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Bioshock Infinite | Official Spoiler Thread |

Pagusas

Elden Member
Here are questions I have:

Who sent booker the letter in the early part of the game warning him about the number 77 for the drawing?

Who put the note on the light house?

Who killed the guy at the light house?

Is it possible what separates Maytre Booker (the one who died fighting for the VOX) from our booker is that the Maytre one didn't draw 77, comstock had more time and moved Elizabeth before he gotto the tower, thus why she wasn't there. If that's the case then maybe the brother and sis recognized that failed attempt and found a way to rig the number 77 to get booker to Elizabeth faster. Just an idea.
 
Here are questions I have:

Who sent booker the letter in the early part of the game warning him about the number 77 for the drawing?

Who put the note on the light house?

Who killed the guy at the light house?

Is it possible what separates Maytre Booker (the one who died fighting for the VOX) from our booker is that the Maytre one didn't draw 77, comstock had more time and moved Elizabeth before he gotto the tower, thus why she wasn't there. If that's the case then maybe the brother and sis recognized that failed attempt and found a way to rig the number 77 to get booker to Elizabeth faster. Just an idea.

The luteces did it all. Maytre Booker only helped the Vox to get to where Elizabeth was being held, since in that timeline she was moved from monument island to Comstock house before he got there.
 
Here are questions I have:

Who sent booker the letter in the early part of the game warning him about the number 77 for the drawing? Luteces

Who put the note on the light house? Luteces

Who killed the guy at the light house? Luteces

Boring answer. :-/ Sorry!

Edit: aaaand beaten
 

mjc

Member
I don't know if this has been posted before, but I thought this video nicely summed up some of the stuff Infinite got wrong (mostly gameplay wise). After letting the game sink in for a week now I feel the same way, especially regarding the content that got cut from the final game, and the gameplay from the previous games being better overall.

Everything Bioshock Infinite Gets Wrong

Perfectly illustrates my issues with the game. I still like Bioshock much, much more than Infinite. It just failed on most levels to hook me.
 

DatDude

Banned
Perfectly illustrates my issues with the game. I still like Bioshock much, much more than Infinite. It just failed on most levels to hook me.

Did you like the setting more?

That's the only answer I could think of.

But that's fine then, because not everyone who likes chocolate ice cream, will like vanilla ice cream as well.
 
I'm going through Bshock 1 right now and it definitely hasn't aged as well as my rose tinted welding mask led me to believe. Feels soooooo cramped especially that first big daddy fight. I can't believe how confined it is.

One thing I noticed going through the game again is you guys know the fight after Shantytown where you have to jump on the rails to take out the blimps engine?
If you look around that area there is a ton of rails going all over the place and tons of hooks and places to land/shoot from that have no purpose whatsoever. It makes me think that fight was massively stripped down(Still a great fight). I bet there was 2 blimps at one point or something along those lines.

I remember that level as well, and I had similar feelings. Actually you can say that about a lot of the levels, even the one right before the first fireman. There is no way assets such as Skyrails that if you follow go to quite specific routes are for some reason inaccessible without it originally being an integral part of the levels.

Reason they were cut we may never know, but the game could be so much more in the combat side yet I love what we got now.

Too bad we won't be revisiting Columbia pass DLC.
 
I mean come on now. Bioshock was nothing BUT fetch quests..but for some reason when it happens in Infinite it's like UGH WORST GAME EVER!! DEVS HOW CAN YOU DO DIS SHIT MAN!

Just feel like there are incredible double standards when it comes to Infinite's flaws, and Bioshock flaws.

Personally the reason Infinite's fetch quests bothered me more is that Columbia is this broad world connected with all sorts of skylines and tramways and zeppelins, so when you hit a "locked door" it feels that much more restrictive and arbitrary. Rapture was a claustrophobic series of tunnels, so a literal locked door makes a lot more sense as an actual impediment to your progress.

And Bioshock came out almost six years ago, when most of us didn't have extreme shooter fatigue. It's not surprising that Infinite is being held to a different standard.

I remember that level as well, and I had similar feelings. Actually you can say that about a lot of the levels, even the one right before the first fireman. There is no way assets such as Skyrails that if you follow go to quite specific routes are for some reason inaccessible without it originally being an integral part of the levels.

I assumed a lot of those (at least in the early parts of the game) were mostly there just to establish why skyrails exist in the world.
 

Borgnine

MBA in pussy licensing and rights management
I don't know if this has been posted before, but I thought this video nicely summed up some of the stuff Infinite got wrong (mostly gameplay wise). After letting the game sink in for a week now I feel the same way, especially regarding the content that got cut from the final game, and the gameplay from the previous games being better overall.

