Play Stepping outside is another world entirely. Andrew Ryan has sunk Fontaine’s department store to the bottom of the ocean (even more so) and turned into a prison: it’s now home only to Splicers and other nasties, and when Booker and Elizabeth’s investigation takes them there, we enter more familiar BioShock territory: dank, leaking environments, a tense atmosphere and combat aplenty. Of course, it’s not long before that undercurrent becomes all-consuming. “When Fontaine went down, the city was louse with ‘em… she started showing up… should have known if I started to feed her she’d never leave.” Pre-fall Rapture, then, echoes BioShock Infinite’s Columbia – immaculate, bright, colourful, yet with a dark undercurrent beneath it. “She’s just another orphan,” says Booker about Sally. The wider backdrop is centred around the conflict between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine (aka Atlas), and the ramifications for the city one of which was the closing of Fontaine’s orphanage. “Adam factories,” Booker comments, while later Elizabeth notes that “This world values children, not childhood… there’s a profit to be made and men who make it.” Childhood is a major theme in Burial at Sea – the story is driven by Booker and Elizabeth’s search for Sally, an orphan that Booker became attached to that he believed dead. It’s an insight into the dark heart of Rapture before the fall. I want to go to there.In one area, rows of Little Sisters stand in a group they’re dressed identically, their faces eerie white masks.
The city teeters on the brink of chaos, but this is very much in the background during Burial at Sea’s opening act, in which Booker and Elizabeth are – effectively – exploring the city in all its art deco grandeur going into stores, watching a Big Daddy at work out in the ocean, listening in on conversations between citizens and so on. Burial at Sea, you see, is set on Decem– a significant date in Rapture lore, and a time at which its utopian façade is gradually coming apart and internal factions are gearing up for conflict. What makes this return so special is we see Rapture in its heyday. Rapture before the fallRapture – the underwater dystopian world introduced in BioShock – is one of the all-time great video game settings, and Burial at Sea takes us back there, and does so with style.
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