Unbreaking the circle of Bioshock (A critique of Burial at sea)

[Introduction]

There’s a scene that struck me as out of place in Bioshock Infinite. On the way to retrieve Chen Lin’s tools, Booker and Elizabeth visit a saloon in Shantytown. Upon entering its basement, Elizabeth notices a guitar. Booker picks it up and begins to strum, and Elizabeth sings a verse from the hymn ‘Will the circle be unbroken’. I wondered why Booker would start strumming the chords to a hymn, when he refused his baptism, but the importance of this moment is in the name of the song. Will the circle be unbroken? The hymn is about leaving the broken circle of pain and suffering on the earthly realm for something better in the sky. It’s a nice allegory to the purpose of Columbia itself (at least what its creators see it as) but here’s the problem. Before a circle can be unbroken, there has to exist a circle in the first place. After completing Burial at sea, the two final episodes of downloadable content for Bioshock Infinite, I wondered the point of what I had just played. Having written the video you are watching now, I have an answer. Irrational Games were trying to unbreak a circle, not just for Bioshock Infinite, but the franchise itself, and to do so, they needed to create a circle encapsulating their two games. The following video contains my thoughts and feelings regarding Burial at sea, and how I interpreted it. Enjoy.

[Story recap]

We’ll begin by going over what happens during Burial at sea. If you’d like to skip the story recap, you can head onto the next chapter of the video. Episode 1 starts in the office of Booker Dewitt during the heyday of Rapture. He is a private investigator. Elizabeth enters the office. Booker does not recognize her. She wants Mr. Dewitt to find a young girl named Sally who has gone missing. Booker was looking after her and lost her during a regular bout of drinking and gambling. To get a lead on Sally’s wearabouts, Booker and Elizabeth gain access to Sander Cohen’s party. Cohen agrees to share his information if Booker and Elizabeth will dance for him. Elizabeth is cagey about this, and Cohen picks up on her lack of honesty regarding her dance partner. He electrocutes them both, and sends them to where the young girl was taken, Frank Fontaine’s Department Store that Andrew Ryan sent to the bottom of the ocean.

Booker and Elizabeth find out Sally is in the vents, hiding from Fontaine’s mad splicer army. In order to coax the little girl out, they close the vents. The plan is to turn the heat up, causing Sally to exit through the final vent where they’ll be waiting for her. Booker is against this as it might hurt the girl, and Elizabeth responds that she will turn up the heat herself if he does not. Booker goes through with the plan. When trying to grab Sally, Booker realises she is now a Little Sister, as her screams call forth a Big Daddy. We help Booker put down her protector, but when he goes to grab Sally again, his memories return.

We are not playing as Booker Dewitt. We are playing as Zachary Comstock. This is a Comstock who when trying to pull baby Anna through the portal, had the portal close around her neck, decapitating the child. Disgusted with himself, he had the Luteces send him to Rapture, forgetting his sins through alcoholism, just like the Booker from Bioshock Infinite. One of the Elizabeths travelled to this universe and sought Comstock’s help in order to make him realise what he had done, and to then punish him for it. We find out the Big Daddy was not killed. As Elizabeth is admonishing Comstock, it gets up, and rams a drill right through Comstock’s torso, splattering Elizabeth with blood as she watches with satisfaction. This ends episode 1.

Episode 2 begins in Paris. We are playing as Elizabeth. She is enjoying the idyllic scenery and friendly atmosphere. This dream turns into a nightmare when Elizabeth comes across Sally. As she chases the small girl, the streets grow ever darker. Elizabeth chases Sally to Booker Dewitt’s office, opening onto the furnace where she insisted they turn up the heat to oust the little girl from the vents. Elizabeth wakes up next to Comstock’s corpse as Atlas and his splicers are searching it. The voice of Booker tells Elizabeth what she needs to say to Atlas in order to save her life. Elizabeth tells Atlas she knows Suchong, and can get Atlas and his army back up to Rapture, but only if he gives her Sally in return. Atlas agrees to these terms.

When leaving the scene of Comstock’s death, Elizabeth comes across her own corpse. Her memory returns. The Big Daddy that had killed Comstock killed her as well, but she wanted to come back to this universe. Maybe it was the guilt of using an innocent girl to get revenge. It would explain why she agrees to help Atlas if it will keep Sally safe. Regardless, her memory includes a warning from the Luteces. If she returns to this reality, one in which she died, it will erase her powers. She won’t be able to open tears, and she will have no more access to, or knowledge of the multiverse. Elizabeth understood these terms and chose to return anyway. As Elizabeth had the power to see all potential outcomes, she has to trust her past self that this trip was made for the right reasons.

Entering Suchong’s restaurant, Elizabeth discovers a Lutece machine. She repairs it and finds that it leads to Columbia. Jeremiah Fink and Yi Suchong were sharing technology through the tears. It’s how they developed both Plasmids and Vigors. Songbird was built from the technology of the Big Daddys. Elizabeth travels to Columbia to obtain the device enabling the buildings to float. This is what will allow Atlas to return to Rapture. Before she can return however, Suchong wants her to obtain a DNA sample from Fink’s private lab.

The tear in Columbia opens up on Fink’s headquarters, after the Vox Populi have overtaken it. While crawling through a vent Elizabeth comes across Daisy Fitzroy. She has captured Fink and his son. The Luteces are there too. They are asking Daisy to threaten Fink’s child in front of Booker and Elizabeth. To force Elizabeth to take action, kill Daisy, and harden her for the future they desire to bring about. Daisy is reluctant. The Luteces ask “What is more important? Your part in the play, or the play itself”? Keep this question in mind. It has greater relevance later.

On her way to find the DNA sample, Elizabeth learns more about Songbird. How Suchong and Fink could not get either Songbird nor the Big Daddys to imprint and protect their charges. Songbird’s devotion to Elizabeth was almost a fluke. Songbird injured itself when Elizabeth came upon it as a small child. She showed it kindness, and in turn it showed her protection and devotion. Around this time Elizabeth also comes to terms with the Booker in her head being her own subconscious. The path forward being dictated by the echoes of future memory before she cut herself off from infinity. Having obtained the DNA sample (a lock of her own hair, of course), Elizabeth returns to Rapture.

Making her way to Atlas’s office, Elizabeth installs the flotation device and is knocked unconscious by Atlas’ goons. Tied to a chair, a doctor asks her where the “ace in the hole” is. Atlas was never going to keep his end of the bargain, but he does want more from Elizabeth. The doctor overdoses her with truth serum. Elizabeth wakes up 2 weeks later, with the Rapture civil war in full swing. The war isn’t going as well as he’d hoped and Atlas wants his secret weapon. He thinks Elizabeth must know what it is. He starts to administer a transorbital lobotomy. The icepick pierces her above the eye, and it’s only going to take a few taps to crack through the skull and into her brain. Elizabeth welcomes oblivion, as she knows Atlas will never get what he wants if he destroys her mind. Enraged, Atlas then threatens Sally with the same procedure. This spurs Elizabeth to action. She tells Atlas the “ace” is in Suchong’s office, and she’ll get it for him if he lets Sally go. Atlas agrees, but we know just like the first time, he’s not going to honour the deal. Elizabeth knows this too.

In Suchong’s office, an injured Big Daddy is blocking the doorway. The Little Sisters are scared of it. Remembering how Songbird was imprinted on her, Elizabeth coaxes the little girls to show the monster kindness. They do, and both form an attachment with each other. Now if you’ve played Bioshock, perhaps you remember the audiolog in which Suchong is killed by a Big Daddy. He was lamenting not being able to get the Big Daddys and Little Sisters to imprint on each other. Two Little Sisters start clamoring for his attention. Distracted, he smacks one to get her to go away. An enraged Big Daddy bursts into the room and disembowels him with a drill. The Big Daddy the two Little Sisters just saved.