Everything Bioshock Infinite Gets Wrong

Another 100% +1 for this, great video. Ugh, I'd forgotten about the musical interlude. Worst was not being able to get out of it once it started despite my mashing. I felt violated.
 

Nose Master

Member
Anyone else kinda let down by the townsfolk/enemies? I missed the crazy splicer-esque townspeople from the early demos. In this all of the enemies were cops or vox.
 
That video hits all the right buttons.

In general, I feel like while the imagery is awesome the entirety of it is forced.
I like it when artists are free to do their thing. That was one thing that I loved about Bioshock.
You're just thrown into this situation and you have no fucking clue what's going on. In Infinite it's like everyone's being cheeky and not telling you the secret.

And speaking of Bioshock, people said it lost momentum after meeting Ryan/the twist but they don't do anything to resolve that in Infinite.
They just move the twist to the very end of the game. I like it when games/movies have something after the climax.

In Infinite, as great as the ending is, it feels like a woman rushing for her clothes and bolting out the door.

---

Jeff from Giant Bomb mentioned my main criticism of the game in the B:I spoilercast.
Basically he says how all of the tears make the player feel like nothing really matters because it's just going to be changed again anyway.

Not to mention I think the Vox Populi plotline is a bunch of uninteresting drivel.

Also yes, the Luteces are great but their presence makes it half their game and half Booker and Elizabeth.

I think the game is great but I don't know how it took them this long to make.
 

kurahador

Member
Jeff from Giant Bomb mentioned my main criticism of the game in the B:I spoilercast.
Basically he says how all of the tears make the player feel like nothing really matters because it's just going to be changed again anyway.

Not to mention I think the Vox Populi plotline is a bunch of uninteresting drivel.

To me that's what makes it more interesting. In BI the game made it seem like you need to meet someone like in Bio1, but it turn the table around with the tear.

The Vox Populi is another interesting perspective. The game make you see how the 2nd class citizens got treated throughout the game and make you get sympathetic towards Vox's plight, only to turn that around by making them no different than Comstock's men when a big war broke out.
 
You can show them as no different that Comstock's men by a simple firing squad set-piece or something like that.

But the problem is tension and the underdevelopment of key areas.

The first 15 minutes is all this awesome spooky religious stuff.
Then it becomes this happy American amusement park.
After that it's about these xenophobic sky racists.
Then you meet Elizabeth with weirdo scientific testing.
Now it's a bit about a revolution.
It goes on and on...

It's all too distracted. Too many tonal changes. Nothing important or interesting is overt.

Changing gears so many times makes it a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none.
 
Jeff from Giant Bomb mentioned my main criticism of the game in the B:I spoilercast.
Basically he says how all of the tears make the player feel like nothing really matters because it's just going to be changed again anyway.

They pulled it together well at the end, but yeah, that was the point where I sort of checked out and started going along for the ride. It felt like an intermission until the game could get back to the "main" timeline.

I think the game is great but I don't know how it took them this long to make.

I can believe it with all the talk of "they made five different versions of the game" -- I'd just like to know what those versions were.
 

njean777

Member
I really like how Columbia is a huge metaphor about America. It can be beautiful and great, but once you live here and stay for long enough you can see the nastiness and problems that plague the US everyday.
 
I can believe it with all the talk of "they made five different versions of the game" -- I'd just like to know what those versions were.
Even with all the polished moments, I don't get it.

I expected Elizabeth to have some truly amazing AI but she's still pretty borked.

I can believe it with all the talk of "they made five different versions of the game" -- I'd just like to know what those versions were.

Me too.

I just wished that they made that centered solely on religion, xenophobia, and felial piety.
Leave Fitzroy and the rest to voxophones.

Then you'd have a smartly designed but still primarily emotional game that provides a lot of interesting flavor.
 
I remember that level as well, and I had similar feelings. Actually you can say that about a lot of the levels, even the one right before the first fireman. There is no way assets such as Skyrails that if you follow go to quite specific routes are for some reason inaccessible without it originally being an integral part of the levels.

Reason they were cut we may never know, but the game could be so much more in the combat side yet I love what we got now.

Too bad we won't be revisiting Columbia pass DLC.

It is kind of a depressing thought. This is a pretty fantastic world that could really be built upon.(gameplay wise)
 

Bsigg12

Member
It is kind of a depressing thought. This is a pretty fantastic world that could really be built upon.(gameplay wise)

Yea, and the way the story played out, how in the hell do you do another Bioshock? Where would you even approach it from because now we know the man/lighthouse/city setup is all the same thing in different universes so now they have to come at it with a different approach to make it interesting.

