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In the BioShock multiverse, there's always a lighthouse, there's always a man, and there's always a city. In the world of film noir detectives, the constants are somewhat simpler. There's always a dame. There's always a case. The only variable is how much trouble both will inevitably turn out to be - and in the underwater city of Rapture, you don't need to be a professional s**t-magnet like Booker deWitt to find plenty of that.Playing Burial At Sea was a strange experience for me, not least because in theory it's the BioShock Noir that I've longed to see since wandering into the PI's office in BioShock 2 - its original trailer feeling less like something Irrational had made than something I'd inadvertently yanked through a dimensional tear. Sure, in my head, it wasn't Elizabeth smokily asking for a light and Booker gracing her cigarette with a plasmid-fuelled burst of flame from his thumb. Everything else though was terrifyingly close, down to tiny details. My ringtone has long been the main theme from the movie This Gun For Hire. Of all the classic noir posters Irrational could have chosen to homage for Burial At Sea, guess which it picked. Creepy.
In practice though, having played through the whole thing from start to finish, it wasn't what I expected - and I suspect that's going to be a common reaction. If not necessarily for the same reason. To answer the basic questions without any spoilers though, yes, while the DLC is set in Rapture, it's absolutely a piece of BioShock Infinite content, yes, it is 'our' Elizabeth rocking the femme fatale look, and yes, this is Rapture Prime rather than an Elseworld. At least, it's meant to be. In an odd but easily ignored time-saver, it does opt to use Infinite's vigors/gear rather than the original game's plasmids/tonics, offering a handwave involving Suchong stealing Fink's research and the city then deciding to go back to injections, and there's a deeply misjudged attempt to retcon in skylines that are then barely even used. For all intents and purposes though, we're indeed returning to the same utopia doomed to become Jack and Delta's ruined playground.
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