BioShock Infinite

Yeah, this blog's pretty much dead now, right?

It's been nine years since I played and absolutely loved the first two BioShock games. This one left me the slightest bit cold. The story's interesting but it almost directly rebuts a major theme of the first two games, in which decisions you made throughout the game affected the tone of the ending substantially. Here in Infinite, choice is completely irrelevant! Saying more would spoil some stuff, but, yeah.

Another thing the first two games had going for them was the atmosphere - abandoned underwater cities, which were just some of the creepiest and coolest and most serene environments I've seen in gaming. The "up in the air"-based society of Infinite was cool in its own right, but it was definitely a needless addition. The whole thing was a step back from what I remember loving about the first two games. There weren't even any memorable or iconic enemies in this one the way the Big Daddies of the first (and second) game stole the show.

There's a big twist early on that reveals - minor spoiler - that you're actually hanging out in White Supremacy Utopia, but it gets abandoned pretty early on in favor of an under-explained socialist uprising by black folks and Irish people. There's just a lot of philosophy and political science I thought this game left on the table that the first two made some minor hay with!

It's also possible that I'm a few years too late to this party, and that the ending played out a lot better in 2013 before multiverse theory went mainstream thanks to, like, Rick and Morty. (Oh shit, did I just spoil the thing I said I wasn't gonna spoil? Gah! Whatever.) The whole story was left feeling very Looper-esque, very Primer-esque - the ending wasn't satisfying, and if anything was nihilistic. The ending looks you square in the face and says, "that place you just spent ten or twelve hours exploring? Those characters you came to appreciate, and kind of understand? Yeah, none of any of that matters. Nothing matters. Embrace nihilism, eat at Arby's!"

If there's one highlight here, it was the relationship between main character Booker and deuteragonist Elizabeth. It felt an awful lot like the relationship at the center of The Last of Us, and probably 500 other video games about gruff dudes learning to care about young women. So it goes!

Maybe, just maybe, I'll eventually try out the Burial at Sea DLC associated with this game - it's allegedly very good, and brings the story of Rapture full circle in ways the baseline game did not. (More likely, I'll just read about it. Gonna go do so right now, actually.)

Lastly, I thought we were done here, and the game itself kind of lays out plainly that there need not be any new BioShock games (or games of any kind at all, really) but apparently there are fairly recent and very heavy rumors that a fourth title is in development. Cool! I'll play it. Someday.

Anyway, embrace nihilism. Eat at Arby's.