Bioshock: Infinite

[Fabricated]

Can we call Colonial Marines gaming's "Baseketball moment"? Can SimCity be gaming's "Waterworld"?

No, we all agreed that Colonial Marines was bad.

Star Wars Episode 1?

[UnSub]

Can we call Colonial Marines gaming's "Baseketball moment"? Can SimCity be gaming's "Waterworld"?

No, we all agreed that Colonial Marines was bad.

Star Wars Episode 1?

Prometheus.

[Rasix]

This is a pretty fun game but I'm not sure why they decided to call it Bioshock anything.

To tug at the purse strings of the Gamestop kiddies that often refer to Bioshock 1 as the best game ever as proof if their hardcore gamerness. Plus, vigors, which still make no sense.

It is a lot of fun.  Very well done with some interesting touches in parts.  Game really picks up once you get Elizabeth.

Yes, I know it will end badly.  The general plot is too "out there" for it not too. I don't care at this point.

[Sparky]

Bioshock convinced Something Awful that libertarianism was a crap philosophy.  Seriously the whole debate forum was full of randroids until that game came out.  In the near future every political party will make games pimping their beliefs to capture the young vote.  I'm not even kidding.

[Riggswolfe]

Ruin it for me please.

[Fabricated]

Almost nothing anyone does in this game makes any sense past a certain point.

The one that annoys me the most is...well, it's not a spoiler we're trying to save the girl right? Well at one point people are fleeing the already advertised interfaction fighting, hopping onto the small barges and flying away from the city. There's one you can see where there's some drama going on because a woman is too scared to jump onto the thing to her husband.

Like. It's right there. I mean, it's a skiff leaving the city. RIGHT THERE. The people on it aren't hostile. Why can't I'd just jump onto it and fucking leave? There's no parachutes either? I'd think there'd be some emergency parachutes somewhere in a gigantic floating city? Couldn't I just get some, or hang out in some house and make a ghetto one, then just...parachute off the floating city? We're clearly over land.

...I guess not? Okay, let's go through all this trouble to secure this one very very specific airship instead of just stealing another one. Whatever.

[Khaldun]

That's what drives me nuts--is when I have to do something when everything in the visual and narrative environment seems to give me the choice to do something else. I just hate that.

[Fabricated]

The problem ironically is that you have Elisabeth with you. Yeah she's great and adds to the game portion of it a lot but that means you have to keep contriving reasons for us to not just jump the fuck off of Columbia, which the game does not do.

I guess they could've implied more strongly/earlier that songbird would be up your ass the instant you hit any real airspace around Columbia and make it so you had to dick around finding ways to kill/incapacitate it or leave without being noticed and skip the whole faction fighting thing, but they don't really do that.

[Velorath]

Ruin it for me please.

[Margalis]

It sounds like the game itself is really unambitious. At any point where they had a choice that could have resulted in lower sales or less lowest-common-denominator-focused gameplay they chose the safe conservative path. (Including even the box art!)

It's a little weird to have "big ideas" in a plot which is arguably somewhat bold on top of a game that is just "Standard Game: The Game." There is a lot of "hey, it's a video game what do you want?" coming out of Irrational. It's hard to give them a lot of credit for being bold and imaginative with the story and some stuff like the art design when it doesn't apply to the underlying game.

There is this weird notion in many AAA games right now that the moment to moment gameplay in a game is essentially non-canonical. That you are supposed to dismiss most of the game as "eh, it's just a game" and that the real narrative only comes from the non-interactive parts. You spend the vast majority of the time interacting with a game but somehow none of that counts compared to the time you spent passively listening to an audio log.

It does make you appreciate games with interesting narratives where the gameplay works as part of the whole rather than being something to ignore. (For example Silent Hill) I don't really get this idea that you can take what is basically a generic military shooter and paste an entirely separate story layer on top of it and have it work. It's like if Super Mario Brothers had cutscenes and in them we found out that Mario runs a wildlife refuge that specializes in turtle conservation.

[Malakili]

It sounds like the game itself is really unambitious. At any point where they had a choice that could have resulted in lower sales or less lowest-common-denominator-focused gameplay they chose the safe conservative path. (Including even the box art!)

It's a little weird to have "big ideas" in a plot which is arguably somewhat bold on top of a game that is just "Standard Game: The Game." There is a lot of "hey, it's a video game what do you want?" coming out of Irrational. It's hard to give them a lot of credit for being bold and imaginative with the story and some stuff like the art design when it doesn't apply to the underlying game.

