Our Step-by-Step Guide to 'BioShock Infinite''s First 10 Acts

In a swanky hotel suite in LA this week, we sat down with other reporters and developers from Irrational Games and played through the first few hours of BioShock Infinite.

If you want the short version, here it is: it's incredible.

The longer version takes a bit more time, so we thought it might be wise to just walk you through the game's first few hours step-by-step. This is what you'll experience from the very beginning of the game.

If you don't want to read any plot spoilers, you might as well stop now. But if your curiosity gets the better of you, then we think you'll like what you're about to read.

Follow @ComplexVG

BioShock Infinite begins similarly to the original BioShock. It's an intentional throwback—a rowboat is carrying Booker DeWitt through stormy seas to a lighthouse on a small island. A caption tells you that it's 1912, and you're off the coast of Maine. Booker's handed a cigar box with a gun and a photo inside—just like in the first game.

On the door of the lighthouse is a sign that reads, "Bring us the girl and wipe away your debt—this is your last chance," giving us the first hint at what Infinite's story is all about. There's creepy religious music playing inside the lighthouse, and bloody handprints on the wall lead toward a hooded corpse with a bullet in its brain. It's clearly a warning: don't fuck this up.

A chair at the lighthouse's peak straps Booker in once he sits down, and the room quickly condenses into a pod, echoing the first bathysphere trip from BioShock 1. But instead of going down, you're going up this time.

The pod blasts off into the sky, and breaking the cloud cover gives you an incredible view of the floating city of Columbia—much like our first glimpse of Rapture in the original BioShock. Right away some billboards introduce the character Father Comstock—he's important—and the concept of Columbia being a "New Eden." Shit gets real religious, people.

Especially since the next destination is a church, called the Welcome Center. Its floors are covered in ankle-deep water, creating strange reflections and echoes. When Booker asks a robed man, the first person he meets in Columbia, where they are, the man replies, "Heaven, friend. Or as close as we'll see until judgment day."

The Welcome Center is populated by dozens of robed, chanting men. Even though they're clearly celebrating something, it's extremely creepy, and more than a little cult-like. Here you're also introduced to the "seed of the prophet." You'll realize eventually that the prophet is Comstock, Columbia's leader, and the seed is Elizabeth, his daughter.

After undergoing a violent baptism at the hands of a zealous asshole, you'll awaken in a fountain surrounded by statues that bear names like Father Washington and Father Franklin. It's at this point that you're first alerted to BioShock Infinite's other main theme: American Exceptionalism. The people of Columbia take this as far as literally worshipping the founding fathers.

Thankfully, Booker is a voice of reason, murmuring to himself, "Just because the city flies don't mean it ain't got its fair share of fools." He's no silent protagonist, after all.

Here you'll finally get to walk through the city and meet its inhabitants. For the most part, they're just going about their business and enjoying the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of Columbia. Some hints of crazy slip through, though, and from the get-go it's clear that something weird is going on under the surface of Columbia.

This is also where you're introduced to several important concepts: voxophones, audio records that help flesh out the story like in past BioShock games, lie scattered about, though not as frequently as in Rapture. Technology is also more advanced in Columbia than it should be; mechanical horses seem to work by magic, drinkable vigors grant you incredible powers, and there's even a half-man, half-machine cyborg called the Handyman. Needless to say, you'll get to fight him later.

After putzing around with several carnival games—which themselves reveal more hints at the story, mentioned the Vox Populi resistance movement and "the anarchist Daisy Fitzroy"—you'll continue on your quest.

After conning his way (with the help of a "Possession" vigor) into a restricted area and meeting a strange man and woman who ask him to call a coin flip and then wander away, Booker has his first real shock since arriving in Columbia. A sign in front of him warns the God-fearing citizens of the city to beware the false shepherd, whom they'll know by his mark: the letters "AD" scratched into the back of his hand. Sure enough, there they are on Booker's right hand. Things get tense after this.

You'll make your way to a grand stand, where a raffle is being held. An earlier telegram (odd, how does anyone know Booker's there?) warned you not to pick number 77, but unfortunately Booker seems to have forgotten about this. So he picks number 77, of course, and guess what? It's his lucky day.

What happens next proved nothing less than shocking. The announcer on stage makes a slightly racist comment; it seems strange enough. But then a black woman and a white man—an interracial couple—is led onto the stage in bonds, and you're told that Booker's winning the raffle gives him the right to throw the first "stone" (in this case a baseball). Yup, it's a good old-fashioned racist stoning. Holy shit.

The game actually lets you choose who to throw the ball at, and I chose the announcer, naturally. But before Booker can land the throw, he's recognized as the False Shepherd (should have bought some gloves, bro) and he finds himself in a scrap with the local police. Things escalate quickly, and before you know it you're scrounging for ammo and racking up quite a body count.

After a lengthy series of conflicts, you'll elude the authorities and continue on your way to Monument Island, where you were told the damsel is being kept. But to get there you cut through a foreboding looking building that belongs to the Fraternal Order of the Raven. And if you were hoping they were Columbia's version of the underground railroad, you're going to be disappointed. They're more like the KKK.

