You know I was there day one for Bioshock Infinite. In fact, it was the first time I pre-ordered a game,ever. And all these years later, like many others, I’m still reckoning with the fallout of what actually released.
If you’re just looking for a simple ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ answer, then you won’t find it here. Time hasn’t been kind to BioShock Infinite, as revealed by the shift in opinion towards it since its highly praised launch. Gone are the accolades, in their place is a wealth of scorn and criticism. That shift on Infinite over the years didn’t come from nowhere either (though there are some, like our Rob Zak, whostand by the game through thick and thin).
Where most broken games have mindbogglingly absurd gameplay or some strange story that makes no sense, with Infinite it’s so much more abstract, like trying to untangle gum from an aggravated sea urchin. Over time, the longer one has to assess Infinite, the less likely they are to be able to take it at that surface level. I know, because that was my experience. When I first played it, I had genuine fun, but something kept gnawing at me, so I went through again. Every couple of years after, whenever I was prompted to re-examine it again, that gnawing sense grew until I finally tried to put all the pieces together.
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Where Bioshock explored Objectivism and Capitalism, it tended to only glance at other, more complex issues like race, religion, and sexuality. It was bold for its time, but Infinite goes further by trying to explore the many problematic aspects of American Nationalism.
Yet all the mechanical shortcomings could’ve been forgiven if Infinite managed just one thing: a good story.
The game wasn’t always about this though. Originally it was meant to chart a conflict between technophiles and Luddites - essentially Silicon Valley versus conservative Mennonites, then it became more akin to Capitalists vs. Communists, (even though this was essentially the conflict in 2K Marin’s own Bioshock 2). The version most players were sold via gameplay video demos and in interviews was the latter one, which looked and played wildly different from the final release. For instance, take this early demo, which features Elizabeth’s powers working more like magic, both she and Booker are older, and the flow of combat much more resembling the original Bioshock. There’s also a great deal more physics-based combat and level destruction.
This was not the game we received on launch day, but there are still embers of it, with leftover characters and concepts now wildly out of order. You can start to see the game we’d finally get coming together a mereyearlater in 2011, already drastically reworked in several respects.
However, even here are multiple distinct changes. Elizabeth’s powers operate on a recharge timer, there’s scripted narrative branching, and the scale of combat arenas is easily twice if not three times the size of the final game’s largest encounters. Even the gunplay is demonstrably different, with weapons treated as disposable, brutal tools, rather the lithe, snappy arsenal players received in the end.
Yet despite changing its central conceit (among other things) so many times, Infinite still tries for a much more geopolitical story, something akin to Game of Thrones. It wants to address and iterate on everything in its direct predecessor - which, as far as creative lead Ken Levine was seemingly concerned, was just Bioshock, wholly sidestepping even so much as an acknowledgment of Bioshock 2.
This is despite Bioshock 2’s ending being poised to connect, and pointedly close, the door on Rapture. In both regards, Infinite does the exact opposite. If one word defines Infinite, it’s “inconsistent”.
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It’s not that Infinite doesn’t try to deliver on its promises, but even late development pre-release materials advertised unique enemy types in different ways than how they function in the final game. Some key setpieces from early demos are reused but in such a way that they’re much simpler and don’t have to deliver on the bigger goals promised. Youcanrisk starting a fight early, but it still happens regardless because it needs to for you to suitably search an area.
Your near-constant companion, Elizabeth Comstock, can open Tears (alternate reality portals), but these are mostly relegated to spawning extra ammo, an alternate weapon, more health packs, or a bonus spot of cover. The best tears typically give you a temporary elite NPC ally, but these are sadly fairly rare.
You can still use your Skyhook to grapple onto skyrails and board enemy blimps, but each is so truncated that the novelty is purely aesthetic, rather than dynamic elements that the Xbox 360 and PS3 simply couldn’t handle at this level of fidelity. Even a few tears related to traversal are practically useless for anything other than a brief escape from gunfire.
Why they didn’t just delay the game for the then fast-approaching PS4 and Xbox One remains utterly beyond me, but it certainly didn’t do the project any favors.
