🌉 BioShock Infinite Poster UK — Columbia Wall Art

Irrational Games · Ken Levine · 2013 · Booker & Elizabeth — confirmed at 98types from £3

BioShock Infinite is the most narratively ambitious game in the BioShock franchise — a first-person shooter set in Columbia, a floating city above the clouds, whose story of parallel universes, American exceptionalism and the philosophy of choice received 96/100 on Metacritic and won Game of the Year awards from IGN, GameSpot and GamesRadar in 2013. Developed by Irrational Games under Ken Levine and published by 2K Games, BioShock Infinite is a confirmed individual product at 98types on 260gsm museum-grade archival matte paper. From £3, buy 3 get 1 free, same-day dispatch from Market Hall, Camden Lock Place, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8AL.

🌉 Columbia — The World

Columbia is a floating city established in 1900 by the American nationalist Zachary Hale Comstock as a celebration of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny — initially presented as a World's Fair attraction before being taken aloft permanently and establishing itself as an independent militaristic nation-state. The city's visual aesthetic — early 20th century Americana elevated into the sky, all bunting and brass bands and the specific optimism that precedes knowledge of the century ahead — is one of gaming's most richly imagined environments.

Booker DeWitt, a Pinkerton agent haunted by his past, arrives in Columbia via a lighthouse and a bathysphere to rescue Elizabeth — a woman who has been imprisoned in a tower for her entire life and whose power to open Tears in the fabric of reality makes her both precious and dangerous to the various factions fighting for control of the city. The game's narrative eventually reveals that Columbia, the Pinkertons, the Vox Populi uprising and Booker's own past are all connected in ways that the game's parallel universe mechanics make simultaneously scientifically coherent and emotionally devastating.

Elizabeth — The Companion Who Changed What AI Partners Could Be

Elizabeth accompanies Booker throughout BioShock Infinite as an AI companion and is the game's greatest achievement. Unlike most AI companions, Elizabeth does not require player protection, does not get in the way, and actively contributes to combat by throwing Booker ammo, health and money she finds in the environment. Her emotional arc — from a young woman who has never left her tower encountering the world with both wonder and horror — is rendered with the consistency and patience of a literary character. The moment she walks through Columbia for the first time, looking up at the buildings, marvelling at a barbershop quartet, is one of the finest pieces of environmental character development in gaming.

The BioShock Original (2007) — Rapture

The original BioShock (2007), also developed by Irrational Games under Ken Levine, is set in Rapture — an underwater city built in 1946 by the libertarian industrialist Andrew Ryan as an experiment in pure capitalism free from government interference, religion and ethics. By 1960, when the player arrives, the experiment has collapsed into civil war, addiction to ADAM (a genetic modification substance) and the specific horror of a society that removed every external constraint and discovered what people do when there is nothing to stop them. BioShock's famous plot twist — "Would you kindly?" — is the most celebrated use of player agency as a narrative device in gaming history.

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