BioShock Infinite: review

Formats PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC
Developer Irrational Games
Publisher 2K Games
Released 26 March 2013
PEGI 18 

There is a scene halfway through BioShock Infinite in which protagonist Booker DeWitt and his companion Elizabeth are searching the poor underbelly of the floating city Columbia. The shantytown is battered and filthy, kids singing dressed in rags, adults feverishly searching for food. In a basement, a child quivers beneath the rickety wooden stairs. Elizabeth spots a guitar propped up against a chair. She has been imprisoned and studied for her entire life, her experience of the world played out through books and phonogram recordings. “I wish I could play guitar,” she says softly. Without a word, you, as Booker, a man who has spent a great deal of his and Elizabeth’s time together killing to keep them safe, can walk over to the guitar, pick it up, and begin to play. As Booker strums softly on the instrument, Elizabeth sings along and unearths an orange before handing it to the boy under the stairs. Tentative at first, he hungrily grabs the fruit and begins to eat. Elizabeth stops singing, Booker stops playing and the pair make their way upstairs to find a way out of Columbia.

 

Brief, touching and saccharine, this moment of levity tells you a great deal about BioShock Infinite. The scene is optional. In fact, you may not venture into that basement at all. So it doesn’t matter. Which is to say, it matters very much. It’s an important beat in Booker and Elizabeth’s relationship, where they share a brief moment of respite in a violent, threatening city, Booker exchanging bullets for strings. One small, incidental yet essential brushstroke on a brilliant canvas of world-building and characterisation that is arguably peerless in this youthful industry.

To put it in practical terms, unless you are in the midst of battle, Columbia is a place where you walk, you don’t run. You are compelled to take it all in, to soak in the vistas of a city floating in the clouds, to inspect every nook. This is early 20th century Americana writ large, unbound from the rules of the union, defined by religion and enhanced by heady science-fiction. Buildings bob weightlessly on the horizon, the cobbled streets of the city’s affluent facade glisten under (in?) blue skies and sunshine, barbershop quartets skirt the streets on decadent floats, mechanical horses trot up and down the boardwalks. It’s no accident there’s an achievement called “Sightseer”, this is virtual tourism at its very finest.

It’s 1912 and in order to erase an unknown debt, Booker has been ordered to recover Elizabeth from her prison in Columbia. Why and for who, Booker either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, whooshing up to the city in the sky via a mysterious lighthouse off the coast of Maine. There’s menace in the clouds as he arrives, Columbia’s idealistic notions quickly crumbling to reveal its true nature. Founded by ultra-nationalists, Columbia’s fuelled by racism, divided by wealth and run by religious zealotry. The city’s overseer is Zachary Comstock, a self-styled ‘Prophet’ who aggrandises his own history and wreathes Columbia in propaganda to keep the proletariat in check.