Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

Obligatory spoiler warning! Get out of here if you’ve never played Bioshock Infinite. Seriously.

The original Bioshock was one of my favorite games ever and I’ve discussed what I thought about that game here. Bioshock Infinite is, in my eyes, the true sequel to the original. Ken Levine wasn’t involved with Bioshock 2, and neither were the rest of the Irrational crew. Instead, 2K Marin developed Bioshock 2.

Bioshock 2 is more like decent fan-fiction then a true Bioshock game. It just didn’t need to happen, the original game was perfectly self containing both in terms of narrative and theme. I’m not saying Bioshock 2 was a bad videogame, but I am saying that it wasn’t really Bioshock. Plus, you should know how I feel about Ken Levine by now…

But if Bioshock 2 was unnecessary, then why was Bioshock Infinite necessary? Well, Infinite did a lot of really interesting things with the idea of Bioshock , some of which I hope to explore here. It’s also a game that is very aware of its status as a sequel. “Is it someone new?” asks the blind priest when Booker first arrives in Columbia. This was one of the first things you heard when you got to Rapture as well, only it was a crazed splicer in that case.

The original game plunged us deep under the ocean to a society run by an atheist libertarian businessman. Infinite takes us in the other direction, rocketing the player to a more-American-than-America city in the clouds run by a highly religious and oppressive leader. Andrew Ryan and Comstock couldn’t be more different in their views, yet they are very similar in that they hold very tightly onto their ideals. Part of the reason that Infinite works is that it recontextualizes the original Bioshock in some ways. Perhaps it’s not specifically Ryan’s ideas which were horrible, but instead perhaps it’s extremism which is to blame. After all, the ideologies of Columbia and Rapture are quite different, yet both cities are quite clearly dystopias.

Anyways, we’re not talking about the original are we. Let’s talk about Infinite…

Where do we start…?

Bioshock Infinite is a pretty difficult game to talk about. This is in part because there just seems to be so much going on in it. If you ask somebody what Infinite is “about”, they might say any of the following:

guilt

redemption

free will

religion

racism

games

American history

history in general

the impact that narratives have on us

national identity

personal identity

self

violence

imperialism

And so on…

You can certainly look at Bioshock Infinite with any of these ideas in mind and find something interesting to talk about. Some have criticized the game on this account however. Infinite seems to introduce or touch on many complex ideas but seems to only follow through with a few of them.

To keep this post from becoming a novel, I’m going to try and focus what I talk about here mostly on what I found interesting about Bioshock Infinite. All the “specifics” of the game’s plot aren’t nearly as important as what they suggest on a more broad level. That is to say, I don’t think Bioshock Infinite is really about American history, or racism, or multiple universes, so much as it uses these things as a setting and as props to hold up its main ideas.

Infinite is in large part a story about stories.

When I say story or narrative, I really mean it in the broadest sense possible. Something constructed by people out of events, memories, and ideas – that could mean taking history itself as a story, or the story of national identity, or the story of religious forgiveness, or even the idea we have of ourselves.

Narrative of Forgiveness

Booker Dewitt was, and still is, a very violent man. And he’s a man haunted by the atrocities that he committed at Wounded Knee. The game explores this guilt and sin in a few interesting ways, but the most interesting way that Booker’s guilt is explored is through the twist.

The big Ken Levine twistaroo this time around was the fact that Comstock was in fact Booker from another universe. The event that distinguished these two men was that after the battle at Wounded Knee, they both wound up with a decision to make. This decision came in the form of a river baptism and essentially amounts to this: do you accept this baptism symbolically and thus purge yourself of all sin? Or do you walk away and hold onto what you’ve done?

– “That old time religion is good enough for me.”

Our Booker chose the latter, he did not accept the baptism. The Booker that would eventually become Comstock, however, decided to accept the baptism.

Booker rejected the narrative of forgiveness and his guilt sent him down a path of despair. He became addicted to alcohol and gambling, and this depression eventually led him to sell Elizabeth.

Comstock, on the other hand, accepted the narrative of forgiveness and this sent him on the path to Columbia. Comstock’s choice led to him completely rewriting and recontextualizing his past actions as acts of heroism. He is a man wholly committed to this story. If the story is wrong, then he is a terribly guilty and sinful man and this simply can’t be the case. It’s almost like Columbia isn’t just a means for Comstock to have power and to convince others of this version of the past, it seems to be a way to convince himself of this as well. Like telling this version of the story over and over will erase what he has done and make it right.

The fact that Comstock is really just a Booker who made a different choice complicates our exploration of Columbia. It’s as if Booker is looking in a mirror in some ways, Columbia forces him to confront the choices that he’s made. If we as players are disgusted by Columbia, and yet are playing an extremely violent man who, in some ways, IS Columbia, what does this mean? It’s difficult to say, but interesting to think about.

Who are you?

All this quantum mechanics parallel universe mumbo jumbo is interesting in another way in that it complicates the idea of the self. What does it mean to be ‘you’ when who that person is can depend so precariously on decisions which define you for the rest of your life. And is our identity simply the narrative that we continually tell ourselves in our heads? Do the ideas that we accept or reject become who we are? Infinite seems to be suggesting that, yes, in large part we are defined by our stories and our constructed ideas of self.

This also plays into the “apparent” story of Bioshock Infinite. By that I mean the story that we think we are getting into at the start of the game. “Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.” As we learn, the story that Booker is telling himself of why he is even in Columbia is a fabrication. His whole motivation for intruding into Columbia and murdering people is based on a justification that is a result of his mind desperately trying to make sense of what he’s doing. Perhaps the Luteces also had a part in what he believes, but the fact still stands. Who we are and how we justify our actions are simply stories that we tell ourselves.

