{"id":265,"date":"2013-04-14T00:17:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T04:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/?p=265"},"modified":"2013-04-14T00:19:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T04:19:33","slug":"infinite-regress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/infinite-regress\/","title":{"rendered":"Infinite Regress"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know I probably shouldn’t but I’m going to write a thing on\u00a0Bioshock Infinite<\/em> since I played it all the way through, and a theme in the game has been gnawing at me. It doesn’t hurt that the theme now has echoes\/resonances in other arguments going on among the beautiful people of gaming criticism, who thankfully will never know this post exists. ANYHOW.<\/p>\n

Since there are obvious spoilers for the game (and a few for Tomb Raider<\/em>, FYI), out of courtesy the rest of this post is behind the cut.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Right. So I’m not here to give my Extensive Breakdown\u2122 of the game because that’s not really helpful or needed. I will say that my general impression is that Leigh Alexander and I came to roughly the same conclusion: Columbia is in many ways a themepark<\/a>\u00a0(the phrase Leigh and I batted back and forth on Twitter was “racist Disneyland”). It’s brightly colored, fantastically designed, intricate and wonderful and primarily experienced on rails. Everything about it is caricature; larger-than-life, big and bright and about as subtle as a sledgehammer.<\/p>\n

As a secondary point, I want to emphasize another opinion I have on that game (which you can also hear in an upcoming episode of GaymeProbe<\/a>) — the idea that racism is basically a red herring, in\u00a0Infinite<\/em>. That doesn’t mean it’s any less problematic; I think Courtney Stanton’s breakdown of that issue<\/a>, among others, is pretty spot-on so do some reading there. But I mean, in terms of the plot structure and overarching narrative of\u00a0B:I<\/em>, racism isn’t interesting, important, or even necessary — it’s there to push the cart along the It’s A Jingoistic Racist Eminent Domain World After All ride to its inevitable,\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0<\/em>science-y conclusion.<\/p>\n

But it’s that major plot device — the multiple worlds, the predestination paradox ending, the time loop that has claimed the lives of 120+ Booker DeWitts — that actually interests me, even if the game waits a little too long to get into the meat of it.<\/p>\n

Lemme start with voxophones.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have the energy to collect them all — I had Redbox’ed the game and to be honest at about the same time you start fighting the Siren and the game becomes\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em> I really just didn’t want to shoot anything anymore — but the few I heard did interest me. More to the point, afterwards I made an effort to hunt down recordings\/transcripts of the voxophones of Rosalinde Lutece in particular. I felt like they’d give me some insight into the events of the ending.
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