The “ace in the hole” turns out to be a simple phrase on a piece of paper. It’s encoded, and unlike the previous moments where Elizabeth looked at Suchong’s ciphers, this one is not translated for the benefit of the player. Don’t worry, if you didn’t realise what it was yet, like me, it becomes all too obvious soon. Elizabeth returns to Atlas. She hands him the piece of paper saying they both know how this is going to go down, so just get it over with. Atlas obliges and hits Elizabeth in the head with a wrench. Before her dying breath, she tells Atlas what the message says. It says, “Would you kindly?”. It’s a trigger word for Atlas’ secret weapon. For Jack. The man who is going to come back to Rapture, and lead to Atlas’ downfall. Elizabeth saw all this, including her own death going in. Atlas does keep his end of the bargain this time. He leaves Sally with Elizabeth. Soon Jack will rescue Sally along with the other Little Sisters and they will all have a good life on the surface. This is the reason behind Elizabeth’s sacrifice, to put into effect the events of the first Bioshock, in order for Sally to be saved.

[Changes to Bioshock Infinite]

Burial at sea spent most of its time in Rapture with the player controlling Infinite’s main characters. Irrational Games wanted to link the two together. Like a circle perhaps. Let’s begin our analysis by looking at how Burial at sea changes what we know about this universe after playing Bioshock Infinite. The tricky part of a story involving multiverse theory, is every permutation of said story is possible. This means anything is possible. A question I still have is, if the entire plot of Burial at sea (and thus the entire plot of Bioshock) is a result of Elizabeth’s guilt at having mistreated an innocent girl for the purpose of her own vengeance, where did the Elizabeth the player controls in Burial at sea come from? Multiverse theory says many Elizabeths could have been killed in Rapture by the Big Daddy, but also, many Elizabeths could have travelled back to Paris celebrating a job well done until the guilt gnawed away at them, leading to the events of episode 2. But what about Comstock?

In my Infinite video, I said that in a multiverse, Elizabeth’s solution of drowning Booker to erase the possibility of Comstock seemed too easy. There would have been plenty of Booker Dewitt’s who survived, or became Comstock in another way. The problem with the multiverse is if anything is possible, then nothing is permanent. Every possibility has to be accounted for. The ending of Infinite works as a sacrifice on the part of the Booker Dewitt we were playing to atone for his sins, but only for that Dewitt. Sure his sacrifice would have prevented a score of Comstocks from inflicting their horrors on the world, but there still would be plenty out there, just like there are other Elizabeths out there as well when all this is said and done. It’s the versions we are playing that are important, this Booker, this Comstock, and this Elizabeth, which I feel is the one we spent the most time with in Infinite.

A change to Bioshock Infinite that sparked discussion is the retconning of Daisy Fitzroy. No longer is she an example of the oppressed becoming an oppressor, but she is instead a pawn in the Lutece’s game. It is felt this removes agency from the character, while she didn’t have much to begin with based on her behaviour in Infinite. I feel this humanises Daisy a bit more, that she was willing to become a martyr for her cause when it came down to it, even if the road taken was one she could never have foreseen. I also like it as a parallel to Elizabeth’s sacrifice, and the reason for the whole story in the first place. As the Luteces said to Daisy, “What’s more important? The play itself, or your part in it?”

With Elizabeth being able to see all potential futures, she chose this one for herself, with all the torture, the suffering, and finally her own death. It is a painful, unglamourous way to end one’s own story. It reminds me of the end of Marvel’s Infinity War, where Doctor Strange looks through millions of possible futures before he finds the one in which they achieve victory, even if victory comes at a high cost (and geez, I can’t believe I made a flipping Marvel movie reference in one of my videos). Why did Elizabeth choose this path? For the same reasons her father went to Columbia in the first place, guilt over the treatment of a little girl. Using Sally for her own vengeance ate at Elizabeth, who chose to walk down the one path in which not only Sally, but other exploited innocents got the chance for a happy ending, even if she wouldn’t be there to see it. Elizabeth wanted to unbreak the circle of exploitation rampant in the objectivist utopia of Rapture. She felt that the play was more important, than her part in it.

[Changes to Bioshock]

While Burial at sea changed how we perceive aspects of Bioshock Infinite, what about our perception of the original game? Elizabeth’s actions set in motion the events of Bioshock. It was Elizabeth who allowed Atlas and his forces to attack Rapture, and it was Elizabeth who retrieved the “ace in the hole” for Atlas, sealing his own fate at the hands of Jack. In my video on Bioshock, I called the “bad ending” of the game, where Jack leads a splicer army to wage war on the surface more resonant to its themes, but because of Burial at sea, we know the “good ending” of Bioshock is the canon ending. Aside from making Atlas out to be an even bigger piece of garbage, all Burial at sea does to our perception of Bioshock is how it intertwines with Bioshock Infinite. Both games are now not just linked by a franchise name, but one couldn’t have happened without the other.

[The reason for linking the games]

Why link the two games like this? In the DLC no less? When Elizabeth took Booker and Songbird to Rapture, it was a nod to the lineage of the series, a shocking moment emphasizing that Bioshock was one possible story that could happen in this multi-verse of stories. Burial at sea changed this. No longer can we say “It was cool how Elizabeth opened a portal to Rapture”. Instead it’s “Columbia couldn’t have happened without Rapture, and vice versa”. What is the point in doing this? The answer I have may sound cynical. 

Linking the end of Bioshock Infinite to the beginning of Bioshock unbreaks yet another circle. Even though Infinite alludes to unlimited possibilities for new stories and games within the Bioshock franchise, this is Irrational Games lowering the curtain on their involvement with it. The stories of Rapture and Columbia are complete. Zachary Comstock, Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine, Booker Dewitt, and Elizabeth are dead, or at least the versions we care about. Jack and the Little Sisters got to grow old and have a life. Sure the cities can house new stories (like Bioshock 2), but it won’t feel the same.

In December 2019, 2K games announced the development of Bioshock 4. When the announcement happened, I had little excitement for the prospect of a new Bioshock game. Even before playing Burial at sea, what the Bioshock series was felt concluded. Now after Burial at sea, the announcement seems even sillier. If the game connects itself to Rapture and Columbia, it will feel like Bioshock 2 trying to connect itself to the first game, and if it takes place in a new location, with no connection whatsoever, why call it Bioshock? I know, I know, branding, but they could always do what Ken Levine did when he took the “shock” from System Shock for his spiritual successor. 

It feels like the point of Burial at sea was to end the Bioshock franchise for good, and considering my feelings regarding a new game in this multiverse, I’d say it was successful. Elizabeth was able to unbreak - to transcend - the circle of the exploitation of innocents, atoning for her own actions, just like her father at the end of Infinite. Irrational games created a circle between Infinite and Bioshock, unbreaking their involvement with the series as a whole, finally being able to move onto something else. The circle Irrational created in Burial at sea to link the two games still remains, and we’ll have to wait to see what is done with it as the series continues.

[Thoughts and sources]

But what are your thoughts? What are your feelings about the changes Burial at sea made to your understanding of Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite? Do you feel it’s a fitting end for these characters? What happened to the Luteces? They’re still out there you know. I wonder if they’ll appear in the new game. I’d love to hear all about these ideas and more down in the comments. While Bioshock Infinite had too much research to thank everyone individually, I found only 2 pieces written on Burial at sea to be of use. I’d like to thank Stephanie over at Ludogabble for her commentary on Burial at sea episode 2, and Noah Caldwell-Gervais for his video on all of Infinite’s DLC. Links to both these pieces are in the description. And look at that, I’ve finished my series on all of the Bioshock games. Thank you for watching not only this video, but the others in the series as well. I put a lot of work into these. I like to think I’m getting better at this whole videogame critique thing, and I appreciate your time and feedback. The next critique is a milestone. It’s number 50. I alluded to having something special lined up in the last video. Let me tell you what it is. I’m going to be covering Dark Souls. I don’t want to give a timeframe, because I have no idea how long it will take me to play through the game, let alone research and write about it, but I’m aiming for by the end of the year. I hope to see you all then, and I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.

