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Bioshock Infinite |OT| No Gods, Kings, or Irrational Games

A

Andrew.

Banned
It'd be cool if Vigor placement could be randomized. Then again, it could really screw you during some battles if you didn't acquire the one best suited for the given situation.
 
C

conman

Member
Dylan said:
I think you just had very different expectations for what this game was going to be. It's a science fiction with an extremely fleshed out world. If Levine had stayed away from filling Columbia with real-world ideas like racism and indoctrination, it would just be another shooty-shooty-robots game. Including these themes enriches the world.

If getting a whiff of these more controversial topics took away from your enjoyment of the rest of the story, that's really too bad, but I don't see it as a failing on the writers at all; that isn't the story they set out to tell.
Click to expand...
But it is the "story they set out to tell." It's just not the story they finish with. The entire first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game are nothing but game design treatises on American exceptionalism in the past and present (the direct parallels to post-911 culture are about as on-the-nose as you can expect). In many ways, the beginning of the game is an "echo" of American cultural life in the early 21st century set in an alternate history of the early 20th.

The game is undeniably about those "controversial topics" in its first 6-8 hours. Then, suddenly and with no justification, it's not. Irrational can claim all they want that they set out to make a "personal" story, but that's only in retrospect. The game was pitched as another High Concept game along the lines of the original Bioshock, and the first handful of hours bear that out. But then, it's about something else entirely. And like I said, all of the "controversial" and "messy" stuff gets dropped in favor of a safe, sloppy, derivative sci-fi technobabble thriller.

And, hell, I enjoy all of that sci-fi idiocy as much as (or maybe even more than) the next person, but don't tell me I'm getting a Bioshock-like sci-fi dystopian political allegory for the first half and then give me M. Night Shyamalan for the second. It's not fair to their own vision, their world, or even to their characters.
 
F

Fine Ham Abounds

Member
Neiteio said:
BioShock 2 only had two faults, in my eyes:

1) The game starts out very, very slowly. The early areas are a bit bland and forgettable.

2) The scenery outside the windows wasn't as pretty as BioShock 1; usually, it was foggy blue water and a sparse kelp forest.

However, unlike BioShock 1, BioShock 2 only continues to accelerate, slowly but surely, and it reaches a high top speed. Barring the absence of a Fort Frolic equivalent (although Fontaine Futuristics comes close), BioShock 2 tells the superior story to BioShock 1. And it has superior gameplay, as well.

Where does Infinite factor into all of this? In terms of the narrative, Infinite is the best of the three, imo. It starts strong like BioShock 1, it ends strong like BioShock 2, and it's consistently interesting throughout. With a single focused ending and no banal morality system, Infinite has the narrative strengths of its predecessors, and none of their weaknesses.

In terms of gameplay, the controls feel better in Infinite, in terms of sprinting and turning and jumping -- just the right amoung of tilt and bobbing. The gunplay feels greatly refined, as well.

However, the combat doesn't encourage the same twisted creativity as BioShock 2 and, to a lesser degree, BioShock 1. It's just as good, in a different way, with more focus on navigating the environment, from the skyrails to the tear transformations. But I think I preferred rigging the entire environment in my favor: turrets and sentry bots, mines and trip-wires, and so on.
Click to expand...

I'm mostly in agreement with you here from a gameplay standpoint, narrative-wise I don't know yet because the beginning of Infinite didn't do much for me in all honesty. I'm actually liking the middle more than the beginning, which seems to be a minority opinion.

I didn't play 2, maybe I should. Minerva's Den also, apparently.
 
S

SmithnCo

Member
Prodigal said:
Any tips for preparing for the final fight in 1999 mode? I'm only a few hours in but I know it's gonna be tough. I never died playing on normal but I want to be extra prepared for the finale.
Click to expand...

I would upgrade Return to Sender, and place its mines all over the core to absorb bullets. I did this and passed it in one try easily on 1999.
 
N

Neiteio

Member
beastmode said:
They've already said all three are mini campaigns.
Click to expand...
Wow, the Infinite DLC will be THREE mini-campaigns?

That's amazing. If they're all as good as Minvera's Den, that would be like a freaking sequel in itself.

Maybe that entire level Levine had cut at the last moment will be in the DLC? I hear one of the designers quit over that decision.
 
B

BruceLeeRoy

Banned
conman said:
I enjoyed the first Bioshock, but it's far from my favorite game of the generation. And I think there are many other big-budget games that deal with Big Ideas much more coherently, so I don't hold it up as the exemplar of addressing "serious" issues. But it certainly is the poster child for those kinds of games. And its financial success has made it possible for many of those games to get funded and find an audience. So it deserves credit for that, at least. Put it this way, if all we'd gotten was Bioshock Infinite and no original Bioshock, I don't think that sea-change would have happened.
Click to expand...

What games?

conman said:
But it is the "story they set out to tell." It's just not the story they finish with. The entire first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game are nothing but game design treatises on American exceptionalism in the past and present (the direct parallels to post-911 culture are about as on-the-nose as you can expect). In many ways, the beginning of the game is an "echo" of American cultural life in the early 21st century set in an alternate history of the early 20th.

