One of my favourite parts (and I have many favourite parts) was going back to the general areas from the start of the game, after the Vox rebellion. I don't want to say that I didn't expect the greater explosive conflict between the Founders and the Vox, or that the Vox would eventually turn against me. What I was unprepared for was how effectively the game used that conflict in its narrative.
I mean, the game goes out of its way to make the people of Columbia distasteful, especially to most modern sensibilities. Pompous. Casually racist. Classist. Brainwashed. There are countless occasions that the game highlights this, even before you hit Finkton and actually get to see how the downtrodden live. Even Booker, whose actions are less "let's help the People!" and more "I want my damn airship", voices support for the Vox cause after seeing that.
And then they get their guns.
Seeing what they did to the people of Columbia is sickening, filled with such violence and cruelty against them because they were products of a certain society. It reminded me of a scene from The Dark Knight Rises, after Bane tells the people to take back his city and rich folk are attacked because they're rich. Not because they did anything personally, but because they represented an aspect of a culture that the attackers hated. In that moment, going back to the Coney Island-Disneyland fusion of the Columbian streets and seeing heaps of vendors and civilians in piles, unceremoniously butchered without any hints of resistance, I felt bad for them. They may have been racist ****bags, but did they deserve that? They, like most people, would have more than likely backed down when threatened with violence, but instead the Vox commit this sort of genocide against them and you, the player, feel bad. You feel bad not just because they didn't deserve it, but because you hated them and more than one person probably fantasized about doing the same thing (or actually did, seeing as how this is a shooter).
And, I mean, it was done perfectly. There's this scene that was in the 2011 demo (which I thankfully didn't watch until after I'd finished the game) where the game has the option of stopping a Vox show trial of a shopkeeper or somethingn that really draws attention to what they're doing. This was cut from the final game. Some people have bemoaned that, for isn't the demo scene more interactive? I much prefer the end result, though. One, it puts the reaction wholly in the player's hands, doing what the game does very well and encouraging (and rewarding) exploration and observation. But it also takes away your ability to do anything about the atrocity. You, Booker (and Elizabeth), caused this, and yet it's completely out of your hands. You can only witness the aftermath.