RETRO – When BioShock Infinite launched in 2013, it was like an absinthe-drenched oracle—a game that packed its social critique into a whirlwind of bullets and dimensional rifts while a Beach Boys tune dueled with patriotic anthems in the background. For some, it was just an overindulgent shooter; for others, a dissertation on America’s founding mythology. But for Ken Levine, the game’s creator, it was about one thing: the impossibility of redemption.

And here we are now, in 2025—12 years after its release—and it still feels as fresh as ever. Donald Trump is back in the White House, and Columbia no longer seems like a satirical exaggeration of the past. Instead, it feels like a city that has somehow slipped through the cracks of fiction and materialized in reality. Because no matter how many times we tear down Comstock’s statue, another one rises in its place—with a different face, a different slogan, but the same promise: “We will restore the glory.” The problem? That glory never existed.

Columbia and Nostalgia as a Weapon

Columbia is what happens when nostalgia turns into religion and religion turns into politics. A floating city that sells itself as the pinnacle of civilization—a paradise that crumbles the moment you scratch the gold paint off its facade. And America has been running the same cheap trick for centuries.

The American Dream, much like Columbia, was never meant for everyone—it was always a selective promise designed for a chosen few. It’s no coincidence that Comstock’s motto, “A city upon a hill,” comes from John Winthrop, a 17th-century Puritan preacher who envisioned America as a new Eden—but only for those who fit his mold. Trump didn’t invent this myth. He just repackaged it and sold it with the aggressiveness of a late-night infomercial host to a nation that would rather buy into fantasy than confront reality.

Columbia does the same. The parades, the gleaming neoclassical buildings, the little orchestra playing God Only Knows at the entry port—it’s all a trap. A meticulously crafted narrative designed to make you feel like you belong, even when that home is built on the bones of those who were never welcome.

Infinite doesn’t try to hide any of this. From the very first moment, Columbia rolls its eyes at its own ideology. The town’s infamous lottery—where the grand prize is the opportunity to stone an interracial couple—isn’t a shocking plot twist. It’s Levine’s thesis statement: this isn’t an alternate world, it’s an extension of what America has always been for some. So when we look at America in 2025, with its second Trump term, reinforced borders, and rampant historical revisionism, we’re not witnessing a coincidence. We’re watching Columbia in real-time.

Are We All Booker DeWitt?

The most brutal thing about BioShock Infinite isn’t its violence—it’s its sheer hopelessness. Booker DeWitt, the protagonist, spends the entire game trying to escape his past, to undo his mistakes. But Levine isn’t that naive. Booker’s fate is sealed the moment he steps into Columbia, because he can never outrun what he is. And this is where the game feels eerily relevant. If in 2016 there was a Booker who tried to change America’s course, by 2020, he had already failed. And in 2025, the cycle has repeated itself.

Trump is not Comstock, because Comstock is not a person. He is an idea, a symptom, a virus that finds a new host every time the system feels like it’s losing control.

If Booker represents America at its worst, then Elizabeth is the crack in the system.

Ken Levine’s Impossible Utopia

Levine has never been an optimist. From System Shock 2 to BioShock, his work has always revolved around the impossibility of utopias. Andrew Ryan, the industrial titan of the first BioShock, dreamed of a society built on absolute individualism. Comstock, in Infinite, envisioned a theocracy where divine will justified any cruelty. Both failed because their utopias were rotten at the root.

And this is what makes Infinite feel so disturbingly relevant. It doesn’t just criticize a particular ideology; it questions the very act of idealizing the past.

Columbia is the fever dream of an America that refuses to look forward—one that would rather repeat history over and over again, convinced that this time things will be different. And that is the dilemma of the U.S. in 2025. Trump and his followers have successfully sold the idea that the country can be great again without acknowledging that this supposed greatness was never real for most.

The Price of Redemption

It’s 2025, and the American Dream is still a bubble waiting to burst. The country is still stuck in its own loop. Promises of a brighter future keep crashing against the yearning for a past that never existed. And as we keep making the same choices over and over again, the question remains: will we finally break the cycle? Or, like Booker, will we keep walking through the same door, hoping it leads somewhere different this time?

-Herpai Gergely „BadSector”-

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer:Irrational Games

Style:FPS, narrative action

Release date:March 26, 2013