BioShock: Infinite Message Board older than one year ago

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea will return players to Rapture. The second and third pieces of downloadable content for Infinite are a far more narrative experience than today's Clash in the Clouds.

The first episode places Booker and Elizabeth in Rapture, the underwater city from the original BioShock, but before the fall. Players will get to experience the city in a time before it became the leaky dream under the sea, with new weapons, new "Plasmids/Vigors," tears, Big Daddies and... apparently some sky-lines.

The second episode will have players taking on the role of Elizabeth. She won't be the bullet absorbing tank that Booker DeWitt is, as Irrational Studios head Ken Levine explained it'll be a different type of experience. The two packs have been priced at $14.99 apiece (or included in the BioShock Infinite Season Pass) with more details and a release date coming soon.

So, as guessed by people paying attention to Ken Levine last night, there’s to be BioShock: Infinite DLC. What a surprise. What’s more of a surprise is that one bit is out today. That is Clash In The Clouds, and is a bunch of challenges. Below you’ve got a trailer for that, and a teaser for something called Burial At Sea, which will be a new campaign set in Rapture!

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We put all the Kinectoscopes from Bioshock Infinites: Clash in the Clouds DLC in one location for you to see.

We show you the secret to getting all the Voxophones in the Clash in the Clouds DLC for Bioshock Infinite.

Our very own Andrew Goldfarb sits down with Irrational's Forrest Dowling to talk about Bioshock Infinite's new DLC Clash in the Sky.

Booker and Elizabeth begin their adventure in Rapture in Episode 1 of Burial at Sea. See the trailer to get a glimpse of the action.

CHANGES INCLUDED IN PATCH 6

• Added features necessary to support upcoming DLC.
• Fix for issue where the navigation assist / nav aid arrow was not showing the path of jumping from the deck of the barge to the sky-line above when viewing it from the barge after the town lottery.

As promised back in April, the folks at WizKids/NECA have come through on the BioShock Infinite front, delivering a set of tiny playable figurines that look just like the promotional, only with incredibly sloppy paint jobs. HeroClix players — action figure collectors in general, really — are used to these discrepancies between announcement images and the final product. It's due to the fact that production pieces are painted by real people, and promotional shots are crafted by angels. It's true. What we've got here is the BioShock Infinite starter set, a fine selection of six figures(including my personal favorite, horse), and a box of 24 blind packs. I ended up with about ten doubles, but you can never have too many Bookers. I'm sure the rulebook included in the starter kit will contradict me on that. The starter kit also comes with a pair of dice, object and terrain tokens, and a double-sided BioShock Infinite playfield — enough stuff that I could, given the chance, actually learn how to play. As long as you don't get too close the figures are quite nice, easily recognizable as their respective characters. While I am most fond of horse, old man in suit and good old Mrs. Commstock would probably be my best friends if they weren't small pieces of plastic. The BioShock Infinite HeroClix starter set ($19 or so) and packs ($2.50-ish) are set to go on sale later this month. I would not suggest eating them.

Dead End Thrills has shared some very cool warped shots of BioShock Infinite by Joanne Harper. Check 'em out.

Information on upcoming BioShock Infinite DLC is expected to arrive in late July, Irrational Games tells Joystiq.

It's unconfirmed if the as-yet-unannounced DLC is part of the BioShock Infinite's season pass, which grants guaranteed access to three DLC packs for the game. The game's "Columbia's Finest" DLC was recently made available as a separate download on Steam.

Then the covers would look a little like...this! Here are the latest and greatest Dr. Seuss themed covers and rhymes from DrFaustusAU, who graced us with other similar covers in the past. This time we've got The Last of Us, Resident Evil, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and BioShock Infinite—all from the last couple of months. Check em out: I'm the host of a fungus that grows in my brain,but it keeps off the Sun and it keeps out the rain. One herbTwo herbsRed herbsBlue herbs Run or hide?The answer's plain:If I stay here, I'll go insane! If you have an idea, Fink'll cut you a deal.He can take all your dreams and then make them all real.Making gadgets, and skyhooks, and vigors to sell—it is really quite safe to say business is swell!

