BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.0.2 Update

BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition is a re-release of BioShock Infinite including all its downloadable content, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms. It is also available on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, backward compatible with PS5 and Xbox Series X, and included with BioShock: The Collection. It was released on November the 4th, 2014, for $29.99. Private investigator Booker DeWitt finds himself in debt to the wrong people, and is tasked with an impossible mission: travel to Columbia, a city in the sky, and rescue a mysterious woman named Elizabeth. She possesses the ability to manipulate reality, a power that her captor believes will bring his twisted vision of the American dream to fruition. Soar through the air on gravity-defying Sky-Lines, wield various firearms and superhuman abilities, and join forces with Elizabeth in a desperate attempt to achieve salvation.

GAMEPLAY

BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter with role-playing elements. Infinite adapts the gameplay formula of BioShock, with weapons, powers, and upgrades often functioning similarly to those in the earlier game, albeit named differently. The player may carry only two weapons at a time and can collect other weapons and ammunition from defeated enemies or the environment. In addition to guns and melee attacks, the player can use superpower-bestowing Vigors; these include the ability to shoot lightning, disable enemies by launching them into the air, or control enemies or machines. Vigors can also be laid on the ground as traps. Vigors require Salt, the equivalent of magic points, to power the abilities.

Booker has health and a damage-absorbing shield; the shield automatically regenerates out of combat, while health must be replenished with medical kits or food.  If Booker dies, the player revives in a safe area at the cost of money, while local enemies are also partially healed. Items called Gear grant passive abilities that can improve the player’s strength or damage resistance. A piece of Gear attaches to one of four slots; only one piece of Gear can be affixed to a slot at a time, with extras stored in the player’s inventory.  Player attributes can also be improved by finding Infusions, which upgrade the players’ shield, health, or Salt meters.

The player is opposed by enemies representing the Founders and the Vox Populi. These foes range from normal infantry to Heavy Hitters, more formidable enemies that act as mini-bosses throughout the game. Armed automatons scattered throughout Columbia act as a security defense system for the city. Columbia is filled with large, open spaces that offer players freedom in how to approach enemy encounters. The city is traversed on foot or via the Sky Line, a rail system that Booker and enemies ride via special hooks. Booker can jump on, off, and between Sky-Line tracks at any time and fire one-handed weapons while riding them. The hook also serves as a melee weapon, capable of performing executions on weakened foes. Booker is aided throughout the game by Elizabeth, a computer-controlled non-player character. Elizabeth requires no protection and assists during combat by tossing helpful items to Booker as needed. She can also be directed to open Tears, bringing in items or pieces of the environment, such as medical kits or a ledge for higher ground. Elizabeth can pick locks using her hairpin to open doors or find useful items. Cash, food, medical kits, ammunition, and Salts can be found scattered throughout the game’s environments.

Vending machines can be used to buy supplies and powerful upgrades for weapons and Vigors. Optional side-missions are also available, where the player must unlock safes or decode hidden ciphers; completing them rewards Booker with supplies and upgrades. Audio logs (Voxophones) and film projectors (Kinetoscopes) scattered through Columbia expand on the characters and events of the game. Infinite has four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties are available to start. After beating the game on a lower difficulty level or inputting the Konami Code in the main menu, the hardest “1999 Mode” is unlocked. Enemies are much tougher, the player’s navigational aid and aim assist are removed, resource management is much more crucial to survival, and death is more punishing.

SETTING AND CHARACTERS

BioShock Infinite is set in 1912 and takes place in a floating steampunk city-state in the sky called “Columbia”, named for the female personification of the United States. The city of Columbia was founded by self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Hale Comstock, and funded by the United States government as a floating world’s fair and display of American exceptionalism. Tensions rose between Columbia and the government after the city intervened in the Boxer Rebellion, and Columbia ultimately seceded from the United States and disappeared into the clouds.

Comstock transforms the city into a theocratic police state, with Comstock worshipped as a prophet, and the Founding Fathers of the United States venerated as religious icons. Institutional racism and elitism are widespread in the city, with minorities serving as a labor underclass of Columbia. By the events of the game, Columbia is on the verge of civil war; the Founders of Columbia are opposed by the Vox Populi, a resistance group led by Daisy Fitzroy who fight for the rights of the marginalized.

