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Another World: BioShock Infinite vs Reality

Those of us who didn't spend the best part of a week legging it around a giant convention centre earlier this month could only swoon at the resulting tall tales of BioShock: Infinite's newly-announced reality-rift feature, known as Tears. Now we get our own crack in space-time to peer through, as Ken Levine talks about (and demonstrates) companion character Elizabeth's ability to introduce elements from other realities into the player's game-world.

The theory is that there are any number of alternate universes she can tap into, where Columbia is broadly similar but with tiny changes to paths and populace. The idea of choice here - that you could choose whether to bring over a new skyline or a door to get away, or a clutch of 'friendly' NPCs to help battle your current foe, or just something to hide behind - is pretty neat, and in the BioShock idiom of choosing and combat being closely aligned.

Also, a brief glimpse of what happens when Beth's (do you think she minds if I call her Beth?) powers go a bit haywire and time as well as parallel reality is traversered...

Watch on YouTube

Reality-bending - the new Little Sister harvesting/saving?

And there's sooooooooo going to be a Rapture visit. An Easter Egg at the very least.

More details on BSI's rifts and everything else in our E3 preview and interview.

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