It’s been four months since Bioshock Infinite came out, and I believe it’s safe to say that there are still gamers out there still feeling the effects of its powerful ending; I know I’m personally still recovering from the shock. My favorite activity after playing Infinite was watching reaction videos of the ending from other gamers. It was interesting watching the contortion of faces as each person went from confused, to shocked, to angry, and finally to sad understanding. The most surprising aspect of watching these people was that no matter the differences between them, each person ultimately went through these stages in their own way. As always, there was split opinions after the fact on how good the story and gameplay were, but at least there is comfort in knowing that those first initial minutes of end game credits left many people in the same state of mind. In a day and age where every story there is to tell has been told, how was Ken Levine and the developers at Irrational Games able to pull off such an ending?
The answer is misdirection. The world, the story, the characters, the music, all of these things were created and used in such a way to play off of common conceptions of gamers. Where a normal approach to creating a story would start small and build steadily to a climax, Infinite starts small for a brief period but then ramps up the volume to eleven. The biggest glaring use of misdirection was the contrast between the first Bioshock game and Bioshock Infinite. There’s the obvious comparisons of one is in the ocean/one is in the sky, one is a social commentary of Objectivism and the dangers of completely free enterprise/one is a social commentary of Nationalism and the dangers of worshipping governments and the founders of nations as deities, etc.. People who played Bioshock were undoubtedly going to go into Infinite with a particular set of preconceived ideas based upon the first game and games in general. Things that seemed like they were ultimately going to be a typical boss battle in any other style of game turned out to be allies while friends turned into foes. Explanations for seemingly simple plot points became more difficult while hard to understand aspects became clear. Everything you think you know or understand is changed in some way to play off of your prior knowledge of the Bioshock series and games in general.
The visualization that I use to understand the story evolution of Infinite is that of a camera lens. The story starts big by throwing major ideas at the player, things like racism, nationalism, and classism; however, these themes are so big and spread out that the lens is terribly out of focus. Slowly, the lens becomes clearer as the focus becomes smaller and more directed towards Elizabeth and her growing understanding of the world that she unknowingly lived in her whole life, leading her to mature along the way. This act of focusing continues along the way even throughout the ending sequence until the last few seconds. Everything from before becomes useless and forgotten in those last seconds, but it was those ideas that allowed for the ending of Infinite to be as impactful as it was.
For those who would like to see a much more in-depth analysis along the lines of what I have introduced, I suggest checking out Movie Bob’s series The Big Picture on The Escapist Magazine website which includes a video titled “Shock Treatment.” I warn those that are interested, this video is filled with spoilers (in fact, he gives the entire storyline within the first couple of minutes of the video), so those that haven’t played or are not done yet should wait. But those that are done, I highly recommend this video; it is very interesting and informative.
The Big Picture - Shock Treatment
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