Columbia is home to “Tears” in the fabric of space-time. These Tears reveal alternate universes. Some individuals exploit the insight offered by the tears to create new weapons and technologies, while several others replicate futuristic media heard from the Tears, bringing anachronistic elements into Columbia. The player controls protagonist Booker DeWitt, a disgraced member of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency scarred from a life of violence.

Faced with mounting gambling debts, he is sent to Columbia to find a young woman, Elizabeth, who can open Tears. Elizabeth has been confined since childhood in the city and guarded by Songbird, a large, robotic bird-like creature who has been both her friend and her warden. Two individuals, Robert and Rosalind Lutece, direct Booker to Columbia and appear throughout his travels. Though they appear as twins, they are revealed to be the same person from two different realities, having figured out how to communicate through and subsequently cross realities.

PLOT

In July 1912, Booker DeWitt arrives in Columbia, where he is pursued by authorities, who recognize him as a prophesied “False Shepherd” who will corrupt Elizabeth and overthrow Columbia. Freeing Elizabeth from her tower, Booker narrowly evades Songbird. Commandeering an airship, Booker promises to take Elizabeth to Paris; when she realizes they are going to New York City to fulfill Booker’s debts, Elizabeth knocks him out and flees. Booker awakens to find the airship under the control of Daisy Fitzroy, who offers to return the ship if Booker helps her arm the Vox Populi. Booker and Elizabeth join forces to secure weapons from a local gunsmith. Traveling through Tears, they arrive in a world where Booker is a Vox Populi martyr and open warfare has erupted in Columbia. Elizabeth kills Fitzroy to prevent her from executing a Founder boy.

Songbird attacks the duo as they try to flee Columbia, and their airship crashes back into the city. Elizabeth and Booker discover a conspiracy behind the city’s founding: Elizabeth is Comstock’s adopted daughter, whom he plans to groom into Columbia’s leader after his death. Comstock killed his wife and the Luteces to hide the truth and installed a siphon in Elizabeth’s tower to limit her power. Elizabeth is recaptured by Songbird. Pursuing her, Booker is brought forward in time to New Year’s Eve of 1983 by an elderly Elizabeth as Columbia attacks New York City. This Elizabeth returns Booker to 1912 with information on controlling Songbird, in hopes he can save her younger self and erase the torture and brainwashing she suffered Booker rescues Elizabeth, and the pair pursue Comstock to his airship. Comstock demands that Booker explain Elizabeth’s past to her, and the two begin to argue; an enraged Booker drowns Comstock in a baptismal font. Booker denies knowledge of Elizabeth’s past, but she asserts that he has simply forgotten.

Booker and Elizabeth direct Songbird to destroy the Siphon, unlocking Elizabeth’s full powers. Elizabeth opens a Tear and transports them to the underwater city of Rapture. The newly aware Elizabeth explains there are countless alternate lighthouses and versions of Booker and Elizabeth; their reality is one of an infinite number depending on their choices. She shows that Robert Lutece approached Booker on behalf of Comstock to acquire Booker’s infant daughter, Anna DeWitt, in exchange for erasing his debts, as Comstock was rendered aged and sterile as a result of exposure to Tears. Booker attempted to take Anna back from Comstock, but the closing Tear severed Anna’s finger. Comstock raised Anna as his daughter, Elizabeth; her severed finger, which caused her to exist in two realities simultaneously, is the source of her ability to create Tears. Robert Lutece, angry at Comstock’s actions, convinced Rosalind to help him bring Booker to the reality where Columbia exists to rescue Elizabeth.

Elizabeth explains that Comstock will always remain alive in alternate universes since the Luteces have enlisted the Bookers of numerous different universes to try to end the cycle. Since stopping Comstock requires intervening in his birth, Elizabeth takes Booker back in time to a baptism he attended, in the hope of atoning for the sins he committed at Wounded Knee; she explains that, while Booker changed his mind, some Bookers in alternate universes accepted the baptism and were reborn as Zachary Comstock. Booker, joined by other universes’ Elizabeths at the baptism, allows them to drown him at the moment of his choice, preventing Comstock’s existence. One by one, the Elizabeths begin to disappear, the screen cutting to black on the last. In a post-credits scene, a Booker awakens in his apartment on October 8, 1893. He calls out for Anna and opens the door to her room before the screen cuts to black.