The more naturalistic, environmental storytelling that Irrational is much better at is similarly hamstrung by outdated means of information delivery. Voxophones, collectible audio recordings that let you eavesdrop on the conversations of relevant or random people, have a massive impact on your understanding of both Columbia, and the greater Bioshock universe. Half of the early discussion about the game’s finale was the result of players having come to it with different pieces of the puzzle assembled, because finding the recordings and listening to them is optional. While there’s a case to be made for how hiding exposition encourages player exploration, the Voxophones present another case of design undermining internal narrative logic. In many cases, both the content, and the placement of the devices stretches believability, with personal diaries, private conversations, even criminal confessions strewn about the environments like litter, appearing at just the right moment to provide some context for something nearby.
Then, once you’ve taken a step back, and looked at the story as a whole, you start to see the shortcuts the game has to take to make its big finish work. The early thematic overtones of racism and jingoism mostly disappear once the dimension-hopping element is added to the mix, to the detriment of many characters. Daisy Fitzroy, the initially intriguing leader of Columbia’s revolutionary faction, becomes a one-note madwoman, as giving Booker someone to fight becomes more important than exploring why everyone is fighting in the first place. Meanwhile, the de facto villain of the game, Comstock, barely registers any sort of personality beyond that of a paternalistic demagogue, out of a need to keep players from cluing into his connection to Booker. The second playthrough casts the plot in a whole new light, but it also makes you aware of how much gets hemorrhaged from the first playthrough to make that so.
The thing is, it’s obvious that Ken Levine and Irrational have the potential to be some of the best storytellers in the business. The game takes a huge risk with its finale, by not just expanding the scope of the story, but contracting it as well. Sure, the lighthouse concept blows the scale of the game out to previously unfathomable proportions, but the story ultimately does come down to the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth. Levine latches onto that relationship like a life preserver in the ocean of metaphysics and metacommentary he’s thrown himself into, and wisely so. Without the two leads, there’s such existential, even nihilistic discomfort created through the multiverse concept, that we as an audience would be lost without something human anchoring all the far-out philosophy and theory-spinning.
But is it enough to make the final moments land with the desired emotional heft? For the most part, I’d say yeah, sure. It may take you a couple viewings to pickup on all its intricacies, but Bioshock: Infiinite’s last ten minutes are essentially flawless in how deftly they complete Levine’s magic trick. The feeling of surprise, and enlightenment it elicits is neither cheap, nor easy for anyone in any medium to produce, and for that, Irrational should be proud. But once the shock has worn off, and you start thinking about the things that make Infinite powerful, it being a game isn’t one of them. It’s fun to play, and looks gorgeous, but the thing that elevates it above the status of entertainment, that makes it stick with you, and want to think about it obsessively, is the story. And that story, sadly, isn’t just underserved by the medium that it’s being told in, but irreparably compromised by it.
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