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Author Topic: Bioshock: Infinite  (Read 81994 times)
Tarami
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Reply #210 on: April 02, 2013, 07:30:10 PM

Elizabeth's problem as a character is that everything she says is at face value. Clementine in The Walking Dead is god damn terrified at all times but she's as terrified of being seen as a burden. Realizing she acts (and therefore, is) brave out of concern for others is what makes her sympathetic. This would be true of anyone but even more so of a young girl.

Crying when you're expected to cry isn't sympathetic, it's understandable. Sympathy requires selflessness.

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.
Having Elizabeth go "Mhmhf..." and stare at the ground when addressed would have been great. awesome, for real

Truthfully, though, I think a reason Elizabeth alternates between this angsty child and a paragon of awesome power is one similar to your comment on the writers being pussies - they worried about, or didn't know, how to write a female character that didn't seem unfashionably weak. It's an odd thing I've noted in some reviews - since Elizabeth has this supernatural power, she is a strong character and not at all a damsel in distress, eventhough the game acts exactly as if she were. Well, until the last ten minutes.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2013, 07:31:46 PM by Tarami »

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pxib
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Reply #211 on: April 02, 2013, 08:41:42 PM

...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.
That hasn't been legitimately novel since Ico did it eleven years ago. I think rather than being concerned that she would be seen as weak, the team was concerned that the player would be annoyed about having to drag Elizabeth around. A character who genuinely inspires fear in Booker is one which probably inspires annoyance in anybody controlling him.

I also want to second the "vitachamber resurrection mechanics are dumb no matter how much you dress them up with plot justification" thing, too. What's the point of dying if it's not even remotely a hassle? Why include mortality at all?

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Riggswolfe
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Reply #212 on: April 03, 2013, 06:18:25 AM



Why aren't I PARACHUTING OFF THE FUCKING FLOATING ISLAND THE INSTANT I SAVE THE GIRL?


Some of your complaints are valid but this one? Not at all.

Let's say you're booker. Let's say you just got the girl out of the tower. Let's even pretend that for some bizarre reason you've had training in sky diving in a time period where that makes absolutely no sense.

What would you make the parachutes out of? How about the harnesses? What do you do about the terrified girl? Strap her to you and knock her out? Ok. I hope the harnesses are made for that.

Also, I hope that Columbia just happens to have the right type of material to make a good parachute. I also hope all of those cops who have been trying to shoot you don't fill the parachute with a lot of holes or you know, casually fly over to you in one of their airships and shot you as you go by.

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
Bunk
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Reply #213 on: April 03, 2013, 06:20:09 AM

At least in this version when you died any of the tough creatures you were fighting got their health back. In One, I could attack a Big Daddy with a wrench until it killed me, run back from the vita chamber in the next room and just keep on whacking away at it, eventually killing it.

Just finished it last night, and the ending made my head hurt. Then I started reading different opinions on what the ending meant, and my head hurt any more. Then I found out I had missed the post credits ending...  swamp poop


The game wasn't perfect by any means, and timey-whimey stories will always be annoying, but this game really did do a lot of things right. There was enough engagement between the story and the gameplay to get me to finish it in a week. Games like this usually take me about two months to finish, if I ever do.

For me, Elizabeth sets a new bar for what you can do with an NPC in a single player game. There's all kinds of ways you can criticize her character if you like, but the mechanics behind her are ground breaking for this type of game.

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Reply #214 on: April 03, 2013, 07:50:31 AM



Why aren't I PARACHUTING OFF THE FUCKING FLOATING ISLAND THE INSTANT I SAVE THE GIRL?


Some of your complaints are valid but this one? Not at all.

Let's say you're booker. Let's say you just got the girl out of the tower. Let's even pretend that for some bizarre reason you've had training in sky diving in a time period where that makes absolutely no sense.

What would you make the parachutes out of? How about the harnesses? What do you do about the terrified girl? Strap her to you and knock her out? Ok. I hope the harnesses are made for that.

Also, I hope that Columbia just happens to have the right type of material to make a good parachute. I also hope all of those cops who have been trying to shoot you don't fill the parachute with a lot of holes or you know, casually fly over to you in one of their airships and shot you as you go by.
If I accept that there's a floating city held aloft by 1900's super-science it stretches my credulity to the point of snapping if parachutes haven't been invented at said floating city.