Understanding Bioshock Infinite (Game critique)

I eagerly awaited the release of Bioshock Infinite. I've talked before about how I passed over Bioshock 2 when it came out because it wasn't being made by Ken Levine. I loved Bioshock, and wanted to see what the man with the vision behind Rapture had in store for players next. Then details were released. A city in the clouds instead of under the sea. A companion character who could tear holes in reality, and a focus on the American myth of manifest destiny. The gameplay is reminiscent of Bioshock with vigors instead of plasmids, and skyhooks instead of bathyspheres. It felt like it was familiar enough, yet different enough, which is what us video game fans tend to want in our sequels. It reviewed and sold well too, before us critics began writing about it. After all this time, in 2020, the critical consensus is the game is a failure. It was pulled in too many directions, and everything it tried to do, it did not do well. After my recent playthrough to acquire this footage and refamiliarise myself with the game, I find myself agreeing. I enjoyed moments of Bioshock Infinite, but it did feel conflicted, and ultimately unsatisfying. Because of this feeling, I would like to ask the question of what Bioshock Infinite as a work is trying to say, and then maybe we can come to an understanding if it was successful or not.

Before we can understand what Bioshock Infinite is trying to say, we need to know what happens during a playthrough of it. If you haven't played the game before, I am about to go through the plot. Now would be a good time to back out of the video if you still wish to play the game for yourself without knowing what happens. For those of you have played the game, think of this as a refresher so we're all on the same page. Good? Good. We play Booker Dewitt. At the start of the game, a man and a woman are rowing him towards a lighthouse. Booker has made a deal to enter the city of Columbia to retrieve a girl named Elizabeth. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt". He takes a rocket up to a city in the clouds and finds himself in the middle of a festival. After taking in the sights and sounds, Booker is chosen in a raffle to throw a baseball at an inter-racial couple as part of the festivities, but before we as the player can make a choice about who to throw the ball at, a guard recognises Booker's tattoo as the mark of what they call "the false shepard". It seems the city has been warned about Booker's arrival. Guards try to stop him, Booker murders them, and the game begins in earnest.

Fighting his way to Elizabeth's tower, Booker finds the girl is being kept locked up because she possesses the ability to open up tears in reality. She's also missing her pinky finger on one hand. Remember this. It’s important for later. The two escape from not only the tower, but the giant metallic songbird guarding Elizabeth as well. When they reach an airship, Booker sets the destination to New York. He lied to Elizabeth, telling her they were going to Paris. She knocks Booker out and runs away. When Booker comes to, the airship has been taken over by the Vox Populi, a resistance movement looking to overthrow the power structure of Columbia. Its leader Daisy Fitzroy makes a deal with Booker. If he can arm the Vox with weapons, she'll let Booker and Elizabeth have the airship and escape Columbia.

Booker chases down Elizabeth and makes a deal to take her to Paris if they can get the weapons. She does not trust him, but realises he is her best chance out of here. The two need to head into Finkton and find a man by the name of Chen Lin to get the weapons. They chase him down but they're too late. Jeremiah Fink is the wealthiest man of industry in Rapture, and his flunkies have captured and tortured Chen Lin to death. The Luttice Twins show up. They've been making constant appearances. They were the two rowing Booker to the lighthouse at the start of the game, and they gave Elizabeth a choice of what pendant she would like to wear around her neck. They appear, spout cryptic bickering nonsense, and then disappear. Mysterious. In their current appearance, they say life and death is all a matter of perspective. Chen Lin may be dead here and now, but in other times, and other realities he is alive. It's all about how you look at it. Elizabeth uses her power to open a tear to a reality in which Chen Lin is alive, and the two head through to find their weapons.

Booker and Elizabeth come across Chen Lin, but all is not right with the man. His death in another reality seems to have had a drastic effect on him in this one. Chen Lin’s wife thinks if her husband got his tools back he would be ok, causing Booker and Elizabeth to go find them. The tools are not in this reality. It's time for another jump, but oh what a reality they find themselves in. The Vox Populi have begun their uprising. In this reality, Booker fought for the resistance and led them to overthrow Columbia. As Booker and Elizabeth run around, the game takes great lengths to point out that the way the Vox are treating the captured citizens of Columbia is just as, or more cruel than they were treated. Booker and Elizabeth come across Daisy Fitzroy. In this reality, Booker died fighting for the Vox. The fact there's a Booker alive and well doesn't go along with the narrative. This one has to die. After surviving everything Daisy throws at the player, she threatens to kill a child. Distracted by Booker, Elizabeth sneaks up behind Daisy and stabs her.

Despite the reality hopping, and the bodies left alone the way, Booker and Elizabeth have their airship, but there's still Songbird to deal with. There's no way to escape Columbia without disabling the mechanical monster. While pursuing this goal, we find out the Luttice twins we've been seeing pop in and out all around the place are not twins, they are the same person from two different realities. They found each other through experimentation. Most of the technology of Columbia was made from their experiments. It's how Comstock was able to fulfill his prophecies and how Fink was able to make his fortune. Songbird catches up with Booker and Elizabeth, and to spare Booker's life, Elizabeth agrees to be put into custody again.

To rescue Elizabeth, Booker enters yet another reality. One where Comstock tortured Elizabeth for years, until she became his successor, waging war on what she saw as a corrupt surface world. This elderly Elizabeth still has her wits about her. She gives Booker the means to stop Songbird, and sends him back to save her, before it's too late. Booker is able to rescue Elizabeth, but now she has a score to settle with Comstock. Her time with Booker has hardened her. It's time to assault Comstock’s airship. The two fight their way aboard and confront the false prophet. Comstock appears genial at first. He asks Booker to tell Elizabeth what happened to her finger. Comstock becomes excited in his anger and starts to shake Elizabeth. This triggers a violent reaction in Booker who assaults and then drowns the old man. Booker swears he has no idea about Elizabeth's finger, but Elizabeth doesn't believe him. She thinks Booker knows, but can't remember. The next step is to destroy the siphon and free Elizabeth's true power. Booker thinks the answer to their questions must be waiting behind another tear.

Booker uses Songbird to destroy the siphon, which was the tower Elizabeth was being kept in. The power bursts forth, turning Elizabeth's hair white. Booker loses control of Songbird but before it can attack, Elizabeth opens a tear and takes them all to Rapture. Underneath the pressure of the water, Songbird is destroyed. Booker wonders where the heck they are and Elizabeth leads him up to the first lighthouse, where Bioshock began. They open the door onto a scene of infinite lighthouses. Elizabeth now has access to the multiverse. Reality is different in each one, but there are constants too. “There is always a lighthouse, there is always a man, there is always a city” Elizabeth takes Booker to a baptism. Booker remembers this moment of his past. After the atrocities he committed in the army, he thought to be born again, to wash away his sins, but he chickened out at the last moment. He felt a dunk in the water wasn't enough to make up for what he'd done. How right he turned out to be.

"Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt". The start of the game, and the inciting incident for the player did not come from travelling to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth for the Lutices. We find out Booker had given up his own daughter while she was still a baby to Robert Lutece in order to pay off his debts. Booker was wracked with guilt over this decision, chasing Lutece down a side alley where Comstock was taking the baby back to his own reality. Booker failed to save his daughter, but the struggle caused his Anna to have her pinky still in his reality when the portal closed, severing it off. Yes, Elizabeth is Booker's daughter Anna. The years she spent growing up as a prisoner in the tower, Booker spent descending further into alcoholism. It made it easy for the Luteces to pull him through into Elizabeth's reality, and fabricate memories causing Booker to think he was there to perform a job for them. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt".

Booker is aghast at this revelation. Not only because of the guilt cause by giving up his daughter, but anger at Comstock for offering to buy her in the first place. Elizabeth tells Booker it's not enough that he killed Comstock. He only killed Comstock in one reality. Comstock lives in countless more. The only way to remove a man as heinous as Comstock from them all is to go back to before he was created and remove him then. A question is raised by the Luteces. How would you ever know how far back to go? This is a question to which Elizabeth knows the answer.

