Booker
and Elizabeth are back.
Or
are they? There’s something different about the tortured
ex-Pinkerton and his lovely charge. In his case it’s hard to say
what – he’s just a pair of animate forearms, after all – but
though his right hand bears a familiar ‘AD’ brand and his
mysterious nosebleeds remain, Mr. Dewitt seems something of a changed
man. Elizabeth, meanwhile has...filled out. The headstrong teenager
has nudged the sex throttle all the way to va
va va vooom,
morphing into a Chandler-esque femme fatale, her baby blues veiled in
onyx eye shadow, her sweet voice edged with smoke and moxie. The
innocent girl whom we only wanted to nurture and protect has become
the woman who's gonna step on our hearts with stiletto heels.
Why
do these people feel at once so strange yet so tantalizingly
familiar?
To
anyone who played, finished, and – most crucially – understood
Bioshock: Infinite,
the answer to that question should be obvious. To anyone reading
this expecting a review free of main-game references, turn away now –
there is absolutely NO reason you should be playing Burial
At Sea if
you haven’t completed Infinite.
And if you’re in that third category of (baffling) people who
finished the game but didn’t understand the ending, do whatever the
hell you want, as you’re unlikely to appreciate this DLC anyway.
It's
another time, another place – Rapture, if you care to know, on
December 31st
1958. Whether it is the same undersea metropolis from the original
Bioshock
– or whether it is just hours away from a calamity that will doom
it to madness and ruin – doesn't really matter. There's always a
city, remember, just as there is always a man and lighthouse, and
whether this is the same Rapture or one of a thousand million others
is, for the moment anyway, inconsequential. Dewitt has (inevitably?)
found himself in the same dubious line of making an honest dollar,
sleuthing. A decidedly different Elizabeth is his client who hires
him to find a missing girl, a job she intuitively knows will pluck at
something deeper and more profound than Dewitt's wallet. “You'd do
this gratis,” Elizabeth tells him, sounding cocksure. Booker
follows with hardly more incentive than a come-hither glance from his
winsome retainer, as suddenly, unaccountably drawn to her as he is to
the case.
So
begins the second DLC for Irrational Game's extraordinary Bioshock:
Infinite. The first, Clash
in the Clouds, was an arena-style
dust-up heavy on combat and light on story. Burial
at Sea is the exact opposite, a
stylish dimestore vignette that features some shooting but doesn't
dwell on it – call it 'story-driven violence', if you will. Gamers
who loved Infinite will
find a thousand reasons to swallow the price tag for the download,
while those who didn't care for it
but adored the original Bioshock will
likely go for it anyway, as it returns you to the old stompin'
grounds: the libertarian utopia of Andrew Ryan, a man so
anti-government he founded a damn city on the bottom of the ocean
(Seriously, how do they get enough food to feed all the people down
there? That's always been
my question about that place).
2013
tech has given Rapture a facelift and a new coat of paint; the
modernist architecture and sleek set pieces have never looked
sharper, and there are more windows and portholes than ever through
which you can gape at the grandeur of the deep, from the glittering
undersea skyscrapers to passing cetacea. And there's actually time
to gawk, since this is a slow-burn
mystery with a casual pace instead of the survival horror scramble
we're familiar with. So keep Elizabeth waiting for a bit, hang out
on one of the verandas, check out the shops and enjoy yourself before
things get all conspiratorial. It will seem like a delirious dream
for veterans of the first game. We're used to seeing Rapture as a
charnel house of insanity and excess. Here it seems a damn
fine place to visit...at least at first.
After
nosing around for what seems like no time at all Booker and
Elizabeth find themselves hip deep in the bad stuff, forced into the
bowels of Rapture where industrialist Frank Fontaine and his
supporters were banished after Ryan decided he could do
without them. Lucky for our heroes then that the ruined shopping
mall that's been physically broken
off from the rest of Rapture(!) is
also where Elizabeth expects to find her missing girl. One problem:
since being severed from the main city the survivors of Fontaine's
little disagreement with Ryan have had nothing to do for fun but
overdose on plasmids, transforming them into deranged splicers. So
it's actually more like many dozens of very psychotic problems, all
gunning for you. Fortunately Booker has a generous array of
weapons and powers held over from Infinite
to help even the odds. The hand cannon is back, as is the
blunderbuss shotgun and the ubiquitous Shock Jockey among others.
Elizabeth's reality-warping power is still there to provide timely
cover, turrets, and robot samurai. Yeah, robot samurai – it's
Bioshock fer
chrissake, just go with it. And though this may be a different
Elizabeth, she hasn't forgotten her oh-so-helpful habit of tossing
Booker a clutch health pack or ammo clip when the going gets rough.
You'll need it all as you battle your way through the various shops
and hallways, a space that is probably the equivalent of one
decent-sized 'area' from the main game.
Through
it all veterans of Infinite should
be on high alert, not for enemies but for clues. It's plain from the
outset that something – everything, really – is very, very wrong
about this whole scenario. If Booker and Elizabeth have never met why
does she regard him with such cold indifference? What is the meaning
of Booker's sudden seizure-like flashbacks and the haunting grayscale
glimpses of strange people, odd reflections, other...worlds? Why
can't the detective remember when he arrived in Rapture and why is
he helpless to explain why the missing girl interests him so much?
The
answer, or part of it, comes at the end, somewhere between two and
three hours of playtime later. This is Burial
at Sea Episode 1, after all; another
episode is forthcoming. This first chapter sets the stage and
introduces the players but it stops short of full disclosure,
although not before an eleventh hour twist that, just like the end of
Bioshock: Infinite,
will fairly well blow your face clean off and deposit it on the other
side of the room. I will stop short of spilling the beans in
deference to the folks who will play this DLC and love it
unconditionally – the ones who are going to understand said twist
and will want to see it for themselves. My reaction was to gently
lay my controller on my lap and stare off into space for a solid ten
minutes while I meditated on the mind-blowing implications.
Okay,
I'll give a little hint. Ready? Neither Booker nor Elizabeth are
who they say they are...but they are exactly
who they've always been. Whoooaaa...
It's
fifteen bucks for the download, which is a tad hefty for such a lean
volume, but this is quality over quantity, no question. Irrational
took their time with the details: Rapture is festooned with
innumerable charming details from classic Americana-inspired
billboards flogging 1950's domestic technology ('Surprise her with a
Fontaine Futuristics vacuum cleaner!') to the automated p.a. ads
dripping with cheesy father-knows-best voice-overs. The gunplay is
frenetic and colorful and the new plasmid/vigor animations are as
eye-popping as ever. Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper reprise their
roles as Booker and Elizabeth respectively. Both seem entirely at
ease with their alter egos this time; Draper especially has a chance
to stretch her vocal talents, playing Elizabeth a half-octave lower
with a throaty Ava Garder whisper. Is it worth it? My answer is
yes, if only to get you pumped for the next chapter in the story,
which is sure to be a jaw-dropper.
Constants
and variables, my friends. This is a mystery worth solving.
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