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.