The game is undeniably about those "controversial topics" in its first 6-8 hours. Then, suddenly and with no justification, it's not. Irrational can claim all they want that they set out to make a "personal" story, but that's only in retrospect. The game was pitched as another High Concept game along the lines of the original Bioshock, and the first handful of hours bear that out. But then, it's about something else entirely. And like I said, all of the "controversial" and "messy" stuff gets dropped in favor of a safe, sloppy, derivative sci-fi technobabble thriller.

And, hell, I enjoy all of that sci-fi idiocy as much as (or maybe even more than) the next person, but don't tell me I'm getting a Bioshock-like sci-fi dystopian political allegory for the first half and then give me M. Night Shyamalan for the second. It's not fair to their own vision, their world, or even to their characters.
Click to expand...
I think the whole beginning is setting up the reality of what happens when you allow yourself to justify horrific actions by a pursuit of fictional righteousness you create. Thats the whole reason that framework is established. To show how you as the main character could ever become something like that. I thought it was amazingly well done and it seems to me like others have stated you have a very narrow view of what was actually happening as opposed to the more broad tale the story was going for.
 
E

Enco

Member
SmithnCo said:
I would upgrade Return to Sender, and place its mines all over the core to absorb bullets. I did this and passed it in one try easily on 1999.
Click to expand...
I upgraded one weapon and that's it. There was little need for vending machines and upgrades to be honest. Barely spent money. Ended with around 3k.
 
D

Dylan

Member
conman said:
But it is the "story they set out to tell." It's just not the story they end up telling. The entire first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game are nothing but game design treatises on American exceptionalism in the past and present (the direct parallels to post-911 culture are about as on-the-nose as you can expect). In many ways, the beginning of the game is an "echo" of American cultural life in the early 21st century set in an alternate history of the early 20th.

The game is undeniably about those "controversial topics" in its first 6-8 hours. Then, suddenly and with no justification, it's not. Irrational can claim all they want that they set out to make a "personal" story, but that's only in retrospect. The game was pitched as another High Concept game along the lines of the original Bioshock, and the first handful of hours bear that out. But then, it's about something else entirely. And like I said, all of the "controversial" and "messy" stuff gets dropped in favor of a safe, sloppy, derivative sci-fi technobabble thriller.
Click to expand...

Why do you assume that their use of racism and nationalism in a 1912 setting is meant to describe the USA in 2001 and not, say, the USA in 1912?
 
A

Andrew.

Banned
Neiteio said:
Maybe that entire level Levine had cut at the last moment will be in the DLC? I hear one of the designers quit over that decision.
Click to expand...

Nah that designer quit because Levine didnt approve of his Shantytown design after he worked on it for half a year.
 
X

x-Lundz-x

Member
I have a question,
when the game was first shown there is a great scene where Elizabeth puts on a Lincoln mask and does a "four scores" impersonation, and also another one involving a horse she tries to bring back to life. I take it these were both cut from the game? Because I never found either one.
 
T

therealminime

Member
x-Lundz-x said:
I have a question,
when the game was first shown there is a great scene where Elizabeth puts on a Lincoln mask and does a "four scores" impersonation, and also another one involving a horse she tries to bring back to life. I take it these were both cut from the game? Because I never found either one.
Click to expand...

Yeah neither of those are in the game unfortunately.
 
S

StuBurns

Banned
x-Lundz-x said:
I have a question,
when the game was first shown there is a great scene where Elizabeth puts on a Lincoln mask and does a "four scores" impersonation, and also another one involving a horse she tries to bring back to life. I take it these were both cut from the game? Because I never found either one.
Click to expand...
Both gone, yeah.
 
B

Biggzy

Member
x-Lundz-x said:
I have a question,
when the game was first shown there is a great scene where Elizabeth puts on a Lincoln mask and does a "four scores" impersonation, and also another one involving a horse she tries to bring back to life. I take it these were both cut from the game? Because I never found either one.
Click to expand...

No doubt the game has gone through a lot of chopping and changing considering it has been in development for about 6 years.
 
D

Dylan

Member
x-Lundz-x said:
I have a question,
when the game was first shown there is a great scene where Elizabeth puts on a Lincoln mask and does a "four scores" impersonation, and also another one involving a horse she tries to bring back to life. I take it these were both cut from the game? Because I never found either one.
Click to expand...

A lot of the animations and dialogue from that trailer are kept in the game, but just used in different situations, etc.
 
U

ultron87

Member
Biggzy said:
No doubt the game has gone through a lot of chopping and changing considering it has been in development for about 6 years.
Click to expand...

Sadly yeah. I really would have liked to see some of the stuff they showed where
Elizabeth is more actively involved in the combat instead of just hiding behind stuff and tossing you items.
 
P

ProfessorLobo

Banned
Enco said:
I upgraded one weapon and that's it. There was little need for vending machines and upgrades to be honest. Barely spent money. Ended with around 3k.
Click to expand...