I wish Ken would write Infinite as a novel and include major plot points that got cut due to gameplay issues. It would make a hell of a read, and they could flush out more of the characters, just leave the end alone because the way they ended it was perfect.
 

aett

Member
Not sure if this has already been mentioned to death. I'm replaying the game and got to the area with the gondola to the First Lady airship. Outside of the ice cream parlor is a hot dog salesman. If you buy a hot dog from him, he asks if you're going to get one for your daughter, as well. He's just assuming, but I thought it was an interesting bit of foreshadowing.

Right after he says this, Elizabeth asks Booker how old he is. His answer amused me: "South of forty, north of you."
 

Guess Who

Banned
But the problem is tension and the underdevelopment of key areas.

The first 15 minutes is all this awesome spooky religious stuff.
Then it becomes this happy American amusement park.
After that it's about these xenophobic sky racists.
Then you meet Elizabeth with weirdo scientific testing.
Now it's a bit about a revolution.

All of this is just window-dressing for the story of Booker and Elizabeth. It's not supposed to be about the city, or the political themes, it's about a man and his daughter. These things are all underdeveloped because they're not the point.
 

ziadoz

Neo Member
I wonder how many people have actually played Bioshock in recent days.
...
Just feel like there are incredible double standards when it comes to Infinite's flaws, and Bioshock flaws.

I understand your point, but I think you're being disingenuous. You could just as easily argue that Bioshock Infinite is one big fetch quest (fetching Elizabeth).

One of the things for me, highlighted in the video, was just how hollow Columbia felt in comparison to Rapture. A good example is the Vox Populi section, that never really gets fleshed out. The scene they cut where the Vox take over the city and start performing executions in the street would have at least forced me to form an opinion of them. And after the scene in elevator and meeting Finks assistant, we never even meet the man himself. There was a missed opportunity here for us to find out more about him, and how he 'killed' the Luteces and stole Rapture technology, but in the end all we witness is his death at the hand of another shell of a character.

In comparison Rapture was far better realised. The downfall of the city is believable, and the player sees the end result. The random conversations of splicers, the Big Daddy introduction scene (compare that to the introduction of the Fireman in Infinite), the deranged Sander Cohen in Fort Frolic, the ghostly scenes of splicers abusing ADAM; all of it weaved a more tangible world for me.

Regarding the gameplay, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say Bioshock has aged badly. The games share almost identical mechanics, with Infinite improving in some areas and regressing in others. For example the verticality and larger arenas are a welcome addition, and provide a sandbox for the player to experiment in that the cramped tunnels of Rapture can't offer. The gear system was also a decent attempt at overhauling tonics, and being able to change them on-the-fly is progress.

But then there are regressions, like the worthless weapon upgrades and the vigors that never get fully utilised. I counted two places I could use Shock Jockey to enable a generator, and one where I could use Devils Kiss to open a gate, which makes me question if other puzzles where they could be used were cut. Then there are the good things from Bioshock that got left out, like the ability to carry multiple weapons, the risk/reward research mechanic, the different ammo types, the turret bots and the hacking minigame.

Infinite isn't a bad game, it's a fantastic game (and the guy in the video echoes this sentiment), and it's easily better than a lot of the cruft on the market today, but it's troubled development shows, and for me personally it doesn't surpass the original.
 
All of this is just window-dressing for the story of Booker and Elizabeth. It's not supposed to be about the city, or the political themes, it's about a man and his daughter. These things are all underdeveloped because they're not the point.

The problem is, their story isn't all that compelling. He's the grizzled hitman with way too much blood on his hands. She's the naive ingenue with powers beyond time and space. Add some quantum psychobabble and suddenly you get an engrossing story for the ages apparently
 
All of this is just window-dressing for the story of Booker and Elizabeth. It's not supposed to be about the city, or the political themes, it's about a man and his daughter. These things are all underdeveloped because they're not the point.
Ok fine and I know that's what they wanted to come across.

But all of those things prevented the player from doing that in my opinion.

In the end, you're just marginally connected to Elizabeth, the supposed centerpiece of the game.
Beyond her helping you survive in combat situations, she's a useless character. You know next to nothing about her. You barely interact with her. She seldom says anything.

The player brings all of the emotional and intellectual weight to the relationship.

It's a good idea but it could have been so much more satisfying.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
All of this is just window-dressing for the story of Booker and Elizabeth. It's not supposed to be about the city, or the political themes, it's about a man and his daughter. These things are all underdeveloped because they're not the point.

But by the time the nature of the reveal rolls around, it's too late for Booker and Liz to re-establish their bond as father and daughter before the whirlwind of the ending kicks in.

