I wish I could rate this game lower than half a star, because that is TOO generous for the disgrace it is.

BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea Part 2 is a stain on the BioShock franchise name- spitting in everything the previous games stood for and squandering what shreds of potential Infinite was struggling to hold onto, as Ken Levine decided since 2K was going to make BioShock game without him to tank canon by tying all the game into a timeloop and retroactively running every part of the franchise.

There is no way I can cover every way this DLC fails and offends the franchise- I’d have to do a scene by scene analysis to cover all the retconning and ways Elizabeth is forced into Rapture Lore to make all of canon hinge on her existence, but by golly I’ll give it my best shot.

Let’s start off simple, the gameplay is horrendous. They go the stereotypical “Woman is weaker than man, so she must have stealth-based gameplay- with the option of non-lethal”. They take away all of her tear abilities because they made her so OP they couldn’t figure out a way to balance her in gameplay so they strip her down to the most generic and basic thing (also anyone else remember when she whipped Booker so hard with a wrench in Infinite he was knocked out for a good while? Yall that would’ve KILLED him, she can clearly do some damage- but no “girl weak”) but the stealth gameplay is a JOKE.

Enemies forget where you are so fast, not that any of that matters because right off the bat they give the ability to CHEAT the stealth gameplay so you can turn invisible and know where all enemies are at any time. Peeping Tom is INSANELY broken in BaS, especially since the AI is so poorly done, they hardly look around and instantly forget where you are- They don’t even have a line of code to shoot or attack where they last saw you, so you can just turn invisible, shoot them, turn back invisible, repeat until they’re dead and you’ll take no damage. AND THEN, right at the START of the DLC you can easily go and get an upgrade for Peeping Tom which makes turning invisible while standing still use NO EVE. So you can stand still, invisible FOREVER and keep popping in and out of sight killing enemies with no punishment. It’s actually pathetic, and incredibly boring to play.

Also the lock picking minigame is boring- BS1 had a pipe game that took some thought to it, BS2 simplified it do a timed minigame where you had to hit the right sections, and if you could get rewards- which SOUNDS similar to BaS’ lockpicking, but in BS2 there are multiple levels you have to clear, AND the minigame didn’t freeze time so you had to worry about enemies and fighting while hacking- Lockpicking freezes time so you can just sit there and stare at is while it randomly moves around. At least in BS2’s hacking it was about timing instead of just waiting to for the pick to move where you wanted.

The story to this DLC is horrible- and it takes about 3 hours to get through it. It’s full of so much garbage that doesn’t work in tandem with pervious games, and, at many times, actively works against preestablished lore and rules in favor of Elizabeth being the Messiah of the BioShock franchise (Sorry Elizabeth, you were boring in Infinite being a generic character, but Infinite takes her and spikes her character into the ground while simultaneously trying to suck her dick off. This DLC, and how Ken talks about her in interviews, definitely gave me a Pavlock Reflex for her. Canon was better without her).

Like?? Why is Atlas in his supporters locked up in this department store? How in the two months from Fontaine faking his death did he get enough of the ball rolling for Ryan to actually lock them up in a department store? Four months to build up to the Kashmir Bombing feels like enough time for me, but two months to be a threat and then locked up? Then how did they pull the bombing off? Keep in mind this DLC takes place December 31st, 1958, the night before the bombing. Atlas has NO idea how to get out of the department store they’re locked in which is WHY he doesn’t kill Elizabeth right off the bat, since she promises to get them out, there’s even a log about one of Atlas’ men trying to pick when and where they attack (referencing other holidays, like Valentines in Arcadia) meaning they didn’t KNOW when they were going to escape, so HOW did they sneak a bomb into a restaurant statue on such short notice? That’s something you’d need to set up in advance not just magically pull off when there’s only a few hours left of the holiday.

