Bioshock Infinite: 10 Important Details You Didn't Notice
Pay close attention to the chords used during a certain sequence...
BioShock was always going to be a hard act to follow. In the underwater metropolis of Rapture it produced one of the most iconic locations in the history of video gaming, a beautiful, breathtakingly ambitious dystopia as tragic as it is compelling.
In Andrew Ryan it produced one gaming’s most iconic villains, a brilliant, charismatic, fundamentally flawed visionary whose ultra-capitalist philosophy set the stage for one of the most penetrating examinations of capitalism and scientific ethics yet attempted by the medium.
Infinite was compelled to do better, and so it went big. Its setting is a floating metropolis even more beautiful than Rapture, its villain a man more dangerous and of far more horrifying charisma, and its themes of prejudice and predestination versus free will even more layered and complex.
That complexity resulted in a dense, often obtuse, experience of such mind-blowing detail that players never had a hope of finding, never mind comprehending, all there was to see, with the unfortunate result that many a fascinating bit of foreshadowing, subtext, and even common sense consequences, flew under the radar.
Well, no more. Time to take a deep dive into ten details that slipped by players but make the experience far more rich, far more rewarding, and prove there’s a lot more down the Infinite rabbit-hole than you thought.
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Warning: Spoilers abound.
10. Booker And Comstock Are The Same Age
Now yes, fans will call nonsense on this. After all, Comstock is a man easily in his sixties, while Booker looks to be, at most, in his early forties. How can they be same age?
Well, it’s true. And, want to hear something really surprising? Booker – and Comstock – was sixteen when he fought at Wounded Knee.
How so?
According to Booker’s Pinkerton contract he was born in 1874. The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee (a real-world tragedy), took place in 1890, placing Booker at the tender age of sixteen (yes, historically sixteen-year-olds were in the military).
Comstock, after his baptism, went on to launch Columbia in 1893. It was also at this time that he used the machine designed by Robert and Rosalind Lutece to look through tears into other universes.
Overuse of that machine led to rapid and severe ageing, not to mention cancer.
The events of Infinite take place in 1912, putting Booker’s age at a relatively young thirty-eight. Likewise, though physically he is at death’s door, the same is true for Comstock.
So next time you feel old, think of how much worse it could be.