There's no little moment of downtime such as the ones that occur while going through the Hall of Heroes, Fink's elevators, or what have you for Liz to express her thoughts. She obviously realizes that something is up, or that some old memory she has along with Comstock's ravings has triggered something in her (and this is before the siphon is destroyed), but we as Booker aren't ever allowed to experience it with her.

Instead, we're slogging through the final airship battle.

I understand Ken's moving the Twist to the end, since it's extremely central to the narrative, and (officially, narrative-wise) revealing the father/daughter angle too far before the timeline information comes into full effect would make it harder for us to see Liz doing what she does. Still doesn't make their newly found out father/daughter relationship particularly compelling at the end. The hints are there, but nothing comes of it due to timing issues.

Getting back to Liz, her main 'arc' mainly consists of viewing the growing insanity of Columbia and how it changes her as a person (in addition to the whole "who are my parents and how does that affect me" discussion). But this ties back into the whole 'exploring too many themes' argument, as we're constantly bombarded by different images/messages of differing experiences, and since we as Booker may not be looking in the right section, or focusing on the impending gunfight, Liz is forced to react to each and every one of them to make sure we catch them, which at times is completely missable.

The player is the one who assigns the weight to things like the Guitar scene and Liz's development. And while I did enjoy Liz coming to terms with the crazy situation she'd been raised in and how that continued throughout her life (which was what I presume was supposed to happen, as to better allow the player to not 'fight' Booker's decision to let Liz kill him) personally, the guitar scene and a few other 'connection scenes' didn't really mesh with me, because instead of being naturally occurring, they felt 'forced' in a way.

edit: I'm not saying that Liz and Booker don't bond as two people, a grizzled wordly resecuer with the knowledgeable, non-helpless rescuee, but to me, at least, that's so much less interesting once you know of their real connection to each other.
 
If Comstock hated black people so much, why did he allow them on his floating city? You'd think he'd just have picked the best people to stay and get rid of the rest.
 

ignata

Member
Just went back and checked in my game (on PC) and Elizabeth's pin stayed the same (bird) all throughout the ending. It just disappears after you go through that last lighthouse and you get the multiple Elizabeths.

If you watch Giant Bomb's spoilercast that they did yesterday, the same thing happens on their playthough that happened on mine. Elizabeth is wearing the cage pin only during the second boat ride during the ending. They were also playing on PC. Really wondering what is triggering this in some cases but not in others...
 

rinker

Member
I assume this is a common question, someone give me a hand -

So I just watched the Giant Bomb thing and came up with a question of something I thought I understood originally - which booker is being drowned? If its the same booker who we just played the game as, why would drowning him affect anything? That version of booker already made their choice. I think my issue is that I'm thinking of it like time travel - that if they went back to this universe/time where he made the baptism, our booker is just a visitor.
 
If Comstock hated black people so much, why did he allow them on his floating city? You'd think he'd just have picked the best people to stay and get rid of the rest.

There are a few audiologs that speak directly to this. Essentially it boils down to:

1. Cheap labor.
2. Cultivating a sense of racial superiority.
3. Teaching some perverse lesson about how cruelty is a necessity in the face of greater good.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
I assume this is a common question, someone give me a hand -

So I just watched the Giant Bomb thing and came up with a question of something I thought I understood originally - which booker is being drowned? If its the same booker who we just played the game as, why would drowning him affect anything? That version of booker already made their choice. I think my issue is that I'm thinking of it like time travel - that if they went back to this universe/time where he made the baptism, our booker is just a visitor.

There's two theories here.

One is that Liz takes our Booker outside of Time/Space back to the origin point utilizing the infinite possibilities granted to her through her ability to see 'all the doors'. The other is that all the other Liz's that you see could be seen as other universe's Liz's doing the same thing to their Bookers.

And if our Booker is taken to this 'special' place, or if every Booker is allowing it to happen, all of their universes are wiped out due to the paradox of Liz being the one to kill her father before she could ever be born and gain the tear powers to perform said kill on Booker, hence 'all' of the Liz's disappearing.
 

Fjordson

Member
The ideal DLC would include:

- New player character
- New AI power
- No tear powers, but ability to direct your AI partner to effect change in other ways
- New voxophones, infomericals, etc
- New weapons, vigors and gear
- New strong enemies (Handyman, etc)
- Return of under-utilized enemies (Boys of Silence)
- New areas: Three of them, like Minvera's Den
- Make one of those areas hub-like, like Finktown
- New propaganda, PSAs, stained glass, etc
- New architecture and decor
- Some substantial battles on skyrails
- New insights into Fink, Daisy, etc
- Some insights into Songbird
- More anachronistic music
I'd love more on the Founders and the early days of Columbia. That's what I really want to find out about. Who all the founders were and why they were chosen, how the city grew to what it became what we see in Infinite, etc.
 
