This section was really, really long. At the same time, I didn’t really mind that much because I was enjoying playing through it. One of my favorite things so far has been the vigors; I feel like they provide a very interesting contribution to fighting and game play with their unique attributes. At the same time though, they are quite similar in the sense that holding and throwing mostly spawns a trap of that vigor at the target location. Nonetheless, I’ve been finding them quite useful in battle, especially the fire one. Navigating through the storyline, I think the plot is really picking up by now. So far, from what I’ve inferred, Booker has a secret motive for finding the girl. He has some kind of debt to pay in the real world ‘downstairs’ for which he’s considering trading in the girl. In between some stages, you find yourself in a darkly-lit study room with someone knocking maniacally at the door, requesting us to pay our debt. Whenever you go and open the door, the next stage starts. I found that to be a pretty nice addition to the narrative. I’ve also been picking up voxophones throughout the game, along with looking through kinetoscopes. They provide some context for the kind of world that Columbia is, which is a really racist one by the way. However, the people seem to be living oblivious lives in their luxury, brainwashed by their prophet aka white supremacist Zachary Hale Comstock. Meanwhile, Comstock constantly sends out messages defaming us as the False Shepherd and ensuring that our life is hell wherever we set foot.

When we finally find Elizabeth, our first visions of her include her ripping a hole in the space-time fabric and accessing worlds even weirder than Columbia. Interesting lady. We go and rescue her from there and then get chased around by a large mechanical bird. I think we never find out what happens to the bird but we escape from that place. Afterwards, there’s a bunch of stages throughout which Elizabeth helps us a lot with fighting. Her ability to open tears proves to be exceedingly useful later on as she can provide us with supplies as well as landscape. One notable part of the story was where we’re forced to fight our old comrade, Slate. During that exchange, a lot of history about our character, Booker, is revealed. Turns out, our past isn’t as clean as we think it is. Slate keeps referring to Comstock stealing his glory and how we’re the real warriors and not Comstock’s tin-men. Our character, however, seems bent on abandoning his past and keeps thwarting Elizabeth’s attempts to inquire about. Afterwards, we’re forced to make another choice, whether to spare Slate or not. Regardless of our choice, we acquire the shock jockey vigor and are able to call a ship to escape. At this point though, our character’s true motive surfaces when we set course for New York (where we’re supposed to deliver the girl) instead of Paris. She starts crying upon learning of our betrayal but then just knocks us unconscious. You wake up in the hands of the Vox Populi, your ship in their control until you do what they require.

Throughout the game so far, I’ve loved the whole atmosphere that the graphics and music set. Playing on ultra, the game has surprisingly good graphics for a 2013 release. For that reason, I spend a lot of time just admiring Columbia’s beauty. The music really provides for the heavenly-city feel as well. Some thing I found annoying though was a glitch near the pier fight, before the gondola arrives. I literally got stuck between a crate and a wall and couldn’t jump/crouch/sprint out. That forced me to go back to an earlier checkpoint and play through again. At another point, the character lost the ability to move the camera during the fight. I could still shoot/jump/run but couldn’t change the direction I was looking at. I think the game does have its fair share of bugs sprinkled throughout.