As I made my way through interactive historical marvels, walked
along marble floors listening to voxophones and stopped occasionally at the
nearest kinetoscope to delve into the rich history of Columbia, I realised that
Bioshock Infinite is the best museum
experience I have ever had. I was learning, and it was fun – something was
horribly wrong with me.
I’ve been to museums before, but this was something
completely different. There were no droning lectures - no gentle, defeated
murmurs coming from the hungover employees; there wasn't even a single
stegosaurus in sight. I was being led through the long halls of a fictional,
historical knowledge and was surprised at how much I was enjoying myself.
I found myself stopping at every building, display and carnival
game with a puppy-like eagerness. I’d unabashedly run into the middle of
people’s conversations in order to hear what they had to say; their cued
dialogue was like pressing the start button on an informative animatronic
display. Everything was a new piece of information about this new and exciting
place – I had discovered a new world and tried to cram my brain with as much
knowledge as possible.
Damnit, my teachers were right, I did enjoy the excitement of learning. When I came to the Hall of
Heroes, the comparison was starting to become a little too literal. Now I was inside a museum, and it was made
explicitly aware that I was learning. I thought this would detract from my
knowledge-lust, but as I made my way through the museum’s red, white, blue and
slightly racist hallways, I found my interest still hung like a lead weight
around my neck, dragging me down to every plaque and poster I stumbled across.
Voxophones were like my headset guide, revealing tiny
nuggets of revelation that were tucked away in my ore of knowledge. They
grounded the fantastical Columbia into the dark, harsh reality of everyday
life; with comparisons to slavery, xenophobia and class warfare the voxophones
tore away the fluffy clouds and replaced them with dark, ominous thunderclouds.
My fascinations began to grow deeper and darker as this farcical history
juxtaposed our own morbid reality.
The kinetoscopes achieved the very opposite, they fanned
the sails of Columbia and its people, promoting the peace, placidity and
pompous segregation that built this wondrous city. It was like reading two
differing accounts, by two different authors on the same historical event, you
couldn't discount one until you had read the full recount of the other. I was
becoming confused, something I was used to when my brain tried to reject new
knowledge coming in. Not because it was confronting, or difficult to grasp,
just because it doesn't particularly like going to the effort.
Thankfully the gift store was close by – in fact, it was all
around me. Desks, drawers and bedside cabinets were full of a veritable cartload
of goodies. Salts, eagles, apples and oranges spilled from casks, barrels and
boxes and straight into my grubby little fingers. I was content to scrounge - each history lesson broken up by a sneaky glance in a forgotten purse or a
misplaced wallet.
Bioshock Infinite brings
the tedium of monotonous lectures into the open arms of its players by creating
an interactive mix of museum and house of horrors that encourages learning. Now,
if we could get Irrational Games
into the schooling board...
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