After just finishing my first play through of Bioshock: Infinite, I have to say I loved it. It’s a great game, it doesn’t have multiplayer but the story is epic and there’s few people who really dislike it after playing it. There are loads of different enemy types, characters and just general NPC’s. I loved it so much I immediately made the top 10 best Bioshock Infinite characters!
NOTE: MANY SPOILERS
10. Handyman
Not to be confused with the Handyman from the Timesplitters series. You first see this abomination when you’re wandering the streets and come across some entertainment tents, he’s regarded as some kind of sideshow freak and people just stare at him. When everything goes haywire and the entire city goes into war, these guys keep popping up everywhere. They’re one of the closest things we got to Big Daddies in Infinite and I think the devs did a great job.
I’d say the Handymen are stronger than Big Daddies considering these guys follow you everywhere and hit you for loads of damage. The first encounter was considerably tough but after a few battles you kind of get used to getting around them. We’re lucky we never had to face two at once.
9. Lutece Twins
I think it’s impossible for me to summarise these up without writing an entire essay but I’ll give it a try. At first these two seem like a nuisance, they pop up every now and again giving you some choices, a coin flip and a choice between two amulets. Later on, though, they start to directly help you in your adventures and pretty much have an influence on whether your plans succeed or not. There’s a LOT of backstory to these two, I personally find them a bit boring though which is why they’re ranked so low.
If you want to know more about these two, visit their wikia pages here and here.
8. Zealot of the Lady
One of the best non-boss enemies I’ve seen in a video game for a long, long time. When you first meet one of these, you watch him send some crows to rip the flesh from a random civilian while he’s still alive. Very gruesome and very cool, the best thing is, once you defeat the first one you get the ability to summon your own crows to do the same to your enemies.
They’re awesome to fight against, having the right balance between providing a challenge and not being too difficult. Ignoring the crows, they’re primarily melee too, which is even more epic. They’re like the assassins of Columbia and are much more interesting to fight over the other non-boss enemies.
7. Servant
There isn’t much to say about this guy, the game setting is based on a time when african americans were deemed as lesser (hence the amount of racism complaints they got) but it really shocked me when I encountered this guy. You hear him talking normally, but when he realises you’re there he ‘switches back’ to his servant type voice. It made me want to go up to him and tell him not to pretend, hand him a gun and get him to come with me but obviously I couldn’t. I love it when developers put in these little things like this.
6. The Siren
Formerly Lady Comstock, The Siren is stuck between a point of living and death. You fight her multiple times and each time she resurrects corpses around her. For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s nothing to do with ghosts, undead or anything like that. It’s to do with manipulating time, space and multiple universes. You just have to play the game to understand.
Anyway, The Siren gave me a really fun and different boss fight each time. Instead of facing the Vox Populi or The Founders’ troops I was fighting this spectre like creature. The sounds, abilities and aesthetics really lend to the overall experience, making it scary and incredibly fun.
Here’s a link to a random YouTube boss fight
5. Songbird
Remember when I said Handyman was one of the closest things to a Big Daddy that Infinite has? Well this is the closest. It’s a cyborg bird controlled by songs from a steam calliope organ. Throughout the game, it’s a constant threat. Every time you’re getting somewhere, this thing pops up and smashes you way back in the opposite direction of where you want to go. Only luck and quick thinking by your partner stop it from killing you.
In the final mission though, it teams up with you and takes down numerous flying boat type things as well as zeppelins. This vs a Big Daddy, heck even 5 Big Daddies and it’d smash them all into next week.
4. Zachary Hale Comstock
The main antagonist of the game, he leads the floating city of Columbia with an iron fist. The people listen to him because he’s ‘the prophet’, he can ‘see into the future’. He technically can, but through scientific ways, so literally anyone could. This ‘ability’ does have side effects, accelerated ageing and infertility being the main suspects.
He stole a child (due to his infertility) and called it the “lamb”, supposedly the person to take the throne over from him. The child started to develop unnatural skills and the ‘mother’ wanted to let people know, so he murdered her. From there he decided to murder everyone who wanted to release the secret. He’s pretty much a typical antagonist, hated by the good guys and followed by the bad guys.
3. Cornelius Slate
He had a big impact in the small part he played in terms of gameplay. He was a soldier of Columbia until he was dismissed for falsifying the Prophet’s claims of battle victories. He was there during these so called victories so he does know, he had command over a large group of soldiers who he named “true soldiers”.
When you encounter him, he knows he and his troops will die to the Prophet’s men and so he wanted a soldiers death. You fight his troops in awesome museum displays of previous battles (such as Wounded Knee) and it’s a great addition to the story. I feel like the developers could have done so much more with this character, I certainly would have wanted him and his men to fight by my side although that would have made the game a bit too easy. At least we get the ability to shoot lightning from him.
2. Booker DeWitt
The main character of the game and the character you play as. He’s an ex-military on a mission to get out of debt and his job goes from bad to worse, then much worse, then incredibly worse, you get the drift. He’s the first Bioshock character to have a lot of dialogue and make most of his own decisions.
Most of the things he ends up in he doesn’t care about, he’s got wrapped up in a load of trouble when he just wants to get out. It’s kind of sad really. Also, he’s the Prophet aka Zachary Comstock. Well he is in another world/universe, after the battle of the Wounded Knee he has an offer to be baptised and his slate cleaned. In this world, a world is created where he is baptised, another is created where he isn’t. The world where he isn’t he stays as Booker, whereas the world he is he becomes the Prophet.
This eventually leads to his unfortunate death, well the death of every Booker in every universe were he accepted to become baptised and become the Prophet.
1. Elizabeth
Arguably one of the best non-playable (excluding the Burial at Sea Episode 2 DLC) characters in the history of video gaming, Elizabeth is the driving force of the plot and in turn, the entire game. Acting as a kind of side-kick, she’s the reason Booker is in the entire situation. See he was sent there to find her and exchange her to someone in order for him to pay his debt. During the game they go through multiple battles where she assists him by finding ammo, health, lockpicks, salts and summoning turrets. Yeah, she utilises portals between dimensions to summon all sorts of help.
In terms of storyline, she’s Booker’s daughter. It’s an immensely complicated plot but it’s so interesting and easy to follow if you play the game the whole way through,
She starts off as someone who has barely seen another human and hates the idea of violence. She then turns into someone who knows that they have to kill to survive (thanks to Booker) and as you follow the story she really grows on you. It’s amazing how followers/side-kicks are usually a nuisance but the developers somehow managed to get her spot on.
I know the game has been out for a long time so this list is a bit outdated but for those who haven’t played it, you should do straight away. Unless you’ve read all of this and now know most of the spoilers. Oh well, thanks for reading!
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