In which we will discover (and plunder) Columbia, walk through a very disturbing valley and discover that we’re THE EVIL.
This and the following part wrap up everything up to the moment where I stand in the game right now, so this long-ish and probably incoherent. Further installments will be… no, I wont promise anything.

So we’re on this boat, with two people I don’t know, on our way to a lighthouse. Where we get into an almost literal rocket-chair, to get shot up into a city in the clouds. Well hello there, 1/Bioshock.
Some more introduction is done here: we’re some kind of private investigator named Brooker DeWitt and we’re in some deep shit. Also, we have to get a girl to repay a debt. Alright, that’s the tune, let’s dance.
After passing through a church with a serious plumbing-problem (because that’s what you need on a floating city: tons and tons of free-running water), looting everything not nailed down and surviving a rather aggressive baptism, we… freely continue looting everything not nailed down and rummaging through every barrel, box and trashcan. And that’s were the trouble starts:
In Rapture, the city-in-the-sea of Bioshock 1&2, this made sense. The only inhabitants left were the Splicers, the long-gone-mad remains of those living Ryan’s dream. Looting everything of value was necessary to survive, and there was no-one left to take offense.
In Columbia, on the hand… we move around the citizens of the city, grabbing everything, and no-one says a word about it. We can pillage handbags and baskets, grab food from a vendor’s tray or take everything out of a register with the shop-owner standing right next to it. Nobody cares. Nobody. Not a single word. Nothing.

UNTIL we’re at Soldier’s Field, about.. three hours in, I guess. “Stealing may have consequences”. Is that so? The Interwebs says “yes, every NPC in the area who can turn hostile will”. Uh-hu.
I took the game by its words and didn’t steal anything – as in “I did not loot two registers and did not grab a named shotgun”. There was still lots of clutter around, which went straight into my pockets. Everything went fine, no one recognised us as the public enemy number one we are and we get to the Plot Point, where we have to pull the Plot Lever to call a Plot Car to take us to the Next Plot Point.
The device blows up, the game tells us to go and grab the new hot McGuffin plot device to proceed and… Columbia’s PA starts blaring, informing everyone in the area of our presence. Shooty time it is, because teh player haz to shoot teh dudez because why else would he be here.  Fine. Shooty time. Every single civilian vanished at this point. Obviously, I went back to the stores and grabbed the cash (because that’s we do) and continued to get the plot device, a new plasmid vigor. The door leading there was previously blockaded and is now magically open. What?
Much talk, few points: Consistency (“nobody cares” vs “crime will be prosecuted”), scripted failure (“you will now have shooty times despite not pulling aggro until now”), vanishing people, a rather ham-fisted plot door…

I jumped quite a bit forward here (the plot demanded it), so let’s get back to the beginning.
I really liked the tutorial. The introduction of the guns, the voice-recorders and the plasmids vigors in a fair, embedded in the setting felt really good. Furthermore, your targets at the shooting booths are the Vox Populi, the local revolutionaries, and… the devil. Environmental storytelling at its finest.
However, as good as it is done, it directly leads to more critique: the vigors and the uncanny valley.
I’ll start with the vigors. They are clearly a legacy mechanic from BioShock I/II – it’s BioShock, so you need to be able to shoot lightning from your fingertips. No, you don’t. The problem starts with the face that no civilian used a vigor (until now). The plasmids of BioShock were advertised as useful little helpers and (I guess) drifted towards more destructive powers when Rapture went to hell.
Columbia is not in an open civil war – there is some kind of rebellion going on, but not everyone is armed. Seeing people using plasmids in their everyday life, even just once or twice, would help rooting this mechanic in the world. One of the advertisements for the flame plasmid in Rapture showed someone lightning a cigarette with it. Oh wait. You can’t do that in Infinite, as EVERY SINGLE VIGOR I’ve encountered so far is a military-grade offensive weapon. You don’t shoot flames from you fingers, you conjure and throw supernatural molotovs. WHY ARE THESE AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC OF A FLYING CITY? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Ammunition and weapon upgrades for sale at public vending machines in a non-open-gun-carrying-society hit the same spot.
Final thoughts: the plasmids of Rapture felt like an integral part of the society, the lore and the world. The vigors feel bolted on top of the world, because BioShock.

Up next: the Uncanny Valley.
The population of Columbia had the usual problems of random NPCs. They stand or sit around, generally looking good, sometimes looking awkward. A flirting couple in a corner with just one line of text might be justified from a producers point of view as voice acting costs money, not reacting to someone coming round said corner is weird. Then I got my first plas vigor. The lady who sold (“gave”) it to me went through her animations, the field-of-view f-up happened and she was looking… above me? As in “seeing the white of the eyes because she is looking up very hard”. If I were asked to give my moment of understanding the uncanny valley, this is a top-notch candidate. The same happened later again with Elisabeth. I understand that this stuff is hard. Really hard. But this was just creepy.

 Back on the plot: On our way along the objective-marker we pass a poster, informing the good citizens of Columbia that the public enemy number one, the false prophet who will bring the end of all, can easily be identified by a scar on his hand. DeWitt looks at his hand, *drumroll*, there it is. I still wonder: was this scar there all along? If so, why was it never mentioned? Is it new? If so, why doesn’t it scare the hell out of the protagonist? What is going on here?
Moving further, a closed plot-door leads to the participation in a raffle. The first price? Casting the first stone ball unto a mixed-race-couple. We are in a 1912-white-people-society, after all. Racism runs rampant, segregation is common practice. This theme will be revisited later.

The player is given the choice to throw at either the couple or the announcer, but is identified by the aforementioned scar on his hand. The situation dissolves into shooty time, we get the skyhook and happily murder our way towards the next area. The choice is ultimately meaningless – in terms of game progression.
However, this choice give the player the opportunity to actually do some character-building for DeWitt. What will he do, and why? This is a way to bring up an illusion of agency in an otherwise linear game. It forces the player to actually carve out a rather large chunk of DeWitt’s character all by himself. This is great.

This post continues with part 2.