"So I thought, maybe we can do something where we give the player the opportunity to just play with the full toolset, and all of the powers and upgrades and everything, and create far more challenging gameplay for them," he said. "So with that in mind, we gathered up the people really specialized in combat on Infinite and essentially told them the gloves were off, you guys can make whatever you want."
If it seems odd that a game criticized so much for its overly abundant combat would release its first DLC based entirely around combat, well, keep listening. Levine announced a second piece of DLC, one designed by the core Infinite Team who has been thinking about it since the game shipped. It's a two-part outing called "Burial at Sea," and as the title implies, it takes place in the city of Rapture.
Specifically, players will take control of Booker DeWitt (still attached at the hip to Elizabeth), and explore Rapture not after its fall, but in its prime when it was still Andrew Ryan's utopia showcasing the best of what man can achieve. Levine promises this DLC will be "a little more narrative oriented, obviously. A love letter to the fans."
In the first part, players control Booker, in the second, they'll be in Elizabeth's shoes instead.
"We decided we wanted to shift things around a little bit for the third one, so the player character in the third DLC, you get to play Elizabeth and the gameplay is quite different as her. She's not the tank that Booker is. And you'll see how all the stories come together."
So how do all the stories come together? Those who beat the game will remember that (spoilers) Booker and Elizabeth ended up paying a short visit to Rapture as it was revealed the city was one of many parallel universes with similar themes adjacent to a place like Columbia. Further investigation revealed the mind-blowing twist of just how well the story of Rapture matched up with that of the floating city. I'll recount my old exploration article I wrote after the game's release:
"What else do we have if Jack is Booker and Andrew Ryan is Comstock? Well, we have the obvious idea that Rapture is Columbia, sunk under the ocean instead of floating above it. In this universe, things get a bit wonky, but the comparisons are still clear. Plasmids are Vigors, EVE is Salts. Taking it a step further, Atlas/Fontaine is Daisy Fitzroy, the blood thirsty working class hero/eventual psychopath who challenges Ryan/Comstock and leads to Rapture/Columbia’s downfall.
Dr. Lutece is Dr. Tenenbaum, looking after the little girls with magic powers. That would make Little Sisters fractured versions of Elizabeth, looked after by a multitude of Big Daddies, all condensed into the massive Songbird in Columbia. The brown hair, the nearly identically arranged blue and white clothes. It’s now impossible for me not to see Elizabeth in the Little Sisters. Their eyes are glowing yellow, but if I bet if that light faded, you’d see a sparkling pair of blue eyes staring back at you."
This was all spawned on the back of the idea that Jack and Booker were the same because Booker could operate a bathysphere that could only be used by someone with Andrew Ryan's DNA. The rest sort of unraveled from there, and the similarities were obvious.
I'm not sure how many of these parallels will be explored in Burial at Sea, and Levine doesn't say. Fortunately, when your plot revolves around the ability of a character to travel through space and time into any number of infinitely possible universes, you have some leeway with the story.
In any case, this is exciting news for fans of the game, both those who want to start playing it again immediately with Clash in the Clouds, and those who want to learn more about the universe with the apparently in-depth Burial at Sea. No word yet on when the two-part story will be released.
Update: Now with more trailer
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