BioShock Infinite

[Twig]

Haha that was pretty good.

[Gormongous]

Does anyone have any opinions on the alternate covers Irrational released? I personally find the third one, "Falling Art," so visually arresting that it would have made for an instant buy, rather than a long bout of hand-wringing.

[Joewintergreen]

Yeah that is a really nice cover

[Nappi]

It's a shame that they just lazily stamped the same logo in all of the alternate covers. It doesn't match the look of the concept art ones at all. The cutting/occlusion is pretty horrid as well, especially in "Booker and Elizabeth 2".

 

I agree that "Falling Art" is pretty neat, though.

[vimes]

I wrote a pretty long text about my experience of Bioshock, but here's my conclusion

 

When I play a game with a strong core that has flaws, I always imagine how they could have been fixed.

To me, the original Bioshock wasn’t about the events of the game, it was about what happened before, it was about a group of inspiring people united under a strong ideal who, when trying to implement it, discover that the difference in perception of what this ideal means is going to tear them and their utopia apart. That’s why, despite the obvious flaws of the game, I had no problem imagining a Bioshock more to my liking, a game that was not as belligerent, that would make us experience this central theme directly, during the city’s genesis, growth and apex.

The seed and spirit of this ‘better game’ was definitely in the original one.

 

But when I think about Infinite, I fail to see the mending possibilities. The game isn’t about the ideal behind Columbia – since it is condemned from the beginning and never shown a redeeming side. It isn’t about how people deal with guilt – since all options but death are insignificant.

In summary, it isn’t about questions and the panel of valid answers that can exist for them.

 

It is about Elizabeth. It is about the parallel universes and the narrative device to present them. And it is about the bullet laden escape. At best, it could be about the branching between Comstock and Brooker persona. But even then, it cannot NOT be an action game set during the bombastic fall of Columbia, because at their core that’s how the central pieces want to be explored: Elizabeth has to be freed by making a giant building explode.

 

All the nice environmental art, the beautiful architecture, the brilliant sound design, the idea of a floating city, the research on American Exceptionalism… every awe-inspiring elements are just accessories to that.

And that’s why, it never really mattered what the execution was, Infinite was always going to be this linear experience that I don’t like.

[I_smell]

Ken Levine said his favourite was Falling Art, and it's currently my desktop background!

[Dirk Anger]

  On 4/13/2013 at 6:28 PM, youmeyou said:

Well you do murder a lot of female cops, so the music isn't the only forward-thinking element of an otherwise puritanical society.

Likewise, at some point at the beginning, a cop laments how (I'm paraphrasing) "negroes, micks and misogynysts" are poisoning their precious Columbia.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? This aspect doesn't make sense (why would an otherwise fundamentalist society tone down that particular aspect of their ideology?), and it's portrayed very inconsistently throughout the game. There are the female cops and Rosalind Lutece, but on the other hand, many tidbits in the voxphones or uttered by civillians clearly portray Columbia as a patriarchal society common to its' time. 

Maybe it's meant to represent Comstock's... dificult relationship to the women in his life. More probably though, those bits were just inserted so you could should some chicks in the face once in a while.

Or am I missing something here?

[Chris]

Maybe it just represents that one guy.

That's actually something I think is missing from this game generally--the acknowledgement that not every person with a worldview is either 1) a down the line doctrinaire who takes every single aspect of his or her ideology to the most extreme point, or 2) basically a nihilist.

[Sno]

What about the sequence with the two white Columbians offering medical assistance to the black population?

I wish i could remember where or what exactly was said, but there's another bit of dialogue where a husband starts talking about how he thinks they should treat the non-whites of Columbia more fairly, only to have his wife hurriedly hush that line of talk out of fear other people might hear it.

[Zederick]

Brought over from the Episode 101 thread, since it seemed more appropriate here:

 

  On 4/14/2013 at 12:13 AM, malkav11 said:

I've seen this argument elsewhere, and I think it's a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of what the ending is actually presenting.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

They're not just moving to another reality, but actually replacing Booker at the moment he undergoes the baptism and chooses to become Comstock. When he's drowned instead, that choice is never made and no universe containing Comstock is ever produced to branch into a quantum infinity of Comstock-universes. The tears are, after all, repeatedly presented as also accessing other times, particularly when it comes to music, but also in, say, the scene where Elizabeth opens one onto a movie theater advertising a Star Wars film. But they have to have a Booker that's willing to make that choice.

 

I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it hangs together well enough. Insofar as these sorts of stories ever do.

 

On an unrelated note, I highly second the earlier recommendation of Nier. That game is fantastic.

