I’ll admit, I think Burial at Sea: episode 1 was a nice little story that was wrapped up in a neat bow at the end. It had a nice film noir vibe, a mix of Bioshock playstyles for all fans, and a twist ending that didn’t require a doctorate to understand. Episode 2 seems a bit tacked on for no real great reason.

This episode starts where the first one leaves off and sees you playing as Elizabeth. Well, actually the game starts with a short intro of Elizabeth in a version of Paris that is so sickly sweet even the birds are singing like she’s Snow White. This is just a dream and we are dragged back to lying on the floor next to a dead Booker/Comstock. We learn that the Big Daddy that killed Booker decided to go ahead and kill Elizabeth as well. You learn this by finding your own dead body, which has some big implications.

Now that you are playing as Elizabeth they have to find a way to neuter your tear powers because in theory anytime things start going south, you could just ‘nope’ out of there or pull guns out of thin air. So, we get a bit of an info dump of new rules about dimension traveling. If Elizabeth visit a reality where she previously died, she loses all her powers and becomes, as she puts it, “just a girl with lots of book smarts and some lockpicks.” The gameplay as such becomes much more like the traditional Bioshock. The whole DLC is a long stealth section. You don’t have much ammo at all and you are prodded into a non-lethal playstyle using sleep darts and knockouts. Avoiding fights is the best policy except when you are put into small arenas with a few well-placed enemies and sky hooks. However, Elizabeth is no Batman, so these don’t feel like fun encounters but more chores. There’s also a little lockpicking mini game, which has a nice art style I enjoy. You also get a smaller selection of vigors meant to help with stealthing, the most useful for me was the “Peeping Tom” power that serves as your Witcher Sense/Detective Vision/Eagle Eye.

To continue on the story, Elizabeth has returned to Rapture to save the girl we found at the end of episode one. It turns out she didn’t care about finding the girl, just wanting to kill Booker, but now she realizes she left that girl to a terrible fate, just like her father did to her. Unfortunately, the girl was kidnapped by Atlas and in order to get her back you have to work for him. While episode one felt like a continuation of Infinite, this one feels more like an addition to Bioshock one. Elizabeth is physically alone the whole game, but Booker is with you as a mental cricket on your shoulder. He’s there to help Elizabeth work through her issues of being human again, how she’s treated that girl, and the thought that she’ll never leave Rapture. It is an interesting dynamic to dive into, a omniscient demigod of a person becoming just one of us.

I do feel the main point of this DLC is tying up loose ends. You have a short trip back to Columbia thanks to Suchong building a Lutece device, and all of the story information you discover between Rapture and Columbia relates to how vigors existed in Columbia via Fink watching Suchong invent Adam through a tear and why they are drinkables in Columbia but injections in Rapture. It also goes into why Songbird and Big Daddies share so many similarities, this time Suchong ripping off Fink. In more fan service, besides Atlas of course, Andrew Ryan shows up for a quick cameo basically. Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve played the first BIoshock, but I don’t remember Ryan being so comically evil. He wasn’t a hero, but I remember him more of a Mr. House type, an antagonist, but not necessarily evil… or maybe I’m just thinking of House. He also introduces the worst enemy in this story, a teleporting fire thrower. In a game so heavily focused on stealth, trying to get the drop on a teleporting enemy is tough, and if they spot you it’s near impossible to take them down. You are forced to fight 2 of them towards the end. Once you complete Atlas' mission, he moves the goalpost. As the Booker in your head has been reminding you, Atlas will likely not uphold his end of the deal. The final act Elizabeth finds the passphrase that activates Bioshock 1’s Jack. Admittedly I got a little confused here, but I think Elizabeth is also the one who delivers the package with the gun to Jack on the plane to start off the hijacking. Either that or she bleeds out after being beat to death by Atlas with a wrench.

All in all, I think you’d be alright stopping at Burial at Sea episode 1. This episode feels tacked onto an already complete story. It’s also a little depressing, but I guess that’s expected of Bioshock story. The combat is okay, but the stealth could use some more tuning. It was an interesting switch up to play as Elizabeth, but seeing as they had to strip her of her powers, she just becomes a worse Booker. I do chuckle at how she gingerly taps buttons after watching Booker punch every elevator button.