In a blog post on the Irrational Games website, legendary designer Ken Levine has opened the clanking, whirring lid on BioShock Infinite's brassy pair of collector's editions.
The Premium Edition, which will cost $79.99 (around £50), includes a 3-inch keyring based on the 'Murder of Crows' special power, wherein lead character Booker summons a plural noun's worth of corvids to attack his enemies. Kind of like Corvo's ability to summon rats in Dishonored, but with wings. There'd be a neat little bit of symmetry here if BioShock Infinite's leading man had a name that meant 'rat', given Corvo's cognate. But it doesn't. Oh well. It would have been a lovely bit of Booker-ending.
I'll stop now. It's a keyring, alright?
There's also a lithograph (“fancy picture”), a figurine for the new BioShock Infinite board game, an art book and an scattering of downloadables, including PC themes – which I presume means a wallpaper, or “jpeg”. There are also a few in-game upgrades, including the ability to push people over, make possessed enemies explode, and audio logs that grant you cash when you listen to them.
You also get all of this within the Ultimate Songbird Edition, too, but this more expensive box ($149.99, around £90) is the only place you're able to nab an impressive 9 ½ inch statue of Songbird, Bioshock Infinite's winged Big Daddy analogue. It's been designed by concept artist Robb Waters, and it appears to be shaking its first angrily as if to ward youngsters off its sky-lawn. Place it on your windowsill, where it can remind passers by of the folly of fin de siècle American exceptionalism while also reminding them that they do not want to be abducted and murdered by a man in an old-timey diving suit strapped to a hang glider.