I don't know if this has been posted before, but I thought this video nicely summed up some of the stuff Infinite got wrong (mostly gameplay wise). After letting the game sink in for a week now I feel the same way, especially regarding the content that got cut from the final game, and the gameplay from the previous games being better overall.

Everything Bioshock Infinite Gets Wrong
Home run. Holy shit, it's like this guy is me in an alternate universe where I know how to edit a video like that and can voice my opinions more coherently. And have an accent.

"A game that tries to blow your mind rather than encourage you to use it" is the best quote about this game.
 

Melchiah

Member
Just finished the game last night, and eventhough I liked the ending, the twist was pretty much foreseeable long before it happened. I dunno whether it was partly because I expected it, like I've expected it from Shyamalan's movies, or whether it was so obvious in itself. Towards the beginning I suspected Elizabeth was Booker's daughter, and some time after the reality jumps started I began to think Booker was in fact Comstock. Although, I didn't realize that the AD on his hand was for Anna DeWitt, which was pretty obvious in retrospect.

I wonder how exactly the story and/or the ending were changed after the religious Irrational Games worker was about quit? I'd really like to know how it was originally, but I suspect that they're not going to reveal the details.

I was somewhat disappointed by the choices making no difference; whether you stole things in the area before the encounter with Slate, and whether you spared him or not. I found it refreshing, that before the last fight there were absolutely no frustrating sections in the game on medium difficulty, which is pretty rare nowadays. The gameplay mechanics and options were more limited than I expected though. The length was good (somewhere between 15-20 hours for me), and it didn't start to drag on towards the end like the last two in the series.

Overall, I truly loved the game and its world, and its ties with the original. Now that I've finished it, I'm finally going to listen the soundtrack that came with the premium edition. Looking forward to the upcoming DLCs. BTW, did anyone get the sightseeing trophy? I tried to inspect every nook and corner, but still fell five short of them. Which is why I thought it's possible to get only via the DLCs.

P.S. The Songbird's cry in Fort Frolic blew my mind.
 
Huh. Just found the voxophone where Comstock is saying that "The Archangel" demands his heir to be his own blood. Makes me wonder if this is just him justifying wanting a child within his own line and kidnapping Anna, or if someone or something actually demanded it.
 

kurahador

Member
Huh. Just found the voxophone where Comstock is saying that "The Archangel" demands his heir to be his own blood. Makes me wonder if this is just him justifying wanting a child within his own line and kidnapping Anna, or if someone or something actually demanded it.

Who's The Archangel again? I always thought it was the Lutece.
 

MNC

Member
Nah, the publishers will get greedy and pump out Bioshock Infinite 2 by 2K Marin. It's a better idea than the XCOM FPS.
I hope not, just the name "bioshock infinite 2" sounds ridiculous.

The game, with a its flaws acknowledged, is still a fucking amazing game, imo.

I finally was done thinking about this game 3 days after completion, but then i listened to the music.... snd im right back at the start. This game doesnt let you go and the music severely gets too little credit. The entire ending ost is more powerful than 90% of all games.

...was i the only one that felt pretty disconnected from songbirds dead? My thoughts were basically "aww, thats sad. Wait. These doors. This is... this is fucking rapture?!"
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
I don't know if this has been posted before, but I thought this video nicely summed up some of the stuff Infinite got wrong (mostly gameplay wise). After letting the game sink in for a week now I feel the same way, especially regarding the content that got cut from the final game, and the gameplay from the previous games being better overall.

Everything Bioshock Infinite Gets Wrong

Thanks for linking this video. I'm in complete agreement with this guy and he got his opinion across very well.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
Who's The Archangel again? I always thought it was the Lutece.

I believe that the 'archangel' is either a dream based on remnants of the events of Wounded Knee and Comstock's other atrocities that he has to justify....

or that it's just a story to pull the wool over the eyes of his followers, and that in actuality, he just saw what would happen through the tears and decided that instead of probability of events occurring, such as Female Lutece says, he would accept these viewings as being divine prophecy.

...was i the only one that felt pretty disconnected from songbirds dead? My thoughts were basically "aww, thats sad. Wait. These doors. This is... this is fucking rapture?!"

Songbird doesn't seem to have been meant as an actual character, more like an all-powerful boss variant who would always succeed in killing you until neutralized by a greater power, in this case, Liz's upgraded tearing ability.

He was more a device to give the plot a sense of urgency (and to humanize Liz by being her 'jailer') than a real 'character'.
 
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