Elizabeth’s powers are totally bogus and completely made up- How come when she goes to a dimension, she died in she immediately loses her powers, but when the Lutece’s go to places they died (remember them digging their own graves back infinite??) Nothing bad happens to them? How come Elizabeth can see through all the doors and all of time but still went through with part one? Wouldn’t she have seen her own death? Seen the guilt she felt at killing Sally and found a better way to go about things instead of focusing down on her revenge quest? They gave her so much power and instead of having her use it or hold her accountable this DLC constantly pats her on the back and tells her how great she is. You CANNOT go a MINUTE without having some character telling Elizabeth she’s smart, or pretty or special.

Having Atlas hit on Elizabeth was such a BOGUS moment- A) he’s like 39 at this point hitting on a 19-21 year old B) She’s a DIME a dozen to him, he was one of the most powerful and influential people in the city, and even as Atlas he still has a lot of power- he’s not just gonna bed over backwards for some random girl who showed up and didn’t take him at face value C) There is NO way the devs are unaware of Atlas’ role as fandom sexcapade, so having him hit on the player character is fanservice so the player can be like “OH Atlas is flirting with ME”. Suchong WOULDN’T call her pretty either- he thought Tenenbaum was gross cause she had mustard on her shirt, you think he cares about girls at all??? Nah man his only love is science! Ryan would NOT call her special- and would NOT offer her a job after pointing out he knew she wasn’t from Rapture. Ryan was super paranoid! He got people sent to prison (BaS does not acknowledge the prison in BS2- because why would Ryan lock people in a department store when he could send them to Persephone and have them rented out to the protector program?), started hanging in Rapture for smuggling because he was scared of contact with the surface and people sneaking into Rapture to steal it from him- He wouldn’t BEND over for Elizabeth because she’s ~so~ great. Even the lady Elizabeth STOLE a DRESS from was like “I’m not angry… this dress is so pretty, who ever was wearing it MUST have great taste”

You can tell they didn’t put Tenenbaum in this DLC because they knew if you put Elizabeth next to an ACUTALLY good female character all her cracks would should- BUT EXTRA POINTS TAKEN AWAY for bringing IN TENENBAUM’S VOICE ACTRESS just to have her voice a SEX AD and then not using her for the actual character. The treatment of female characters was already bad in part one but now its worse in part 2- we get it confirmed that Elizabeth’s outfit is from a sex shop! That’s right she stole a sex outfit to go hit on her alt dad (also like for the time period its such an underdressed outfit to be sold from a sex shop). This DLC is also just a torture porn for Elizabeth- she is CONSTANTLY getting beat up, knocked over the head, knocked unconscious, put through a seven minute log first person torture scene where Atlas tried to lobotomize her, to be once again smashed in the head by Atlas to kill her.

(the torture scene is bogus for treating our only female main character like that- but ALSO??? Dumbing down Atlas by having Elizabeth have to tell him a lobotomy would erase her memories and make her useless to him- and the SAME with the ending where Elizabeth gives him the ace [oh we WILL get to that] and then Atlas kills her before actually confirm that she got him what he needed, he’s SO LUCKY she didn’t immediately kick the bucket, he’s so stupid in this DLC. and ALSO there is NO WAY Atlas would break character and use his real accent he’s a better actor than that, and there’s ALSO NO WAY he would let ANYONE know about his true identity. The fact that he’s torturing Elizabeth in his ~special~ room where anyone who enters knows who he really is is DUMB. He KILLED people in BS1 to keep that information in check it was one of his most VALUEABLE secrets. Also are you trying to tell me he was wearing wigs this whole time??? No way bro, he grew his hair out and got plastic surgery like the GOOD OLD lore said.)

BaS’ desperate need to connect Columbia and Rapture together is so forced- APPARENTLY Vigors and Plasmids are the same thing now!! Which is SO DUMB- Why are there no negative side effects of splicing in Columbia? They mention Fink doing deep sea expeditions to get ADAM slugs but???? HOW??? Columbia is constantly floating over mainland America, how were they getting all the way to where the slugs were in the Atlantic Ocean?? Vigors are drinkable abilities and require 10x as much ADAM so how are they mass producing so many of them?? They don’t have their own versions of little sisters so ?????????????

