BioShock Infinite should have dared to have its narrative cake and eat it
BioShock Infinite is great. It’s a really, really great. There are already a large number of detailed and passionate articles and reviews that get into the gritty detail of what makes it one of the most exciting things to happen to videogame storytelling since, well, BioShock, but if you haven’t done so already you should just play the damn thing. If you have played it, you should play it again.
Because this is a complex game narrative that blossoms in fascinating ways with each new scrap of understanding attained; reaches loftier heights with every voxophone heard and incidental moment noticed. It’s a trip, man. Did you see the two kids playing rock-paper-scissors in the street on the way to the raffle? If not, find them. It’s the tiniest detail, but moments like it make all the difference.
And yet since finishing it, something has been bugging me. Really bugging me.
SPOILERS WILL NOW ABOUND.
By the end of the original BioShock you’ve been forced to deal with an ugly truth about protagonist Jack: he is a tool in the most literal sense. In a war between a mad libertarian capitalist and a mad libertarian criminal, his role was that of the asset to be deployed and he fulfilled it perfectly. When he is released from his servitude the intention of his master Fontaine is to ‘decommission’ him. Fontaine fails and the result – though delivered via some pretty grotty gameplay– is a neat closing of the overall narrative arc.
You finish what was started when you first jumped on to the one way bathysphere to Rapture. In doing so, you also complete the broader statement that BioShock has to make about its themes of rampant free market economics and the reduction of human beings to business apparatus – slaves are men (and women), and eventually they will always stop obeying and start choosing.
And Bub, you may not like the choices they make.
Now consider the ending of BioShock Infinite in relation to the beginning and the middle. It’s a beautiful conclusion in and of itself, a treatise on guilt and parenthood and free will and a million other things expressed in an astounding and heart-wrenching manner.
But what the hell does it have to do with the themes of racism and blind faith that we are exposed to for the majority of the game? Why are we asked to choose between throwing a baseball at an interracial couple or the man asking us to commit this disgusting act in the game’s opening, if we’re never going to come to a conclusion about the ideas this moment introduces?
Why does Irrational Games drop the hot potatoes in favour of an ‘all extreme ideologies are bad’ platitude, before rounding things off with what has become by the game's end an entirely separate – if still very interesting – plot line?
I hope my respect for the story that is told about Booker, Elizabeth and Comstock is clear. In a gaming world of grey, insubstantial plotting and by-the-numbers characterisation, every second of BioShock Infinite was something to be cherished.
Looking back now however, with the infinite doors of possibility far behind, it just feels like there are two wonderful halves that were never made whole; like initial theme and overall plot were devised by different people and forced to coexist simply by appearing in the same place.
Could things have been different? Should they have been different?
Well, if you’ll humour me, I’d like to propose a simple change that I believe would have married the component parts together into a single, clear story. Imagine yet another BioShock Infinite universe, the same in almost every way but one…
In this universe, Elizabeth’s birth mother was a Native American. We’ll call her Elizabeth B (and ‘real world’ Elizabeth will be Elizabeth A).
DON’T RUN OFF. Give this idea a few seconds, and let me explain. Start by picturing only small alterations to the game as it already is. Elizabeth B’s character model must change, of course, as well as some of the main dialogue around her – though if you really think about it not that much. In fact some significant tension could potentially be introduced by having Booker and Comstock’s dialogue remain mostly identical.
There would need to be a few general changes to incidental NPC dialogue; it’s hard to imagine the citizens of Columbia would regard the sight of a white man and a woman of Native American heritage together with much in the way of genteel civility. It is likely that they’d normalise it to their twisted way of thinking though. These people would not see Booker and Elizabeth B as equals, they would see a master and a servant.
We wouldn’t need to get rid of Courtnee Draper’s show stopping turn in the vocal booth – Liz B was still raised in secret by Comstock’s Super WASP scientists and would speak accordingly. As a matter of course she wouldn’t even need to dress differently.
Here is where things start to get really interesting: none of the propaganda around Columbia would need to change, either. The majority of the people in this city have never seen their ‘Lamb’. If Comstock told them he had a white child hidden in the wings to take his place when called on, they would believe him. In private it would be fascinating to hear the voxophone recordings of a man who believes an angel told him that Elizabeth must succeed him, when he himself cannot deal with the colour of her skin.
There would need to be one or two inciting incidents over the course of the game. Perhaps, on Battleship Bay when Elizabeth B runs off in search of distant music, Booker would find her engaged in fisticuffs with the xenophobic troupe at the end of the pier. Perhaps the Wounded Knee exhibit in the Hall of Heroes would contain a whole new level of subtext in the relationship between the protagonists. Perhaps Elizabeth B initially finds something even more profoundly attractive in the goals of the Vox Populi than Elizabeth A, and this makes her later murder of Daisy Fitzroy all the more important in her character development, as well as the plot development in general.
Consider the ways this new universe would influence the relationship between Elizabeth B and Lady Comstock. A woman who was before a tragic and unwilling adoptive mother now has a much more intricate character progression. She really does come back from the dead to redeem the sins of her life, and the ongoing sins of her husband. She’d also know something else about Comstock that he would never allow to be public knowledge, a knowledge that perhaps she shares with her house maid Miss Fitzroy.
Most importantly, how would our new universe affect the fact that Booker decided to sell his daughter? Suddenly an act of depressive alcoholic mania takes on an even darker aspect. Now it seems a white man has decided he can’t deal with raising a multiracial child in 1900s New York. Drunk and in debt, he hears promises of a better life for his daughter and acquiesces to the demands that are made in order for it to come about. He sells her, and forces her to leave her home.
It is a decision that haunts him.
When Booker goes to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth B, and when Elizabeth B sacrifices Booker/Comstock in the baptismal river at the game's end, something more profound is happening than in events as they currently stand. Booker is seeking redemption for more than familial woes. Elizabeth B is not only killing old sins but laying them to rest. She is forgiving her father. In an act of reasoned faith, she is asking him to try again.
And what is Booker/Comstock but two faces of the same coin; the embodiment of 1900s USA, warts and all?
It could be that you don’t think this would work. It could be you think forcing difficult subjects like historically contextualised racism on the core relationship between a game’s protagonists will turn away those just looking to have fun. It could also be that you played Assassin’s Creed III recently, and enjoyed the wonderful interactions between the Mohawk scout Kaniehti:io and English settler Haytham Kenway (Connor’s mum and dad). Because they were great company, far more interesting than their son as it turned out.
Perhaps I am spectacularly wrong. It’s just that when I start laying out the possibilities, it doesn’t feel like I am. With one small variation, it feels like the disparate elements of racial politics and guilt and parenthood and blind faith and hypocrisy and redemption that make BioShock Infinite such a joy are joined up. The circle is unbroken.
But this is just an idea, and an idea after the fact.
BioShock Infinite will only ever exist as we know it now, and when judged in any light that is a thing to be hugely grateful for. It is a story that doesn’t just entertain, it remains. It prods and pulls at your dreams and haunts your waking mind. Here is a game that gets people talking, and writing, and thinking.
BioShock Infinite is great. It’s really, really great. If you haven’t done so already, play the damn thing. If you have played it, you should play it again.
It’s a wonderful time to be a gamer.
