Thus, you can weaken your enemies by zapping them with a bolt of electricity or by charging into them at impossible speed. Vigors, like the original BioShock's plasmids, are seemingly magical powers that you can fling at your enemies. They even provide a few touches of humor, as do other atmospheric audio audio details alternate versions of well-known tunes could have you grinning once you pick your jaw up off the floor.īioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter, but you aren't armed just with machine guns, pistols, shotguns, and the like you also have vigors. There are clues here to the nature of Elizabeth's gift: her ability to open tears in spacetime and peer into…the future? The past? Other dimensions? Voxophones also elaborate on Columbia's most important citizens, such as Comstock's troubled, martyred wife, whose story illuminates the desperate lengths to which her husband stooped to ensure that his message might be heard in perpetuum. Your confusion is appeased by audio recordings you discover called voxophones, which serve as personal diaries to past events. A time to weep, and a time to laugh a time to mourn, and a time to dance. The concordant harmonies of a hymn of praise take a sour and ominous turn as the more disturbing qualities of Columbia's unerring faith emerge. So, too, does the soundscape metamorphose. When the narrative has you questioning the nature of reality, the surreality of the environments reflects your confusion. Sunny blue skies and perfect manmade beaches give way to burning streets and ghostly memorials. You are a witness to (and a participant in) an imploding social order, and as the story darkens, so too do the places you investigate. Columbia isn't as hushed and mysterious as Rapture, but exploring it is no less tense. So is her relationship with Booker, for that matter, though he is key to Elizabeth's escape from her solitary life, and to the city of her dreams: Paris.Īnd so the two go on the run, alternately exploring Columbia's private nooks and allying with a resistance force called the Vox Populi, not out of politics, but out of necessity. Your first confrontation with Songbird is one of many eye-opening scenes, and Elizabeth's relationship with her protector is a complicated one. You eventually find "the girl." She is the supernaturally talented Elizabeth, locked in a floating tower and protected by a monstrous clockwork creature called Songbird. In BioShock Infinite, religious and political fervor intertwine, much as they do in real life, and these similarities could fill you with dread and unease. His worshipers are just as fearsome in their blind willingness to follow their leader, even when the costs are high. What Andrew Ryan was to Rapture, Comstock is to Columbia he is a frightfully well-meaning man who believes so strongly in his own damaged philosophies that you can only fear him. The leader of this city is Father Comstock, a self-proclaimed prophet and religious zealot whose likeness and influence pervade the game. Nationalist propaganda is mixed with airships and mechanical combatants, and the moving picture machines you occasionally use elaborate on the history of Columbia, which seceded from an America that just wasn't American enough. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart.Ĭolumbia is a tremendous place to be, the all-American dream-turned-nightmare crossed with steampunk sensibilities. Identified as a prophesied fiend, Booker has no choice but to run. You also confront one of BioShock Infinite's many core mysteries: What is the nature of the brand on Booker's hand? In Columbia, the brand is a mark of the false shepherd, this culture's version of the Christian Antichrist and the 666 that marks him. At a key early moment, you confront the festering illness corrupting this porcelain-white culture, where anyone whose skin is not the ideal color is ostracized and enslaved. The buildings of that 1893 exposition were part of an area known as The White City, and here, too, Columbia lives up to the name of its inspiration-not just in the whiteness of its buildings, but in the whiteness of its racial structure. Now Playing: Video Review - BioShock Infinite By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
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