 

Are we at a point where we aren't spoiler-tagging the ending yet? I feel like someone coming to this thread ought to know what they're getting into by now, but I'll tag it just to be sure.

 

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I've got no problem with the time-travel part of the phenomenon, but if Elizabeth is able to replace the Booker of another world with her local one, then why not do that anywhere else in the game ever? It would have solved any number of problems (or in one setting, probably trapped the player in a coffin), but it never occurs or is hinted at in the other tears. Even after unlocking her powers, we see multiple different Bookers and Elizabeths along the lighthouses.

 

Perhaps her now-unlocked powers do allow her to go to some sort of prime-reality where they can replace the local versions of characters - but if so, then why is she joined by multiple copies of herself? Wouldn't they each be replacing her?

 

And even if they are in the prime-reality where Booker replaces the original Booker and can make those decisions (say, traveling not along an objective timeline, but along a subject's personal timeline and resetting them to who they were at that moment), then it's still undone by the whole idea of the branching realities. If Booker chooses to sacrifice himself, that would also split into another reality where Booker decides *not* to sacrifice himself -- which means there's still a Comstock out there branching off of those realities. And then Bookers to oppose them. And so forth.

 

I mean, I totally dig that it's a good emotional end, but by the laws they've established, it just doesn't work.

[I Saw Dasein]

Another thing about time-travel/replacing self:

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if you replace the local-universe version of yourself when you time travel, shouldn't Booker have died as soon as he traveled into the future, since Comstock was dead at that point?

[Twig]

fuck i hate spoiler tags

 

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I think the multiple Elizabeths are representative of the multiple realities in which Booker succeeded in rescuing Elizabeth, after which she brought him there, to the Prime Reality. There's only one Booker because he is the focal point of the multiple realities, and it's his baptism that births Comstock. I feel like if they could have filled the screen with thousands of variations of Elizabeth, all contributing to the drowning of Booker, each representing her own reality, without it being hilarious, they would have.

 

Also to respond to the above post: I don't think Booker replaces Booker as a rule, although there is an absorption of current-reality knowledge that I think is just some weird result of all the tears ripping apart reality. Anyway, I think Booker replaces Booker only after Super Elizabeth is born, because she makes it happen, along with every other Elizabeth. It's hand-wavy, but whatever, it doesn't detract from the Booker/Elizabeth dynamic, so I don't really give a shit.

[toblix]

Just finished this and here's my dumb review:

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The bad parts:

• I didn't enjoy any of the combat, so I felt there was too much of it. Especially the defence sequence was super-frustrating, with me having to restart tons of times to get past it. Overall, it left me frustrated that I had to explore this fantastic world with the always nagging feeling of impending fights.
• The weird thing where everything has a 50/50 chance of being a container, since it caused me to algorithmically examine every surface of every room. That's just me, of course, not being able to stop playing a game in the wrong way even realising what I'm doing.
• I felt there was a lot of repetition to many of the locations. A lot of fightin' arenas with some locked-off offices with shelves and safes in them.
• The whole racism thing started out like a core thing, but in the end I felt they just used it to "set the mood," which feels weird.
• I was a bit disappointed that they did the Tomb Raider "character progression = undressing" thing.

The good parts:

• Visual design. I'm so glad I got a new PC just in time for this. Playing it super-smoothly with everything turned to the ultimate max was just amazing. I kept hitting F12.
• So much great use of music.
• The world was fascinating and interesting, and there were a ton of just incredible locations with a million tons of creativity and detail everywhere.
• I love world-mixing, and I was pleased by all the little anachronisticism throughout.
• The rail thingys were fun to ride.
• Did I mention the music.
• The ending was just great. All those lighthouses and Rapture and jesus christ.

[juv3nal]

re the final battle

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I have read (although I didn't do it myself) that you can plant the bullet shield vigor on the actual thing you need to defend, making that fight much, much easier

[malkav11]

  On 4/15/2013 at 9:16 PM, Zederick said:

Brought over from the Episode 101 thread, since it seemed more appropriate here:

 

 

Are we at a point where we aren't spoiler-tagging the ending yet? I feel like someone coming to this thread ought to know what they're getting into by now, but I'll tag it just to be sure.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I've got no problem with the time-travel part of the phenomenon, but if Elizabeth is able to replace the Booker of another world with her local one, then why not do that anywhere else in the game ever? It would have solved any number of problems (or in one setting, probably trapped the player in a coffin), but it never occurs or is hinted at in the other tears. Even after unlocking her powers, we see multiple different Bookers and Elizabeths along the lighthouses.