All the mechanical shortcomings - from only having two guns to most of the more interesting elements being ripped out with a chainsaw’s elegance - could’ve been forgiven if Infinite managed just one thing: a good story. Bioshock, whether you loved or hated its simplification of System Shock, had one hell of a twist, told with some of the best dialogue and acting in the industry up to that point.
Don’t get me wrong, the leads are incredibly well acted. Courtney Draper gives one of the best performances of her life as Elizabeth, and it’s safe to say that Infinite is part of why Troy Baker is cast in any story that involves a duet of likable leads, because he makes Booker DeWitt much more than a stale pair of hands rendered on your screen. The problem is that those ambitions for a headier story beyond the M-rated Disney fairytale of Booker and Elizabeth’s escape from Columbia often sees them dragged into plot elements that are problematicat best.
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The themes explored in Infinite over Bioshock are spread extremely thin, and weirdly comparmentalised into distinct in-game levels rather than functioning as a whole. The ‘racism’ level with the obvious Klan-inspired cult that worships ravens, the ‘religious intolerance’ level where you face the ghost of Elizabeth’s ‘mother’, the ‘violence begets violence’ level that weirdly undercuts the enitrety of the opening arguments about racism - feel like token setpieces rather than meaningful discussions on their central themes.
For instance, when at a horrendously racist rally where white supremacists want to punish an interracial couple, there’s actually the option to either play along or try and defend them. Except you don’t get to live with that action. The decision isn’t even binary - Infinite interrupts you either way, and the only person who knows what you would’ve done isyou. Don’t worry though, because later in the game, the leader of the minorities, at the start of her revolution, is suddenly painted as being as cruel as the masters that used and abused her for years. Not that Infinite wouldn’t attempt to backtrack its own backtracking later, but everything tends to play out like this.
Racism is bad, except when the oppressed try to do anything to throw off their chains. Religion is nothing but an oppressive tool, except for when it’s not. Atheism is a hopeless pit of despair, or maybe it’s a choice to insist on freedom of will. Destiny is real, or it’s not. There are an infinite number of universes, but Infinite actions matter, except when they don’t. It gives me a headache just trying to detangle it all.
The only chapter that extends its commentary is a holdover from the game’s Capitalists vs. Communists roots, with an extended journey at factory level that more resembles the scale and pacing of early demos, but without much of the fun, instead relying on you leaping between realities to move the plot along. Booker and Elizabeth just keep crossing alternate realities, expecting everything to be the same except for whatever they want changed, which may be one of the most absurd plot conveniences ever made in the halls of fiction.
Despite brimming with combat, it doesn’t actually feel like Infinitewantsall that combat. The slower portions of the game,where you and Elizabeth just experience the world more like tourists than terrorists, tend to work better, as they rely on Infinite’s strongest elements: world design, character banter, organic environmental storytelling, sound design, and facial animations.
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Some extremely talented people worked on this game. They eventually had to get Jordan Thomas, Bioshock 2’s Lead Designer, and Rod Fergusson of Gears of War fame, to each come in and right the ship into something that could launch on store shelves. In the wake of years of meandering production, the new management had to reign in Levine’s ambitions and the various disparate mechanics.
This was back when removing too much of what you’d already promised from a game would result in significant backlash, so everything promised istechnicallyin the game, but in the easiest to execute fashion possible. It relies so heavily on presentation that calling it style over substance is being polite. To play Infinite is to navigate a graveyard of unfulfilled ambition and lofty goals that are better explored in the likes of Disco Elysium,Dishonored 2,Wolfenstein: The New Order, and, most ironically, Bioshock 2.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying Infinite at a surface level. It does all the right sort of emotional signaling you’d expect from a Naughty Dog or Insomniac Games production. It’s okay to enjoy a mess, and 10 years on, Bioshock Infinite is one of the best looking, smoothest playing, broken games ever made. All these years later, compartmentalizing this game into a simple thesis is still damn near impossible. Perhaps the one silver-lining - even if Infinite might not live up to its name in gameplay, is that it sure does manage to be a source of infinite discussion.
But hey, thePS Move support is great, so there’s that?
