The sequel strikes back: how Bioshock Infinite wages war on Bioshock 1

Irrational's latest is as self-aware as you'd expect

One of the great tragedies of games publishing is that sequels rarely encourage us to revisit the original game. Book and film sequels don't have this problem, I suspect, because most are mere continuations of a narrative; a game sequel generally represents both the next stage of the saga (excepting non-narrative titles like FIFA, of course) and a new, refined and better-featured version of its predecessor.

To knowingly pick up the latter in place of - or even in addition to - the former is to incur a peculiar anxiety. Think of all the maps you're missing out on, whispers a novelty-mad inner voice, all the additional guns and higher-resolution textures.

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Very few designers choose to engage with this tension in their work, which seems terribly dishonest - sequels are as much imaginative responses as follow-ons, after all, isolating what the original did well and attempting to evolve it. The men and women of Irrational Games are among those few - their latest project, Bioshock Infinite, plays openly and almost sadistically upon its relation to Bioshock 1 in the first couple of minutes.

Main character Booker DeWitt is at sea, contemplating a mysterious scrap of correspondence as his boat nears the shadow of a towering lighthouse - a statelier, eerier mirror-version of the first game's plane crash intro. In the bow, a caricatured English couple labour at the oars and bicker cryptically. "Why doesn't he help?" one eventually asks, more or less. "He doesn't row," rejoins the other. "Ah, I see what you mean," the first archly agrees.

If you have played the original Bioshock - and if you haven't, be aware that I'm about to broach some major spoilers - that interchange should connect with all the force of an iron bar. Ken Levine's submarine odyssey turns on a single, not-quite-masterful gimmick - unbeknownst to the player, the main character is a brain-washed, vat-grown stooge, conditioned to obey unthinkingly any order accompanied by the phrase "would you kindly".

It's a conceit which overlaps brilliantly with the way players themselves are conditioned to jump through hoops by Bioshock's designers, making a mockery of the independent mindedness that's theoretically the province of an interactive artform. And it's a conceit those three little words "he doesn't row" snap into painful focus, transforming the scene into a quick-and-dirty metaphor for how a game of this hue propels you through its own plot. The boat pulls up at the dock. "Why doesn't he move?" enquires one of your companions, as an input prompt materialises under your nose. "He will eventually," the other laconically replies. And you do.

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There's something provocative about the new setting, too. Sequels generally promise the world - more specifically, a larger, more involving world than the one you saved first time round, that's nonetheless recognisably cut from the same mould. Infinite's Columbia feels like a commentary upon the need to simultaneously evoke and out-mode a setting, to conjure up in order to render obsolete - it's a grotesquely inverted Rapture, as far above the ocean as Rapture is below it, buoyed up by a similar mix of dangerously unrestricted scientific invention and philosophical extremism.

Where the failure of Rapture's founding ideals is conveyed as pressure, in the form of millions of tonnes of icy, pitch-black reality weighing on every airlock and porthole, the seeming inevitability of Columbia's collapse is manifest as vertigo. "The sky's the limit," they say. True - but there's a long way to fall.

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Comments

10 comments so far...

  1. It's going to rule. I couldn't care less what the box looks like. It's going to rule.

  2. i have niggling doubts it will be another bioshock 2

  3. i have niggling doubts it will be another bioshock 2

    Ah but Bioshock 2 wasn't Irrational Games, it was done by 2K, this is back in the right hands so I'm going to agree with Twitch

  4. i have niggling doubts it will be another bioshock 2

    Ah but Bioshock 2 wasn't Irrational Games, it was done by 2K, this is back in the right hands so I'm going to agree with Twitch

    Bioshock 2 really wasn't a bad game at all. I don't get all the hate it receives. Sure it had a tacked on and pointless multiplayer but it was a well told and interesting story with very solid gameplay and a return to a fantastic setting. Of course it wasn't as fresh as the first but it gets way too much stick. The story DLC was also fantastic. Perhaps better than the main game itself. Seems like one of these games that's become fashionable to dislike without anyone actually giving a reason why

  5. I actually like Bioshock 2 and think the Minerva's Den DLC especially is easily on a par with Bioshock 1, I was just pointing out the different developer.

    And the MP was terrible. Nice idea on paper, but there were so many better ways to show us the actual breakdown of Rapture then competative Deathmatches.

  6. I actually like Bioshock 2 and think the Minerva's Den DLC especially is easily on a par with Bioshock 1, I was just pointing out the different developer.

    And the MP was terrible. Nice idea on paper, but there were so many better ways to show us the actual breakdown of Rapture then competative Deathmatches.

    Yeah was more in response to alex although that's not the only time i've seen people mentioning Bioshock 2 in Infinite posts. The multiplayer really was a piece o' shite. I only played it because I wanted to see that special cut-scene that linked to the 1st game but when I eventually reached that point my game crashed and I ended up having to YouTube it. What a waste of my time.

  7. I actually like Bioshock 2 and think the Minerva's Den DLC especially is easily on a par with Bioshock 1, I was just pointing out the different developer.

    And the MP was terrible. Nice idea on paper, but there were so many better ways to show us the actual breakdown of Rapture then competative Deathmatches.

    Yeah was more in response to alex although that's not the only time i've seen people mentioning Bioshock 2 in Infinite posts. The multiplayer really was a piece o' shite. I only played it because I wanted to see that special cut-scene that linked to the 1st game but when I eventually reached that point my game crashed and I ended up having to YouTube it. What a waste of my time.

    I never got that far and didn't even realise they existed (quick to YouTube). I just bought the novel which is surprisingly good and set on the New Years Eve that it all goes a bit pear shaped, does a much better job of telling the same story.

  8. I never got that far and didn't even realise they existed (quick to YouTube). I just bought the novel which is surprisingly good and set on the New Years Eve that it all goes a bit pear shaped, does a much better job of telling the same story.

    Well if you've just watched it on YouTube and thought, "well that was a bit of an anti-climax" trying playing up to level 50 on a shit multiplayer, having your game crash and then watching it on YouTube only to realise how pointless it was. I still wake in the night, sweating uncontrollably because of what happened. It was my Vietnam

  9. Bioshock 2 is one of the games that succumbed to the Great Edwin Hard Drive Failure of 2010. Some day, I'll go back. Sounds like I won't be going back for the multiplayer, though.


  10. I never got that far and didn't even realise they existed (quick to YouTube). I just bought the novel which is surprisingly good and set on the New Years Eve that it all goes a bit pear shaped, does a much better job of telling the same story.


    I really enjoyed bioshock 2, the combat was much better and although it isn't as fresh it was still a very good game. Thought the multiplayer setup was novel and liked that, the mp itself wasn't up to much. Got the book but yet to read it, glad you enjoyed it though, looking forward to it if I get time (I rarely do...)