Bioshock Infitie - Burial at Sea venting (SPOILERS)

[hummingbirdmadgirl]

the many different faces of Elizabeth that exist

I want to start this out by saying that I love the Bioshock series. It's rare to come across FPS's that are so smart and so brilliantly designed. Like most things that end up with a ton of sequels, I think that the story quality has kind of gone down over the course of the series (I think I'm in the minority in that I didn't think BS Infinite was the best game ever created ever), but I also think that is to be expected. The first game was a scathing take on objectivism that had a horrifying twist 3/4 of the way through, and they sort of ran with the horrifying twist 3/4 through bit while dropping the politics.

Anyway, I could talk about the series for pages and pages and pages, but I'm not. Instead I'm going to focus on BS Infinite and the DLC for it, which as a gamer, as a woman, was just incredibly unsettling to experience, and honestly kind of ruined the whole series for me, at least for the moment. As a gamer, I've often found situations that have made me uncomfortable as a woman. In a lot of ways, sadly, gaming and feminism are sort of at odds with each other. In the same vein though, I am loathe to turn every moment of pop culture that I expose myself into a platform to discuss how women in media are treated, since it often seems like low hanging fruit, however what I just played has been possibly one of the most horrific story arcs of a female protagonist I've ever seen. This is sort of exacerbated by the fact that it happened in a series that overall has been lauded for being above the typical bro-bullshit that tends to permeate gaming, especially FPS games.




Bioshock Infinite

you can even just see from this screenshot that a lot more effort was put into this character aside from "damsel in distress", you can see that her character oozes personality

In BS Infinite, the goal of the game is to save a character named Elizabeth from a tower in the sky-city of Columbia, doing so will erase a debt that your character (Booker) has somehow incurred.. Once you meet her, you learn that she's a self taught genius (in addition to her inherent intelligence she has spent her whole life cooped up in a tower reading), she's caring, smart, funny, just overall very endearing and sweet. In addition to all of this, she is in touch with some sort of multiverse, which means she can create objects and shift timelines at will, she exhibits remarkable and untapped power. Overall, even though her life as been pretty miserable and isolated, she's an optimistic individual who mostly just dreams of going to Paris. Ken Levine and the staff at Infinite said that they took great pains to model her after a Disney princess, in fact she looks not unlike Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She's adorable. Instead of the game feeling like one giant escort mission with AI only slightly more capable than an ice cube, she's an engaging and capable character that you want to see succeed. Truthfully, it's made very clear early on that if she wasn't with you, you wouldn't make it out of Columbia alive as she's incredibly helpful and powerful in her own right. By the end of the game, she has learned some horrible truths about her lineage and has had to make some terrible and violent choices, but in the process also gained inordinate power, knowledge and most importantly freedom. She ends the game as an almost demigod like character aware of the future and the present and the past. You think if there is an character in the Bioshock universe that stands a chance at happiness or fulfillment, it's her. She's one of the few characters that isn't a mindless drone or driven made by a lust for power. Even though she -is- essentially infinitely powerful, she doesn't seem corrupted by it, she just seems at peace.

Burial at Sea Episode One

a markedly darker and cynical character has taken her place

Then the DLC happened. The first episode of Burial at Sea was kind of a trainwreck, but the long and short of it is that you play another version of Booker (again remember the multiverse thing) who is living in Rapture. Elizabeth appears to him and tells him that they need to find and save a Little Sister (a massive plot point in the first two games, young girls who have their bodies hijacked to store ADAM which is a source of power for the city and its inhabitants). Elizabeth is clearly hostile toward this iteration of Booker, and at the end of the episode, it turns out that her sole intent was to kill you, which she does by having a Big Daddy attack you (the whole multiverse thing makes it complicated, but she's essentially trying to go and kill very specific versions of Booker that exist throughout all the parallels, however in this instance she decides to turn it into an epic game of cat and mouse). It's grim and surprising and the whole episode was poorly paced and kind of nonsensical with a ton of loose ends and little understanding as to what made Elizabeth become so cruel. It felt sort of cheap since it relied on the whole twist ending, but whatever...as a gamer the whole thing seemed more like a prelude to the second episode which sounded a thousand times more exciting because we'd actually get to play -as- Elizabeth.

Burial at Sea Episode Two

see this bold and potentially kickass woman that they used to promote the second episode of Burial At Sea? Yeah, well this is the only time you'll see her. She never shows up in the game.

