BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 was… kind of a let-down. Irrational games promised a chapter filled with intrigue, stealth, and social gameplay, and what we got were a few “sneak behind the counter” missions, a bunch of dialogue in cutscenes, and a whole bunch of the same shooting that we were already bored of in BioShock Infinite ’s main game. However, as much of a slog as the gameplay was, the beginning and end of the game were great. Not only did it give us time to appreciate Rapture before it fell, it also left us with a huge WTF plot twist that left us wanting more. Soooo….
*SPOILER WARNING*
At the end of Burial at Sea Episode 1 , the game dove right off the deep end. What we thought was a story that focused on the origin of Rapture’s fall suddenly got intertwined with the story of Columbia in a weird way. Booker finally meets up with a little sister at a vent and tries to drag her out, but suddenly has a flashback where he struggles against… himself… to bring his baby Anna through a tear. Unfortunately he fails and the tear closes around Anna’s neck, and if you remember how this same tear cut off Anna’s pinky in the original BioShock Infinite, you could probably surmise that she is dead now. How Elizabeth ends up surviving despite Anna’s death (double spoilers, they are the same person) we have no idea.
Then everyone’s favorite time and space traveling comic relief god twins, the Luteces, talk about how Rapture is basically Columbia, but in reverse. You get to see Comstock shaving and being sent to live in the underwater paradise, making it seem as if the Booker you are playing as is actually Comstock himself… post-Comstock, not pre-Comstock like in the main game. We know this is confusing, but bear with us because it gets a lot simpler when Booker is stabbed through the chest by a Big Daddy drill and the episode ends.
Confusing right? Well according to a recently released trailer , BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 picks up where Episode 1 left off… except not in any way whatsoever. Now you are playing as Elizabeth, watching someone who you think is booker drag the little sister out of the vent, which if we believe the symbolism this means that Anna survives. OK…. With you so far… But then things get weird again. Now there is a version of Booker that no one seems to be able to see who is talking with Elizabeth. He is talking her through a conversation with Atlas, who seems intent on killing her. However, Booker tells her that she can get Atlas back to Rapture, and by saying that Elizabeth’s life is spared. Maybe this is about the fall of Rapture after all.
Unfortunately, that’s all we have seen from the trailers so far. No gameplay has been revealed beyond a simple picture of Elizabeth clutching a little sister and holding a gun. Will we finally see a DLC chapter based on espionage and stealth? Or will we have the same slog of “kill all the enemies, proceed down a linear pathway, repeat?” Either way, the questions that were brought up by this trailer are more than enough to get us to want to play. Be on the lookout for BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea when it releases later this year.