Elizabeth brings Booker back to the site of the baptism. On this day Booker walked away from being born again...in this reality. In others, he accepted the baptism and was reborn as Zachary Comstock. The hero and villain of this tale are the same person. Before the baptism the anger and guilt fueling Booker was also in Comstock, but the baptism added a self-righteousness leading us all to where we are now. The trick is to kill Comstock before he was ever created. The trick is to kill Booker before the baptism, before he was able to make the choice. Perhaps because Booker sees this as a path to redemption, a sacrifice to serve as penance for his actions, he accepts. The game ends as Elizabeths from multiple realities drown their father and their tormentor. Well except for after the credits, when Booker wakes up back in his office, and thinks he can hear his daughter, but we don't get to see if she’s there.

Now this explanation of Bioshock Infinite's plot took longer than the entire script to most of my videos, but it was necessary to lay it all out not only to make the events more clear in my mind, but in yours as well. There are a lot of threads, and it leads me to ask next what the themes of the game are. Will the themes tell us what Bioshock Infinite is about? Let’s find out. First and foremost it's a science-fiction story. The plot of Booker and Elizabeth as our main characters revolves around multiple realities. The ability to open tears to new worlds, and how it affects relationships and power. There's the meta concept of the constants and variables of the multiple realities relating to the Bioshock franchise. “There's always a lighthouse, there's always a man, there's always a city”. Bioshock Infinite was criticised for recycling a lot of Bioshock's systems. Systems that seemed to only be in Infinite because they were in Bioshock. Vigors instead of Plasmids, and scrounging around for resources for example. Next, there's the idea of redemption. How our protagonist is a violent man whose guilt and anger consumed him no matter which way the baptism played out, but in the end, a sacrifice was made to try and make amends.

There's the reflection of American culture in Columbia. The deification of the founding fathers, the wrapping itself in religion and commerce. A squeaky clean beacon on the hill to wow all who gaze upon its presence, but what happens when you scratch the surface? Racism and classism. Those deemed as lesser are what keep the city running, while being treated like dirt, and paid even worse. Is it any wonder there was a violent uprising? And in most games, the rising of the Vox would have been as simple as what leads to the downfall of Columbia, but Infinite wants to revisit a theme explored in Bioshock. How the oppressed become oppressors when they gain power. Finally there’s closing the circle on the multiple realities. There's a sense through the Lutece's dialogue that despite the variables, the end result in this story is always a constant. No matter the choices made, everything ends up in the same place. And here we thought Bioshock Infinite was missing the meta-commentary on the videogame medium Bioshock became lauded for.

But are any of these ideas what Bioshock Infinite is about? Are any of these themes more important to understanding what it's trying to say than others? The problem is they're all tied together. Columbia is impossible without the Lutice's research into multiple realities. Columbia couldn't exist without its underclass. It wouldn't exist without Booker Dewitt. The Booker who committed so many atrocities for the US that he sought redemption, was reborn, and created a new America in the sky, continuing a cycle of atrocity. Elizabeth wouldn't exist without Comstock, and Anna wouldn't exist without Booker, even though they were once the same. The villain of Bioshock Infinite, Zachary Comstock is responsible for the creation of Columbia, and our hero Booker Dewitt is responsible for its destruction.

Booker is the lynch-pin of Bioshock Infinite. Take him out and it all falls apart. The Lutices set this tale in motion but without Comstock, there would only ever be one Lutece. Once again it comes back to Booker. Everything happening for good or ill in this story is his fault. This is why Elizabeth wants to stop this story from happening in the first place, but not until she gets Booker's blessing to go through with what must be done. And I'm unsure drowning Dewitt solved anything. There's the post-credits stinger for one. Booker exists in another timeline, and it seemed ridiculous to me you could remove someone from the million-million worlds Elizabeth was talking about earlier. If true, the act of drowning Booker was solely for Elizabeth. The consequences of Columbia caused such suffering that even if it's impossible to remove it from the timeline, Elizabeth needed to try. I think however, she drowned Booker for his own sake. Elizabeth didn’t want to kill her father, and it won't do any good, but for this one version of the character, it will allow him to make a sacrifice. To try and balance the scales, thinking his death has done at least a small amount of good in a multi-verse he enacted such harm in.

"Bring us the meaning, and wipe away the game". It's easy to be cynical about the post-credits stinger as a window for future games in this multiverse. The circle was meant to close with the death of Booker, even if it was futile to try, and it's time to move on. Well, after the DLC of course. As of this writing I have not played Burial at sea. I will be doing so after this video is out, and we'll see if it changes any of my ideas about what Bioshock Infinite is. While the multiverse alludes to many other Bioshock games that could be made, it also alludes to how many other games this team could have made. 

Coming full circle myself, a lot of the criticism of Bioshock Infinite is how inadequately it handles the topics it brings up. From the mythologising of America, to its addressing of classism and racism, to the idea of infinite worlds and the tears they provide being under utilized. Plenty has been written on how disappointing to play Bioshock Infinite is as a shooter, how many would have preferred to walk through the streets of Columbia without any killing whatsoever, but of course that's not the game they were trying to make or the story they were trying to tell. A game with Booker Dewitt, much like America, is going to have violence baked into it. A game about Booker Dewitt is going to have little else.

Bioshock Infinite feels like a game pulled in too many directions. It has too much it wanted to be and thus cannot comment on or execute any of its ideas well. About the only success is its presentation, and just like Columbia, it's surface level. It's not that there's rot underneath the veneer of Bioshock Infinite, but there is chaos. Nothing cohesive at least. Ironic, because a game wanting to be about so much ended up saying nothing at all, or at least not to anyone's satisfaction.

But what are your thoughts? Do you think Booker's sacrifice was enough? What is your perspective on the multiverse theory and how Bioshock Infinite uses it? What do you think has happened to the Luteces? I'd love to hear about it all in the comments. If you've made it this far, thank you for watching. I would like to give a special shout-out to all the critical writing I looked through before beginning this project. Before any critique I research what other people have said about the game, and the sheer amount of opinions and perspectives on Bioshock Infinite eclipse anything I've encountered before. This project's been going on for months and I can't recall which articles and videos I took ideas from anymore, but I do make lists of every piece that caused me to write down notes. Those links are below in the description along with a link to the Critical Compilation on Bioshock Infinite which made researching the game far easier than it would have been otherwise. If you'd like further perspectives on this game, any of these links would be a good place to start. And with this said, it's time to go. The next critique will be on the Burial at Sea DLC, and then I have something special planned for my 50th critique. I hope you’ll all stick around until next time, and I hope you're all having a wonderful day.

Scattered thoughts on Kentucky Route Zero

The following is a scrapped script for my YouTube channel. I played through Kentucky Route Zero and wrote and recorded this lengthy collection of notes and thoughts on the game. Something wasn't sitting right however. The more I thought about it, and the more I procrastinated on making the video, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't happy with the overall result. Not wanting to waste all that effort, I have decided to post the script here. Enjoy.

- Introduction -

I've been waiting years to play Kentucky Route Zero. I made an impressions video back in 2016, waiting for the games' final act to be released. 4 years later I sat down to play Kentucky Route Zero in its entirety and had the most unique and enjoyable gaming experience in years. The reason being I have a favourable disposition to the adventure game genre. Kentucky Route Zero is built with the bones of the adventure genre, as the computer Xanadu in the Hall of the Mountain King is a homage to Colossal Cave Adventure, the first adventure game, inspired by Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, but Kentucky Route Zero uses the adventure genre staples of dialogue and moving through spaces more for mood than narrative. All that's missing are the puzzles. The following video is a collection of thoughts I had after playing the game, separated by topic. if you haven't played the game and are worried about spoilers, I will be discussing the plot turns, but the plot itself is not as important as one might think. I loved this game, and I hope you enjoy what I have to say about it.

