
Introduction
When Irrational Games released the original Bioshock on August 2007, it received unanimous praise and effectively rewrote the rules for the First Person Shooter genre. Ken Levine’s vision of a distopic utopia, taking place in the picturesque world of Rapture, recalled the influence of novelists George Orwell and William S. Burroughs and Ayn Rand’s alternate vision of perception and reality. The gameplay’s unique concept of using both conventional weapons and super human powers (referred to as Plasmids) helped separate it from its contemporaries, such as the Call of Duty and the Halo series. This hybrid would establish the Bioshock franchise as a major force in the coming years.
Coming after a more muted reception to BioShock 2, Irrational Games’ big leap comes in the form of Bioshock Infinite. Expanding on the dystopian, paranoid vision that encompassed the first two Bioshock games and adding greater density and depth, Bioshock Infinite expands the notion of what the story can be in a video game and is the apex of the Bioshock franchise.
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