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Reply #215 on: April 03, 2013, 08:35:15 AM

If I accept that there's a floating city held aloft by 1900's super-science it stretches my credulity to the point of snapping if parachutes haven't been invented at said floating city.

This. It's like building a goddamn city in the trees 100 feet high, then not putting railings on the walkways between platforms. Fuck you, architects of Kelethin.

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Reply #216 on: April 03, 2013, 08:52:53 AM

If I accept that there's a floating city held aloft by 1900's super-science it stretches my credulity to the point of snapping if parachutes haven't been invented at said floating city.

This. It's like building a goddamn city in the trees 100 feet high, then not putting railings on the walkways between platforms. Fuck you, architects of Kelethin.

Even Ewoks understood that.

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Reply #217 on: April 03, 2013, 09:15:55 AM

I found it funny that there was no wind to speak of at "ground level" in the city, yet at the top of Elizabeth's tower you had the howling winds that should have been present all throughout the city.


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pxib
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Reply #218 on: April 03, 2013, 10:38:26 AM

All the quantum that protects citizens from basic physical laws is at the bottom of the platforms.

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Reply #219 on: April 03, 2013, 05:41:49 PM

All the quantum that protects citizens from basic physical laws is at the bottom of the platforms.

Magnets. It all comes down to magnets.

Venkman
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Reply #220 on: April 03, 2013, 05:54:28 PM

I just want to say I've been avoiding this thread because for the first time since ME3 I really don't want to even risk spoilers. But goddamn is this a fine playing game. Each time I thing I've got it figured out (eh it's on rails but pretty, wait it's not so on rails. Eh so I just got to save the girl right, oh she hates me and I'm now arming a rebellion wtf?) it all changes. Gunplay isn't the awesomenest, but I kinda treat that like Tomb Raider: combat as a vehicle to exploration and bow=sniper rifle smiley
Lantyssa
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Reply #221 on: April 04, 2013, 04:25:00 AM

I don't think safety was a major concern back in 1900.  We have plenty of examples of that...

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ghost
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Reply #222 on: April 05, 2013, 10:54:33 AM

So is this good or not?  I'm not quite getting the warm/fuzzy feelings from this thread that I'm seeing in the reviews (go figure, right?).

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.

Meh.  It's been pretty well established that people are dicks, regardless of who is in charge. 
Lantyssa
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Reply #223 on: April 05, 2013, 11:55:13 AM

I enjoyed watching my roommate play.  The whole thing was more interesting than 1 & 2 for me.

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AcidCat
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Reply #224 on: April 06, 2013, 12:12:19 AM

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, I haven't read the whole thread and haven't finished the game, so I'm kinda wary of even minor spoilers.

Why is the game constantly undermining its own immersion? This happens just moments into the game, where, you're exploring this lighthouse, oh crap here's somebody murdered whats going on .. completely distracted by OOH SHINY, COINS! Constantly through the game so far, little stuff I wonder, why. People dead, in grotesque situations, hanging, half burned - oh here's a banana I can grab from them! Or a pineapple! Or fucking cereal! I just... don't understand. Couldn't the same purpose have been served by simply looting bandages off these people? Medicine? Syringes of GO GEL? When you put pineapples and cake and cotton candy bananas and cereal on these bodies, it's just fucking ridiculous, every cultural meme about these items is frivolous, silly, feel good food.

These choices seem so over the top as to be purposeful, am I going to get to some endgame metamoment where these ridiculous and jarring design choices make sense? Like Elizabeth constantly flicking you coins, regardless of what situation you're in?  Are they so worried you might not like her tagging along that she literally has to pay you to like her?

I don't get it, because so much of the design of this world is gobsmackingly beautiful and original to the point of sensory overload, and the story is intriguing and the characters interesting ... why does the game constantly strive to ruin this mood it creates by having me loot fucking bananas off a hanging dead man?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 12:27:13 AM by AcidCat »
pxib
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Reply #225 on: April 06, 2013, 01:00:28 AM

I got nothing.