I was the same way. First half of the game I was meticulously searching every drawer and desk. Second half I was pretty much racing through. Bough a weapon upgrade once in awhile but a fleshed out shop would've been nice.
 
A

Andrew.

Banned
StuBurns said:
Well I don't think either make much sense in the final game, she seems considerably more worldly than she did, and she's much more in control of her tearing ability than she appeared in those trailers.
Click to expand...

The public execution scene and the choice to stop it or not should have been kept in.
 
S

SmithnCo

Member
Enco said:
I upgraded one weapon and that's it. There was little need for vending machines and upgrades to be honest. Barely spent money. Ended with around 3k.
Click to expand...

I managed to upgrade quite a few things and still ended with about 1k left. I think I spent at least 6k on vendors.
 
H

Hylian7

Member
bigdaddygamebot said:
I've given up on my 1999 Mode run. I'm stuck at the Vault fight and the randomness of the gear combined with the weapons I have available for it has me in a spot that is super-grindy.

I'm going to burn through the game on Normal or Hard and get it over with as I would indeed like to see how the game comes together at the end. I hope it holds up.
Click to expand...
If you're not going for that achievement of not using the Dollar Bill machines, take your weapons of choice and camp by the machine and keep shooting the ghost. Buy health and ammo as you need it. When I did it, I used the hand cannon.

I need to do another 1999 run and actually build my weapons and vigors better.
 
D

Dylan

Member
StuBurns said:
Well I don't think either make much sense in the final game, she seems considerably more worldly than she did, and she's much more in control of her tearing ability than she appeared in those trailers.
Click to expand...

Quite unlike my Nvidia card while running BI.
 
H

Hylian7

Member
Dylan said:
Quite unlike my Nvidia card while running BI.
Click to expand...
Buh dum *tsh*

You can use D3DOverrider with triple buffering. Unfortunately, with BI you can't run anything else that injects into the game at the same time though (FRAPS, DXTory, Etc.). I really wish there was a solution for that.
 
A

Andrew.

Banned
Dylan said:
I assumed that scene was replaced with the
baseball choice during the raffle.

If so I think it was a good decision.
Click to expand...

They could've kept both and used the execution as one that occurs during your whole trip to Finkton, Shantytown and the Factory. It would've been a cool way to break up the back and forthness of that section of the game. After all, from my recollection it's the Vox that are doing the execution (probably against a Founder or the like)
 
D

Duffyside

Banned
therealminime said:
Yeah neither of those are in the game unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Yup, not in the game. I think that is symbolic of Infinite overall — lofty goals, but they just couldn't execute them in the final product. Says something to me that there were all these things Irrational was showing to say "here is what we want the game to be like" and they're not in the final product.
 
C

conman

Member
Dylan said:
Why do you assume that their use of racism and nationalism in a 1912 setting is meant to describe the USA in 2001 and not, say, the USA in 1912?
Click to expand...
Because it's not actual history. Not only is it a work of fiction (created in the 21st century), but the game is also about the manipulation of history for political ends. At least, that's what it's about in the first half. It's also made painfully clear that
most of the culture of Columbia has been stolen from later moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--including the political rhetoric and actions of the Vox Populi. But that extends to other racial artifacts like African-American music, the Disneyland-like racist "rides," and so on. There's a ton more, and I was really digging where it seemed like the game was going. Then it falls away completely.

Anyhow, no, this isn't just about racism and nationalism in 1912.
 
C

conman

Member
Dax01 said:
Infinite has come off as a story about Booker and Elizabeth from the get-go.
Click to expand...
Elizabeth isn't even in the game for the first 1-2 hours. She's just "the girl" you need to get.

Besides, my point isn't that the game shouldn't have a plot. Again, look at its predecessor. Bioshock still has a plot with characters. But that plot is a microcosmic reflection of the game's bigger themes. But in Infinite, there's no clear plot-theme relationship. All the loudest notes early in the game are built around the big, high concept ideas, and the characters are caught up in that struggle. That stuff was great. But then that relationship falls away entirely.
 
D

Dylan

Member
conman said:
Because it's not actual history. Not only is it a work of fiction (created in the 21st century), but the game is also about the manipulation of history for political ends. At least, that's what it's about in the first half. It's also made painfully clear that
most of the culture of Columbia has been stolen from later moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--including the political rhetoric and actions of the Vox Populi. But that extends to other racial artifacts like African-American music, the Disneyland-like racist "rides," and so on. There's a ton more, and I was really digging where it seemed like the game was going. Then it falls away completely.

Anyhow, no, this isn't just about racism and nationalism in 1912.
Click to expand...

The thing about historical fiction, the author must go to great lengths to present anecdotes that convey the emotions and culture of the people at that time & place. There are tons of great historical fictions that are little more than murder mysteries, but spend a great deal of time describing setting. I think BI does this very well.

Also, who's to say that those concepts even need to be fleshed out at all? The fact that they are presented in the game at face value with no heavy-handed moral resolution is powerful enough for me.
 
R

razgriz417

Member
So who else is guilty of this?
KR6RPPl.gif


source (with audio) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KLFhMWcFmZ0
 
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