In an interview published in the 2012 book Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play, gaming luminary Warren Spector mentioned something of a bombshell that seems to have gone unnoticed, saying that he "did some work for Valve on Half-Life stuff" in the early, pre-Disney days of Junction Point Studios. The prospect of Warren Spector collaborating with Valve on a Half-Life project is the sort of thing fans could only dream of, but it seems that actually happened. On his resume, an early Junction Point artist says he worked on "Half Life 2 doing texture creation on levels and character in Photoshop and Maya," suggesting perhaps that Junction Point was doing a Half-Life 2-related product. I would imagine it is in concept canonically similar to Arkane's cancelled Half-Life episode. (Curiously, the artist also states that he worked on "pre-production of Deus Ex 3 for PlayStation 2" while at Ion Storm.) Outside of this book, Spector has acknowledged working with Valve, but never specifically said it was Half-Life-related. A then-nascent Junction Point made headlines in late 2005 when it stated on its website that it was "working with Valve on a new game using the Source Engine to be delivered via Steam," which some seemed to confuse for the separate "cartoon-style" "Super Secret Warren Spector Game Project" (Epic Mickey concept development) that Junction Point was hiring for at the same time. Spector has alluded to Junction Point's Valve work in interviews, referring to it as conceptual work, and told GamesRadar last year it was something he still "can't talk about." It's unknown how long Junction Point worked with Valve on Half-Life material, but Spector told Game Developer magazine in early 2007 that "what we’re doing now has nothing to do with Valve at all," indicating that Junction Point and Valve had parted ways by that time. So no need to have an apoplectic fit that Epic Mickey killed the chances of a Warren Spector Half-Life project. The work on Half-Life was just one of a number of projects from Junction Point's early days. Junction Point initially struck a deal with Majesco for "an epic fantasy game," but that went South when Majesco decided to exit the AAA market following disappointing returns on titles like Psychonauts and Advent Rising. Junction Point then did some concept development for an unnamed "filmmaker." By fall 2005, Spector was pitching "two concepts" to publishers: Sleeping Giants, a fantasy game based on an idea Spector and his wife originally conceived for a DC Comics comic book, and Necessary Evil, a science-fiction title that was essentially a spiritual successor to Deus Ex. An unnamed publisher picked up Sleeping Giants, and Junction Point was apparently still working on it as of March 2007. Junction Point also spent a year collaborating with John Woo on a contemporary ninja game called Ninja Gold, but the publisher for Ninja Gold dropped the project when it decided to cancel all its unannounced titles. According to the CV of a former 2K Marin staffer, the new AI companion for the forthcoming first piece of downloadable content for BioShock Infinite is named "Minibuddy." A producer who recently left Irrational Games for Bungie describes the expansion as "a unique first-person shooter experience set within the BioShock universe." Elizabeth Comstock—the companion from the main game—may very well not be returning: Courtnee Draper, the voice actress of the character, admitted last month that she had no idea what was going on with the game's DLC. BioShock mastermind Ken Levine said that Irrational didn't begin working on DLC for BioShock Infinite until after they wrapped development on the main game, and his comments indicate the first piece of DLC is still likely months away at the earliest. I would personally speculate that this DLC—and other Infinite DLC—might be comparable to the BioShock 2 expansion Minerva's Den, which featured a self-contained story with new characters that was divorced from the main game. In a job posting from last week, British indie studio The Chinese Room (developers of Dear Esther and the forthcoming Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) said that they "[had] just signed a development deal with a major publisher and are expanding [their] team for a next-generation console project, scheduled for release in summer 2015." The copy on the posting also says the title is "open-world [and] first-person," and another opening suggests the game uses CryEngine 3. Last summer, The Chinese Room revealed its "spiritual successor to Dear Esther"—a first-person, open-world CryEngine 3 game titled Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. The game, which tasked players to spend an hour in an English town trying to deal with an imminent apocalypse, was targeted for a "summer 2013" release date, but nary a word has been said since the announcement. Additionally, the page for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has been removed from The Chinese Room's site, and the URL redirects to a generic page for a "Current Game"—the aforementioned next-generation title with "provisional launch date of 2015." The page also says that the developer "should be releasing some more information in late summer." Could this new title be an expanded version of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, or is it something else entirely? Konami appears to be establishing a Los Angeles team to work on its sports games. Last week, a games recruitment agency posted several openings for an unnamed company "looking to build a new team in its existing L.A.-based studio with a focus to produce outstanding high-end production sports games on multiple console platforms." A number of the lines in the recruitment firm's postings match the openings for the nascent Kojima Productions Los Angeles Studio word for word. One of the agency postings from last week mentioned the team will be "[handling] contents [sic] developments intended for North America release while collaborating with HQ team." The recruitment firm posted an opening in late April mentioning that the role would have a start date of September. Last year, Konami opened a London studio to handle development on the Pro Evolution Soccer line, and this could very well be yet another support studio. But there presently a void when it comes to multiplatform MLB baseball games, and Konami does have an annual baseball series—the Japan-only Pro Yakyū Spirits. Also, Konami has released two MLB-licensed games in the past year. I am wondering if it might be Konami, not EA, that steps up to the plate for the next generation of baseball games. superannuation is a self-described "internet extraordinaire" residing somewhere in the Pacific Time Zone. He tweets, and can be reached at heyheymayday AT gmail DOT com. Everything in his bi-weekly Kotaku columns is lying in plain sight online and linked for you to investigate yourself.