There is this weird notion in many AAA games right now that the moment to moment gameplay in a game is essentially non-canonical. That you are supposed to dismiss most of the game as "eh, it's just a game" and that the real narrative only comes from the non-interactive parts. You spend the vast majority of the time interacting with a game but somehow none of that counts compared to the time you spent passively listening to an audio log.

It does make you appreciate games with interesting narratives where the gameplay works as part of the whole rather than being something to ignore. (For example Silent Hill) I don't really get this idea that you can take what is basically a generic military shooter and paste an entirely separate story layer on top of it and have it work. It's like if Super Mario Brothers had cutscenes and in them we found out that Mario runs a wildlife refuge that specializes in turtle conservation.

I've noticed this as well and think it is unfortunate.  It is also one of the reasons I really like Valve's shooters even though they are quite linear (which is not usually a quality I like in a shooter), they integrate the story so well with the gameplay.

[Fabricated]

Okay yeah I beat it just now and the ending is complete pretentious gibberish, to the point whoever wrote it needs slapped in the fucking face.

Between this and ME3 I'm wondering if there's a videogame writer out there that isn't so far up their own ass they see their tonsils.

[HaemishM]

Between this and ME3 I'm wondering if there's a videogame writer out there that isn't so far up their own ass they see their tonsils.

Both were follow-ups to successful games. Success is sometimes a writer's worst enemy.

[jakonovski]

Finally finished the game, all I can say is that they had a really great idea, but then made a shooter. It wasn't bad or anything, just the disconnect between the story and what you do in game is jarring.

[Fabricated]

ProTip to any game writers: You need to be very good at what you do to pull off an ending of the type Bioshock Infinite has. The vast majority of you absolutely do not have the chops to do this.

[jakonovski]

Plot spoilers, suckas!

[kildorn]

Plot spoilers, suckas!

That said: it's a good game, and exposes that I'm not nearly as in love with these sorts of endings as game reviewers are. I loved pretty much all of it until the end.

[pxib]

will the circle be unbroken
by and by, lord, by and by?
is a better home a-waiting
in the sky, lord, in the sky?

[Riggswolfe]

Plot spoilers, suckas!

That said: it's a good game, and exposes that I'm not nearly as in love with these sorts of endings as game reviewers are. I loved pretty much all of it until the end.

There is an after credits sequence that is really brief and may actually play in to what you're saying.

[angry.bob]

It was fun and I enjoyed playing it, it's just that the ending was poorly crafted and could have easily been done better by presenting it too any nerd who's seen a scifi show with that type of story and let them soot holes in it until it makes sense.

Sadly, the thing I'll remember most about the game is

[Fabricated]

I didn't realize how many covers/originals of pop songs there were in the game. I heard what I'm guessing is some original Jazz version of Tainted Love, a pedestrian in Finkton singing "Fortune Son", and of course the barbershop quartet cover of "God Only Knows", but there's a lot more.

For example, when you land on battleship falls, you can hear I think an organ version of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". There's a cover of "Shiny Happy People" later on as well.

[Riggswolfe]

It was fun and I enjoyed playing it, it's just that the ending was poorly crafted and could have easily been done better by presenting it too any nerd who's seen a scifi show with that type of story and let them soot holes in it until it makes sense.

Sadly, the thing I'll remember most about the game is

Lol. I suspect you're not alone in that Bob.

[schild]

It was fun and I enjoyed playing it, it's just that the ending was poorly crafted and could have easily been done better by presenting it too any nerd who's seen a scifi show with that type of story and let them soot holes in it until it makes sense.

Sadly, the thing I'll remember most about the game is

Lol. I suspect you're not alone in that Bob.

Now that I've read this, it's pretty clear that this is his way of putting "Would You Kindly" in another BioShock.

He probably would've gone the Old Boy route if he could have.

[jakonovski]

Elizabeth's head was way too big for any of that.

[kildorn]

I didn't realize how many covers/originals of pop songs there were in the game. I heard what I'm guessing is some original Jazz version of Tainted Love, a pedestrian in Finkton singing "Fortune Son", and of course the barbershop quartet cover of "God Only Knows", but there's a lot more.

For example, when you land on battleship falls, you can hear I think an organ version of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". There's a cover of "Shiny Happy People" later on as well.

There's a Vox about that later on.

[Furiously]

Elizabeth's head was way too big for any of that.

She's a Disney princess!

[Tannhauser]

I can confirm that the timeless music of Cyndi Laupner is in the game.

[Rasix]

Carnival song on the beach sounds a lot like "Girls just want to have fun".

 

Ahh, I didn't catch that.  Thanks.

[Riggswolfe]

I can confirm that the timeless music of Cyndi Laupner is in the game.

It's actually in the game twice. Once on the beach and later in a tear as a fully sung version.

