Now that the week of the BioShock Infinite DLC announcement is winding down, we thought it was the perfect time to let you know a bunch of details regarding Burial at Sea.

We’ll be presenting all this information (which comes from weeding out the sarcastic Ken Levine tweets, and a Eurogamer interview) in bullet point form below:

You begin Burial at Sea as Booker, who is a private detective in Rapture. Then, a woman walks in who you don’t seem to know, and they don’t explain it.

Despite that initial confusion, Ken says “it all will make sense eventually.”

Burial at Sea takes place on New Year’s Eve, 1958, the night that the bombing happened in Rapture and the revolution started.

As Ken says, “Originally we wanted to show Rapture when it was fully alive, but do it in the context of an interesting story, not just to go back and talk about Midi-chlorians, you know? To do it in a sort of integrated way, but to tell a story we thought was important to tell with these characters as well.”

Speaking to the scope of the DLC, Levine said, “From a resource and work standpoint, it’s effectively like making a small part of a new game. Almost all the Rapture elements are newly created for the engine. The city outside you saw is actually a 3D structure, whereas in the original game it’s 2D images. I think every single environment is created from scratch. There’s maybe a few objects we brought over, but really everything is new.”

There will be appearances from fan favorite characters, but they aren’t cameos, rather integrated into the story.

Part of Burial at Sea’s action takes place in an old Fontaine department store, which had a very traditional “BioShock 1 kind of feeling with lots of splicers and broken, screwed-up stuff.” Other parts of it take place in a “very pristine Rapture.”

The DLC is built upon BioShock Infinite, with Irrational making a lot of changes, and it’s “more stylistically and gameplay tuned like BioShock 1.”

Those changes vary from when you’re playing as Booker in part 1 of Burial at Sea and as Elizabeth in part 2 of Burial at Sea.

Though Ken won’t say what role Big Daddies will play, they will definitely be back.

“It’s safe to say” that they will integrate Burial at Sea with Infinite.

Hacking won’t be in part 1 and it’s unlikely for part 2.

The Circus of Values machine will talk.

There will be new enemy types in Burial at Sea.

Ken isn’t sure if they’ll stick with shields or go for health packs on Elizabeth in part 2.

They aren’t re-creating BioShock 1 plasmids.

There are new weapons, gear, and plasmids.

“It would help” to beat BioShock 1 before playing Burial at Sea.

Burial at Sea is being created entirely at Irrational, save for maybe a bit of outsourced art.

Levine didn’t reveal exactly when the two new DLC episodes would be available, just that the first one would launch before the PS4 and Xbox One, with the other an unknown at this point. [Update: A Take Two spokesperson has told us that “We haven’t announced timing for each part of Burial at Sea,” “all Season Pass content will be available for individual purchase by March 2014.”

Are you excited for Burial at Sea? Would you kindly let us know in the comments below?

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