The fact that the protagonist has no real inventory was equally dumb in Rapture. Just imagining this guy running around grabbing every piece of food, bottle of alcohol, or cigarette he finds in some garbage can or corpse's pocket and stuffing it immediately in his mouth (with sound effect!) is a more than a little bemusing. Elizabeth's coin collection wouldn't be nearly so distracting if it didn't include the distinct animation and sound effects. Those worked in combat, mind you, because they broke up the fierce monotony of FPS gameplay, but in the game proper they were an unpleasant distraction.

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Margalis
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Reply #226 on: April 06, 2013, 01:12:49 AM

Are they so worried you might not like her tagging along that she literally has to pay you to like her?

They've said basically as much, except dressed up in some BS about "emotional connection." They made her a useful tool so you would like her. It's interesting to compare in approach to something like the Walking Dead, where people like an essentially useless companion because she's likable.

Quote
I don't get it, because so much of the design of this world is gobsmackingly beautiful and original to the point of sensory overload, and the story is intriguing and the characters interesting ... why does the game constantly strive to ruin this mood it creates by having me loot fucking bananas off a hanging dead man?

They wanted to make a great story and a great game without thinking about how the two would co-exist. I think this game is doing a lot to disabuse people of the notion that a hugely expensive game with a giant staff can be a coherent personal vision. (Or at least that it is extremely rare) If you have a large staff of mostly specialized people the vast majority of them do not consider the big picture. The gameplay guy is thinking about how combat would be cool if you could rip dudes heads off, even if that undermines a story beat where that is supposed to be a singular and shocking event.

The sad part here is that it doesn't seem like Levine et al tried to make a coherent game and just couldn't do it because there were too many moving parts, it seems more like they didn't really try and just accepted that the video game layer and story layer would be distinct and often contradictory because video games.

It's like the exact opposite approach of Japanese games that have crazy non-standard save systems or buttons dedicated to sheathing/unsheathing weapons. Those games often suffer because they try so hard to make a coherent whole that playability suffers - they make all the systems reinforce the feel and themes of the game past the point of reason. Here instead it's like the developers are content to make a bunch of decisions that are optimal locally even if the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

Edit:

Quote
Elizabeth's coin collection wouldn't be nearly so distracting if it didn't include the distinct animation and sound effects.

Chances are that it was originally more subtle and got ratcheted up after play-testing because some people in the play-test didn't immediately notice it. Play-testing tends to push games in more obvious directions and prioritize surface-level issues over systemic or long-term ones.

"After playing this game for a few hours this system I thought was cool becomes really distracting and annoying" said no playtester ever.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 01:31:20 AM by Margalis »

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AcidCat
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Reply #227 on: April 06, 2013, 02:59:43 AM

They should have thrown out looting bodies, period. There's no videogame law that bodies have to be looted in every game. That would have been a huge step towards more immersion at zero cost to gameplay.
jakonovski
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Reply #228 on: April 06, 2013, 05:58:41 AM

My favorite must be how Booker spends his time eating out of trashcans. Dude must've gotten low.
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Reply #229 on: April 06, 2013, 08:10:27 AM

It's Levine-esque metaphor. The working man survives on the scraps of the rich, or something.

Riggswolfe
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Reply #230 on: April 06, 2013, 09:48:34 PM



Why aren't I PARACHUTING OFF THE FUCKING FLOATING ISLAND THE INSTANT I SAVE THE GIRL?


Some of your complaints are valid but this one? Not at all.

Let's say you're booker. Let's say you just got the girl out of the tower. Let's even pretend that for some bizarre reason you've had training in sky diving in a time period where that makes absolutely no sense.

What would you make the parachutes out of? How about the harnesses? What do you do about the terrified girl? Strap her to you and knock her out? Ok. I hope the harnesses are made for that.

Also, I hope that Columbia just happens to have the right type of material to make a good parachute. I also hope all of those cops who have been trying to shoot you don't fill the parachute with a lot of holes or you know, casually fly over to you in one of their airships and shot you as you go by.
If I accept that there's a floating city held aloft by 1900's super-science it stretches my credulity to the point of snapping if parachutes haven't been invented at said floating city.