- How dialogue reveals character -

There are no dialogue trees in Kentucky Route Zero. In adventure games we as the player are used to picking a topic of conversation, and then when it is exhausted, looping back to the original conversation choices. In Kentucky Route Zero there is no looping back. Similar to the way Telltale implemented the dialogue in their games, once we choose what we want the characters to say, we're locked in. We continue these choices until the conversation is over, and then we move on. Time moves forward. At first I had a fear of missing out in regards to not being able to explore the dialogue trees, but I discovered this method of conversation is freeing. It means there is no wrong answer. Sure we might ask ourselves "what if", but we do that in life as well, and at least with Kentucky Route Zero we can always play the game again if we want to make different choices. It means instead of dialogue acting as an information gathering tool for the player, or just as entertainment, it allows us to dictate who the characters are. We shade their backstories and how they respond to these situations. Instead of controlling Conway, we are influencing who Conway is, and what he means to us, as well as his relationship to all the other characters. It's why who Conway turned out to be was distressing. Influence is not control, and these characters are who they are despite our decisions as players. Our choices can’t save Conway from what is destined to happen to him.

- Unanswered questions -

There are intermissions between each act of Kentucky Route Zero. They are experimental. The intermission before Act 3 was made for Virtual Reality and the intermission before Act 4 features a real phone number you can call and explore like the one in the game. The first intermission, the one before Act 2 is an interactive art installation. Bob, Ben, and Emily, three characters the player finds in different places through the game are looking at the art of Lula Chamberlain. The art is surreal, and in the case of the tapes, interactive. The audience is a participant. Commentary on Kentucky Route Zero itself, and the role of the player. The assets are here, and they cannot be changed, but the way we navigate through them, the parts we see, the parts we miss, and the parts we ignore, they create an individualised experience.

Kentucky Route Zero features unanswered questions. Earlier this year I watched an analysis of David Lynch's Twin Peaks which posited that by not answering the questions of an audience, it keeps them thinking and engaged with the work. The instant an audience has their answers, they move on. Here are a few elements of Kentucky Route Zero I still question even after all of my research. Perhaps the answers to these questions are in the game, but I did not find them.

Who or what is Weaver? She's Shannon's cousin, yes, but she also instigates both Conway and Shannon’s journey to find the Zero, the magical road leading to the final destination of the game. We see her hand in taking over the TV station in the intermission before Act 5. She's like a ghost who shows up and causes havoc. Other characters refer to her as such. She worked on Xanadu, she was at the Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces, her fingerprints are all over the journey, but I never got a sense of who she was and what her goals were. 

Junebug and Johnny are robots, or cyborgs, or they have implants. They create mechanical noise when they move. Johnny talks about not needing food. They worked for the Consolidated Power Company in a mine and then left to become musicians. I read they were built by the company, but I never came across such an answer in my gametime. They're wanderers, and it feels right in my game that they chose not to stick around the community in Act 5. I wonder if they took Ezra with them.

Route Zero is a loop. It appears to be made from static, and reacts to radio waves. It may be a fluctuation in energy, a tear in reality. The Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces resides there. It's where Xanadu lives, and it's where our group finds the Echo River which leads them to the fabled 5 Dogwood Drive. There's lots to see on Route Zero, just like there are many side attractions in Act 1 before Conway and Shannon find the fabled road, but I was more interested in the destination over the journey. I did not want to stay on the Zero for long. It unsettled me. How it's just a loop changing based on when and where the player turns clockwise and counter-clockwise. It's the idea that such small shifts can lead to such divergent destinations and how such information relates to my own life, that creates tension when thinking about the Zero.

On the Zero, but also in all aspects of this world, nothing lasts forever and people need to find peace and joy where they can. The town which houses 5 Dogwood Drive is flooded when our characters reach it. Destroyed because the Consolidated Power Company never finished the irrigation before moving out. It wasn't cost effective. We see this all through the game. Everyone is drowning. People are living the best they can, but all it takes is one sudden change and all is swept away. We are all at the mercy of forces greater than us, and because of this it can be easy to feel small, it can be easy to despair. Nevertheless, in the face of this harsh reality, we find beauty. Community, remembrance, art, music, a sense of purpose. People ply their trade where they can. They help others, and form connections, bonds. The world may be cold. It may not care about us, but we can care about each other, and huddle together to make the present moment just a little bit warmer.

- The play's the thing -

It's not difficult to see the influence of Theatre on Kentucky Route Zero. The game is in five acts, each section of the game is a scene, and the locations are designed like theatre sets. Walls move as the camera zooms in, and while the game takes advantage of being a computer game to pull off visual feats that could not be replicated on stage, it still feels staged. Because the locations are detailed, and the characters are without facial expressions, being mere ideas of people, abstractions of humanity, the places seem more real than those inhabiting them.

In Shakespeare's plays, Act 3 is where the greatest change to the story takes place, like the death of an important character. In film, this is referred to as the midpoint. In Kentucky Route Zero, Act 3 is where Conway signs himself into slavery. He was already in debt due to the doctor patching up his leg in Act 2, but their tour of the local brewery and the drink he takes to commemorate his taking of the job seals the deal. This is after the most discussed part of the game, Junebug's song at the bar. It's a sombre tale of lost love, remembrance, and regret, well depending on which verses the player picks. Like the dialogue options discussed before, the details may change, but the song remains the same.

The lack of agency the player has on the story of Kentucky Route Zero is most evident in how I chose to play Conway. When Conway is poured the drink at the brewery, there is nothing else the player can do. The mouse is pulled towards the drink, and Conway has to drink, because it is who he is. Before this moment, the game alluded to a possible drinking problem and a troubled past, but as a player I always took other options. My Conway was someone who was working to overcome the past haunting him. If this last delivery is an act of penance, I was going to make it count. Act 3 removed any allusion of control over these characters I felt I had. In Act 4, Conway is drinking away his sorrows, and I leaned into it. A director doesn't have control over the script, an actor doesn't have control over the script. Both can portray the characters how they think is best, how they interpret the material, but the beats of the story have to remain the same, and as the way I chose to play the game up to this point was not in line with Conway taking the drink, it left a sour impression on me that lingered. It was like I was forced into a future I didn't want for Conway or myself as the player. Maybe that's the intention.

Conway is taken near the end of Act 4. The debt skeletons come for him and Shannon returns to the rest of the party alone. I panicked and pressed the skull button over Homer's head, resigning the poor pooch to stay underground with the rest of the telephone operators. Shannon, Junebug, Johnny, Clara, and Ezra decide to finish Conway's delivery to 5 Dogwood Drive leading us into Act 5.

Act 5 is different from the rest of the game. It's in one location. The player controls a cat and as the cat runs in a circle around the town, the day passes. The day after a hellish flood. A flood that killed the commune's horses, named The Neighbours. The whole day is not only our characters deciding if they want to stay in this town or move on now that the delivery is finished, but the people who live there are making a similar choice. It feels like whatever this place was, it's now ended, and there's either the choice to move on, or make something new where it stood, and everybody has to decide for themselves. Before they can move on however, the community holds a funeral for The Neighbours. A song is sung. It's of a similar haunting quality to Junebug's song in Act 3, but the haunting is literal this time. The ghosts of this place appear and join in. This funeral is for them too, for the living as well. The commune is putting to rest the sorrow of everyone left behind by the Consolidated Power Company, and the cruelty of modern life. Little did I know it at the time (as the game ends not long after the song does), but this is a eulogy for Kentucky Route Zero too. A game almost a decade in the making, and now complete. Can the developers now move on? Can the player?

- Has it always been this way? -

The majority of the games writing on Kentucky Route Zero has been about the Consolidated Power Company and debt. Most characters in the game have been touched by the movings and shakings of this looming monolith the player never comes into contact with. Conway sells his soul to the brewery which is owned by the power company, but we only see the result. We hear about the power company’s misdeeds from the memorial to the miners, the programmers working on Xanadu, or the townsfolk cursing the company for pulling out before they finished their irrigation system. One might think this is a commentary on progress, on the old vs new. How everyone was doing fine before the company came along. How this one corporation kept growing and swallowed up all in its path, trading in human misery for a larger slice of profit. I do not.

