BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite sends former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt to the flying city of Columbia to rescue a mysterious girl, Elizabeth, gifted with the ability to open tears between parallel realities. Along the way, a dark history of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and racial segregation is revealed beneath the facade of a utopian early-twentieth-century America. Irrational Games, led by Ken Levine, built on the philosophical ambitions of the previous BioShock titles, this time in a much more open, more colorful setting.

In terms of gameplay, the game combined shooting with so-called Vigors, environment-altering abilities that could be chained into combinations, along with Skyline aerial rails for fast movement between the city's floating islands and for attacking while riding. The character Elizabeth could actively react to the surrounding world, hand over ammunition and items in combat, and open tears summoning helpful elements from parallel realities, surpassing the era's standard for AI-controlled companion characters. Columbia itself was a storyteller: posters, shop windows, and snatches of conversation built a picture of society before anyone spoke a word about it aloud.

The narrative gradually escalated to one of the most complex and most-discussed endings in video game history, tying together themes of determinism, guilt, and the multiverse. Critics showered the game with near-perfect scores, praising Elizabeth in particular as one of the best-written companions in games and the dense political subject matter conveyed through the environment and incidental details. BioShock Infinite became one of the last great narrative high points of the PS3 generation and cemented Irrational Games' reputation as a studio capable of pairing philosophical depth with grand action-game presentation, shortly before the studio was disbanded following release. The debate over whether the game truly thinks its themes through, or merely gestures at them effectively, continues to this day.