This story is three thousand years old. There’s a princess in a high castle. There is an evil wizard and a prophet who imprisoned the girl in a tower. There is even a ruthless monster guarding the beauty. And of course, there’s a hero ready to rescue the captive. But the princess in the dungeon is not so simple, she can open portals to other dimensions and cleverly open any locks, and she sits in the tower only out of respect for the Prophet and by the will of the machine that limits her abilities. And the knight’s motives are less than honorable. “Bring the girl and your debts will be forgiven!”. Except that the word debts has another meaning, a biblical one: “sins.”
It seems that the events of BioShock Infinite are not connected with the previous parts of the game, they take place in a completely different place, 50 years earlier, and the flying city of Columbia does not resemble the underwater Delight at all. But it’s just an illusion. By and large, the story of BioShock Infinite repeats the story of BioShock 2. In both there’s a girl to find, in both you have to save yourself, not her. These references are intentional here. Ken Levine looped the entire series, just as he looped the third series of the game.
That’s why at times it feels like you’re playing BioShock 2, but in a new setting. The sense of deja vu is so strong that somewhere in the middle of the game, Columbia will seem somewhat lifeless and sterile. And that’s exactly what the authors wanted. The whole world of the game is nothing more than a setting for a human tragedy, a scaffolding for a carefully constructed story.
Hints, half-hints, illusions. Diary entries, which in the last part have shrunk to the size of SMS. Overheard conversations, insignificant details. After a couple of jumps between dimensions, you, like the main character, will no longer understand who you are and why you are here. And then there are a couple of physicists, either brother and sister or lovers, smeared across the space-time continuum. They speak in riddles and are themselves a paradox. The logic of actions breaks down. The cat is neither alive nor dead. Until you open the box, you won’t know.
Booker DeWitt is not afraid to open that box. An old broken soldier with a questionable past, he’s generally used to straightforward decisions, almost like Big Daddy from last week’s series. The appearance of a hero in not at all shiny armor traditionally throws the city into chaos. Columbia knows DeWitt is coming – he’s the False Prophet, warned about by Columbia’s creator, Elizabeth’s father and jailer, the Prophet Zachariah Comstock. The two men are about to meet, and nothing good will come of the encounter. Air City appeared doomed as soon as DeWitt set foot on its soil.
BioShock Infinite seems to be a game about social issues. The year is 1912, no racial equality and workers’ rights are out of the question – it’s a time of revolutions. But in Infinite social conflict is nothing more than a usual background, necessary to show the fall of the system built on lies. Except that the lies here are ordinary, human, despite the dreams of world domination and confidence in his own exclusivity, Comstock is just a father taking care of his daughter in his own way. This is a story of relationships, the eternal problem of fathers and children. Responsibility. The limits of freedom. The right to choose for another.