But the flat exchange of design shows how different the two worlds were in the first place. Part of this is because Burial at Sea takes place just before and during Rapture's collapse, when it is dystopian but not in shambles (much like how Infinite sees Columbia in the midst of collapse rather than after it). The original's claustrophobic hallways are traded for Infinite's vistas. True, you fight a Big Daddy, but otherwise the weapons, enemies, and pacing are filled with Infinite's sensibilities. The game plays identically to Infinite, with no real changes based on the new setting. In the DLC's first part, you play as Booker. But this Rapture feels completely different.
The place-based systems of the original are almost entirely gone.īioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea attempts to reconcile the franchise's two worlds, bringing Elizabeth and Booker into Rapture itself. Infinite has a variety of levels, but how you engage with and what you do in each level is basically identical. There is far less backtracking and less ability to engage with the systems of any given location. In a certain sense, you move less from location to location and more from set piece to set piece.
In contrast, Infinite is far more focused on a propulsive, blockbuster logic. Playing a level means getting to know the ins and outs of a specific part of Rapture. The game encourages you to know where vending machines and health dispensers are. Some abilities center around hacking cameras or turrets to create safe zones. Rapture is the primary means through which most of the characters are channeled, and the game's systemic preoccupations are about space. Pointing out such inconsistencies can be beside the point, but in this case it shows a fundamental difference between the two games' design. In one of modern gaming's most frequently observed plot holes, protagonists Booker and Elizabeth are tasked with arming a revolution in a world where you can throw fireballs with your bare hands if you buy the right bottle from a vending machine.
Unlike in BioShock, their presence does not feed back into the narrative. They are part of the carnival which opens the game, but how and from what they are made is unexplained. While Plasmids get several audio logs exploring how and why they came to be, Vigors get tertiary consideration. For example, Rapture's Plasmids return, here renamed Vigors. Unlike the prior game, there is no marriage of convenience between practical and narrative concerns. They too built Rapture out of necessity, a world constructed out of gameplay constraints, that could only exist digitally.īioShock Infinite is similarly artificial, but it is also far less clockwork in construction. Maybe that's because his goals were similar to the designers'. Though BioShock's narrative ultimately, tepidly, condemns him, it also finds some nobility in his mission, in the purity of his vision. In director Ken Levine's own words, "we wanted a very believable reason why they would be there." Rapture's founder Andrew Ryan (a thinly veiled stand-in for writer Ayn Rand) cannot imagine a place where he can build his ideal, objectivist world on land, so it must be done in the sea. Now Playing: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode Two Launch TrailerĮven the game's preoccupation with objectivism comes from these kinds of practical considerations. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
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