It all begins in 1912, on a rowboat in a stormy sea. Booker DeWitt, a private investigator, is heading on a mission to look for a girl. Return the girl and pay the debt. The two rowers don't give much aid to him. No matter what he asks, they just ramble with seemingly odd remarks between each other.
The boat finally reaches its destination, a lone lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. Here, DeWitt jumps off and enters the lighthouse. He finds a corpse and a note to conclude his task, or else. With nowhere else to go, he climbs higher and finds a chair in the light room. He sits on it, gets shackled, for his own safety, and then, instead of going up, the chair launches to the sky, and then, for the first time ever, we, as well as Booker, see the floating city of Columbia, an independent city state that broke free from the USA after its founder, the prophet Zachary Comstock, got fed up with the progressive politics. Now he controls his own god, fearing utopia.
So, from the bright, flying city of Columbia, Booker has to find the girl to pay off his debts. Before the shit hits the fan, he learns a thing or two about the city. Like that, the people use Vigor potions that give them similar strengths as there are in the first two BioShock games. The place is also seemingly a paradise. Seemingly, as it's also deeply racist, a fact that then sets the action in motion.
After gunning his way through Columbia, Booker finally finds Elizabeth in a tower, where she is guarded by a gigantic bird like the robot Songbird. They manage to escape it, with Elizabeth believing Booker is going to help her get to Paris, away from her father, Comstock. To do that, they make a deal with black freedom fighter Daisy Fitzroy, who runs a group called Vox Populi. They seek weapons to strike up a revolution.
If you were wondering why Elizabeth is important, besides being Comstock's daughter, she can open up tears in time and space, allowing glimpses of the past and future, as well as having the ability to make things existing in other realities manifest into her own. It's also possible to walk through these tears and enter other realities.
After doing the deed, Booker and Elizabeth get their airship, but are attacked by the Songbird. Elizabeth agrees to leave with him if he leaves Booker alive, who obviously leaves after her. During the pursuit, he is sent into the future of 1982, where older Elizabeth is leading an attack against New York. This older woman, following in her father's footsteps, sends Booker back, hoping that he manages to save her from this future.
Again, Booker rescues the girl, and they decide to take out Comstock, who is now waging a war against Vox Populi. They find him, Booker drowns him, and then they direct Songbird to destroy a siphon that has been limiting Elizabeth's powers. With that gone, Elizabeth transfers them to the future, in the underwater city of Rapture.
The story of the dimension-hopping pair ends in a proper BioShock manner; it's bittersweet for all involved, but this time around, there's only one ending, not multiple ones like there were in the previous games. But the story of Elizabeth and Booker doesn't end here; it's concluded in the two-part DLC, The Burial at Sea.
It begins with Booker waking up—a different Booker, as he doesn't recognize Elizabeth walking in. A different Elizabeth, at a different time and place. Booker is still a private eye, and Elizabeth wants him to find a lost girl, Sally. He agrees and steps out, only to reveal that they are now in the underwater city of Rapture. Rapture before it fell, so the first part of the game gives a good opportunity to walk around the underwater art deco paradise when it was still in its full glory.
Soon enough, the duo ends up in the prison part of Rapture, the sunken departuremen store, where crazy splicer and other undesirables roam, but the girl is there as well. And if you know anything about Rapture, you'll know that the girl is a little sister.
Again, Booker takes care of the action, and Elizabeth opens tears to bring in aid. They push through to the end, only for Booker to find out that the universe-hopping Lutec twins sent him there to forget his past after he on this unverse caused his daughter's death.
The second part begins in Paris, where Elizabeth is living her fairytale life with friendly people everywhere. This lasts until she sees Sally, whom she follows behind a door and ends up in Rapture. She wakes up next to the dead Booker, with Atlas capturing Sally. Just before he and his goons kill Elizabeth, she manages to convince them, with the help of the dead Booker, that she knows a way out of the department store. Atlas, full of desire to take Rapture from Andrew Ryan, agrees.
Elizabeth knows that something is wrong, and she soon learns what when she finds her own dead body buried in the debris. A Big Daddy has killed her, causing all the tears in the alternative world to collapse. She is now the only one. Now, guided by the dead Booker, she has to find the means to get Atlas what he wants. On her way, she learns of the connection between Rapture and Columbia and how people between the universes have collaborated in creating technologies far beyond imagination.
It all really ends a bit before the first BioShock starts. Atlas gets what he wants, finds the way to Rapture, and takes it over. He also gests his hands on the "Ace in the Hole," which is revealed to be the secret phrase that triggers Jack, the protagonist of the first game. And so, you managed to give a hand to the destruction of Andrew Ryan's dream.
Is this the end of BioShock? I have no idea. There are hints in Burial at Sea that suggest that Andrew Ryan might not be as dead as it seems, as Elizabeth finds messages from the labs where the Vitachambers were developed, stating to set them all to the bio signatures of Andrew Ryan. So the old bastard might be alive after all. Perhaps, at some point, we see the new rise of the egomaniac businessman, who believed altruism to be the worst trait in humanity.
As far as gameplay goes, I don't really have much to say about BioShock. If you've played the previous games, you've played this one as well. Perhaps the biggest addition are the skylines and hooks Booker can attach himself to to ride between places and get an advantage over his enemies. The second part of Burial at Sea introduces some stealth abilities, making it a bit more interesting as far as gameplay goes. There's also a two-weapon limit for both Booker and Elizabeth. So, there are some influences from other moderators included here as well. But overall, the game plays well.
If you like BioShock: Infinite, it boils down to a question: if you find the story to be one gimmick after another, and even if you do, how much of it can you stomach? More than once, the narrative felt it was wearing out its welcome, especially because of its social commentary being so on the nose. Not that the previous games were much subtler in that sense, but here it's even more so. And to add insult to injury, there's not even a pretense of your choices having an effect on the ending of the game. You get what you get.
If you have not played the first BioShock, Infinite does spoil quite a bit of it, especially with the DLCs, which end up as a prequel to the original story. So while it's not really necessary to play BioShock 2, I'd recommend playing BioShock 1 before diving into Infinite.
BioShock Infinite is sold in Steam and GOG. It's also available for consoles.
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