[pxib]

A lot of big ideas, absolutely magnificent art direction, and a heaping pile of the same old shit.

In order for a game's narrative arc to feel authentic, the actions and motivations of the player have to match (or at least parallel) the actions and motivations of the character. If I do not understand why Booker needs to do some particular sidequesty thing, it's hard for me to understand why he doesn't just go ahead and do the things he actually obviously needs to do. Mysterious keys and the cipher/codebook dynamic in the game are a spoilerless example: They're functionally looting. In theory they might have had important information, or shortcuts... but they don't. The plot is staggeringly linear, and the protagonist's distractability just looks foolish.


Then there's the whole problem that all of these plot-heavy shooters have. They are mass-murder simulators. It is possible to produce psychopathic madmen for whom mass murder plots are appropriate, and it's even possible to create sympathetic side-characters who stick with them in spite of it by becoming as broken and jaded as they. This game really doesn't do either. Booker remains bitter and judgemental about murderers and abusers no matter how many varyingly-innocent people he kills, and Elizabeth gets frighteningly efficient and helpful by the end of the game despite how distasteful she claims to find the preceedings.


Then the ending squeezes a lot of plot that could have been genuinely foreshadowed or doled out slowly into a silly and dizzying few minutes. Plus it renders meaningless most of the actions the protagonist took in the entire game...  ultimately one short, if weird and beautiful , step away from "it was all just a dream". How much stronger would it have been had Booker remembered pieces his past earlier and fought with himself to justify keeping it a secret from the people it would hurt?

I really want to love this game like I love its setting (silly quantum hot air balloon city and all), but it ends up being a lot of sound and fury signifying only the depressing lack of narrative depth the weary old FPS genre allows.

[Tarami]

I expected more from Elizabeth, considering they've been tooting their horn for years over her. They want us to like Elizabeth so desperately that they pull all the tricks they can, it seems... I'm not really feeling much other than "that was some terribly good animation". The character feels so deliberate (just look at that character model) and talks so much yet gets so little personality across. Story wise, she's such a huge, huge hassle and offers nothing but complications, judgement and dry exposition in return. I would have knocked her over the head and put her in a bag until she was delivered.

Please, keep her, Songbird, I'll go into hiding in Argentina instead of dealing with all this shit - how little does having another ruined life on my conscious matter.

Maybe I'm just a psychopath. On the other hand, I cared more about minor characters in The Walking Dead than Elizabeth.

[pxib]

She's Rapunzel: Spent the last 20 years hiding in a tower reading books, painting pictures, and inventing games. Basically a blank slate, and without much opportunity to develop over the course of the game. The characters in The Walking Dead are at least implied to have pretty realstic lives, concerns, goals. Elizabeth wants to get out of her tower and go to Paris. That's it.

Also she doesn't like all this killing she exists to help you with. That concludes the development of her character...

[Tannhauser]

Just finished it.  It was an amazingly beautiful, technically well-made game, but it didn't resonate with me as emotionally as they wanted it to.  Artistically, they swung for the fences but only hit a double.  But I'm grateful they tried.  We need more games like this that try to push the envelope. 

[Fabricated]

Pretty much everything above.

A legitimately novel take on Elizabeth would've been actually making her pretty much socially retarded/introverted/nearly mute like she would've been in real life since she spent her whole life locked up with almost no human interaction. Instead she's literally a Disney princess; I was waiting for a literal magic carpet ride. They kinda got her being naive but she's pretty much instantly an empathetic social butterfly who is better at talking to people (when she does) than Booker, who can't seem to stop flashing his fucking sign of the devil everywhere.

There a reason Booker didn't immediately pop into a clothing shop to grab some fashionable fingerless riding gloves the INSTANT he noticed his brand was on a sign that basically said, "SHOOT ANYONE THAT HAS THIS BRAND"?

The game doesn't really follow the internal logic of its own world, and it doesn't even make an effort to handwave shit it can easily handwave. Again: Why am I not hopping on any of the barges fleeing the Vox later? What about any of the barges? Why aren't I PARACHUTING OFF THE FUCKING FLOATING ISLAND THE INSTANT I SAVE THE GIRL? You could've easily established that Songbird would be up your ass the instant you set foot off Columbia and set up some thing where maybe you can get the Vox to help you kill the Songbird so you can escape, and THAT'S why you want to get them guns so badly!

...but nah whatever let's just make something something vague deal with some NPC who has no reason to help us.

At least the game is fun.

[Fabricated]

Also this is "Politics" worthy but fuck the writers for being gigantic pussies and playing the "Both sides are bad!!" card after spending 3/4ths of the game establishing how racist, backward, ignorant, and vile the upper half of the citizenry/government are.