Burial at Sea - Episode 1

"Even in a utopia, someone has to clean up the mess. That's where I come in. The girl promised me a way out, and I was desperate enough to believe her. We were all buried at sea; we just didn't know it yet."

- Booker DeWitt

Burial at Sea - Episode 1 is the first part of the story-driven downloadable content of BioShock Infinite, coming out on November 12th for $15.00 USD on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Windows PC and OSX. It will also be free to purchasers of the Season Pass. This DLC puts the player in the role of Booker DeWitt in a new story, taking place in the city of Rapture right before its fall.

Gameplay
This DLC features the city of Rapture rebuilt from scratch with game mechanics and the Unreal Engine 3 used for BioShock Infinite. It includes new weapons, new Plasmids (replacing Vigors), new Gear, and Tears. The first half of Episode One focuses mostly on an exploration of Rapture and its story, while the second half focuses on combat mechanics close to that of the first BioShock game, with scarce resources and less crowded combats.

Plot
In this story, Booker Dewitt is a private investigator in Rapture, usually handling dirty work for his clients. On the eve of 1959, a mysterious woman by the name of Elizabeth asks him to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Sally. Elizabeth's intentions are sketchy and she is unwilling to reveal any vital information, only that Sally is alive and local artist Sander Cohen may have the information regarding her whereabouts. When they arrive at Cohen's club they are denied entrance entrance unless they are wearing masks crafted specifically for the guest of his party. Booker and Elizabeth then search the nearby stores for the mask which results in Booker sneaking around to acquire it. After several stores of searching they find it and return to be welcomed in to Cohen's party.

As the two enter the Garden of the Muses, Cohen is working on his latest art piece which is capturing the moment of lovers dancing, but Cohen is constantly finding error in his muses and kills the two, upsetting him. Booker and Elizabeth confront Cohen about Sally. Before expressing his suspicion of malevolance in Elizabeth, Cohen agrees to avail himself on the whereabouts of Sally in exchange of Booker and Elizabeth to dance for his muse. In order to fulfill Cohen's offer and to discover his information leading to reclaiming Sally the two dance. It is only moments before Cohen once again finds error and knocks them unconscious, drags them to a Bathysphere, and claiming it will lead them to Sally.

When Booker and Elizabeth awake they notice the bathysphere is headed to the  bottom of the ocean, where Ryan had recently sunk the Fontaine Department building. Cohen reveals that Sally is residing the Housewares section, but Booker and Elizabeth must find the tram to reach it. When the two arrive at the main building, they are immediately attacked by the Splicers Ryan imprisoned in the now buried department store. After defeating numerous enemies, Sally is discovered lurking in the ventilation system. The two close up all but one vent to trap Sally when they increase the temperature to force her out. Sally starts screaming due to the heat and flees to that one vent exit.

Afterwards, when Booker attempts to pull her out, he discovers she (as he feared) is a Little Sister. Booker is shocked and when he aggressively tries pulling her out again, she calls for her Bouncer  Big Daddy, whom then attacks Booker with his drill. Booker and Elizabeth engage the Big Daddy and manage to kill him, allowing Booker to attempt to reason with Sally, but to no avail. Booker, struggling to recover his daughter, recalls previous memories of his earlier attempts to do so, but in another universe. In a flashback,  Booker is revealed to actually be a regretful Comstock, who bargained with the Robert and Rosalind Lutece to steal another Booker's child, but ended up killing the child (her head split between dimensions) in his fight to take her. Booker (Comstock) comes to, realizing he had the Lutece twins remove his memories and move him to Rapture. Having regained all these memories, he now knows the Elizabeth that hired him is the Elizabeth from the Infinite dimension, who (after the events of Infinite) is traveling between dimensions to make sure that Anna and Booker are together in all of them and that Comstock doesn't exist in any of them. Comstock apologizes to her, but she does not accept, instead promises he will be sorry, and he is impaled by a Big Daddy's drill. Comstock screams in pain as the screen fades to black, thus concluding Episode 1.

Main Characters

 * Booker DeWitt (Comstock)
 * Elizabeth
 * Robert Lutece
 * Rosalind Lutece
 * Sander Cohen
 * Sally

Locations
Market Street : The first area of Rapture  Booker roams to assist Elizabeth to find and question Cohen

Fontaine Department Store : The recently sunken building that imprisons Fontaine's Splicer army

Housewares: A section of Fontaine's Department store where Sally is hiding.

Behind the Scenes

 * The inspiration for the cover art came from the French poster of the 1942 film, This Gun for Hire.
 * This game also features a new execution called stealth kills, it only works on unsuspecting enemies.
 * The scene where Booker is impaled by Bouncer is an homage to the splicer that was impaled by the Bouncer in the original BioShock trailer.