You can now watch the first few minutes of March 2013's BioShock Infinite online or read about the game's first four hours in a preview we published a couple of weeks ago. But BioShock beginnings are not the kinds of things BioShock fans have precedent to fret over.
BioShock endings? That's another story.
Ken Levine and his team at Irrational have long been open and frank about the awkwardness of the first BioShock's ending. Remember that boss battle? Not the game's finest moment. You'd hope that kind of thing won't happen in Irrational's Infinite.
I recently asked one of the game's writers, Drew Holmes, about the new game's ending. He wasn't going to spoil it, of course, but he said this: "It's certainly going to be something that is going to be new and unique and that people will be talking about." He added, "This is an ending that I am proud of."
This alone is encouraging, because it makes it sound like the ending of BioShock Infinite won't be conventional, which the end of BioShock 1 was—more conventional than just about anything else in the game, in fact. And it makes it seem like it's not an afterthought.
Ultimately, players will judge how good an ending it is. "Our feeling about the ending is sort of irrelevant," Holmes said. "It's up to the players to decide. I think it's definitely not an ending that people are going to be expecting."
UPDATE: Ken Levine speaks a little more about the new game's ending at 9:30 of this interview. No spoilers there, either.