The idea of getting to play as Elizabeth was thrilling. While all the characters at the end of the Bioshock games turn into overpowered machines that can easily get you through boss battles, Elizabeth was different. I knew her personality as she was such a vibrant and constant character in the game when she was AI (in the first two Bioshock games the character you play is completely silent) and her powers were vastly different. Instead of relying on guns or plasmids, it seemed like a whole other world of possibilities would be open when I picked up the reigns as this pseudo demigod character. It seemed like it was going to be awesome and I was really -really- excited. The obvious icing on the cake was that I'd get to play as a girl*, something you don't often get to do enough of, but I was most excited to see what playing with her infinite powers was going to be like.

Well I shouldn't have had my hopes up because in the first five minutes of the episode, it turns out that Elizabeth has given up her powers to return to Rapture out of an overwhelming sense of guilt based off of her actions in the first episode. In addition to that, you also find out that she, with all her powers and foresight, was somehow -also- killed by the Big Daddy, something you discover when you find her body smashed through a wall. But you don't just find her body, the camera lovingly pans over her corpse, beautiful and stone white in death. It's incredibly morbid and unsettling how lovingly this scene plays out, but it's nothing compared to what is about to come.

Since she is guilt ridden over killing Booker and leaving a Little Sister to a fate unknown in the first episode, as I said, Elizabeth has chosen to give up all her powers to return to Rapture to set things right. Apparently in the Bioshock universe, returning to a world where you have previously died will do that to even the strongest and most powerful individuals (this is extrapolated on by two other characters, but if you haven't played the game it's going to sound really convoluted so just trust me on this) In addition to being rendered human, Elizabeth is incredibly weak. Her healthbar is a fraction of what any other previous character's had been, she takes damage incredibly easily, she can only carry a portion of the ammo other characters can, she's just really nerfed. She is also somewhat delusional and spends most of the game talking to herself by pretending she is conversing with an idealized version of Booker throughout the game. Not even just conversing, she is constantly turning to him for help, help that SHE had previously provided. So right off the bat, our strong, demigod character has been reduced to a weak, bordering on insane character, one who needs to turn to the projection of a strong male character that doesn't even exist.

Since she is so weak, the game is also way more of a stealth game than any other previous installment of the series, which in and of itself is kind of stupid, but is made even worse by the fact that Elizabeth is trying to be stealthy and decides to keep her high heels on. Because that totally makes sense. This is made even more ridiculous by the fact that the game takes place in a department store so Elizabeth easily could have found more sensible shoes to sneak around in, but whatever, this is a minor point.

So the game goes on and Elizabeth spends a good chunk of it wallowing in self doubt about pretty much every task she has to accomplish and is constantly turning to fake-Booker for reassurance that she can do anything. At one point fake-Booker even tells her that people are always underestimating her, in an effort to make her feel better...which yeah, that sums it up pretty well. She went from this veritable goddess who could control time and space to a sniveling twit who needs to be told by her imaginary friend that everyone underestimates her in an effort to make her feel better. The more she travels through the universes of Columbia and Rapture respectively, the more disillusioned and unhappy about everything she gets.

But it just gets worse.

Without getting too deeply into the plot, Elizabeth end up on a mission to help a man named Atlas in order to save the Little Sister she is searching for. It is clearly an uneasy alliance. Throughout the course of her mission she finds out she was essentially tricked into killing a character from the main game, something that is explained by some bullshit analogy to menstruation, where only blood would "change her from a girl into a woman", a revelation that is completely gutting for her. After that cheerful scene, of course the man she is working for double-crosses her, something she was anticipating but does nothing about. She ends up getting knocked out and tied to a chair for a lengthy interrogation sequence. She gets injected with sodium pentothal in an effort to get her to tell her captors information she is unaware of. At this point, it struck me how much attention was paid to the aggressive way in which she was injected with the drug, a clear emphasis on the penetration of her skin. I usually am not one to get massively into phallic symbols or perceived phallic symbols, but this seemed (to me) to be pretty clear and kind of uncomfortable. This goes on for two weeks apparently, though she spends most of it unconscious or delirious.

Finding the sodium pentothal route to be unsuccessful, her captors decide to threaten her with a trans-orbital lobotomy. By threaten I mean that they slowly penetrate her ocular socket with an icepick, disturbing her visual field, and repeatedly hitting it with a hammer, just lightly enough to be absolutely terrifying while not breaking all the way through her skull. This literally goes on for minutes, Elizabeth strapped to a chair with an icepick penetrating her eye socked, being threatened that it can and will get worse if she doesn't do what her captors want, each threat punctuated by the pick being thrust further and further into her bone. I've played a LOT of videogames and my preferred genre is survival horror, and I can honestly say that this is one of, if not the, most unsettling thing I've experienced in a game. The attention to detail is both astounding and stomach turning, the way her vision changes when she has the icepick inserted under her eye, the way it distorts with every thrust, her cries of pain each time it goes deeper...it's pretty revolting and even though there is absolutely no sex involved, it completely feels like a rape scene, which I am assuming was the intent.