For as desperate and destitute as many of the folks in this fictitious Kentucky seem to be, and for all the hostility levied with good cause at the Consolidated Power Company, I don't get the feeling anyone wants to go back to a time before them. It doesn't seem like many people remember or discuss a time before them. Maybe they have always been here consolidating power, but the focus of Kentucky Route Zero is in people choosing to make something new. Either making the best of whatever situation they find themselves in, or working to create a better tomorrow. It doesn't always work out however. Debt consumes Conway whole by the end of Act 4. He never got to see 5 Dogwood Drive and get a chance at a better tomorrow. We don't know if Shannon or Ezra will either, and who knows how many countless others were swallowed up by being tied down with debt. Similar to the miner’s memorial and what was lost due to the Consolidated Power Company's negligence, we should not forget. Not everyone is going to make it through the storm and the flooding. Not everyone will see the new tomorrow, but it doesn't mean it's not worth striving for, and it doesn't mean it isn't real. Once again, you have to find your happiness where you can. The alternative is to succumb.

- Going with the flow - 

The Mucky Mammoth is pushed along the echo river. It goes where the river dictates, Will & Cate keeping it afloat and helping all who need passage. I enjoyed this act because it reminds me of the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Late in the tale, Sidhdhartha stays with a man named Vasudeva tending the river. Siddhartha learns to listen to the river. The running water can impart wisdom to those who take the time to listen. Our time as players on the Echo felt the same. it's because the Echo is part of the Zero thus granting it a supernatural quality, but talking to Will & Cate, listening to their stories of all the folks they've encountered, not only on the river, but in their lives, and what led them to this place, feels like an answer to the questions Kentucky Route Zero is asking.

Act 5 is an anomaly because the player spends the entire act in one location. Every other act has the characters visiting a new place, finding out what they need to, and then moving on. All these spaces, even the reclaimed ones, are just areas to pass through. This is made explicit in Act 4 because of the Echo river. As the river is flowing, it's taking our characters from place to place. Each stop is temporary by nature. When Conway and Shannon take the small motorboat, they travel into the screen, it looks like they are going upriver, against the current. Could this be why Conway is taken? Instead of letting events play out as they should, instead of going with the flow of the Echo, Shannon and Conway are fighting it, and it causes the brewery to act.

- Conclusion -

Those still reading might have unanswered questions. To emulate my playthrough of Kentucky Route Zero in my writing was not my intention. I had hoped through the act of writing to come to a greater understanding about the game I could then share with you. It’s how it worked with all my other critiques. With this project, I found myself grasping at straws as I typed. Sure I came up with clever prose, sentences sounding good when read aloud, and maybe even ideas sparking discussion, but I don't think this writing has an anchor point. There's nothing to hold onto, no ready made conclusion or final point to make about the game to leave you all satisfied with your time spent. Instead I will say Kentucky Route Zero is now a favourite of mine. I plan to play through it a second time, and can see myself revisiting it in the future. Now that I have an idea of who the characters are and what happens, I can navigate the game with greater confidence and perhaps gain greater insight. The comparison to theatre is apt because I'll make different decisions while playing. Like seeing a play with a different cast, Conway, Shannon, Junebug, Ezra, and the rest will not act the way I remember them. I will be picking different dialogue options and I will have a different experience. I’m under no allusion I can change the story, but perhaps I can create a happier ending for everyone.

And now I'd love to hear your thoughts on Kentucky Route Zero. What about the game impacted you the most? Do you have unanswered questions or were you satisfied when the game ended? How did you choose to play Conway and the others? Please let me know in the comments. Until next time, I hope you're all having a wonderful day.

Is Transistor confusing on purpose? (Game critique)

In my impressions video on Pyre I mentioned I'd like to check out the other games by developer Supergiant. I picked up Transistor in the Steam Summer Sale, downloaded it and was going to limit the session to 30 minutes for an impressions video, when I found myself not being able to stop playing. A couple days later I'd finished the game and said to myself, "well, I guess I need to write a critique on it now". Usually a critique is written to answer a question the writer wants to ask about the game. In this case, I had just played an entire videogame with no clue about what the heck was happening. I enjoyed my time with Transistor, but was at a loss as to what the world was, what had happened to Red, and the influence of her actions for the rest of the game. I was confused the whole time. This video will talk about why I found Transistor confusing, and if the developers made it this way on purpose. Enjoy.

Why is Transistor confusing? The game opens with the main character pulling a strange sword out of a dead body. The sword is always talking to Red. It never shuts up. Naively because of this constant narration, I felt everything I needed to know as a player would be divulged through the Transistor's dialogue. When looking at the bios of the people the Transistor has absorbed, the voice lets us know his thoughts of them. Everything was telling me that all I needed to know about the world, and the important characters in it would be explained through the voice of the Transistor. This was not the case. The most important elements of the characters absorbed into the Transistor are only unlocked once the player experiments with their unique abilities in the three different slots available (as a main attack, as an upgrade to an existing attack, or as a passive skill). This encourages experimentation with all the abilities to unlock narrative information, but the information I unlocked wasn’t successful at clueing me into what was happening.

And just what is happening? Here's my understanding. Red is a lounge singer in a digital world known as Cloudbank. Everything in the city can be changed by popular vote, from the food available to the colour of the sky. This is undertaken by code called the Process. A group of higher ups in Cloudbank decide they want something more. They call themselves the Camerata. Their motto is "When everything changes, nothing changes". They want to make something lasting. The Camerata in their investigation into the Process find a way to control it though the Transistor. They develop it into a weapon and start using it to absorb the most influential people of Cloudbank for reasons I'm unsure of. When they come for Red, she is nicked by the Transistor, causing her to lose her voice. The man she is in love with, takes the fatal blow and gets transferred into the sword. It is his voice we are hearing throughout the game. This act unleashes the Process on Cloudbank, allowing them to change the world according to their own whims. Red is set on revenge. She wants to take down the Camerata for what they've done, to see if she can get her voice back, and to see if she can save her love.

Even if I don't understand the Camerata's motivations, the summary was rather succinct and easy to follow, yes? The problem is I came up with none of this by playing the game. It was from a collection of YouTube videos either summarising the story, or engaging in literary analysis. This isn’t definitive information either. There are parts of the "lore" contested among fans. There are wikis dedicated to the game. I'm all for finer details and motivations being discussed and called into question. It keeps the world of a game alive, but having to resort to analysis just to understand what's going on in the first place left a sour taste in my mouth.

The main reason I kept pushing ahead was how enjoyable I found the gameplay. It's a turn based battle system in real time. Not "real time with pause" such as Pillars of Eternity. More, "real time with planning". Listening to how others played Transistor, I get the feeling the turn function where the player is able to stop time and plan out all their attacks is meant to be used in specific situations, the majority of the game played with real time offense, but I relied on it exclusively. Due to this I needed to keep running and jaunting away from enemies during the recharge downtime when Red can no longer use her abilities. I was surprised by the amount of abilities and the variety of their offense. In these types of games, I’ll find a combination early on that works well, and use it for the rest of my play, but here I kept experimenting with new abilities as I acquired them. While I kept playing Transistor to uncover a narrative understanding, I stayed engaged because of my ever increasing mechanical understanding.

The fun I was having might have been the primary motivator to push me through Transistor, but it wasn't the only emotion I was feeling. Yes I was confused about the world the characters find themselves in. No I did not understand what happened to Red at the start of the game and what the deal with the talking sword is, and no, I didn't understand the Camerata or their motivations, but I understood the emotion of the characters. I understood Red was fighting for her life. This group took something from her and she wanted revenge. I understood there was a special connection between Red and the Transistor, and I understood the decision Red makes at the end of the game. I would have been fine not knowing the details if I understood the beginning and didn't feel like I was playing catch-up for the remainder of my playtime, as now that I know the story and have reflected on my experience, it resonates all the stronger.

