I agree that Burial at Sea feels like a hasty retcon, thrown together to try and address the criticisms of Bioshock: Infinite and only managing to swap them out for worse problems. From a gameplay perspective, it is also a letdown. When I first heard you\'d get to play as Elizabeth I was very excited, only to find that instead of getting to test out her crazy massive superpowers, she\'s instead stuck in a stealth game, scraping around for stray bullets.
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It felt like they wanted to use the ideas (the noir aspect, the ep 1 twist, Elizabeth\'s gameplay) so instead of saving it for another game they made a DLC.
Thing is, they could\'ve followed Minerva\'s Den example and at least make it unrelated, which they had plenty of leway with the multiverse.
^^ Yeah, gameplay wise, Burial At Sea shied away from doing anything new or interesting... to the point that Rapture featured kinetoscopes, for some reason - in a setting and time period that already had TV sets available on the open market.
^ Supposedly, the developers were losing control of the Bioshock franchise and trying to Torch the Franchise and Run so that the new studio wouldn\'t have a foundation on which they could build a new plotline. I\'ve no way of confirming this, but that\'s what I\'ve heard.
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Burial At Sea: The Worst Possible Ending To The Franchise
I was a huge fan of Infinite when it came out, and while I found the ending somewhat frustrating and the implementation of Daisy Fitzroy a disappointment, I still loved the game with all my heart. Even with all that confusion over whether the circle was truly broken, I never forgot the sense of wonder as the Sea of Doors was unveiled, and the full realization of the sheer scope of the world - and Elizabeth's Character Development - became apparent.
So, Burial At Sea followed this up with a singularly execrable prequel that undid everything.
To begin with, Elizabeth is transformed from the confident, serene, compassionate demigoddess of Infinite's ending to a cold, ruthless Femme Fatale type with no preamble. Then she's stripped of her hard-won powers, Woobified to an obnoxious degree, and then killed off for the sake of a character I have no reason to give a damn about.
Then, Columbia reappears. The previous game made it clear that Columbia had to be erased. If it's not erased, then the circle remains unbroken, and if the war against the Sodom Below is won by Columbia, they will move on to the rest of the multiverse. They said this in the previous game.
How am I supposed to care about one characterless Little Sister when characters I care about + the entire multiverse are at stake?
Then there's the explanations for things that happened in Infinite, which only raise more questions. Songbird is now motivated by love and not by Fink's conditioning... even though he did nothing during all that time Elizabeth was being tortured by Comstock. Daisy Fitzroy's existence now revolves around Elizabeth, and she was just following orders from the Luteces. Yep, that doesn't sound unfortunate at all!
On that note, the Luteces letting Elizabeth doom herself really doesn't gel with their characters - especially Robert's. And they too intend to give up their powers and walk away from the wonders of the multiverse so they can have a Lannister-style marriage. Wonderful.
And as if vandalizing Infinite wasn't bad enough, Burial then makes a mockery of the original Bioshock: Jack is a cookie cutter messiah who will miraculously solve everything, player choice be damned; Ryan is a nostalgia-driven cameo; ditto Cohen; Fontaine is reduced to a moustache-twirling joke who would never have become a threat to Ryan if it hadn't been for Elizabeth.
Last but not least, Sally has no character and hence, I have no reason to care about her - especially galling since Elizabeth helps kickstart the Rapture Civil War for her sake, an act that result in the deaths of thousands of people, including several Little Sisters.
In short, Burial At Sea should be buried not merely at sea, but in the Mariana Trench, where it will never see the light of day again.