After this, she goes and finishes her mission to help Atlas (knowing full well he is going to kill her) with even more help from her imaginary friend Booker, and finally does get killed by Atlas, bludgeoned to death with a wrench. But all is not lost, even though -she- failed to help or save the Little Sister, she put events in motion that would eventually result in Jack (the protagonist from the first game) could make it to Rapture and save ALL the Little Sisters and make the world a better place with little to no repercussions, something she was apparently completely incapable of doing.


Sorry about that champ, it'll be over soon.

What bothers me the most about this game, aside from the fact that the last hour or so feels like complete torture-porn, is the absolute and utter destruction of Elizabeth. Ken Levine et al made a -huge- deal out of the fact that she was a strong female character, she wasn't going to just be an annoying AI bot, that she was smart, resourceful, powerful...They spent all this time and effort creating this vibrant character, and then spent the last episode, the last Bioshock the studio would ever make, systematically destroying her in every way possible. We get -two- instances where the camera focuses lovingly over her corpse, once at the beginning of the game, and then once again at the end...and it's not just two instances of seeing her dead body, due to the mechanics of the multiverse theory, it's two different dead bodies, killed at two different points in time. Pretty much everything she thought she was doing of her own volition turns out to be orchestrated by other people. She gets beaten, drugged, almost lobotomized, and finally beaten to death. But it's all done -so- lovingly and with so much attention to detail while also seemingly out of character for the entire series that it's REALLY fucking disturbing. This "strong female character" spends the first huge chunk of her life held hostage in a city in the sky, and once she is freed from her jail, she goes off and gets killed in the most horrific way possible. In one fell swoop Irrational Games manages to make both her character and pretty much the entirety of Bioshock Infinite feel completely futile. Instead of finding real freedom, instead of making it to Paris and living out her life, Elizabeth goes off on a completely out of character vigilante killing spree which results in her own gruesome death which wasn't even a result of her actions, but of her guilt over them.

So yeah, I just left the second episode feeling disturbed and unsettled and not in a fun way, in an icky "I can't help but feel that these guys really don't like women" type way. I mean, none of the Bioshock games are particularly happy affairs, and terrible things happen to all of the protagonists, but Elizabeth is the only time where it felt like every moment of her suffering was relished by the storytellers. She's just set up for failure from the start of the episode and things just get worse and worse for her every minute that goes by...


*While I dislike the lack of female characters in videogames, it's not something that bothers me as much as it should maybe? I'm hoping as more women gamers become more outspoken that this will change, and I find articles like this kind of silly since there was no real way to insert a female character into that universe without screwing up the dynamic of the game and of the south park universe on a whole

Comments

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

What the FUCK.

[brigid.livejournal.com]

seriously. like, i really don't don the feminist glasses when i view all media otherwise i'd hate a lot of stuff...like I love South Park and GoT and stuff that is clearly not always woman friendly but something about this was just REALLY unsettling to me

[nepenthedreams]

I sometimes wonder if, because they seem to think most gamers are male, even female characters are a bit dehumanized because they assume the gamer is seeing her as an object rather than as a subject (as in identifying with her). So, I wonder if it's more traumatic for us female gamers to go through an experience like that (since we'll identify more with the character) than it is for a male gamer. I don't know. Then again, I can sympathise with and identify with a male character in a game and I'm sure a man can do the same for a female character. Not that my feelings are strong, but I feel as much "identified" with Lara Croft in the latest tomb raider as I did with the dude in Assassin's Creed III.

Interestingly Far Cry 3 throws this on its head in a way where the expected female captives (you are all captured by pirates, you, the male main, and your five friends, 2 of whom are female) ... anyway, you expect your female friends to be abused, but in fact, it's your male friend who is repeatedly raped and turned into a sex slave. There's way more chatter on the internet about this than there is about any of the sexual violence inflicted on women in a multitude of games. I do think it was an interesting move, because there's no way you can feel titillated by the way they portrayed it - just horrified.

[brigid.livejournal.com]

yeah see I don't care if i play a male or female character, like i referenced a blog post someone wrote where they were really upset they couldn't make a female character for the South Park game because that -totally- would not have made sense either to the game or even the South Park universe.

I wasn't this bothered by the ending of the other two Bioshock games, which are also relatively dark, but I think maybe that is because those characters were silent? Elizabeth has personality, albeit one that changes pretty dramatically over the course of the DLC...so maybe that is what bothered me?

I have to check out the Far Cry games at some point now that I have a PS3. In general I find rape as a plot device very irritating because it's always portrayed as like, the ultimate form of victimization, one that is almost exclusively used against women, and something about that really bothers me. Maybe it's the idea that people who have experienced sexual assault are perpetual victims instead of survivors?