There’s also a big contradiction in the lore BaS introduces because they say Suchong stole the information on drinkables from Fink, and then presented the product to Ryan who loved it and circulated it into the population- but if THAT’S the case then WHY DID THEY ADD A LOG ABOUT FONTAINE TELLING SUCHONG OFF FOR MAKING DRINKABLES???? If Suchong is reporting to Ryan then that means Fontaine has faked his death and isn’t Suchong’s boss. If Fontaine is alive and giving orders to Suchong on the plasmid business then Suchong shouldn’t be presenting products Ryan because Ryan is his boss yet! This DUMB DLC can’t even keep its new internal logic in track!!

(we are taking a quick pitstop, to complain about Suchong’s character in BaS. They literally make a walking stereotype of him, in BS1 he had a thick accent but spoke in compete sentences and had very good English, only occasionally referring to himself in the third person, he was highly intelligent, and you could hear his inflated ego. In BAS THO he speaks in EXCLUSIVELY broken English and will only refer to himself in the third person. Which is cool, and totally not racist at all. And don’t forget in part one Booker talks about torturing Suchong for 15 hours in a off hand comments [which would’ve got him arrested by Ryan for attacking one of the most important people in the city] and part two starts off with Elizabeth and Atlas calling him slurs, followed by more characters calling him slurs later. This DLC really expects you to hate Suchong, when he was ‘good character, bad person’, and hopes you’ll get off on watching him brutally die by a Big Daddy+ instead of going “hey why is his skin tone yellower”)

[+Watching Suchong’s death is such a fanservice moment and takes away from the magic OF the audio logs! There’s a mystery and uneasy energy as you only hear what happens but don’t see it so you don’t know all the exact details. BaS takes that magic away and shows us exactly what happened to Suchong]

BACK to failed internal logic- Part two actually directly contradicts part one! By saying Little Sisters and Big Daddies aren’t bonded! Meaning that the Big Daddy that kills Bookerstock (and later Elizabeth in between parts) shouldn’t have shown up and cared to fight the duo at all. And Sally shouldn’t have called out “Mr. Bubbles” when in danger! This also retcons BS2 where the intro to the game happens at the same time as this DLC, and Big Daddies and Little Sisters are already a working pair. They try to justify this by saying the detachable drills Big Daddies have only in this DLC have ANGRY GAS that makes the Dads angry on SIGHT- so they’ll aggro on anyone, meaning the part one dad just happened to see Bookerstock and Elizabeth and went feral. We all know they just didn’t know what they were doing when writing this DLC and made things up as they went.

This ALSO comes back to retcon BS1 as later in the DLC Elizabeth makes the Little Sister Big Daddy bond by having the girls heal the dad with their ~special ADAM~. They’re trying to connect Columbia and Rapture, while making Elizabeth indispensable to the Rapture world by saying Elizabeth and Songbird were bonded through “an act of kindness” “a thorn in the lion’s paw” and then repeating the same thing here with the Little Sisters and Big Daddies. But its BOGUS because WHEN did Big Daddies need special ADAM to survive?? They’re spliced up men grafted into suits who did construction on the city and were later repurposed into protecting Little Sisters. They don’t need SPECIAL ADAM, any will do. It also goes against all of Point Prometheus from BS1, where we see all the tools and techniques that went into Little Sister conditioning and bonding the duos.

