There are no spoilers here. Not for BioShock Infinite, anyway. I will shortly be spoiling Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and Soylent Green, so if you’ve only recently been introduced to the wonders of electricity I’d suggest you hustle down to your nearest motion picture emporium and go fossicking for those fine films. But no. No BioShock Infinite spoilers.
Not in this article, anyway. Those of you yet to begin, or complete, BioShock Infinite probably ought to remain clear of the comments. And naturally, don't watch the video embedded at the end.
BioShock Infinite’s been out for several weeks now. I finally finished it last night. It’s taken me a week or so to get to the end of it. Short, 60-minute bursts mostly, late in the evening when the house is quiet. I’d normally press on faster but something was holding me back from reaching the conclusion.
It was because I thought I already knew it.
A day before I picked up BioShock Infinite I came across a single comment in an entirely unrelated article here on IGN. It was just three words, but they were three words that allegedly described what happened at the end of the game.
It was only there for a few minutes before the comment and the commenter were nuked. If there was a check box to select that fired live scorpions out of his or her computer and into his or her eyes, trust me, I would have toggled that too. But people had seen it. Some were furious.
Perhaps you saw it too, or perhaps you've seen BioShock Infinite spoilers elsewhere. All four corners of the internet are apparently lousy with them at the moment. However, the worst thing you could do would be to not play through BioShock Infinite as a result. It’s not a matter of principle, or not letting the spoilsports win.
It’s because they probably haven’t really spoiled it for you.
I considered it. I considered putting it into a holding pattern beside my TV, in that pile of games I know I'll never complete. But I didn't. I pushed on instead, throwing birds at people and rummaging through garbage bins hunting for bananas or candy floss or whatever else was inexplicably nestled in them.
It’s obvious to me now, however, that this simple three-word comment was not written by someone who played BioShock Infinite. Rather, it was placed there by someone who scrubbed to the end of a YouTube video and determined the single event that took place immediately before the credits rolled was the spoiler to end all spoilers. Trapped in a lonely pit of self-despair where one can only glean rudimentary glimmers of arousal by triggering anger in distant strangers, this commenter figured depositing these words in front of the unprepared eyes of a BioShock fan would derail their fun.
I initially assumed they would. But they do not.
The closing moments of BioShock Infinite are too complex to ruin with just a few words. There’s so much more to the ending of this game than just the final few seconds. You can ruin Fight Club for someone by telling them Tyler Durden isn’t real. You can completely undermine The Sixth Sense for a first-time watcher by telling them Bruce Willis is dead. You can easily take the wind right out of Soylent Green’s sails: Soylent Green is people!
But you can’t ruin BioShock Infinite like that. There’s so much more to it. Actually, looking back now the actions of the spoiler were almost pathetic; childish naïvety prevented them from seeing the broader picture of the game's ending. Even in the process of trying to spoil it for themselves, they still didn't get it. Ultimately, knowing what was coming didn’t alter the wonder with which I absorbed the game’s final 15-or-so minutes. Knowing what was going to happen didn’t tell me why it was going to happen, and it certainly didn’t tell me how it was going to happen.
Put simply, if you’re still smarting over seeing a BioShock Infinite spoiler and you’re putting off playing it as a result: don’t. Play it anyway.
And stick around until after the credits. The guy or girl who thought they'd ruined BioShock Infinite for me didn’t watch that far.
Joke's on them, really.
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGN here or on Twitter @MrLukeReilly, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
Source : ign[dot]com
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