Logan's Run fans have been clamoring for a remake of the 1976 film adaptation of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's classic tale of dystopian ageist science fiction for decades. According to an exclusive report from Deadline Hollywood, Ken Levine's next big writing gig after BioShock Infinite is penning the latest script for the project. Now before we get too excited, Logan's Run/BioShock fans, keep in mind that this is a project Warner Bros. has been trying to get off the ground since the mid 90s. At one point Bryan Singer of X-Men and Superman Returns was slated to direct, and in 2011 the film looked to be turning into a Ryan Gosling vehicle, though as of last year Gosling is no longer attached. Okay, now that I've grounded you all, it's okay to get a little excited. Levine's got a couple of pre-video game screenplays under his belt, so he's familiar with the process. He's also a big fan of Logan's Run, and let's face it — not many do dystopian as well as Levine does dystopian. You give him a setting, he'll dystop the hell out of it. For the younger folks in the audience, Logan's Run tells the story of a society where people are only allowed to live to a certain age (20 in the book, 30 in the film and TV series that followed). Once they reach that special age, folks are expected to report to a facility where they'll be humanely killed. Logan 5 (3 in the book) is an enforcer tasked with hunting down runners — people who try to escape their fate. Events happen, and as the title suggests, Logan winds up a runner himself. Did I mention he has a gun that fires multiple types of special bullets? How is this not a video game yet? I know the perfect guy to make it. The movie still might not happen, of course, but at the very least we might end up with a leaked Logan's Run script written by Ken Levine, and that'd do in a pinch. ‘Bioshock’ Creator Ken Levine Takes On ‘Logan’s Run’ Script For Warner Bros [Deadline Hollywood]

Which heavy hitter comes out on top? IGN discusses.

