1. Is The Ending Too Much?
I said in the introduction to this article that I believed
BioShock Infinite's narrative aspects were near flawless. So why am I picking on the game's ending, right? First of all, I did say that I believed the game's narrative aspects were near flawless, and I do mean it (for the most part). When I praise the game's narrative, though, I'm praising the way that
Infinite uses the medium to tell the story it's telling, and not necessarily each and every single one of its many, many plot threads. That's to say,
Infinite is a game that puts story first. A lot of games don't. On that aspect alone, it's an incredible achievement. You're absorbed in the story the whole time - so much so, that
Infinite's relatively basic combat system doesn't even come close to derailing the experience in any way, shape of form. The immersion is too damn good. But the ending of the story seems a little muddled to me, and is somewhat overreaching in its final moments. The ending of the game rushes to give you all the plot points you need to try and piece everything together, which is - in this case - enough to fry your brain for weeks on end. There are hundreds of theories doing the rounds on the internet as I write this, all of which are trying to figure out what exactly happened over the course of
Infinite. Because of the extremely complicated,
Primer-like nature of the story, nobody can really piece it together entirely. It was written that way on purpose, I think, and though I like the ending, I believe it's more deus ex machina than something that can be genuinely worked out and pieced together like a puzzle. The problem is, the game kind of gives you the impression that there's something incredibly complex at work, though I'm still not sure that the final "twist" makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe you could shoehorn it into something should you sit down and map it all out, but I think what you'd find, ultimately, would be something badly convoluted instead of brilliantly complex. Don't get me wrong:
BioShock Infinite is incredible in the way it uses the gaming medium to actually tell a story. I mean, there aren't even any cut scenes - you play through the entire experience from beginning to end from a single perspective, and it's wonderfully captivating. I've just got this nagging feeling I can't quite escape: that the ending "twist" isn't particularly good for the story as a whole.
Like this article? Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments section below.