Did you play the newer Tomb Raiders? I always wanted to love the series back on the original playstation but I just couldn't get into it, I think mostly due to the lack of dialogue. I've wanted to check out the newer game but $$$

[nepenthedreams]

The new Tomb Raider is one of the best action-adventure games I've played in a long time. It still plays on the "damsel in distress" storyline, but Lara isn't the damsel - her best friend is. It's a really good story and it honestly is very frightening - to the point where I was literally scared to play the game unless Alli was home. However, it's also very awesome then when you build up your skills to fight back. Actually plot-wise, it's not all that different from Far Cry, in terms of you're exploring ancient ruins on an island you're stranded on, trying to get off the island, etc. Great game. I was lucky enough to get it on sale for xbox. I think I saw it's on sale this week on PSN? Also, I thought it was great that they DIDN'T use the obvious rape plot device on Lara....you expect that's the awful thing that happens to her but really it's so much worse and more horrifying. (but not as horrifying as what you described in Bioshock). The game-makers made a game with a strong female character, whose clearly female, but didn't go out of their way to make the plot different due to that. A male character could have easily fit into the same story.

Far Cry 3 - well, I can't say much for the dude who gets raped being a perpetual victim because he reacts in what I think is a reasonable way (begging you not to tell the other people about it, and then spending all his time sleeping in the tent because he's traumatized) ... but some people complained his character wasn't fleshed out. What i found interesting is - in a background story, you learn that a) he is really into watching p0rn and b) you see a scene (prior to your capture) where he's in a Bangkok club trying to hook up with a hooker. So you see where he participates as the consumer in a world of not necessarily so consensual sex - and then he becomes the object. It's a pretty interesting commentary. The whole game has a lot of interesting commentary, about violence turning you into a different person, about becoming numb to violence, about all sorts of really uncomfortable truths. I'm about halfway through, but as far as I can tell, the game is designed to make the typical male gamer uncomfortable and to turn typical game plots on their heads.

I'm playing Infamous Second Son right now and I'll say for sure the lack of dialogue is bugging me. It's "open world" and I feel like they used that to do "lack of story". But I've only just started - maybe it will pick up. The story starts out as compelling and then suddenly you're just wandering around an open world able to do whatever you want.

[jonathon nerddoom snyder (from livejournal.com)]

Its likely. There are going to be moments in any fiction that are more traumatic for a women than it is or at least not as much for a man due to the perception of our genders and our life experiences due to our gender. To be fair very little people liked Connor, the main character, from Assassin's Creed 3.

[xenoglaux]

Thank you for the warning, I'll be skipping this.
I'll also probably avoid his future games, because screw that guy.

[xaotica.livejournal.com]

I remembered this post but waited until I finished the game to read it. It was not what I'd been expecting because my interpretation was pretty cynical from the start. Here's this woman who supposedly is hella powerful, except that she looks like a Disney princess and gasps and hides in the corner during moments of conflict. Except that we also know that she's experienced many traumatizing events and has been distant from humanity for most of her life. She learns that someone is kidnapping her for money and decides that instead of throwing him into another dimension she will toss him any money and ammunition that she finds and put her life in his hands. To me, it seemed like "stand by your man, even if your man has demonstrated that he has questionable ethics and you know almost nothing about him". I have yet to see a game where your lone male comrade cowers in corners and quietly watches people shoot at you...

I didn't even want the DLC cuz I was annoyed. I will say that the art is beautiful, gameplay is fun, and there's a lot of creative talent in that studio... but gaming still has a long way to go. Also wasn't feeling the race aspect of the game.

[jonathon nerddoom snyder (from livejournal.com)]

To clear one thing up: The Booker you play as in episode 1 is actually an escaped Comstock who fled to Rapture after his failed kidnapping of Anna and reverted back to being called Booker.

I agree with you for the most part on Elizabeth's treatment in Burial at Sea. While I do think there were some good character moments with her in episode 2, its hard not to raise an eyebrow with how she is treated. I also don't buy that Elizabeth will use a child as bait in order to taunt and kill Comstock.Her death was needlessly grim, which was followed after a trans orbital lobotomy, and she ultimately dies for the benefit of Bioshock 1s' story, a story i completed back in 2007 that had nothing to do with Elizabeth or anything mentioned in Burial at Sea. Elizabeth deserved better or at least a death that was fulfilling to her story and not a contrived, unconvincing way to tie Infinite in with Bioshock 1.

I still love the bioshock series, Infinite being my favorite, but Burial at Sea will always be seen to me as the black sheep of the franchise.