Bioshock Infinite
CW: This review contains screenshots from Bioshock Infinite that contain racist imagery.
I’ll be upfront - I am an unabashed fan of steampunk or anything that blends a vaguely steampunk aesthetic with an interesting setting. I was never not going to like Bioshock Infinite, just for the setting alone. Airships, robots, a lambasting of the ethos of the Gilded Age, don’t worry, I’m golden.
Ah, yes. My day.
Imagine my joy, then, at discovering that Bioshock Infinite not only has the setting, but the plot to match, and FPS mechanics I can work with. I was simply chuffed, and promptly played through the whole game in three sittings. I haven’t done much else this weekend besides play Bioshock Infinite, which is something I haven’t done in a while, and honestly, the biggest praise I can give it.
It’s the reasons why I couldn’t put it down, though, that I want to expand upon. Yes, part of it is the steampunk elements, and yes, the shooty bits and the punchy bits are great, but for me, what made Bioshock Infinite so good was its story and setting.
Bioshock Infinite is a first person shooter where you play as Booker DeWitt, a mercenary hired to rescue a girl named Elizabeth from a tower in a floating city called Columbia. Columbia was founded and exists as a grand shrine to Zachary Comstock, a messianic figure clothed in American exceptionalism. Booker shoots, punches, and sneaks his way through Columbia, discovering truths about himself along the way.
You see why I like it.
Bioshock Infinite has the same non-stop pace that I’ve come to expect from an FPS, keeping the plot rolling and not giving space to come up for air. Fight mechanics are great, tailoring to a variety of strategies, from rocking in with a minigun to my approach of throwing as many fire grenades as I can and hoping for the best. It’s bloody and gory, but in a way, that blood and gore accentuates the surrealness of the setting itself. If the setting as a whole is meant as an off-kilter gilded age, the gory violence represents that surrealness cranked up to eleven. The game’s extreme introduction to the levels of violence also serve to remind the player of where they are and what they’re about to do, and why.
Nothing about this scene was going to end well.
The whys of why I enjoyed - indeed, devoured - this game go well beyond the mechanics or the design. I am a sucker for setting, and a game that takes the idea of American exceptionalism and plays it as a villainous ideology was always going to appeal to me.
I’m playing this game in September 2021. The past year and a half have been interesting, both from a national and individual perspective. The idea that America alone knows the way, or that America, by virtue of being America is somehow special, if it had any welcome has long since lost it. Playing this in the middle of some of the darkest days in American history strikes a very particular chord, one where the toxicity of believing America has no skeletons in its closet or demons needing to be expunged has been laid bare before each and every American. The idea that America is somehow uniquely touched by God or history or what have you rings hollow in the wake of over half a million deaths from a pandemic and in the midst of that pandemic still being in full swing because of people’s insistence that horse dewormer is safer than a vaccine.
But I digress.
Bioshock Infinite is a fame about how messianic ideologies are toxic, be they through traditional religion or rabid nationalism. A fair amount of the enjoyment of this game comes from the dissection of that idea and the exploration of how it can not only go so dramatically wrong, but how even when it’s going right, that right-ness is based on something horrifying. The ending, especially, pulls back the curtain, and reminds the player of what they’ve done and what they’ve explored.
Each star, to itself, is exceptional.
Couching all of this under the veneer of the Gilded Age and offering that distance while also covering everything with a light dusting of gore makes the ideas more palatable. The whole game, though, is well thought-out, perfectly paced, and perfectly designed to lead the player through logical twists and turns as intricate as the skyways themselves. It asks us to consider mythos and to be willing to recognise when our myths, martyrs, and prophets need to be re-examined, and I love it for that.
Bioshock Infinite is almost a decade old, but you wouldn’t know it to play it. In both its themes and its playability, it could come from last week. It is fantastic, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
Developer: Irrational Games
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Year: 2013
Country: United States
Language: English
Play Time: 11 Hours