 

Perhaps her now-unlocked powers do allow her to go to some sort of prime-reality where they can replace the local versions of characters - but if so, then why is she joined by multiple copies of herself? Wouldn't they each be replacing her?

 

And even if they are in the prime-reality where Booker replaces the original Booker and can make those decisions (say, traveling not along an objective timeline, but along a subject's personal timeline and resetting them to who they were at that moment), then it's still undone by the whole idea of the branching realities. If Booker chooses to sacrifice himself, that would also split into another reality where Booker decides *not* to sacrifice himself -- which means there's still a Comstock out there branching off of those realities. And then Bookers to oppose them. And so forth.

 

I mean, I totally dig that it's a good emotional end, but by the laws they've established, it just doesn't work.

  Reveal hidden contents

Booker's a pretty terrible person by most of the evidence in the game. Only the Booker that ultimately saves Elizabeth is in a mental place that permits the sacrifice, (I've seen it theorized that this is because he's travelled through several tears at that point and is conforming to Elizabeth's desires for who he should be) and the sacrifice then preempts the version of Booker that would be confronted with that choice from ever existing.

 

And it's not a matter of "prime realities". All of the realities where Booker becomes Comstock branch off that baptism decision in that particular universe's version of Booker's life.

 

Like a lot of time travel/quantum reality stories their rules require a fair bit of handwaving and suspension of disbelief, but I don't agree that the ending they present contradicts or fails to account for those rules.

[malkav11]

  On 4/15/2013 at 9:24 PM, I Saw Dasein said:

Another thing about time-travel/replacing self:

  Reveal hidden contents

if you replace the local-universe version of yourself when you time travel, shouldn't Booker have died as soon as he traveled into the future, since Comstock was dead at that point?

  Reveal hidden contents

As Twig said, I don't know that it's necessarily the rule. But Booker wasn't Comstock in that universe. He had his own separate existence.

[toblix]

Whenever I read people's complex explanation of convoluted plots, like with this game, or movies like Inception, at some point I start thinking "did any of the people making this ever even think of this?" It's always easier to evaluate the whole thing after the fact, and get all the pieces to fit – it seems less likely to me that the actual process of writing the story ever involved the kind of deep analysis you sometimes see fans do, especially knowing that big story pieces are often shifted around until very late in production for weird production reasons. I bet Christopher Nolan reads a lot of Inception forum threads and thinks «oh, I never thought about that!»

 

edit: Oh, except for in that movie «Primer» of course.

 

editer: I guess the question I'm having is: At what point does the fan discussion of plot details go past what anyone responsible for the plot has actually considered, and at that point, is the discussion relevant in any way?

[Twig]

It's more fun to not ask that question SO I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU WOULD.

[darthbator]

  On 4/17/2013 at 5:05 AM, true said:

dit: Oh, except for in that movie «Primer» of course.

 

Actually the director of that movie said that he didn't even have it mapped out as meticulously as other people did. Apparently he was amazed at how well it stood up under that kind of scrutiny. From my understanding he doesn't even like to talk about that aspect of that movie very much. Then again I might not know shit. Strike that I for sure don't know shit. 

[Nappi]

  On 4/16/2013 at 8:00 PM, true said:

• I didn't enjoy any of the combat, so I felt there was too much of it. Especially the defence sequence was super-frustrating, with me having to restart tons of times to get past it.

 

I wasn't paying attention to the instructions and for the majority of the battle I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be defending a very specific thing on the ship. That turned out to work great. I attacked the patriots and other enemies with my machine gun and fireballs as they boarded the ship and took down the enemy ships whenever they got too close. It was only during the last three minutes or so that I realized that the few enemies that had got too close were actually ignoring me and shooting the thing. They didn't manage to do much damage, though. 

 

I didn't die once, despite my considerable lack of FPS skills.

 

I was playing on normal, though.

[toblix]

I was playing on normal too, and knew I had to defend the thing, and still managed to die a bunch of times. I'm just terrible at fights.

[Nappi]

The point was that maybe it was better that I didn't know. I would probably have tried to set up some kind of defensive perimeter around the thing (instead of just charging at the enemy immediately after they boarded the ship), and ended up with lot more enemies on board at any one time. 

[Merus]

Once I noticed there were a couple of elevations going on, and the upper ones had gunners, I had better luck. No-one really paid attention to you unless they had to and you got a steady supply of chain guns.

[malkav11]

There was a specific thing you were supposed to defend?

[toblix]

I watched the Giant Bomb spoiler thing, and noticed there's even new HUD elements for it. Whatever. A couple of days later, and what's still sticking with me is all that great god damn music.