Burial at Sea - Episode 2

"It's up to you what matters more: your part in the play or the play itself."

- Rosalind and Robert Lutece

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2 is the second part of the story-driven downloadable content (DLC) of BioShock Infinite, and was available starting March 25th, 2014 for $15.00 USD on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Windows PC, and Mac. It is also part of the BioShock Infinite Season Pass. The story puts the player in the role of Elizabeth, as she explores Rapture during the start of its fall.

Plot
Elizabeth basks in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. However, she unexpectedly spots Sally and gives chase. As she pursues her, Elizabeth's idealized vision of the French city turns nightmarish. Her memories of Columbia, Comstock, and Sally continue to haunt her.

Elizabeth wakes up in the Toys section of Fontaine's Housewares Department shortly after the events of Episode One. Atlas and his men search the corpse of Comstock for valuables. Before they can shoot Elizabeth and do the same to her, a vision of Booker DeWitt appears and coaches her to claim she can help Atlas escape the sunken department store. She gives Atlas information about Dr. Yi Suchong to convince him, and promises freedom in exchange for returning Sally. Left alone, Elizabeth begins to explore the store and finds her own dead body amongst some rubble. She realizes that her former self was killed by the same Bouncer that impaled Comstock; and as a result, her quantum-superposition collapsed into one last Elizabeth, mortal, without omniscience or the ability to open Tears, and is cut off from the Elizabeths of the alternative universes. The Lutece twins had advised her not to venture back into Rapture, but she was determined to return to Rapture and rescue Sally whom she had previously exploited. The voice of Booker, who states he is simply a facet of Elizabeth's subconscious, helps to guide her through the Splicers who still inhabit the store. Tracking down Suchong, Elizabeth discovers the doctor knew about Columbia and built a Lutece Device connecting back to the flying city, based on the Luteces' technology. Elizabeth rationalizes that she can use the Lutece Particle that kept Columbia afloat to lift the department store back to Rapture.

She collects equipment needed to repair the vandalized device with the reluctant help of Atlas and Suchong. Elizabeth then travels through a Tear back to Columbia. She finds herself aboard The First Lady during the time when Booker and Elizabeth had stormed Jeremiah Fink's factory with the Vox Populi. She recovers the Lutece Particle easily enough, but before she can return through the Tear, Suchong forces her to collect a lock of hair from one of Fink's hidden laboratories or else be trapped. During this, Elizabeth learns that Daisy Fitzroy was instructed by the Luteces to take Fink's child hostage to push Elizabeth into making the innocence-ending decision to kill the rebel and thus pass into a mature mindset. She also learns that Fink and Suchong collaborated through the rift on many technological projects: the use and processing of ADAM to make both Plasmids and Vigors, the creation and conditioning of Songbird based on the Big Daddy technology, and the development of the Vita-Chamber. Unlike the Little Sisters, who were bonded through science, Elizabeth was bonded to her protector through an act of kindness. She retrieves the lock of hair, which turns out to be her own, and escapes some scavenging Vox agents to return to the Tear and get back to Rapture.

Once back, she transports the hair sample to Suchong, but, through a video monitor, comes face to face with Andrew Ryan. He secures the room and sends her an ultimatum, to either join up with him or die at the hands of his men who are moving through the facility finishing off Atlas' followers. Elizabeth escapes and, after fighting her way through the Manta Ray Lounge, brings the Lutece Particle to the top of the sunken structure where the load-bearing columns meet. As she releases the particle and causes the building to start rising, Atlas' men capture her, believing her to be more valuable than Sally. Elizabeth is overdosed with a truth serum in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the "Ace in the Hole," and wakes up two weeks later, with the Rapture Civil War in full swing. Atlas then tortures her by beginning and threatening to fully perform a transorbital lobotomy unless she tells him where the Ace in the Hole lies. Elizabeth is unmoved by this until Atlas threatens to perform the act on Sally. In a moment of intolerable panic, Elizabeth recalls one future that she previously witnessed, and tells Atlas that the Ace is in Suchong's lab. Holding Sally hostage, Atlas sends Elizabeth to retrieve the Ace. While exploring, Elizabeth indirectly causes the death of Suchong at the hands of a Big Daddy, one who Elizabeth recently made protection-bonded with two Little Sisters. She retrieves the Ace -- a simple piece of paper with a coded message from Suchong -- from the doctor's corpse and returns it to Atlas, knowing full well Atlas plans to kill her. Atlas is furious at the contents, but in one last flash of memory, Elizabeth finds herself aboard the plane that carried Jack to Rapture, and recognizes the coded message as Jack's trigger phrase, "Would You Kindly." Secure in the knowledge of what Atlas' future holds, she translates the code. Atlas begins to plan to arrange for Jack to come to Rapture to kill Ryan, and then fatally strikes Elizabeth again, leaving her alone with Sally "honoring" his part of the deal. Sally begins to sing La Vie en Rose to comfort Elizabeth. As Elizabeth succumbs to her wounds, she realizes that Jack will be the one to end the cycle of violence in Rapture and save Sally and the other Little Sisters. She dies happily, content that the matters will be resolved.

