Bioshock Infinite - Burial At Sea

If you've been keeping track of this blog for a while, you might recall that I absolutely loved the game Bioshock Infinite,  I spent weeks after I finished it debating the ending with people I knew.  I spent hours thinking about how it affected me both on an intellectual level and an emotional level.  It wasn't my favorite thing of 2013, but I'm rather surprised I didn't put it higher than The Last Of Us, if only because I still sometimes think back to Bioshock Infinite and what everything meant, but The Last Of Us has been out of my mind for quite some time.

However, there was something I wasn't proud of.  As of this last weekend I was yet to play the downloadable content "Burial At Sea," a two-part add-on to the game that, from my understanding, took place back in Rapture, the city from the first Bioshock.

So I decided to fix that.

And now I love the game even more.

Morality, Opportunity, and Picking Sides: Choices in Video Games

The surge of "choice systems" in video games has had a rather significant resurgence in recent years.  Mostly, it seems like a way for a game developer to offer players a chance to customize their own game experience, make the story more unique to them.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  There have been a few games I've played where it felt a choice system was simply tacked on, others seem to have their entire game premise based around difficult choices.

Now, I'm not a video game scholar.  I haven't studied the history of video games, or interviewed developers, or anything like that, so all I can report on is my own impressions.  If I'm off, or wrong about something, I hope someone lets me know in the comments below.  I'm not looking to pick a fight, just express what I've experienced.

More after the cut.