Even if they existed, Booker would have no clue what to do with it and without training a parachute can be quite deadly. I know I said "pretend you've had training" but in all honesty, you wouldn't. So, no parachutes didn't bother me at all. Besides, the game would be about 1/2 hour long at that point. I've seen far too many movies and read far too many books where there is an obvious solution but it would short circuit the entire story. "Dude, just shoot the villain in the face while he monologues!"

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
Khaldun
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Reply #231 on: April 07, 2013, 04:22:47 AM

++ on this about looting. It's just stupid and unnecessary in this game. It shows you how completely arteriosclerotic most game design has become. "We have to put looting in, that's supposed to make people want to play."
Ironwood
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Reply #232 on: April 07, 2013, 05:10:01 AM


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Reply #233 on: April 07, 2013, 09:23:35 PM

If I accept that there's a floating city held aloft by 1900's super-science it stretches my credulity to the point of snapping if parachutes haven't been invented at said floating city.

Eh, they might have been invented but not in use. Parachutes existed during WW1 but no one used them because it made you a pussy. I really don't get that, but I'm not a biplane pilot or some asshole in blimp. People can call me a coward all they want for using a simple device that saves me from a five minute fall to my death.

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Reply #234 on: April 07, 2013, 10:13:34 PM



 Ohhhhh, I see.

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Reply #235 on: April 08, 2013, 06:20:32 PM

Still playing this. Turning over every rock. Still avoiding this thread. Falling ever further behind in the analysis. But damn as soon as I finish this I'm gonna have some stuff to say!
Kitsune
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Reply #236 on: April 08, 2013, 09:58:13 PM

I finished, and the one thing this game succeeded in doing is get me to reinstall System Shock 2.  The System Shock inventory/scrounge for stuff system that was mostly gutted in Bioshock is now just plain gone, replaced with an intensely unchallenging regenerating shield system.  Gobble pineapples off of corpses to stay alive!  Pay to upgrade your weapons, throw them away, and find new upgraded weapons from that point on.  Everyone in the world magically upgraded their weapons at that point, must be some quantum entanglement thing.  Be named Bioshock, even though the ethics of biological modifications are never brought into any question.  Replace magic gene potions with just plain magic potions.

KILL EVERYONE.  They're either automatically evil racist rich cultists because they're white, or they're automatically evil murderous looters because they're black or irish.  In no case will any of them decide not to try to fight the man who's just killed a few hundred people, nosir, they're going to blindly charge at him.  It's bound to work out better for them than for the previous 524 people.  Set them on fire and saw off their faces for an achievement.  Do this while Elizabeth the Disney princess is watching.

Attempt to make reasonable negotiations with people.  Not once will the people you're trying to negotiate with accept the reasonable offer.  Time to saw their face!

See the fascinating sights on a floating city full of racists who for some reason let the black and irish people into their floating city instead of just denying them entry and flying away to be racist in peace.  Apparently they not only let other races into their flying racist city, they did so in such numbers that the other races had enough people to actually take over the city, which just seems like terrible planning on the face of things.
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Reply #237 on: April 08, 2013, 10:10:08 PM

You lost me once you started ranting on gun upgrading.  It's a video game.

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rk47
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Reply #238 on: April 08, 2013, 10:47:48 PM

moar pineapple flavored nachos

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Reply #239 on: April 09, 2013, 03:44:17 AM

I finished, and the one thing this game succeeded in doing is get me to reinstall System Shock 2.  The System Shock inventory/scrounge for stuff system that was mostly gutted in Bioshock is now just plain gone, replaced with an intensely unchallenging regenerating shield system.  Gobble pineapples off of corpses to stay alive!  Pay to upgrade your weapons, throw them away, and find new upgraded weapons from that point on.  Everyone in the world magically upgraded their weapons at that point, must be some quantum entanglement thing.  Be named Bioshock, even though the ethics of biological modifications are never brought into any question.  Replace magic gene potions with just plain magic potions.

