BioShock Infinite Burial At Sea Episode 2 was released nearly 8 years ago back in 2014, and apart from the remastered collection two years later, it technically remains the most recent game in the franchise until the next BioShock game rumored for some time this year. Episode 2 followed on from the cliffhanger ending of Burial At Sea Episode 1, beginning in an idyllic vision of Paris, France with players controlling for the first time, Infinite’s iconic companion character, Elizabeth.
This peaceful, explorable opening, similar to the opening sequence of Bioshock Infinite, lead to fans rallying around one of the more peculiar background NPC’s. A little boy holding a baguette above his head and dancing in a circle indefinitely. Responding to a joking tweet about the NPC, Gwen Fray, the developer that placed the background NPCs for that sequence explained in a twitter thread how the boy was designed.
As it turns out what players assumed to be a specially designed NPC was actually a clever reworking of existing animations and assets to save on development time and cost. Taking the circular dancing animations from one of the background NPCs in the Battlefield Bay sequence of BioShock Infinite, changing the model to that of a young boy and replacing his dancing partner with a baguette. Frays plan if anyone was to ask why a kid would be dancing with bread was to reply, “bread’s great right!?”
What’s interesting about this bizarre NPCs patchwork creation is that it ended up working within the context of the story. The opening of Burial At Sea Episode 2 takes place not exactly in Paris, but in the character Elizabeth’s idealized version of Paris, a location that throughout Infinite’s story becomes a symbol of her innocence, and where Elizabeth has escaped to after the end of Burial at Sea Episode 1. The player slowly realizes over the course of the opening that things aren’t just as they seem, the idealized vision of Paris slowly falls apart due to Elizabeth’s guilt over using and abandoning Sally, one of BioShock’s iconic Little Sisters, for her own ends in episode 1.
Within context then, a little boy dancing around with a baguette, which many players took simply to be a way of telling the player that they are in France, also works as a player's first clue that this is Paris more of an idea or fantasy for someone who dreams of Paris rather than a true reality. Gwen Fray said she simply wanted more motion in the Burial at Sea Episode 2 Paris scene so, call it serendipity then that her uncanny NPC added more than that to the game and was able to give a few players a good laugh.
BioShock: The Collection is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