It also doesn’t make sense because we never see Elizabeth and Songbird being bonded at all- We only ever hear Elizabeth talking about how much she hates him and wishes she’s left him to die. So these two points don’t connect at all! But Elizabeth’s character is poor through at the whole DLC. She feels guilty, but its clear she only cares about Sally as a projection of her own guilty for abandoning her in part one, as we never see her try to engage with the character on a deeper level, or get to a point where she thinks about Sally sperate from herself and as an independent person who deserves respect. She constantly tries to deflect guilt, blaming everything on the “cycle of abuse” that Ken loves, saying that there’s no hope for any of them, did they ever really have any choice- instead of owning what she DID. She never even cares about the plight of Little Sisters as a whole, as when she finds two in Suchong’s lab she doesn’t give them any acknowledgment, show any concern for them and instead gets irritated when they don’t have nay useful information for her. She just uses them to get what she wants, like how she used Sally in part one to get revenge, so did she really learn anything. Worse of all! The game rewards her for this thinking! The narrative agrees with the cycle of abuse and that no one has agency and constantly validates her pity party instead of challenging the way she thinks! The hallucination Booker that’s her subconscious hardly calls her out or holds her accountable.

Her intelligence is completely make up too as plot convenience. She knows everything and can see behind all the doors, yet she apparently she apparently had to sit around n Rapture for two months before the start of part one reading books (and then STILL doesn’t know about Little Sisters), they cut her off from her omniscience (which is how she HERSLEF referred to her knowledge) yet she still knows everything she needs to get what she wants. She can magically read all of Suchong’s coded information without needing to find a key and translate it, she knows exactly how to fix a Lutece device without any help, she knows every model of Bathyspheres and their components because she “read a lot of books” which is SUCH a COPOUT ANSWER. They could’ve had a decoding minigame to try and show she’s intelligent instead of just relying on her using big words.

And don’t forget how literally every character exists to prop her up- let us NOT FORGET they retconned Daisy’s character after all the backlash of stereotypically portraying the only named PoC in Infinite (who is also the only named WoC in the game too) and made her instead a stepping stone in the narrative. No, instead of her having any choice or agency in her life the Luteces had been guiding her every action to suit themselves- and tell Daisy the only way to defeat Comstock is to PRETEND she’s going to kill Fink’s so to BAIT ELIZABETH INTO KILLING HER TO MAKE ELIZABETH A REAL WOMAN BECAUSE THE ONLY THING THAT SEPERATES A WOMAN FROM A GIRL IS BLOOD- That’s RIGHT its PERIOD METAPHOR. The reduce the black woman fighting of the rights of the oppressed to a PERIOD METAPHOR for another woman that’s more important than every other character!!!!!

AND THAT’S THE THING WITH BURIAL AT SEA. Its ALL about how great and special Elizabeth is. Every other character is dumbed down or killed in order to make Elizabeth look better- Elizabeth has to make the Big Daddy Little Sister Bond for Suchong cause he’s too stupid too! She has to start the revolution for Atlas because he’s an idiot and can’t do it himself! SHE has to get FONTAINE THE WYK TRIGGER PHRASE because he was TOO STUPID TO LEARN IT HIMSELF.

Which is the BIG BAD THIS DLC DOES- WHY would Fontaine not KNOW the code for the expensive bioweapon he commissioned? He went through all the effort of buying a fertilized egg off of Ryan’s mistress and paid for Jack to be genetically modified so he would be an adult in 2 years, built strong for fighting with all this mental conditioning to make sure he could be controlled??? You think he WOULDN’T KNOW the TRIGGER PHRASE?? ‘Would You Kindly’ doesn’t even sound like something Suchong would pick as the trigger phrase! That’s got Fontaine written all over it so it would be easy to work into conversation and subtle. Fontaine would not just LET Suchong have so much control over Project WYK- He wouldn’t let Suchong just have it in his lab, it would’ve been heavily under Fontaine’s control with how much money and weight Fontaine had banking on the project. How does Fontaine know Code Yellow in BS1 and not WYK??