KILL EVERYONE.  They're either automatically evil racist rich cultists because they're white, or they're automatically evil murderous looters because they're black or irish.  In no case will any of them decide not to try to fight the man who's just killed a few hundred people, nosir, they're going to blindly charge at him.  It's bound to work out better for them than for the previous 524 people.  Set them on fire and saw off their faces for an achievement.  Do this while Elizabeth the Disney princess is watching.

Attempt to make reasonable negotiations with people.  Not once will the people you're trying to negotiate with accept the reasonable offer.  Time to saw their face!

See the fascinating sights on a floating city full of racists who for some reason let the black and irish people into their floating city instead of just denying them entry and flying away to be racist in peace.  Apparently they not only let other races into their flying racist city, they did so in such numbers that the other races had enough people to actually take over the city, which just seems like terrible planning on the face of things.
The last bit is what happened in the South for real dude. We "imported" so many slaves that in many areas of the south Blacks outnumbered whites.

As for the rest, yeah. Everyone but you being completely fucking insane for no apparent reason is retarded. The whole Vox gun plot thread made no sense considering there were a million better ways to get off Columbia.

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Khaldun
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Reply #240 on: April 09, 2013, 05:16:06 AM

On some of the "sugar islands" in the Caribbean, slaves were up to 85% of the population. The small white planter class pretty much held views close to the folks on Columbia, maybe without so much shouty religious stuff. It's kind of the point: almost nobody is a racist of the "I don't want anyone near me who is not like me" kind, then or now. They're racists of the "I want those folks under my heel and at my service" kind.
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Reply #241 on: April 09, 2013, 06:39:52 AM

See the fascinating sights on a floating city full of racists who for some reason let the black and irish people into their floating city instead of just denying them entry and flying away to be racist in peace.  Apparently they not only let other races into their flying racist city, they did so in such numbers that the other races had enough people to actually take over the city, which just seems like terrible planning on the face of things.

There's a voxophone that talks about how the people of Colombia expect a utopia where they don't have to do the menial tasks. So African Americans are brought in with false promises of a better life.

Don't know about the Irish though - I'm still early on in-game.

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Reply #242 on: April 09, 2013, 08:50:23 AM

On some of the "sugar islands" in the Caribbean, slaves were up to 85% of the population. The small white planter class pretty much held views close to the folks on Columbia, maybe without so much shouty religious stuff. It's kind of the point: almost nobody is a racist of the "I don't want anyone near me who is not like me" kind, then or now. They're racists of the "I want those folks under my heel and at my service" kind.

That's pretty much Atlanta in a nutshell. There's a reason a black majority migrated here after the 1960s. As an overally generalization, racists down here don't care how close you get to them personally, they just care how high you rise in the economic system. As you go further north, racists don't care how high you rise, they just don't want you living nearby.

Exceptions being poor as fuck rednecks who don't want you close OR making more money than them, because they are idiots living in a bumblefuck county nobody notices.

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Kitsune
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Reply #243 on: April 09, 2013, 10:43:53 AM

You lost me once you started ranting on gun upgrading.  It's a video game.

So's System Shock 2.  Throw away an upgraded gun in that and pick up another, see how upgraded it is.

One of the things that I most miss in Infinite that was present in Shock 2 and still mostly present in Bioshock is the need for care.  While you could just kick open a door and start throwing grenades, it was often much wiser to carefully explore, hack some defenses and lay some traps before starting to shoot people.  In Infinite, run straight through a linear level, shoot everything, keep running, keep shooting.  Not only is permanently hacking area defenses not very valuable, it's flat-out not possible.  Zap a turret with the possession thing, it shoots at people for about ten seconds, then goes right back to shooting you.
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Reply #244 on: April 09, 2013, 11:08:18 AM

I'm watching someone LP SS2 right now as a Psionic which I never did, and after struggling through the first couple decks it seems to have degenerated into him keeping Agility up so he can run around really fast, then wrenching (later laser rapier-ing) to death with adrenaline, with judicious use of the cyberaffinity psionic skill to hack stuff when needed. Psionics actually seems like it'd be broke as hell at high levels...I didn't realize it until the guy did it but with Pyro Field you're immune to the explosions from Protocol Droids.

The thing that SS2 has over all of the Bioshock games is that you have a lot of build options rather than just "welp you're good at everything do whatever".

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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