Arena Mode DLC for Bioshock Infinite Launches at Noon Today, Further Content Teased

At a press event in Boston Monday, Irrational Games announced Clash in the Clouds, the first piece of DLC for Bioshock Infinite, and that it would be available around noon today.

Clash in the Clouds is an arena-combat focused piece of content set in Columbia, Infinite’s fractured floating city. It pits Booker DeWitt, the main game’s protagonist, against a host of familiar enemies in fifteen waves across four maps. Favorites like the handyman and the motorized patriot will anchor waves of the game’s more traditional armed lunatics.

Mowing down Columbia’s most psychotic earns you cash to spend in The Columbian Archeological Society, a museum/display hall where you can unlock and show off trophies like concept art, character models, voxophones, and kinetoscopes.

The more interesting revelation from yesterday’s event, however, was the unveiling of two future, narrative-focused pieces of DLC that will return the series to its underwater roots. Called Burial at Sea, the first episode places Booker in Rapture the night of New Years Eve, 1958, well before the events that led to the city’s spiral into chaos and anarchy. It’s an opportunity to see Rapture as we never have, fully functional and populated (by people other than maniacal splicers) and decorated to the nines for the spectacle of the holiday.

Other parts of the DLC will take place in a department store of Fontaine’s that Andrew Ryan has expelled from the city and sunk to the ocean floor following their infamous falling out, and will be more reminiscent of the Rapture players are familiar with from the original Bioshock: shattered, leaking, and rusted. Irrational also promised the return of Big Daddies as foes though they were tight-lipped about why or how that was possible.

Details about the second episode of Burial at Sea are scant, but the studio did reveal that players will be filling the shoes of Elizabeth, Booker’s paranormally-powered sidekick from Infinite. While no timetable for release has been announced, Irrational head Ken Levine did hint that some of the DLC might slip beyond the release of the next generation consoles this holiday season.