I’m now left asking whether Transistor is confusing on purpose. There's such a high level of care given to the art & animation, the audio, and the mechanics, that it feels silly to me to think the story wasn't given the same attention. Perhaps the same way the citizens of Cloudbank vote on what reality is, Supergiant wanted the players to discuss and debate about what the story is. This would be why they locked a lot of the lore behind the player experimenting with each ability. And as I understood the larger brush strokes of character emotion and motivation, Supergiant might have felt this was enough to push the player through alongside how fun the game is to play. Seeing I only cared about Red and the Transistor after my research, I can't say the story told is successful. My conclusion is Transistor was meant to be confusing, or at least vague, but not to this degree.

But what are your thoughts on Transistor? Were you as in the dark as I was? If so, did you continue for the same reasons? What is your overall impression of the story Transistor is trying to tell? I'd love to know in the comments. I'd like to give a shoutout to the videos that helped me understand the game. A story discussion by Superbunnyhop, An analysis by Foxcade, and a literary analysis by Games as Literature. If you'd like to know more, I recommend giving them a watch. Links are in the description, as well as the link to my Ko-fi page! If you enjoyed this video, I'd love for you to buy me a coffee. If you'd like to help in other ways, please give the video a like, or subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Until next time, I hope you're all having a wonderful day.

Minerva's Den: How pacing affects quality (game critique)

Minerva's Den is Rapture's central computing. There is a machine called The Thinker which has been responsible for running the city, even through its downfall and decay. The Thinker was created by Charles Milton Porter, and Reid Wahl. The player controls the Big Daddy Sigma who has been sent to Minerva's Den by Dr. Tenenbaum because Porter has access to a bathysphere, which she can use to escape to the surface. Porter agrees to take her if they can use Sigma to rescue the code of The Thinker and take it away from Rapture. Reid Wahl is the antagonist of this tale, going mad through splicing, and wanting to use The Thinker's predictive capabilities for his own benefit. Minerva’s Den is the game I wished Bioshock 2 was. At 4 hours its pacing is lightning fast. It's a Bioshock game condensed, and this video explores whether the quickness of its pacing makes Minerva's Den a masterpiece or a mistake.

One reason for a quicker pace is railroaded level design. Each zone is compact. A joy of the Bioshock games is the exploration of a space, looting everything not nailed down, and scrounging up resources. Minerva's Den accommodates this in a straight-forward manner. The player is sent to each wing of a zone, and while there are optional side-rooms full of goodies and enemies, the player is never far from where they need to be. The player is always moving forward, even when they're taking time to explore. This is made more obvious due to the placement of the audiologs. It felt like every room had a new log to listen to. I might have missed one or two in my travels, but it felt like each tape was placed to make sure the player would have the full story before the finale (using the final audiolog of the game as a bittersweet coda). 

Due to railroading the player, there's an increased emphasis on combat encounters. Brutes are everywhere, and the new Big Daddy varieties can be disastrous if you're not prepared for them. Spider and Houdini splicers litter each room, and the game gives the player new weapons and plasmids to use against the increased onslaught: the Laser and the Gravity Well plasmid being the most memorable. I loved using Gravity Well on the Brutes, firing Phosporous buckshot or rocket spears into them as they flailed around the mini-black hole keeping them incapacitated. The laser was great for cutting down normal splicers, coupled with a well placed plasmid shot. My new found power meant I never felt overwhelmed by the combat encounters until the final fight, when my resources were at their lowest, and I was throwing everything I had up against Wahl and the Big Daddy onslaught. It was exhilarating.

The intensity of the combat, and the speed of how I was being guided through each area got me thinking about if the pace of the original game wasn't required. I think the majority of games outstay their welcome. When it feels like everything should be moving to a climax, there's hours more of the same gameplay I'm already bored with. Since there is no climax, the game loses the narrative weight keeping me going. Before starting my channel, finishing a game was a rare occurance. Most just wore out their welcome. However, while the shortened gametime of Minerva's Den allows the story the developers are trying to tell make a greater impact, I do think the gameplay needed more room to breathe.

One benefit of stretching out any game with combat is it gives the player ample time to become comfortable with the ebb and flow of the combat encounters. It allows the player to get good at the game. Each new encounter is an opportunity to make decisions, and increase the player's efficiency. In Bioshock 2, I knew what weapons and plasmids I enjoyed the most, and felt confident using them. In Minerva's Den I became attached to the Laser and Gravity Well. They were new toys so I relied on them over a lot of the other weapons and plasmids I had spent my time in Bioshock 2 using, but maybe that's why the final fight was so exhilarating; it forced me to search through my arsenal for whatever would work. I could no longer rely on the reliable.

The pace at which Minerva's Den throws new weapons, upgrades, and plasmids at the player is too fast for the player to become comfortable with before something new is introduced. This is why it felt like there was an increase in combat encounters, to allow mastery to take place (and of course, this is downloadable content for Bioshock 2, so the player should be familiar with a lot of these weapons and plasmids from the base game). This is the only reason I could think of in favour of the length of Bioshock 2 over Minerva's Den. However, I have no problem trading confidence with the game's systems for narrative impact, because this is where Minerva's Den shines.

Minerva's Den brings back the twist Bioshock 2 was lacking. All through the game we hear about Andrew Ryan being displeased with Porter and his creation. Porter talks about Ryan's guards coming and taking him to Persephone Prison, and how there's no escape. Wahl talks about wanting to steal The Thinker from Porter, pushing Ryan in the direction of imprisoning his colleague. As this goes on, I never thought about where Porter is now, and what the ending of the game will be. I thought nothing of Porter feeding The Thinker audio diaries of his dead wife trying to recreate her personality in the machine. I just felt for his loss. This is why the twist was so effective. I didn't see it coming, but in retrospect, it made everything before it make sense. If you haven’t played Minerva’s Den and don’t want to be spoiled, this is your last chance to back out. 

It turns out the player is controlling Porter. Sigma is Porter who had been turned into a Big Daddy at Persephone. Tenanbaum's research is about removing Adam from a subject without killing them, and she wants to help save Porter. She wants to help the player. The Porter we've been speaking to is The Thinker's personality re-creation matrix. It was tasked by Porter before his arrest to work out a way to survive and get to the surface. It calculated the best way to achieve this task was by emulating the man who had already been changed into a monster, in order to guide that same now-changed man to victory.

The final audiolog in the game is Porter activating his wife's personality within The Thinker. It's too much for him to bear. He tells the machine to switch it off. He knows it's not his wife, and it reminds him of how much he misses her. While Wahl wanted to use The Thinker for his own ends, Porter came to understand how what he was doing was not in his own best interest. In the end he made the right decision, but it still cost him, and as the player, we try to give him a second chance.

Minerva's Den is what I wanted Bioshock 2 to be. It's a wonderful coda for a game lacking its own identity. Minerva's Den has a stronger sense of self. Rather than getting bogged down in the themes of the collective or objectivism, it's about people. Their struggles, their shortcomings, and the mistakes they make. It's about loss, and dealing with loss. It's about healing. It's about making the player care about Porter, and it’s successful. Its success is due to its length. It tells its story, and because no part drags, the emotional impact is felt at full force. If the player wants to become more comfortable with the game's systems, that's what replays and higher difficulties are for.

But what do you think? Did you feel Minerva's Den was the right length for what it wanted to do, or did you feel it was too rushed? Did the twist and emotional impact of the story affect you in any way? Please let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed the video, why not buy me a coffee? There's a link in the description. If you'd like to help me out in other ways, please like the video, share it on your favourite social media sites, or subscribe if you haven't already. Until next time, I hope you're all having a wonderful day.

Bioshock 2: A Lamb in sheep's clothing (game critique)

Late during Bioshock, Jack changes himself into a Big Daddy in order to stop Frank Fontaine. In a moment which should have been impactful because of a self-sacrifice on the part of the player-character, the transformation changed nothing aside from a reduced field of view. By the time the fight with Fontaine happens, the player isn't even looking through a fishbowl anymore. The idea of playing a Big Daddy had merit, it’s just in its execution where it stumbles. We find ourselves playing as Delta (a Big Daddy) in Bioshock 2 for this reason. Much of the sequel consists of addressing the criticisms from the first game, but does improving upon Bioshock allow the game to have its own sense of identity?