Last week, I was chatting with my boss Stephen about The Last of Us. We were both playing through the game, and he was acting as a sounding board as I worked on my review. Suddenly, I got a worrying text from him: "A reader just let me know some asshole is in our comments spoiling the end of the game." "Shit," I thought. (Note: There are no spoilers in this article.) A few minutes later, Stephen sent me a screencap of the "spoiler" in question. Turns out, it wasn't a spoiler at all, but rather a scenario invented by the commenter to troll other readers. No one got spoiled. But a lot of people thought they did. Over the last few days, The Last of Us spoiler-panic has reached a pitch. Most of the spoilers out there have been deduced from a list of cutscenes that was discovered in the code for the game's demo. The cutscene titles, it's been assumed, give enough information to draw conclusions about the ending of the game. They kinda do. They kinda don't. Since I've already finished, I went ahead and waded into the internet to see what spoilers are out there. So far, most of what I've found is a mix of conjecture and vague half-correctism, with a few bona fide spoilers mixed in. There is some good information in with the bad information, but it's a jumble. So, good news: If you think you may have been spoiled by some jerk on a livestream chat or a message board, there's actually a good chance that you haven't been spoiled at all. The better news is that the game is very, very difficult to spoil. More difficult than, say, BioShock Infinite or Game of Thrones, to use to recent examples. The major plot points aren't crucial to the success of The Last of Us; the story doesn't really rely on huge surprises for its impact. It's more of a long-view kind of thing—as I mentioned in my review, the whole game is built on zombie-movie cliches, but the wonderful story it places within those clichés can't really be spoiled, not in the traditional sense. There are surprises in The Last of Us. Lots of them, in fact. But the best surprises in the game aren't major plot-twists or ending revelations or whatever. They're little things, mixed into the game itself with such frequency that only a full playthrough could really spoil anything. And really, they're less "surprises" and more "things that happen over the course of a good story that you're hearing for the first time." As Evan adroitly pointed out when writing about having part of BioShock Infinite's ending spoiled for him: When the work has been strong enough, even spoilers can’t ruin good execution. Seeing the moments leading up to a spoiled plot point—the whole cloth of the story being told, if you will—is what I really show up for. And BioShock Infinite’s whole cloth is very impressive. And while a good amount of BioShock Infinite's ending relied on the punch of "Holy *crag*, I didn't see that coming," The Last of Us is a much more considered, reserved affair. To use an apt platitude, the game is more about the journey than the destination. But it really is. As the release-date draws nearer, there are going to be more real-deal spoilers out there. Sony was remarkably draconian with their restrictions on pre-release coverage; they asked early reviewers not to get into specifics regarding the back half of the game or the very beginning, and their video restrictions were so extreme as to make meaningful video coverage impossible. (This is why you haven't seen many video reviews or quick-look demos yet.) But even with those restrictions in place, I'm starting to see videos of full playthroughs go up on YouTube, which means that the message-thread spoiler terrorists will start to become more consistently accurate. If you want to avoid spoilers over the next week, keep your wits about you. And if you do see someone in our comments spoiling the game, please email me or Stephen. But don't get too worried. Even if you do catch a stray spoiler, there's a pretty good chance it isn't real. To contact the author of this post, write to kirk@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @kirkhamilton.

It only does crazy bundles. Oh Sony, you've given us so much. From ads like the one above, to massive security breaches, to Wonderbook. But seriously, I love my Playstation 3, which I got on launch day in North America, that against all odds is still running smoothly almost seven years later. I had to do a triple take when I saw this bundle, partially because it's really good, and also because it's very confusing. For $323 at Newegg, you get the following:• Playstation 3 250GB with included controller• Extra controller (currently $45 on Amazon though they've of course been cheaper)• $50 PSN card (free money)• Whatever Playstation Plus trial is included (it's not being clear about it)• Bioshock Infinite• Max Payne 3• Need for Speed: Most Wanted• Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete• Burnout Paradise (not sure if this is all DLC included or not) These are boxed copies of the games, so you can sell them to your friend or a store or just give them away if you already own them. It's also free two-day shipping if you have a ShopRunner account. Why is it confusing? For one thing, Infinite and the $50 card aren't listed anywhere, and don't show up unless you add the item to your cart. Also, the way it's listed, it looks like you're getting two copies of Need For Speed: Most Wanted. It's already crazy, so maybe you are. It's a good enough deal to replace an aging PS3 with, buy a second one to have blu-ray in multiple rooms, get your Dad for father's day, etc. If you don't already own a PS3 and/or missed several of these games, the bargain is that much better, especially considering the Playstation 4 won't play PS3 discs, and whatever streaming/emulation they have planned won't be ready at launch. [Newegg] Looking for the current Moneysaver roundup? Click here. Keep up with Shane Roberts on Kinja and Twitter. Check out Dealzmodo for more great tech deals, and Deals.Kinja.com for even more discounts. This is a Moneysaver One-Shot, a post focusing on a single deal, sale, or category. Join us every weekday at 2:15pm ET for the full Moneysaver roundup, brought to you by the Commerce Team. We're here to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available, and to be clear, we also make money if you buy. We want your feedback.