And the worthless ending to this worthless is having Elizabeth give Atlas WYK after kick starting the revolution to force the events of the first BioShock so Jack will be brought to Rapture and save Sally. WHICH IS BAD. First of all- Elizabeth is willing to kill everyone in Rapture, which is a lot of children and other Little Sisters who are going to be harvested by Atlas’ men, the people on Jack’s plane in the plane crash, who were COMPLETELY INNOCENT and there was at least ONE BABY ON BOARD, AND the Little Sisters that DON’T get saved at the end of BS1 and go on to be experimented on by Lamb and turned into Big Sister who die at the bottom of the ocean, because she values Sally’s life more. Which is morally disgusting to me when she had OMNISCIENT so this WHOLE SITUATION WAS AVOIDABLE- If she had cared about ANYONE beyond herself she could’ve done a lot of good with her power, Elizabeth could’ve found Tenenabum and teamed up with her using her tears to help ferry children out of the city.

THIS ENDING ALSO DEFEATS THE POINT OF BIOSHOCK 1. Only the good ending is ever referred to during the game, as they make Jack’s agency, Jack’s first real choice in his life a constant of the universe. Now he no longer as the choice that defined him as an individual and proved to himself that he wasn’t a tool to be used is gone, cementing him permanently as a means to and end- as Elizabeth uses him to justify her selfish actions- Saving the Little Sisters in the Original BioShock is no longer his choice, but Elizabeth’s.

There’s no point to the first game! Everything was predetermined, destined to happen- And all the antagonists have lost their intimidation because we know they can’t do anything on their own and need the franchise’s most special girl to do everything for them.

This all gets constantly validated out of universe as Ken Levine talks about Elizabeth and BioShock in interviews. He backs up the ice cold talk of BioShock being about how the “Cycle of Abuse is inescapable” and how “Elizabeth is the only character to escape that, because she’s very special” its is BULL. The first two BioShock’s were about escaping abuse- With the characters escaping Rapture directly symbolizing escaping abusive situations to have a better life. Jack is able to kill his abusers in the first game, and if you go for the good end, he helps the Little Sister’s escape the cruelty that’s been afflicted to them as they escape to the surface- And don’t forget Tenenbaum (like Ken does) who realizes her mistakes and drops everything to fix them and make up what she did to the people she hurt, escaping the city with Jack and the girls to have a better life until she comes back in BioShock 2. And we CAN’T forget the Bioshock 2 Little Sisters, Delta and Eleanor who have to fight against dehumanizing and Eleanor’s abusive mother to escape to the surface and live safe lives. Should we forget about Porter? Who had to cope with his wife’s death and learn to let go instead of clinging onto his grief, trying to find ways to relive his old life? Well if you ask Ken NONE of those people MATTER. ONLY ELIZABETH OVER CAME HER ABUSE, ISN’T SHE THE BESTEST PERSON EVER. Despite the fact she continued her cycle of abuse, refusing to move past her pain and went on a revenge quest. Abandoned a child to burn to death without a second thought, got a city and plane full of people killed because she knew ‘what was best’. Yeah, that sounds like someone who’s overcome their trauma and not succumbed to it all.

Ken will talk about her like she’s been hurt the worst in the franchise- when we have Tenenbaum the Holocaust Survivor, All Little Sisters, Eleanor and Jack who were human trafficked, experimented on and denied human rights from a young age- Delta and Porter went through their own trafficking and experimentation as they were turned into Big Daddies and dehumanized. But No. Elizabeth had it the worst. Spending 19 years isolated in a really nice tower, furthering her hobbies and education- studying music, painting, dancing while having all her physical needs met. So sad.

And all of this was done because Ken KNEW this was going to be the last piece of BioShock he was apart of before 2K took over and made it a reoccurring franchise. So he made Infinite a prequel, tied all the lore to Elizabeth and then killed her so 2K couldn’t do anything without him.

AND IT SUCKS BECAUSE LIKE INFINITE PEOPLE THINK THIS GAME IS GOOD. There’s a reason we haven’t had a BioShock game in 8 years and it’s not much of a guess to say this DLC is why.

I hope 2K does us all a favor and retcons in whenever they drop more info on BioShock 4, instead of pandering to the clowns who forth over the faux deepness BioShock Infinite and both parts of BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea brought to this franchise.