BioShock Infinite

Irrational's 2013 follow-up abandons the seabed for Columbia, a city held in the sky by quantum trickery and run as a nationalist theocracy one strike away from civil war. You are Booker DeWitt, a Pinkerton with debts, sent to retrieve a girl named Elizabeth who can open tears into other realities. Elizabeth is the design centre: she scavenges for you, cannot be killed, and rips open portals mid-fight that pull in cover, turrets or allies, which is a rare case of an escort character being a mechanical asset rather than a liability. Combat is faster and more vertical than Rapture, built around skyline rails that let you leave a fight and re-enter it from above. The two-weapon limit and the vigor system narrowed the improvisation the original was known for, and that trade remains the main criticism. Its ending, which reframes the whole series as a set of variations rather than a sequence, split opinion permanently and is still being argued about a decade later.