After playing about 3 hours into BioShock Infinite, my mind was only able to formulate one solitary question, a query that even Shakespeare couldn’t have phrased more eloquently. A question that is, in fact, worthy of its own quote block: “What. The. ****. Just. Happened.” What did I just see? How did so much content manage to be crammed into such a small amount of time? Why am I so sweaty? These questions, and a million more, ran through my mind as I attempted to wade through the architectural masterpiece that is BioShock Infinite. Now, I know this game had been suggested to me by fellow writer Luke Schultz at Monolith, to which I had replied: “Infinite is nothing special, really. It’s pretty much just historical.” (In terms of architecture, I meant) Well, turns out I was sort of wrong on that one. To be fair, I hadn’t played it before I wrote that. All I had seen was brief glimpses of row houses and dockyards whilst watching my brother play for about 15 minutes, and that hadn’t really piqued my interest. Only the encouragement of friends and fond memories of the original BioShock drove me to give Infinite a try. This time around, I’m going to take a look at how architecture helps to tell the story of Infinite, in relation to a few key areas: the main faction in the game, the Founders; your own personal story, and how architecture plays into the player’s experience; and the overarching societal themes that seem to be dominant in the floating city of Columbia, such as racial segregation and patriotism (‘Murica). I’d also like to focus on something that isn’t specifically an architectural concept, but it’s one that has been successfully implemented as such, and lends to the overall feeling of uneasiness, or creepiness, that is always present in Infinite: the uncanny (I’ll explain later, don’t worry). **SPOILER WARNING** (sort of) This article contains gameplay information from the first few hours of BioShock Infinite, as well as images. 1: The Founders One thing that I noticed about Infinite is how you see a setting first, and then its inhabitants. The game is set up to provide the player with allusions to a certain group of people well before they are actually introduced. This happens with the Founders towards the start of the game. Gilded doorways and pillars line the path you walk towards the group of robed figures. Then, you meet the fanatics. From here, you enter an idyllic, Eden-esque garden containing more of these nameless individuals. Who are they? Who built all of this? None of this is very clear until you see the rest of Columbia first hand. You walk past stark white buildings of stone, wholesome brick homes, and great archways. Advertisements make broad proclamations of sovereignty, of truth, of freedom. Now you know who these people must be. Nobody could be this patriotic, this sure of themselves without being a little bit of a zealot. And it’s all confirmed with the #77 baseball throw. All of a sudden it comes back to you: the statues, the patriotism, the robed figures — it’s meant to be a utopia. We all know what that means, don’t we? Somebody is suffering for these people to live the way they do. So what does this have to do with architecture? If you paid attention to your surroundings, architecturally, up until the point of your first combat encounter, you should have noticed a number of things. First off, uniformity. There’s only a few materials, a few types of buildings, and a few types of people: the characters are represented in their architecture. This is an impressive feat, mimicking personalities with architecture. The structures built by these individuals allow you to get a sense of what they’re like, and the views they uphold. From their buildings, you can see that they like uniformity, cleanliness, and purity, but that there might be something a little off about them — it’s just too perfect. This leads me to my second point, which with the Founders’ architecture, is known as phenomenal transparency. The best way to explain this concept is by thinking about something that’s see-through. This is called literal transparency. Simple, right? You can see through it, therefore it is transparent. Now, phenomenal transparency is a bit more abstract. Take that see-through thing you just thought of. Because you can see through it, you can’t actually see it. Something that is phenomenally transparent doesn’t exhibit the literal characteristics of a literally transparent object: it possesses the property of being unreadable, of being hard to figure out. The Founder’s buildings essentially all possess a degree of this phenomenal transparency. They’re solid buildings, with façades that are imposing, proud, and completely mask the interiors of the structure. You can see them for what they are on the outside, but the inside is absolutely impossible to discern from an outward study. You don’t know what’s going on inside these buildings. They could be resistance strongholds, just waiting to rebel against the idyllic world at their doorstep, or a maze of hallways meant to trap individuals who wander inside. All of this right at the center of Columbia, the flying utopia. The Founders themselves are literally identical to their buildings in this respect: impossible to read, you never know what’s going on inside of them, and you can’t tell what secrets they are keeping. Kind of eerie, isn’t it? Thirdly, the cult of personality created by Father Comstock is achieved partly through the architecture of Columbia. The city is a testament to his holiness, a working example of what following him can lead to. The structures are a representation of him, and the citizens respect him for it. They praise him endlessly, thanking him in the streets and speaking of him in everyday conversation. They love him for what he has given them, and it is shown through the architecture of the city. He has given them pride, a sense of elitism, of being a superior race of people. Elegant structures, devoid of any imperfections, reach into the clouds and float idly amongst one another. All of this, meant to increase Comstock’s public image, his cult of personality. It’s this underlying cultish tone that is the backbone of Infinite’s story, the feeling that things aren’t at all what they look like, and architecture does a fine job of passively reinforcing it throughout. 