her character at that point would be a little bit less helpful in terms of giving health or ammo. Her dialogue is less warm and receptive, but if I would fix one thing about the game is that if during that one moment in time where she didn't know if she trusted you any more, she would be much more reluctant to do these nice things for you, even going so far as not reviving you if you died. (spoilers, you never die permanently from combat). I can see why they did that, they really wanted to focus on making her a likeable character, and even one moment where she showed her distaste at you during high-intensity situations, if not handled properly, would be worse than any brief moment of disconnect.
And speaking of Combat, one of the interesting things about it is that, while it's relatively average as a shooter, as just an action game where you happen to be shooting stuff along with blasting it with vigors and leaping onto it from sky rails, it's incredibly intense. I'm more or less competant at shooters, but even I had trouble hitting targets at close range occasionally, that was more than made up for by how visceral the combat feels, in a "the game would be better if it didn't have crosshairs at all" kind of way. The bigger enemies you fight throughout the game are all contextual, horrifying and significantly tougher than any of the standard gun-toting fare. There's the Handymen, sickly/terminally ill individuals given something resembling immortality in the form of a grotesque mechanical body, conscripted into the heavy physical labor that the minorities can't accomplish on their own, and are often set loose into the fray whenever Booker seems to be doing to well against the militia. They're actually one of the toughest enemies in the game, more akin to the Big Daddy in terms of bullet-spongyness and threat to the player. Then there's the Firemen, almost exactly like Handymen, except they're highly trained in Vigors having to deal with burning things down. And of course, there's the Motorized Patriot,
A sort of clockwork Hall of Presidents George Washington manequin, with American flags for decorative wings and a fully functioning Gattling Gun, who spouts Jingoistic mantras at you in between long bursts of gunfire. One of the small details that hard to notice is that if it takes enough damage, the porceline mask begins to crack and eventually reveals the inhuman mechanics underneath. That's actually one of the big things I like about this game, the sheer amount of detail that the vast majority of people who play it will never catch up on, and that barely anyone will see all of (as you might be able to tell from the video with Elizabeth, you can just hear the developers crying whenever somebody just runs straight to the door.) For example, there are a wide variety of audio-logs scattered throughout the world, and each and every single one has something unique to add to the story, but some are behind locked doors and you don't have enough lock picks, some are just in a place most people wouldn't think to find, but they tried to make it so that at least some people will try and catch 'em all by making an achievment out of it.
Sometimes the best secrets come from little moments that occure just when you're in the right place at the right time. One is when you come across a black servant sitting in a corner smoking a cigarette, and he tries to lie and say "I aint even never had a one before!," but then Booker says that he won't rat him out, then the guy stops talking like an exagerated stereotype and thanks him, this is especially meaningful after you realize that the guy might get lynched, or worse, if anybody catches him with it. One of the other hidden jems was something that I totally missed out on my first playthrough, and I don't know how it happened, but here it is.
It's the little things...
That's another thing I really liked about the game. Booker is unique to almost all other FPS protagonists; He's not a blank slate, but at the same time, he has the ability for the player to empthize with and at times project onto him. He has a voice, but that voice doesn't displace what the player is feeling, and it doesn't contradict what Booker is feeling. Booker and the Player are two entities, but the player is encouraged to feel the way Booker would feel, and Booker allows the player to feel a wide range of emotions at any given moment. He's not a bad guy, but he's also a guy that's able to kill dozens, if not hundreds of people, and he knows that. The line between written character and played character is so well treaded, I'm having a hard time coming up with another FPS character that does that. Who has dialogue and has emotions, but it's almost never out of synch with what the player feels. That's what I love so much about the guitar sequence, because in a behind the scenes thing, it's revealed that the guy who does the voice of Booker is the one playing the guitar. It's a nice moment, and it doesn't change Booker's character, it enriches it. I want to talk about the Founders (the dudes lead by Comstock) and the Vox Populi, the key antagonists in the game. While I find it interesting that it was these two political extremes that were chosen as the games thematic backdrop, it's even more interesting to see how it doesn't demonize either side. Or rather, it presents every fascet of what those opposing ideals mean, and it's left up to the player how much of that is evil and how much of that was a good ideal turned corrupt. Like I personally feel (and I understand that the game was designed to more encourage this view) that religous fantascism in the game wasn't what caused all the terrible things to