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As you make your way up the inside steps of its tower, there are portents of what's to come: religious music and signs with messages such as "Of thy sins shall I wash thee." That phrase evokes an ornery response from DeWitt, "Good luck with that, pal."

At the top of the lighthouse steps is a chair; you strap yourself in, and you're transported with a noisy blast to another world.

This moves the game along to what Aristotle considered the most important element of tragedy: the plot. You, as DeWitt, are getting paid to rescue someone. You're reeled into rescuing Elizabeth — a character who's been imprisoned since childhood — from a city called Columbia and return her to New York.

It may be a first-person shooter game, but the killing doesn't start when you get to Columbia — a floating city in the clouds.

You spend an hour of the game exploring streets and gathering supplies. The city is filled with quaint turn-of-the-century buildings. People seem to peacefully meander along the sidewalks, stopping at shops and cafes.

'Cluing You In'

But everything is laden with clues of a darker story that will bring this floating city to earth. There are preachers and statues of historical American leaders.

"This city is run by a prophet figure who created a new religion that worships the Founding Fathers of the United States," Levine says. He describes their religion as "a mixture of Christianity and a sort of Founder worship."

But what makes this different from a tragic play is that you aren't just watching Hamlet — or rather Dewitt. "You are him," Levine says. "So we have lots of ... cleaver ways of sort of cluing you in to who you are, and what your mission is and what your purpose in life is."

In Hamlet, the audience watches the prince struggle with the implications of taking violent action. In BioShock Infinite, you struggle with it.

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