BioShock Infinite

The following review contains no spoilers.

What constitutes beauty in gaming? Many have said that BioShock Infinite is a beautiful game, but just what does that mean? Does beauty only refer to a game’s graphics and the level of immersion you feel when you sit down in front of the screen, or can beauty in gaming also be found in a well-formed narrative, creating emotional investment through relatable characters and an engaging plot? Perhaps a game’s beauty is in its razor-honed gameplay, leaving you wanting more and drawing you back to your controller at all hours of the day. There are many ways that one could quantify beauty in gaming, so what do I, and so many others, mean when we say that Infinite is a beautiful game?

BioShock Infinite is the spiritual sequel to Irrational Games’ 2007 release, BioShock. In Infinite, you control the character of Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton man who has built up an impressive amount of gambling debt. To clear away this debt, Booker has taken on the task of traveling to the city of Columbia to find a girl named Elizabeth, and bring her back to New York. Much like Rapture in BioShock, Columbia is another fantastical city, only it flies aloft in the clouds instead of sitting beneath the sea. The citizens of Columbia worship the founding fathers of the United States as if they were gods, and are ruled over by their Prophet, a man named Zachary Comstock. The world of Columbia is just as fleshed out as Rapture, but with a key difference: where we were introduced to Rapture well after it had fallen into decay and chaos, Booker arrives in the middle of Columbia’s golden age in 1912. The city is thriving, the citizens are happy (well, some of them anyway), and barbershop quartets sing a cappella versions of Beach Boys songs from boats flying in the air.

Yep, you heard me right, Beach Boys songs being sung in 1912. When you encounter this early in the game, it’s one of your first clues that everything in Columbia is not quite as it seems (well, as much as things can be off kilter in a city floating in the sky). The focal point of these oddities seems to be Elizabeth, the young woman you’ve been tasked with “rescuing.” You discover that tears — windows to somewhere, or sometime, else — have been cropping up across Columbia, most often when Elizabeth is around. More often than not, these tears are utilized in combat, but the most important ones are used to move the narrative forward in some truly astonishing ways. It’s in this way that BioShock Infinite sets itself most apart from its predecessor. In the original BioShock, the game’s story was built around a central twist, but Infinite parses out its essential plot details carefully. As each of these pieces falls into place in the greater narrative, you slowly unlock the truth behind all of the events you’ve witnessed, and the rush toward the end of the game is far more satisfying as a result.

Combat in BioShock Infinite is very similar to what players experienced in the original BioShock. However, much like the similar-yet-different feel connecting Rapture and Columbia, Irrational wasn’t content to rest on its laurels when it came to gameplay. The core combat mechanics have largely stayed the same: gun in one hand, vigors (Infinite’s versions of plasmids) in another. These base mechanics, however, have been refined and iterated upon. In BioShock, you could carry all of the weapons in the game around with you at once, and you kept an inventory of health packs and EVE, the game’s version of mana potions. In Infinite there’s no such inventory. You can carry only two types of weapons around at any given time, and your health has been supplemented with a recharging shield, an addition which is satisfactorily explained from a narrative perspective with a quick line of dialog. In addition to these basic changes, Irrational has added a whole slew of modifications to the way combat works. The biggest change is the addition of the Sky-Line, a series of rails in the sky that are used both as a plot device for moving about the city of Columbia and as a clever system for quickly getting from one part of a combat zone to another. You won’t often be fighting in an area that has these rails, but when you do, the combat is exhilarating, allowing you to hop on a rail, dive off it to attack an enemy and hop right back on, shooting all the while. This makes combat frenetic and exciting in a way not found in its predecessor or really just about any other game I’ve played. In addition to this, your companion Elizabeth is no slouch when it comes to fighting. While she never fires a bullet, she becomes almost essential in combat, tossing you weapons, health, and other supplies when you’re in dire straits. Elizabeth also has the ability to open tears while on the field of battle, bringing in turrets, cover, and other useful elements. These additions have allowed Irrational to throw an almost inexhaustible supply of enemies at you in combat, increasing the spectacle over the three-to-five enemy encounters found in BioShock and making gunfights far more enjoyable.

As you play through BioShock Infinite, you quickly realize that Elizabeth is far more than a simple combat assistant and plot device. In Elizabeth, Irrational have crafted an exquisitely complex AI. Throughout Infinite, the story leans heavily on the growing and evolving relationship between Booker and Elizabeth. So heavily, in fact, that if there were the slightest crack in the believability of Elizabeth as a living, breathing character, the game itself would have been for naught. As you move through the incredible environments in Columbia, you’ll want to stop and examine every nook and cranny in your surroundings. As you do so, you’ll notice that Elizabeth is just as interested in the city as you are. She’ll bend over and look at objects of interest, fiddle around with parts of the environment, and generally keep herself occupied as you hunt for every last collectible you can get your hands on. She’ll be ready to move on when you are, but she’ll never get in your way or make you feel like you need to progress. As events happen in the story, Elizabeth’s mood will also change, and these changes are reflected believably in her character as well. Her demeanor toward you will change, from the way she talks to her body language. All of this is a clever balancing act that Irrational have honed and perfected, and is incredible to behold. If you want to get a more in-depth idea of what went into creating Elizabeth, I highly suggest checking out this spoiler-free talk given by Irrational’s creative director, Ken Levine.

So, to return to the question I posed before, when people say that BioShock Infinite is a beautiful game, what are they referring to? Well, all of it, really. The gameplay, the graphics, the world, the characters, and the story are all beautiful in their own right. Any one of these aspects alone would set BioShock Infinite on par with many of this generation’s most beloved games, but Infinite delivers on all fronts, creating an experience the likes of which gamers rarely get to see. It’s the game every studio dreams of making and every gamer dreams of playing. Normally I get bored while playing first-person shooters, but I truly enjoy and cherish the gameplay mechanics introduced and expanded upon in Infinite. I am forever lamenting the poor storytelling found in many games, but Infinite presents a mature, cerebral story that keeps you guessing until the very end. In an industry where most games feature the same drab colors and ho-hum scenery, Infinite creates a living, breathing world in Columbia that is familiar, foreign, and breathtaking all at once. To top it off, Irrational’s crowning achievement, Elizabeth, is an incredible feat of artificial intelligence the likes of which we’ve never seen before in gaming.

I don't care if you don't like first-person shooters, this game transcends genre. It transcends gaming.

Going into it, I knew that I was going to enjoy BioShock Infinite, but I wasn’t prepared for it to become my favourite game in the history of the medium. And yet this beautiful game has, without question, captured that top spot in my heart. I don’t care if you don’t like first-person shooters, this game transcends genre. It transcends gaming. Yet the story it told could only be experienced through a game.

Hallelujah.

This review was originally published on April 9, 2013 on Blue Sun. It's been reposted here for posterity.