For the most part, Elizabeth is a hanger-on. Of the NPCs remarked by the plot, those centric to Booker in address, nature or backstory include Comstock, Slate, Fitzroy, and the Luteces for Elizabeth, there is Songbird and her ghostly mother, a few voxophones notwithstanding. In combat she is invisible, regardless of how sensible it would be for the Vox to take her hostage. She seldom interacts with other characters beyond Booker. In ballooning Elizabeth’s value and pretending that her secondary role is “enough”, we volunteer two steps back to the one barely granted forward.įair enough–Elizabeth is absent from the first quarter of the game for the last, she’s delegated to the role of damsel in distress. Not only is Booker Infinite’s main protagonist and antagonist, he gets to kill the villain in spite of Elizabeth’s more legitimate claim to revenge. Supposed player motivations mirror Booker’s: kidnap the girl, get the guns, rescue Elizabeth, preserve her innocence, holiday in Paris. The climax of the game is predicated on his character arc, the revelation of his amnesia, his ties to Comstock. Elizabeth exists primarily as an accessory to his story. In truth, the front cover shows a grizzled gun-slung Booker because BioShock Infinite is Booker DeWitt, long and short. Between citations of a raised benchmark for “strong female characters” (that old chestnut) and pretending it to be as much her story as it is Booker’s, their wee gamer minds have cracked. So accustomed to her significance are they that, on the rolling of credits, many leading critics have internalized the marketing and proclaim Elizabeth as the new sliced bread. At the time, these complaints were justified. After all Irrational’s inflation, that a seemingly crucial female character would be ushered out of sight on the sole basis of her gender was a travesty. When Elizabeth was relegated to the back cover, we whined. Elizabeth was the game’s star Booker was just along for the ride. We were fed videos on the detail put into crafting her, naming her as the one pivotal element on which the player’s experience would hinge. They told us how Booker’s actions would dictate her fate and that the world would burn or thrive by her. We saw how her control over tears was pronounced in combat and narrative, changing the playing field or whisking you away to another world. Since the early days of BioShock Infinite’s marketing cycle, Elizabeth was a core focus of trough-bound footage and spin.
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