Sleep-speaker

I want to talk about Bioshock Infinite. I'm not sure how to begin. This game has been spectacularly successful, critically and commercially, with good reason, and also subject to some criticism, also with reason, and I'm just, I'm in a weird place with it. It's doing some interesting, difficult things with the narrative, but I can't help but feel that it holds up this dark, uncomfortable mirror, one almost pointedly aimed at the entitlement and violence of these...stubbly, world-weary white, masculine protagonists. How hard it must be for them to watch their wives and daughters brutalised and stolen, to be emasculated, to save them at such personal cost to their honour and self-respect, to make such dark, morally ambiguous decisions. Oh! How this new white man's burden is written in every cocked eyebrow and condescending, sarcastic remark about the way things really are and how they're just passing through and do not want to get involved.

But. Of course. We need a hero, and it must be someone bitterly disinterested with exactly the correct ratio of beard to razor.

Bioshock Infinite constructs a beautiful noose around this idea. It hangs you with it. And then it bends over backwards to hide what it's doing for fear of upsetting you.

( Spoilers EVERYWHERE. )

And those are my thoughts...