happen to the people of columbia, but merely the catalyst by which a power hungry mad man took control, with little-to-no risitance. Religion, especially as depicted in fiction, has a tendency to make good people better and bad people worse, and as many will see before the game is over, that's how it happened with Father Comstock. The things that are said by these people, especially by another class of enemies called "the brotherhood of the raven" or something like that, are some of the best excuses I've ever heard in a video game to kill someone while they're not looking. This "brotherhood of the raven" is encountered shortly before finding elizabeth, and it's essentially the KKK if it rolled around in the mud for too long and took a fancy to birds. Before you even meet them, you get to see a statue of Father Comstock wrestling with a 3-headed snake, with each head fashioned after charactatures of the 3 main nations of asia, symbolizing his victory in squashing the Boxer Rebellion, and then you get to see a picture of John Wilkes Booth assassinating President Lincoln, with Booth donning a halo, and Abe Lincoln with an obvious pair of devils horns. Yeah, John Wilkes Booth is their patron saint, and then you see them in their black hoods chanting and marching in place. I try to set myself up as a good person when playing games, I never kill anybody I don't have to, and when I get the drop on somebody I like to do a non-lethal takedown or just a quick conk on the head, even if it technically counts as lethal. But nothing felt more satisfying than blowing the cult leaders head off with a revolver litterally called "the Handcannon" from one floor above, announcing my presence to the rest of them as I get ready for the next shot. Never before do I think I've ever said "oh, you so gotta die." aloud to any of my enemies, or even targets, but I said it then and I stand by it. (It's actually kind of an example of Booker tactfully letting me be the architect of my actions but still staying in character, since earlier in the game I had the chance to throw a baseball at a mixed race couple or the stageman who was orchestrating the show, and I chose the showman. So my booker is distinctly anti-racist. I don't care if it makes me sound self righteous, but that makes me feel pretty good.)
Then there's the Vox Populi, (that's Voice of the People in I-looked-it-up-even-though-I-can-sort-of-read-latin latin.) They're a tough nut to crack, specifically because you spend less time with them, and their agenda kind of goes in crazy places after you play through long enough. Let's just say that their "If you're not with us you're against us" views, while a little cliche, are no less impactful on both Booker and Elizabeth. It's actually kind of interesting because previously, I didn't think their agenda was so bad, as is the intent, since you're supposed to be going through all kinds of figurative hoops to help them out. But after a while, they eventually turn on you, saying that you now "complicate the Narrative." And that kind of struck a chord with me, because (caution: politics) while I never voted for Obama, I always thought it was cool that 1) we finally had the black president that all those futurist movies were alluding to for the past couple of decades, and that 2) it proved, on a surface level at least, the old american mantra "Anybody could grow up to be President." This past election season kind of bugged me when I saw pictures of people wearing t-shirts like "Put the White back in the White House," making me think that, even though I voted another way, I kind of hoped Obama would win just to prove that guy wrong. The buzz surrounding that image was about how at this juncture the narrative of america might be a little bit more important than the policies, and I wanted to agree with them. Then Bioshock Infinite put me into a position where I would have to be killed by the person I just finished trying to help, in order to "maintain the narrative." and I kind of realized that just because you're on the right side of history, doesn't put you on the right side of whatever morality you're proposing to be remembered by history. Daisy Fitzroy, the leader of the Vox, wanted Columbia free for everyone, but if enough circumstances happened in the right order, she would just as easily want columbia for herself and her thugs. This isn't because of race or reversed discrimination, but because she tasted the power that comes with leading a movement, and she couldn't resist. So very much like Comstock.
I think that's all I can say right now without spoiling any more, but if this hasn't convinced you that you need to at the very least check out this game, then either I need to work on my righting skills or you shouldn't have been reading this far in the first place. If you can't buy it, rent it. If you can't rent it, find a friend who can. If you don't have a friend who has it, or don't play games, or have less free time, watch somebody else play it. There's a plethora of Let's Plays on YouTube (I'll include one I find particularly entertaining, even if it's not very good for Proxy-play) and lots of further discussion throughout the net if you just want to absorb the entire game experience before actually playing it (you sick freaks). I'll be posting my (supposedly) last entry on this single game later, and that'll be FULL of spoilers. Recomend playing through the game yourself before reading on, or at least watch somebody play through. The experience honestly is so well delivered that just having it told to you kind of makes the fact that you learned the information so cheaply kind of depressing. See you guys soon-ish!
