Ark of the Lost Angels

Last week, I gushed for much longer than I usually do about Life is Strange. It’s one of those games that hit me emotionally and appealed to what I love about video games. Another one of my top games of all time is Bioshock Infinite, and that’s what I’m here to talk about today, specifically, the floating city of Columbia. Now, I will be more spoiler heavy next week, but there will be a few floating around. And, as usual,   I will offer some context for those of you who don’t want to play the game.

A lot of comparison is made between Rapture from Bioshock and Columbia from Infinite, mostly contrast, and it’s purposeful. Looking at Ken Levine’s approach to storytelling and reaction to ideologies as demonstrated in the games, it’s pretty easy to say he disagrees with taking ideologies to their extremes. But let’s take a look at how the aforementioned contrast works in service of that goal, and that it might contrast so much that it horseshoes back around to the same ideas.

Rapture was built off of the final evolution of the idea of Ayn Rand’s idea, and a completely non-governmental form of society, where the market may determine all, and there are no bigotry issues, it’s all about the money. Darwinism in an economic form, if you will. There was also the idea that the highest power is man. Naturally, it imploded when a threat to the workings and the exploitation of people of the lower classes caused founder Andrew Ryan to start taking more and more direct control and making government-like decisions and decrees. So, Andrew Ryan is a big fat liar, his ideas were wrong, and what would have been one of the world’s best examples of Art Deco architecture (my favorite style) was destroyed by a civil war. Nice job Mr. Ryan.

From the onset, Columbia is unified in its belief in God, the Founding Fathers, and it’s prophet, Zachary Hale Comstock. In that order. A far cry from the anti-centralization theme that Ryan espouses. The city also exists floating in the clouds (despite the fact that nobody can actually breathe that well up there, but it’s okay, it’s 1912, they can’t possibly know that.) which gives it a heavenly atmosphere, also part of the point. The city is alive and thriving when Booker lands on it as compared to Rapture’s decrepit state when Jack arrives. Oh yeah, there’s also that thing where legally the white people are completely superior, and if you’re a minority, you’re treated like dirt. Y’know, good ole Walt Disney’s childhood, Main Street USA in Disney World kinda stuff.

The cities seem pretty different, but there’s one key similarity that bridges the gap. There’s a bunch of people that are pissed off at those in power. In Rapture, it was Frank Fontaine’s men, and after his supposed death, the followers of his alter-ego Atlas. In Columbia, it’s the downtrodden followers and members of the Vox Populi, led by the charismatic Daisy Fitzroy. Most of the members of the Vox are, people who are exploited, this time just on more racial lines.

So, the big messages that Ken Levine is saying, and what makes Columbia an extension of Bioshock is that extreme ideologies don’t work; that power corrupts even when it isn’t supposed to; that there will always be power imbalances, but instead of embracing them, they should be minimized; and that you can take a fictional world and make it a very real criticism of actual ideas. Columbia hits the same notes that Rapture does, just on the other side of the coin.

The only question is, “Heads…” “…or tails?”