National/Historical Narrative

Can’t we extend this idea of construction to the idea of national or historical narrative?

We know “the facts” are that Booker/Comstock did some terrible and violent things in their past. But the history and mythology of Columbia paints those actions as heroic and noble.

This is seen clearly in Soldier’s Field, a historical museum/amusement park of sorts, where we see the version of the story that Comstock is perpetuating through Columbia. Cardboard cutouts of extremely racist depictions of Native American people and Chinese people highlight the idea that this history is nothing but a fabrication.

Myth and history are portrayed here as a means of control and power. But then why do so many people buy into this national narrative? What’s in it for the citizens of Columbia? Infinite seems to suggest, and quite rightly I think, that national and historical narratives give people comfort and a sense of identity. It’s nice to be able to point at something tangible and say, “this is us, this is who we are.” Being on the inside of Columbia (that is, not a minority or a lower-class individual) is a pretty great thing it seems. There is something very idyllic, peaceful, and wonderfully close-knit about certain sections of Columbia. The first 30 or so minutes have the player simply exploring this super-ideal and impossibly beautiful early 20th century America (a constructed America that never existed, but an America either way).

This comfort and sense of stability and community motivates the citizens of Columbia to fight to maintain their nation. If something were to upset the narrative of Columbia, then people wouldn’t be happy. This is why people are so willing to kill Booker and get Elizabeth back. Consider the quote on the loading screen below:

We can also interpret the alternate universes/timelines as being other narratives, other versions of history that are possible.

Perhaps the reason why Comstock is so frightened of Elizabeth is because her ability to see other possabilites and to see other stories can destabilize the story that he has built for himself with Columbia. If there are other “truths” and other “histories”, then how can Columbia’s be the “right” one? Keeping her locked away in a tower is his way of stopping her influence from breaking down Columbia.

Game Narrative

Like I’ve mentioned, Bioshock is very aware of its own identity as a sequel and as a game. It calls attention to its own status as a story at the end of the game. Easily one of the most ‘meta’ moments in gaming ever, Elizabeth is cut free from the draining influence of the Siphon and she teleports us to Rapture! She now has a God-like omniscience and can see all possibilities.

But are we just going back to Rapture, or are we stepping into another game, into another story? It sure seems this way. The end works on two levels. For Booker it might just be another universe and another city, but we as players recognize that, “Oh my God… I’m in the original Bioshock!”

So when Elizabeth shows us the infinite lighthouses and says:

“There’s always a lighthouse. There’s always a man. There’s always a city.”

For Booker it might mean that there are infinite universes, but for us it means that there are infinite stories, infinite games, infinite Bioshocks.

This moment is the game very obviously pointing to its own constructed nature as a story. It’s as if the game is trying to say, “Hey! I’m a narrative, and narrative is extremely important!”

One complaint about Bioshock Infinite was that some of the features which fit perfectly with the world of Rapture seemed pretty arbitrary in Columbia. Vigors for example seemed like they were there simply because Plasmids were in Bioshock 1 and because the gameplay would have been dull without them. We learn that many of the concrete things which make Columbia and Rapture similar are either a result of “constants” between universes, or a result of people like Fink who saw into Rapture (or other worlds) and created technology or music based on what they saw. This could be interpreted as the game again being self-aware of its place as a sequel – Fink peering into another universe and “borrowing” some things is just like what the developers did. If a universe is a story, then Bioshock Infinite is “borrowing” certain constants from the original Bioshock. Maybe you find this to be a cop-out, but there is an explanation for why these things are there at least.

Damsel in Distress?

There’s also the fact that, on the surface, Bioshock Infinite has an extremely cliche video game plot. A man has to save a princess from a tower. You can’t get more old-school Zelda/Mario than that. These plots have been criticized as being sexist and some have claimed that these tropes are hurtful to women. The argument is that the women in these video games are reduced to objects which the player has to “win”. Whether or not this is true, maybe Bioshock Infinite is recognizing this video game cliche of a powerless woman in a tower and is subverting it. Elizabeth is most definitely not a powerless object at the end of the game. The last thing that the women in the game does is kill you. The damsel in distress is not only infinitely more powerful than the man, she is also no longer framed in reference to him. She is completely freed from both Booker and Comstock.

The very very end…

If we allow that one of the main themes of the game is the influence of narrative on our lives, then how are we to interpret the very last scene of the game?

Elizabeth believes that the only way to fix the universes and to make things better is by killing Booker, thereby erasing all possibilities where he creates Columbia. We have no reason to suspect that she’s wrong, she seems almost God-like now after all.

So when Liz drowns Booker in the place that he both rejected and accepted the baptism, what are we to make of this? It seems like this scene is almost infinitely meaningful in some respects. There are so many ways to interpret the ending and I don’t want to suggest that any one way is more correct than the other.

But keeping the idea of narrative control in mind, perhaps we could read this scene as a sort of murder of the influence of a white man over history. By drowning Booker, Liz is essentially murdering the very idea of a man controlling history. She is cutting off any possible control that Booker/Comstock will have over the story, over any story. It’s the only thing that will stop the cycle of violence, justification, and narrative control.

If you call that a bit of a stretch then I’d agree, but it might be something to think about.

Final Words

I hope my interpretation of Bioshock Infinite as a story about stories made some sort of sense. I feel like this is a central theme to the game and one that was deliberately explored by Ken and the rest of the Irrational team.

I almost feel like I’ve not even scratched the surface of all the significance of this game though. This is just one thematic layer of many.

Did you see things differently? Feel free to comment below.