Bioshock Infinite: Vol 1 - Intro

I didn't know if this game was going to be any good. I first heard about this game when Tobuscus did one of his "literal trailers" of the E3 demo that came out all the way back in 2010, and it was the only thing that the developer, Irrational Games, was working on since the original Bioshock, even further back in 2007.

For those not in the know, Bioshock was a game that took place in the underwater city of Rapture, an Objectivist Utopia turned to chaos, with the player stumbling apon it and just trying to survive, using weapons and genetics-augmenting superpowers called Plasmids. Along the way, meeting lumbering beasts called Big Daddies and their stewardships, the Little Sisters, who collect the genetic materials that make Plasmids work. If you encounter one and defeat the Big Daddy, you can choose to release the little sisters, or harvest them. It was "the highest rated game of all time" according to Metacritic, and was so good, the publishers of the game wanted a sequel more than they wanted the original team to work on it, so when Irrational Games (the people who made the first Bioshock) declined to come back for a direct sequel, the publishers decided to farm it out to somebody else. As you can imagine, it didn't do nearly as well.

So when I heard that the original creators were coming back for one that was different but the same,I was intriuged. I had yet to play the first Bioshock game at that time (I still haven't gotten all the way through, but that's mostly due to losing my copy), but I knew that what it was all about. As more and more of it came to light, this new title looked like it was going to be more in the vein of a spiritual successor, rather than an actual sequal, with the throughline of calling it a Bioshock title being that it was all about a city built around an idea, and that city falling apart as the idea falls apart. And you got to have a fist full of loitning. This time, it was a city in the sky, built around American Exceptionalism with a relgious bent taken to Jingoistic extremes, and the minorities rising up against them, starting as a equal rights labor movement, but slowly taken to extremes and turning into all-out terrorism. Now the fact that video games were finally starting to tackle these kinds of issues was really cool already, but among the many good things I saw coming out of the developmental process, what stood out to me the most was the emphasis on the character of Elizabeth, a girl, raised and locked away in a tower by a giant mechanical beast called the Songbird and had the ability to tear open the fabric of space-time to bring in usefull tools and allies. I had a lot of high hopes for this, especially after finding out that it would release on my Birthday at the end of February. Then I thought I started to see some cracks; the game was looking radically different then it did a year ago, it had gotten delayed for a 3rd time (though only by another month, so I wasn't too bumbed about that), then the box art was revealed.

 

Now, I am well aware that those of you who have no idea what the game is even about will look at this and think, "Hey, that looks kind of cool." And that's OK, because that's actually exactly what this piece of artwork was supposed to do, encourage people who would otherwise be scared off by the overly thematic overtones of the franchise and give them a chance to see the games asthetic without the baggage of having to know what the game is about to know what the cover's about. But when I first saw it, my first thought was "Is that it?" Not only is Elizabeth, one of the most important characters in the game, not on the front, Booker (the player character in Infinite) has almost the exact pose, gun toting and everything, as Nathan Drake from the first Uncharted game. It didn't have anything to say about the story, the character, and even the setting is left obtuse until you turn over the box. But then I finally listened to what the developer and director, Ken Levine, had to say about it, and I'm kind of sad to have had to hear it twice before I got it.

"If you put a burning american flag and a dude with a gun slung over his shoulder infront of 10,000 people, people like it. If you put in front of a Hardcore gaming site, people hate it." He went on to say "We don't make comprimises on our games... The Cover doesn't having s*** to say about the game... It is possible to hug the baby so tightly that it dies, if we have to make compromises on a cover to reach a wider audience, I'll compromise on a cover." He even mentioned that it wasn't even his favorite cover, but the beautiful art that he really wanted (left) a) wouldn't work on a 8 1/2" X 5" box front and b) wouldn't have the same kind of reach-out-and-grab-your-eyeballs feel of certain other pieces of artwork. Not to mention the fact that they shortly afterwards put to a vote online what the art would look like on a reversable cover, and while it's more in-tune with what the game is about, I gotta admit that it's not much better in person. (below)

"The mind of the subject will deseperately struggle to create memories where none exist...."
              -R. Lutice. Quote on back of alternate cover.

This cover is much more apreciated after you've actually met Songbird.



I've played the game. I've finished the game. The game is REALLY good, and the cover didn't change that. If anything, the only problem it had was not giving the proper amount of limelight to the character of Elizabeth, and that actually made me more interested in the character that was on screen, not any character that was promised in advertising. It is kind of depressing that it took me this long to deconstruct the mountain that I made out of that mole-hill, but at least now everybody who wanted to play the game as early as I did knows that it's a good game, and the people who don't know squat about it are hearing us say how good it is. I highly recommend that people get this game. It's available on almost every platform, It has one of the best told stories in a game since the first game (yes, it took Bioshock to beat Bioshock), and it deserves all the praise it's getting. I'll be back shortly and I'll talk about what the game is actually about (limited, but still some spoilers) and then I'm going to play through the game a second time and give a comprehensive analysis of all the mind-bending stuff that happens throughout the course of the game, let alone all the well placed artsy stuff I love to pick apart. Till then I'll just give you a taste of what the game's like and leave you with this great quote I stole from MovieBob's blog.

"Oh, you only have one interesting, big-idea, theoretical scifi concept built into your narrative, and it's only to explain the more video-gamey part's of your video game? That's cute..."
Bioshock Infinite, to the Assassin's Creed series.