What's your overall opinion of the narrative as whole? Do you think this is one of the best the medium has to currently offer?
I thought it was great, and indeed one of the more thought provoking and insightful endings the medium has to provide. In execution I think there's room for improvement. As with BioShock 2K have a tendency to introduce tangent narratives in their games that dip into less interesting territory. They always pick up, but I think there's area for overall refinement there, and maybe a bigger internal focus.
I don't really think Infinite put anything new on the table in raw execution. It's not like it revolutionises the medium. But the
content is ambitious and the execution is very good. The ending is largely responsible for how my positivity. They wanted to tell a story, were very heavy handed in including a scripted narrative in an interactive work that's also still a "video game", and managed for that narrative to come to a very satisfying and discussion worthy conclusion. So in that they succeeded, and that makes the game worth playing.
Infinite is a game that plays like a 7/10 but it's written so damn well that it doesn't matter.
The inner critic always tries to attach a score, because I write for a website and if I were single handedly reviewing Infinite I'd have to :lol. And as important as so many aspects of the game are, I am very much for critiquing where critique is warranted. And some parts of Infinite I don't like all that much (see: side quests, checkpointing, and damage stacking). As much as I enjoyed the experience entire, that experience also included a couple of moments where I booted up my save and went "what the fuck? why am I so far back?", and a couple of moments where I
feared quitting, not knowing when the game would next checkpoint.
On a side note, much of why the story elevates Infinite so much is identical to why I adore Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Two very bold stories that bring it all together with an excellent, memorable ending.