They've got a statue of John Wilkes freaking Booth in the lobby, with portraits of Abe Lincoln with devil horns poking through his brow. It's some seriously creepy shit. Making your way up through the tower (and killing every fucker in there, of course), you'll come to a locked door that you can only open a crack. On the other side is a man getting literally torn apart by black birds—it's brutal. When you break through, a hooded figure with a coffin strapped to his back is walking nonchalantly away. Naturally, a boss fight with this teleporting enemy ensues, but it's nothing Booker can't handle.

The next stop on Booker's journey is the Monument Island Gateway—he's getting closer to the girl, now, and to wiping away his debt. By now, you've got a pistol and a machine gun, plus vigors that let you throw fiery grenades, set fire traps, and possess machines (like turrets and, later, humans, which then fight for you until being destroyed). And from that last boss battle, you've gained the Murder of Crows vigor, which lets you send murderous black birds directly at enemies or lay a "nest trap" activated by their footsteps.

This section is characterized mainly by the Skylines, aerial tram lines that stretch between Columbia's floating neighborhoods and platforms. You traverse them using the spinning hooks mounted on Booker's left arm, and despite how complicated it may look, the controls are actually simple. It's quite fun.

One propaganda billboard in particular stuck out to us here. It read, "Even God is entitled to a do-over, and what is Columbia but another Ark for another time?"

After solving some rudimentary puzzles, you'll finally meet the "prophet" Father Comstock for the first time.

The insanity really begins when a group of enemy soldiers, ordered to stand down by an authoritative disembodied voice, simply lay down their weapons, get on their knees and start praying. You don't have to kill them, but we did, and they didn't move a muscle as we systematically gunned them all down. What can we say?

The next scene plays out much like the first conversation with Andrew Ryan in the first BioShock. You enter a room, and a massive black and white screen in front of Booker lights up with Comstock's face. From their conversation, it's clear that Comstock knows way too much about Booker's past, and Booker starts to really wonder why he's there in the first place. It also becomes clear to the player that there's more to Booker that we've yet to discover by this point.

After evading an assault from Comstock's militarized zeppelin (epic), you'll board the airship and attempt to commandeer it. But in another display of blind religious zealotry, a child sacrifices himself to destroy the zeppelin and take Booker out. Yeah, Comstock is a dick.

After escaping the plummeting zeppelin and taking another trip on the Skylines, Booker finally arrives at the Monument Tower. It's a positively enormous statue of Columbia, the Lady Liberty-like angel who's supposedly Comstock's heavenly benefactor. Somehow we doubt there's anything heavenly about Columbia at all, but that's another story.

The entire tower is locked down, with signs everywhere warning of the danger of the being who's locked up at its apex. Booker presses on despite the apparent danger, only to find that it's Elizabeth herself at the top. She's been locked there her entire life, watched by researchers attempting to discover…something. We don't know. But she is considered the sacred spawn of Father Comstock, granted immense power and destined to take his place when he dies (presumably of cancer—there's mention of tumors).

You'll get the chance to watch Elizabeth, and besides opening "tears" in space-time to other realities, she's a normal girl—loves dancing, Paris. You know the type. Long story short, she wants to leave as much as Booker does; but obviously, things aren't going to be that easy, and the deadly mechanical Songbird shows up and wrecks the entire tower as Booker and Liz try to escape. The scene ends with a plummet down into the water below and a too-close look at the Songbird's inhuman eyes.

Watching through Booker's eyes as he wakes up on a sandy beach to the sound of splashing tides and the sight of Elizabeth's relieved face is a strange experience. For a split second, you'll think the duo landed free of Columbia and are back on Earth; but off in the distance, the ruined statue/tower pours smoke, and the water's edge is unnaturally close by. It's a convincing, but unnatural, beach.

This is where you'll really start to like Elizabeth. She wanders off to find the source of some faintly heard music, and by the time you've caught up with her she's having literally the time of her life dancing.

The two make their way through a vaguely threatening boardwalk, discovering more of the racist undercurrents pulsating throughout Columbia. Facilities are segregated, and black and Irish people alike are treated with contempt and disdain. It's disgusting, and you'll become eager to put an end to this fucked up floating city.

Booker and Liz devise a plan to steal the First Lady's airship and fly away from Columbia (to Paris, or so Booker promises), but before they can buy a ticket they're ambushed by armed thugs.

Booker fights off the mob, and though Elizabeth is shaken, she eventually accepts that they're not just going to be able to waltz out of Columbia. That was convenient for us, as players, since in the very next area we shot everyone we could find—civilians, allies, enemies, it didn't matter to us—and she barely batted an eye. We had begun to hate the residents of Columbia.

You'll wind up in an amusement park of sorts after this, and you'll be forced by a deranged war hero—and apparently a former colleague of Booker's—to fight wave after wave of enemies in a grisly exhibit that tells altered history versions of important battles. It seems Comstock has rewritten American history from the founding fathers all the way to the present, and not everyone on Columbia is happy about it.

After this is where Liz's "tears" start to come in handy. In one large-ish area, you get to choose whether you want her to summon a large turret and structure to fight from, or hooks that Booker can traverse to launch an attack from above and behind his opponents. Throughout the game so far, the battles have become more and more open and diverse, and we can't wait to see how far they take these concepts.

In the next room, we were assaulted by a crazed mechanical George Washington, and sadly, that was where the demo ended.

So what do you think of the first few hours of BioShock Infinite? Are you dying to get your hands on it now?