Ken Levine talks BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea's themes and characters

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea will star the same Elizabeth and Rapture as always, but neither are the same as before. Elizabeth has changed from the forces she was caught between in Infinite, creator Ken Levine told our friends at CVG, and she's no longer the girl who danced on the beach at Battleship Bay.

It sounds like Levine wants to address criticism that the series uses heavy topics like racism and American exceptionalism as little more than window dressing. BioShock and BioShock Infinite painted their social problems in broad strokes, but Burial at Sea will show their impact.

"It's not enough to say, 'okay, this week we're looking at oligarchy,'" Levine said about the themes players will encounter. "You have to have something to say about it, so in this instance we're looking into the human impact that these philosophies have, specifically on Booker and Elizabeth."

The DLC's story takes place a year before the events of the first BioShock. With the underwater city yet to fall into complete chaos, where will you find splicers, Little Sisters, and Big Daddies running amok? In the sunken Fontaine's Department Store, of course, where Booker and Elizabeth's search for a missing girl will undoubtedly take them.

Levine has said only that the release date for Burial at Sea is "soon to come." Until then, you can enjoy this alternate universe mockumentary of an alternate universe mockumentary.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.