2: Architectural Moods and Combat Now that we’ve established the main mood — the airy, utopian brightness of the Founders — let’s look at how that changes the player’s experience in terms of combat situations. Remember, this might not be directly architectural, but the mood was established through mainly architectural means. For me, the outdoor, airy combat was, if I could condense it into one word (as I seem to be fond of doing), frenetic. Bullets are whizzing through clouds of smoke, enemies are popping up over balconies of Shakespearian proportions, and all the while the atmosphere perfectly dichotomizes the action. The player’s utopian surroundings seem as though they could get up and walk away from the violence, and maybe ask the combatants (politely, of course) to take their scuffles elsewhere. Everything feelsout of place, and my god, is it a beautiful feeling. The streets that you are fighting in literally haven’t changed from when they were populated with normal, happy citizens. Nothing has been blown up, as seems to be the case in most games. Combat always seems to take place in a location that has already seen some hard times, especially in games like CoD or Battlefield. But no, not in BioShock Infinite. You are the reason the buildings are missing most of their façades, you are the reason that there are so many shattered windows, the reason for all the rubble strewn about. It’s a liberating feeling, I think, and the best part is how out of place all of the combat feels: it feels a lot more real. Now, it does take place in somewhat ruined environments from time to time, but you’re still reminded of when the streets were normal. Architecture plays into combat by creating this mood, by setting the stage with perfectly clean, idyllic props, and letting the actors contrast against them. By using this effectively, Infinite can take a moderately intense fight and turn it into something extraordinarily unique. 3: ‘Murica Oh, patriotism. Where would we be without you? And, how better to represent our national pride than to build monuments to ourselves, and the things we stand for. If there’s one thing you can glean about the inhabitants of Columbia, it’s that they love themselves. The structures represent a certain societal standard that seems to have emerged within the Founders. Forget all of the transparencies and actual facts about the Founders’ true nature, and just look at why they built the way they did. If you saw yourself, and your race (white, black, hispanic, you name it) as being completely pure, free from any trace of anything you deemed “lesser”, what would your neighbourhood look like? In the case of the Founders, they wanted it to look just like their bloodline: clean. The shapes, the materials, everything is perfect, and just about as uniform as it gets. The societal norms of Columbia’s culture include things such as racial segregation, elitism, and inequality — the place is a human rights nightmare. But, there is only one group in charge, and they chose to design and build in their own self image. Their architecture stands as a monument to their own elite status, and after they’re gone it will still remain. A legacy of purity, segregation, and lies. 4: The Uncanny Why is BioShock Infinite so damn creepy? There is a property of visual/literary matter called the uncanny. This refers to something that is too familiar, or just barely familiar, and results in it being uncomfortable to look at or be around. I believe that the concept of the uncanny applies to the architecture in Infinite. The setting is, for a lot of us, familiar: repetitive suburbs, upper-class row houses in the city, the kind of setting you see in a lot of movies and sitcoms. The thing is, they always looks fairly lived in, or used. Evidence of human activity abounds, alongside the usual signs of physical degradation in the structures themselves. In BioShock Infinite, this just isn’t the case. Nothing in real life actually looks like it does in the game. These row houses are too clean, too well kept. They aren’t degrading, under construction, or in possession of any type of litter. There are no messes, no bricks missing, or stone tiles dirtied from years of walking. The whole place looks like it gets constantly polished. Now, isn’t that a little too perfect? It’s like walking into your image of something nicer than what you have. You picture a pristine home, and once you’re there it’s a little off-putting. A good way to put it would be that it all seems a bit too good to be true. It feels fake, hollow, rehearsed. The whole place, Founders included, seems like a big charade. An entire city made for mass consumption, to be looked at in terms of nothing but face value. I’d be scared walking around there. It’s like everyone is watching you, like you’re the outsider because you’re a real person. Even in the game, you start to feel a strong connection with Booker because of the disconnect you have with the in-game built environment. You know he’s not from a place like Columbia, and neither are you. He reacts with a bit of fear and a lot of suspicion whenever someone talks to him, and so would you. It’s the natural response of a human when we’re placed in places that make us uncomfortable, especially when we don’t know why they do. In BioShock Infinite, it’s the uncanny that makes us feel that way, the sense of our surroundings being uncomfortably familiar. That’s all for now, folks. I hope using a few smaller angles was effective, and be sure to leave any critiques in the comments section. I’m working on refining my repertoire of approaches, so that I can have a semi-consistent set of questions that I ask myself when looking at a game’s architecture. Aaron Cote is an architecture student studying at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. His posts can be found at gaming community Monolith. Republished with permission.

