BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea

Irrational Games

I've been writing reviews for a long time. Never in a professional capacity, as much as I would like to, but I've been posting my opinions about games and movies and whatever else for over a decade. Shortly before my mom passed away, I came up with the hairbrained idea to play through a bunch of horror franchises in "in-universe" chronological order, centered around the loose idea of a (headcanonically-speaking) shared universe. Of course BioShock, descended as it was from the cult sci-fi survival horror hit System Shock 2, had to be in this. A solid seven years ago I played through BioShock Infinite, thinking that I would burn through a bunch of World Wars stuff and the 1950s, and get to the DLC in a matter of months if not weeks. That was in summer of 2019. It's April 17th, 2026, as I write this, and I've finally reached BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.

Why such a delay? It was a combination of the list of stuff I wanted to do getting wildly out of hand, making a fateful decision to go back to the top of the spreadsheet — twice! — and, generally, life getting in the way. Playing through Burial at Sea feels like some kind of closure. I barely remembered the main game anymore, only that replaying it all the way back in 2019 confirmed a lot of my complaints about it when it was new. Despite moving the action to the Rapture setting of BioShock 1 and 2, Burial at Sea is very much rooted in its base game, both in terms of story and gameplay. More than just playing with the multiversal theme introduced in Infinite to allow players to experience Rapture once again, but with Infinite's familiar characters, it's a very final conclusion to Elizabeth's story, and really that of Infinite.

As was common with DLC of the era, the story was split into two separate episodes, each functionally their own game. The first one takes us to a version of Booker DeWitt who escaped his own time into Rapture, continuing his private investigator business. Approached by a version of Elizabeth, whom this version of Booker doesn't know, he's hired to find one of the many young girls who have gone missing around Rapture, specifically Sally, an orphan girl he had taken in. With Elizabeth in tow to ensure he follows through, they eventually journey to Fontaine's Department Store, a three-building complex that was unceremoniously dropped into the bottom of the ocean with all of Fontaine's followers following the apparent death of Fontaine and the controversial nationalization of his companies. The bulk of both episodes is in this dark, splicer-filled warren; ironically, being set New Year's Eve, 1959, this is a preview of what Rapture would eventually become in the year and change before the events of BioShock 1.

This first episode plays pretty much exactly like the main game. At this point, I don't need to tell you how I feel about that. It's all the same gameplay, all the same incoherent writing. You get to play around with some classic plasmids, and see a glimpse of Rapture before its fall. Ultimately, though, it's a disappointment.

The second episode switches to Elizabeth... but not the same Elizabeth... sort of. Feeling guilty for her actions in Rapture, she gets the Luteces to take her back, fully aware that by returning to that particular reality (because, and this is a spoiler, that version of Elizabeth has died) all versions of Elizabeth would collapse down to one. If this one bites it, that's it: no more Elizabeths. This second episode is by far the more interesting one; it's longer, spookier and plays very differently from the base game and even BioShock 1. Elizabeth isn't a fighter; her skyhook swing is weaker and she can't take as much damage. But she's stealthier, and has access to a crossbow and some stealth-oriented weaponry to make her job easier. The base game and the first DLC episode featured "1999 Mode," which despite promises during development calling back to System Shock 2, ultimately just turned out to be an extra-hard mode, a disappointment. Elizabeth's DLC instead boasts "1998 Mode," a call-back to Thief: The Dark Project, the landmark stealth game that director Ken Levine also worked on. 1998 Mode plays more or less like the base game, but strips out the lethal options for purely non-lethal. It works surprisingly well; I found it refreshing, easily the most fun I had in the entirety of BioShock Infinite.

In terms of story, Burial at Sea is kind of all over the place. BioShock Infinite already is a big mess with its multiversal stuff, and its approach to social issues is hamfisted at best. Burial at Sea attempts to do a few different things: one, it brings players back to Rapture, a fan-favorite setting (and why not? it's like exploring the scariest dead mall you've ever been to); two, it was Levine attempting to address one of the biggest criticisms of the story, that is, throwing Daisy Fitzroy under the bus; and three, trying to tie Elizabeth to Rapture. I think it mostly succeeds on the first one, somewhat succeeds on the second one, and not only kinda cocks up the third, but was arguably unnecessary in the first place. Positioning Elizabeth as — spoilers! — the catalyst for the beginning of BioShock 1, contradicting a lot of both the novel and BioShock 2 (and I know this was on purpose, because Ken Levine is an egomaniac who resented that he had less involvement in those two projects), and finally bending the existing Infinite lore just to make any of it work, it all just kinda cheapens both Elizabeth as a character and the story of Rapture. Fuck, the least they could have done was just have her hook up with Eleanor from BioShock 2. I'd play that game.

Nevertheless, I had a decent time with Burial at Sea. The second episode is more fun than the first, but it was nice to revisit Rapture after all this time. I don't remember when I played through the BioShock series last, other than Infinite, but it was definitely at least a decade ago. I'll be picking up BioShock 1 pretty soon, and it'll be a nice trip down memory lane. Hard to believe this franchise is almost 20 years old. So much has happened in the years since.

How time flies, right?