A post-credits scene shows a view of Rapture and the tail of the Apollo Air Flight DF-0301 sinking in the city -- indicating Jack's arrival in Rapture.

Gameplay
The DLC features the city of Rapture built from scratch with game mechanics and the Unreal Engine 3 re-used from BioShock Infinite. Episode 2 prominently features stealth-style gameplay and elements of survival horror, in contrast to the more action-driven approach and glamorized setting of the first episode.

The player now has the ability to pick locks and can be used to open doors and disable turrets. Elizabeth is physically weaker than the previous protagonists. She can't carry as much ammo and becomes inebriated after only one alcoholic drink. She is unable to deal any damage to the Big Daddy.

When struck by an enemy, Elizabeth will lose a large amount of health, so the stealth approach becomes a necessity. When creeping up on an enemies, crouching will make it harder for them to notice Elizabeth. The easiest way to get through an area is to take the enemies out one by one. Hiding is an important part of the gameplay since Elizabeth is such a vulnerable target. She can hide in air vents that will also give alternate pathways or jump on ornamental lighting sconces to avoid contact or flee.

With the DLC comes a brand new gameplay approach: 1998 Mode. The new gameplay option will challenge players to complete the narrative using only the non-lethal tools afforded to them.

Main Characters

 * Elizabeth
 * Booker DeWitt
 * Atlas
 * Sally
 * Robert Lutece
 * Rosalind Lutece
 * Yi Suchong

Enemies

 * Thuggish Splicer
 * Leadhead Splicer
 * Big Daddy
 * Frosty Splicer
 * Houdini Splicer
 * Ryan Security
 * Vox Populi

Weapons

 * Air Grabber
 * Crossbow
 * Hand Cannon
 * Shotgun

Plasmids

 * Old Man Winter
 * Peeping Tom
 * Possession

Vigors

 * Ironsides

Locations

 * Paris
 * Housewares
 * Columbia
 * Artemis Suites

Behind the Scenes

 * This is the first BioShock story featuring a playable female protagonist.
 * Episode Two features a lock-picking mini-game, unique from BioShock and BioShock 2's hacking mini-game.
 * The concept of Quantum superposition explains that "a physical system -- such as an electron -- exists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states simultaneously; but when measured or observed, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configurations". This concept is frequently related to the Schrödinger's cat experiment (details omitted), which puts the cat in a superposition, being potentially alive or dead, until the box is opened, forcing only one outcome. This might be reflected with the the Burial at Sea universe containing two possible Elizabeths: the one that died at the hands of the Big Daddy in Episode One and the one that is the main character in Episode Two. Two states of Elizabeth existing in the universe, but only one is made apparent on viewing.
 * When Elizabeth passes Daisy Fitzroy's body after her death, a Hand Cannon can be seen lying beside Daisy's body. In the main game, the gun dropped is a pistol.
 * This is due to the fact that the Pistol is not available in Burial at Sea.
 * The reload animation for the Hand Cannon looks different and is a bit slower due to Elizabeth's inexperience with weapons. The Shotgun's animation, on the other hand, doesn't change much.
 * During Atlas's interrogation of Elizabeth, the song "The Great Pretender", by The Platters, can be heard playing in the background. This is obviously an allusion to the fact that Atlas is actually Frank Fontaine in disguise.
 * When Atlas, in anger, breaks from his Irish accent into Fontaine's Bronx accent, during the episodes final, the close captions for his dialogue change from identifying the speaker as Atlas to identifying him as Fontaine.

Audio Diaries

 * Burial at Sea - Episode 2 Audio Diaries