Courtnee Draper -- BioShock's Elizabeth -- visits Up at Noon (spoiler alert). Also, Greg reacts to the Xbox One...and a cute dog.

If there really is a Santa, I'll be rocking this come December 26. And yes, I know it's the middle of Summer in Australia on December 26, but *crag* it. The BioSloth Infinite Sweatshirt You Didn’t Know You Wanted [Fashionably Geek] BioSloth Sweater [Shelfies]

Today's Gold Box deal of the day on Amazon is BioShock Infinite. Downloadable PC versions of the game are $25 off ($35), whereas boxed copies of the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are $20 off ($40) for today only.

Meanwhile, $35 Steam codes through Groupon for the game appear to still be available until the end of the day. What we're trying to say is, today might be a good day to buy a new game.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Deals are just falling out of the sky. You heard it here first. Amazon's got your ticket to Columbia for its lowest yet, regardless of your platform. If you've been putting off playing the year's biggest game, now is the time. • PC [Steam] Bioshock: Infinite ($35)• PC [Physical] Bioshock: Infinite ($35)• PS3 Bioshock: Infinite ($40)• 360 Bioshock: Infinite ($40) Click here to dig in to Amazon's ongoing Mayhem sale on over 1500 games, and here for the current Moneysaver roundup. Keep up with Shane Roberts on Kinja and Twitter. Check out Dealzmodo for more great tech deals, and Deals.Kinja.com for even more discounts. This is a Moneysaver One-Shot, a post focusing on a single deal, sale, or category. Join us every weekday at 2:15pm ET for the full Moneysaver roundup, brought to you by the Commerce Team. We're here to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available, and to be clear, we also make money if you buy. We want your feedback.

Unlike other Groupons for BOGO grow-your-own nagchampa kits and 15 percent off the first 30 minutes of your dog's Le Cordon Bleu certification lessons, this Groupon to get the PC version of BioShock Infinite for $35 is actually worth spending money on.

