5 Most Thought Provoking Video Games Of The Decade

BioShock was a steam punk spiritual successor to the System Shock series and its atmospheric underwater Rapture was a testament to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The game focused on the illusion of agency as a game mechanic until its final moments where you were presented with the horror that you're not actually in control at all, deconstructing the nature of gameplay itself. BioShock Infinite was the 3rd game in the series and it managed to elevate the existential dread to new heights. Literally.

Infinite is a deconstruction of idealistic utopias focusing on determinism and consequentualism. As Booker DeWitt arrives in a floating city called Columbia on a quest to find a girl, he is thrust in a reality bending adventure which forces him to confront himself literally and physically. It makes us question whether we are actually in control, or if we are nothing more than pawns in a great meta game of chess being played out dozens of times with the same results. It focuses on infinite universes and ideas such as predeterminism, while the game fixates on the idea of free will.

Booker is shown that there will always be a man, there will always be a girl and there will always be a lighthouse and that regardless of his actions the same thing will happen again and again across an infinite number of universes where he, Comstock and Elizabeth will play through the same inevitable loop again and again and the only way to stop it is to die before the cycle can begin again. While it may be one of the darkest endings in gaming history, it offers the slightest glimmer of hope to Booker and Elizabeth's future.