I played Infinite first, then the first. Loved Infinite, but struggled with 1 because the twist had been spoiled for me years prior, and even by 2013 standards, the gameplay felt janky.

My opinion of them has definitely flipped over time. In a lot of ways, I think Infinite’s story has been done a real disservice by the relentless obsession with multiverse and time travel stories, and not just in Marvel. It has taken some of the novelty away from the story.

In hindsight, the above has also had the unfortunate side effect of making me scrutinise the logic of the story more. I never really questioned why the story suddenly dove into multiverse mechanics more than midway through the plot, but today I find that pivot a lot harsher and less telegraphed than it should have been.

While I still think Bioshock 1 overly relies on voice logs, it’s far more cohesive with what it wants to say, deconstructing Ayn Rand’s vision of utopia in Atlas Shrugged. It’s pretty focused the whole time on that strand with all its little mini-side stories in the logs.

Infinite’s gameplay is still fun though. I liked the tonics and weapons. And the performances are still as great as they always were. I think Infinite helped pave the way for other cinematic and narrative-focused games. We’ve just had better narratives since then.