Last time we saw anything from Vector Sigma Creations’ Weaselhammer, he’d made a weapon from the future in the form of the M-12 Locust submachine gun from the Mass Effect games. This time, he goes back into the past and crafts a swell looking machine gun from BioShock Infinite. The Triple R Repeater wasn’t my favorite weapon in the game but damn if it doesn’t look impressive as a real-world object. Take a look at how the final product came together over at his blog. (Image from BioShock Wiki.)

For the first time in ages, Deus Ex director Warren Spector is unemployed. The man who created what’s regarded by many as the greatest game of all time isn’t cracking any whips, cooking up cyber conspiracies, or teaching cartoon mice to sing. Instead, he’s taking some time to both teach and learn, which is what brought him to UC Santa Cruz’s recent Interactive Storytelling Symposium. There, he echoed the refrain that’s recently become his calling card: take games to new, interesting places, and don’t just lean on crutches from film, TV, and the like to do it. It was a call to action – a plea for tomorrow’s burgeoning brains to break outside the box and then burn the remains. Do not, however, mistake that for an admission of inaction on Spector’s part. Unemployed or not, his gears are churning again, and he’s starting to think about his next big move. After his session, Spector and I discussed why he can’t simply make another Deus-Ex-esque game, why he really wants to put a “no weapons restriction” on his next project, Kickstarter’s popularity among his pioneering peers, Epic Mickey in retrospect, and more.

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Since shipping Irrational Games' opus BioShock Infinite in March, creative director Ken Levine is already hard at work penning the script to his next game. Levine began crafting his next work earlier today, he confirmed on Twitter.

When asked by a fan what inspires him, Levine rattled off a list of authors, films and television shows, running the gamut from composer Stephen Sondheim to the works of the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh and Stanley Kubrick. Levine also referenced the Don Draper chronicles, Mad Men. Of course, these are just works that inspire him; not necessarily the works that will directly inspire Irrational Games' next project, whatever that may be.

Take-Two announced its financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, revealing that the company took in $1.214 billion in sales last year, up from $825.8 million for the fiscal year 2012.

Take-Two notes that BioShock Infinite met with "significantly" higher sales than any previous BioShock release, shipping over 3.7 million units to date. The company reports a net loss of $31.2 million over the past fiscal year, but projects between $1.75 to $1.85 billion in revenue for the current fiscal year (ending in March, 2014), spurred by upcoming releases like Grand Theft Auto V and WWE 2K14.

The report notes year-over-year improvements in both revenue and net losses, bolstered by big sellers like Borderlands 2, NBA 2K13, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Catalog sales for older releases like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption also saw strong performances, as Take Two noted a 192 percent year-over-year rise in revenue from digitally delivered software.

BioShock Infinite has shipped over 3.7 million units, according to Take-Two interactive's year-end financials released today. The company noted the game experienced "significantly" higher first-month sales than any other BioShock release.

The company also mentioned it has seen solid demand for the BioShock Infinite Season Pass, but did not share any numbers. The Season Pass will include the game's three coming DLC packs.

You might think that a good-looking game like BioShock Infinite would be perfect for a screenshot gallery at Dead End Thrills… and you'd be right! Duncan Harris has posted a bunch of great new high-res shots over at his site. Go check 'em out.

Is your tower loft/prison missing that certain something? Irrational Games hopes a Songbird plushie, now available for pre-order through the BioShock Infinite developer's web store, will fill that need.

The plush Songbird is sits seven inches tall, has a wingspan of 14 inches and is made of metal, wire and polyester. Each Songbird costs $55 and will take flight from Irrational's warehouse and ship out to customers in September.

The Songbird is the bodyguard of Elizabeth, the coin-flinging counterpart to game protagonist Booker DeWitt. If you're looking for other ways to express your love of BioShock Infinite, you could also print out some different cover art, get a new ringtone or head down to your local buffet.

Some players find the violence in BioShock Infinite disturbing and at odds with the story. We think there's a far more jarring element, however, specifically that Booker eats everything in sight. We're not sure what message Ken Levine an co. were trying to convey, but it isn't pretty.