So if you remember the end of Bioshock Infinite, Elizabeth turns basically into this omniscient goddess who can travel and open portals through time and space and between universes at will. She exists in multiple realities, has infinite parallels etc. Which is why none of the story makes any sense at all.
Main story of Burial at Sea I is that a comstock killed baby Anna/Elizabeth by mistake when abducting her through the portal. He takes on the identity of Booker and moves to rapture. Then Elizabeth changes into a femme fatale version of herself and decides to have her revenge, culminating in Booker trying to rescue a little sister and then getting killed by a big daddy.
This story only works if Elizabeth was suddenly IMPOTENT and a SADIST. For one, during the accident with Anna (which is due to the portal closing and taking her head not her pinky) the BI version of herself stands next to Comstock and DOES NOTHING. Instead of, you know, using her powers to keep the portal open or just shoving Comstock aside. I found this utterly unbelievable. And you cannot even explain that with her being unable to interfere as even after the baby dies she still exists (because she obviously is from a different universe).
Then, her whole plan to take revenge on Comstock is not just to kill him (which she could do any second she wanted) but to make him realize what he did and then have him killed by some flunkie. In doing so (omniscient goddess, remember) she willingly burns a little girl alive as if that was the only way to have him remember. And then she (who with the wink of an eye teleported an enemy thousands of meters into the sea) gets killed by the same bid daddy who she saw coming a mile away. WTF?
Which is where we segment into Burial at Sea part II. She suffers from remorse at killing that one girl in order to get revenge on comstock for killing baby her (yes, just as stupid as it sounds) and tries to rescue her from Bioshock 1 baddie Atlas. BUT: Apparently because she died in one reality, she cannot come back to the same reality except by becoming human again with no special powers whatsoever. Yeah. This is exactly as stupid as it sounds. Even ignoring how we have seen her crossover at will in Infinite even if she dies in that reality....there should be no reason why one reality would impact all the other infinite timelines and universes. Because she herself in part I is able to easily cross into timelines where she or a baby version of herself dies. This feels like a huge copout for the designers not being willing to design her powers into the game. Also from a story perspective it is never really explained what that will do to all the alternate versions of herself - do they lose their powers or not? Does this create a human copy of Elizabeth or does she lose her powers? Neither makes sense, neither is explained fully.
In any case, Burial at Sea II has its good moments. There are parts of the story (especially with Songbird and its creation, as well as with Big Daddy bonding with little sister) that are awesome and well done. The dialogue is great writing. And the overall story is moving. But some moments just stick out like sore thumbs and ruin the DLC for me to the point of me having to caution you of spending money on it.
Several moments of the DLC itself were pretty bad.
- The underlying message of it seems to be that the circle can be broken....by having the subject of most abuse killing herself to help others. This is simplifying but nevertheless what happens.
- There is one torture scene happening to the main character that went far beyond what I would consider artistically acceptable. You cannot convince me that these
five (very NSFW) minutes were in any way necessary to the story or had any merit other than showing what a bastard the villain is.
- The overall purpose of the DLC was to link Infinite to Bioshock 1. I am not sure if that was in any kind necessary. In any comparison of Rapture to Columbia the latter almost inevitably wins and I would rather have explored colombia again than rapture, where almost none of things that made Infinite cool (and what it was designed for) are present.
- why even have elizabeth in the first place if any stock action hero would fulfill the same purpose?
- The overall story of the DLC was pretty bad when you think of the implications. So Elizabeth sacrifices herself to save one little girl. While doing so, she knowingly starts the civil war in rapture thereby killing thousands of people. I remain unconvinced that this was the only way to break the circle of abuse and abuser - by killing herself and thousands of others in the vain hope that Jack Ryan was going to break the circle (but what if the player in Bioshock 1 killed just one or more of the little sisters?)
And when you take the other bioshock games into account this ending feels even less satisfying. First of all, the ending seems rushed and short, failing to convince me of Elizabeth's inner state of mind leaving her no option but of killing herself. It did not feel right considering how strong and determined she was in Bioshock infinite.
What is more, it is a profoundly unfair ending to that particular character's arc. All her life she has been abused and tortured, locked up in a tower. Through immense effort and through the effort of Booker, she gets to be free of that and recovers her power. If anything she deserved to have a happy ending. Or in short: I did not fucking race through the last levels of Bioshock infinite just to have her commit suicide in the most retarded manner ever when she easily could have prevented her being killed in the first place.
It even gets more troubling when taken into account that Ken Levine and his troupe turned the Intellectual Property over to 2k. It feels like he decided to tie up all loose ends and prevent the characters from being used in the planned sequels. Which on some level is understandable but when done in this instance just feels petty, especially considering it won't stop any kind of character recylcling if the guys who own the IP feel like it.
So the overall point of the DLC storylines were:
a) nothing you do in infinite ever really matters
b) if you suffer abuse, the only way to break the cycle is not by your own actions, but those of proxies whose powers are far below your own
c) Everybody you cared for in infinite is dead
d) Play Bioshock 1 which is the best game ever
e) BTW, why did Bioshock 1 need more explaining in the first place?
f) Especially because the authors will not explain any of the interesting parts of infinite in the DLCs, like whatever is the plan of the luteces (who did not want her to go back in the first place)