Playing a Big Daddy recontexualises the relationship the player has with the Little Sisters. Instead of rescuing them, you adopt them, and help them fulfill their Adam collection duties, guarding them from Splicers until they're ready to be cured of their affliction. The player still murders the Big Daddies protecting the Little Sisters, before adopting them. Let's hope there’s little trauma as the girls cry over their dead protector. Aside from the rescue / harvest duality, there’s an additional morality system at play in Bioshock 2. Each level is run by a person connected to Sophia Lamb. They act as an end goal, and an antagonist. To move on, you need to confront them, and the player chooses if they live or die. I always try for the good endings in games with morality systems, and in Bioshock 2, the "good choices" become trickier as the game went on.

Bioshock 2 doesn't punish the player with the bad ending for a single transgression like the first game. Pushing the Little Sisters aside, there are 3 life or death choices the player must make: Grace, Stanley, and Gil. Who deserves to live, and who deserves to die? Let’s go through all three. The reason Grace hates Delta is due to a misunderstanding. Grace projects the pain of her lot in Rapture and the injustices she faced onto Delta, who broke her jaw back when he obeyed his programming, protecting Elanor as a Little Sister. I found it easy to leave her be. Mercy makes Grace realise she’s wrong, and she goes out of her way to aid the player. I waited for such a response from Stanley but it never came. Through my time in Dionysus Park, I learned about Stanley's past. How he manipulated Lamb's followers in her absence and sold Elanor to the Little Sisters Orphanage. It would be easy to say such actions deserved death, but I thought to myself, "who am I to decide who deserves to live or die?” I left him alive. Afterwards, I thought about the silliness of such a question, what with the hundreds of Splicers I've murdered over the course of the game already, but I stick by my decision to let Stanley live.

Gil is where I made a quote "bad" choice. My rationale for letting Stanley live reflects the way the Bioshock 2 team coded the morality system. Who is Delta to decide whether anyone deserves to live or die? Elanor watches after all. She's always watching her father. During my travels through Fontaine Futuristics, Gil left messages addressing his slipping sanity. He begs whoever listens to end his life when they find him. When we come across Gil, he’s a tank-bound pulsating monstrosity. It would be a stretch to call him human, and even more of one to call him sane. Seeing what Gil has become, I thought the humane and quote "right" moral action was to grant the request he made while of sound mind and body. The game takes this as the wrong action. Gil may no longer be human, but we're still not allowed to take a life. I don’t disagree with this stance, but seeing I’m allowed to make a mistake and still achieve the "good ending", I had no idea this was the wrong course of action until researching this video. Perhaps the clouds of blood and agonised screams coming from the tank should have clued me in, but echoing my thoughts on considering the murder of Stanley, what's one more gruesome death when my primary action as a player is to use all manner of joyous plasmid violence on any who stand in my way?

As Bioshock 2 is a refinement of Bioshock, I expected a similar narrative structure as well. I didn't get it. The pivotal moment of Bioshock, (the Andrew Ryan scene) is not at the climax of the game, though it feels like it should be. One reason the last few hours of Bioshock were lacking. Playing through Bioshock 2, I waited for Lamb to have her "Andrew Ryan moment" and I expected it at Dionysus Park. Imagine my surprise hours later when I still hadn't encountered her. I remember saying to myself, "Oh of course, they've addressed many criticisms about the first game, perhaps the climax is at the end where it belongs". There’s a similar moment to the Andrew Ryan scene when the player first encounters Lamb and Elanor face to face, but it’s understated compared to what I expected. It’s just not as memorable. There’s no twist in Bioshock 2 putting everything the player has gone through in a new context. No “Would you kindly” moment. When the player comes face to face with Ryan, he champions his free will by ordering his conditioned slave of a son to kill him. Meeting Lamb contains no traces of her supposed philosophy. She suffocates Elanor to sever her link with Delta, all to complete her plan. Nothing more. Sophia Lamb is no Andrew Ryan.

By this point, I had already checked out because the events of Bioshock 2 are reverse engineered to run alongside the timeline of the first game. Sophia Lamb is meant to be an important citizen of Rapture. There's audiologs of her public debate with Andrew Ryan, how as a psychologist she influenced the downtrodden of the city into forming a religion around her and her daughter. The problem I have? None of it works. It's asking too much of my suspension of disbelief. I've played Bioshock, and yes, the game's explanation is Lamb’s imprisonment during the events of it, but to have not even heard her name until the sequel, and yet she's supposed to be this central a figure? No sir, I don't buy it.

When it comes to Lamb as an antagonist, the question I kept asking is does she believe her own bullshit? The audiologs are full of her philosophy. The power of collective, how Rapture betrays its people, how Andrew Ryan's vision is foolish, and how the current system needs to be torn down for a new utopia to flourish. It sounds persuasive on its surface, but as I heard more from her, Lamb’s message felt hollow and contradictory. It’s accepted among many players that Lamb is running a con. She's amassing power. She's a narcissist who put herself and her daughter at the centre of a religion. One who took advantage of Rapture's vulnerable citizens in order to amass power and influence. While Lamb’s role in the story sets her up as Bioshock 2's Andrew Ryan, if she is manipulating the poor for her own ends, and it is all an act, she's not Andrew Ryan, she’s Frank Fontaine.

I have trouble believing Lamb's rhetoric is all an act because of her plan for Elanor; to use Adam to put all the minds of Rapture into one person. To have this person be whoever Rapture needs them to be moving forward. To be an altruistic messiah to lead the masses to a new utopia. Let's put aside the horror of what happened to Gil for a moment, Lamb planning to do the same to her own daughter (despite the assumption being a Little Sister protects Elanor from Gil’s fate). What’s the purpose of the plan? Even with the combined memories of the brightest minds of Rapture, one person is not a collective. Everyone is not melding and co-existing as one being. The dead are going to live on in one person, and send her insane, causing more harm in the process. Is this just another empty piece of philosophising meant to maintain Lamb's control over her Splicer collective? Is this a power play, maintaining a frightening level of agency over her daughter? It’s possible, because the role of the player is to save Elanor. Are these just the ravings of a madwoman? Has Lamb always had delusions of grandeur? Is what she wants to do to Elanor the latest bad idea from Rapture’s new leader? Is Lamb just a tyrant no one dared say “no” to?

Delusional or a manipulator, since I have no idea how to process Lamb's actions and the reasoning behind them, I feel the same towards Bioshock 2 as a whole. I have no idea what it's trying to say. This disappoints because while Bioshock didn't stick its landing, I knew what it aimed for. The story of Rapture is the story of Bioshock. The mystery of Rapture unveils itself to the player in the first game, and this new outing in the same setting doesn’t offer any new insight. While Rapture is a testament to Andrew Ryan and his objectivist ideology, Bioshock 2 tries to be about the people left behind. This approach explains Lamb's rhetoric, and why the relationship between Delta and Elanor is effective. Their bond is the most memorable part of the game, especially through the final areas. Speaking of their relationship, I enjoyed how Delta wants to protect Elanor because she’s his Little Sister, but after Elanor saves Delta’s life, she puts on the armour of a Big Sister, becoming the one who then protects Delta.

In the end, Bioshock’s greatest strength is Bioshock 2’s greatest weakness; Andrew Ryan. He's still more compelling a character than anyone in both games. Rapture cannot escape the shadow of the man who willed it into being, even this long after his death. While Bioshock 2 has the opportunity to carve its own path, the first stop after the intro is in Rapture's amusement park. A shrine to the objectivist ideology, to Andrew Ryan himself, and to the first game. Bioshock 2 can't escape the shadow of its predecessor, and I’m not sure it ever wanted to. Bioshock 2 may play better, but like Lamb’s rhetoric, nothing about it feels substantial. It’s just paying homage.