BioShock: Infinite

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm tempted to buy this since there's nothing else currently that interests me, but I've never played the previous installments.  Will I be lost?  Are they even connected?

[Fighter]

The defining aspect of an escort mission is that the player must protect a vulnerable, underpowered/useless NPC from point A to point B. Elizabeth is closer to an RPG companion/party member than the subject of an escort mission. The mission can't even fail because as long as she's around she revives the player/Booker from death/near death.

 

And that's what you do narrative wise. You are escorting a vulnerable character. Elizabeth supports you but she needs you to do the fighting at least for a large part of the story. She doesn't have to be useless for it to be an escort mission. But yes mechanically speaking they've simply removed the typically annoying aspects of an escort mission thus strictly from gameplay perspective it's not really that and in many ways the other way around.

[Nonek]

I'm tempted to buy this since there's nothing else currently that interests me, but I've never played the previous installments.  Will I be lost?  Are they even connected?

 

They're connected but not in an intrusive sense, it stands alone as its own game with a few nods to the previous ones that are not too jarring.

[Fighter]

I'm tempted to buy this since there's nothing else currently that interests me, but I've never played the previous installments.  Will I be lost?  Are they even connected?

 

You wouldn't be lost. The story and the setting work on its own. You just might not get a few easter eggs and thematic similarities.

[mrmud]

I'm tempted to buy this since there's nothing else currently that interests me, but I've never played the previous installments.  Will I be lost?  Are they even connected?

They are thematically connected but you can easily play infinite without having played bioshock.

[Bokishi]

You'll appreciate one scene in the ending more if you play through the first game

[Orogun01]

Finished, I will say that i'm not a fan of taking away choice from the player as a device to advance the plot. It wasn't as bad as Farcry 3 but still bothered, specially since I could see the ending coming a mile away.
I can't see the necessity of giving up the baby as fixed point in time, since it was just

one Comstock/Dewitt who managed to cross into another universe, you could have simply not given the child away. Or you could have killed the Luteces and prevent anyone from crossing in the first place

So a fixed, static ending for a game which makes a narrative device of having infinite possibilities seems dissonant. 

[entrerix]

just finished it, didn't like it.  i forced myself through the last few hours so i could see what happened at the end, but it wasn't worth it, i should have just watched a lets play or something

 

bland story, a few good moments/decent environments, terrible level design, overral weak gameplay.  if this had come out a year after bioshock i probably would have really liked it, but honestly, the gameplay feels pretty stale and outdated in 2013, even for a console game.

 

also it manages to feel more linear than bioshock, which felt more linear than system shock 2.  the shock series appears to be dramatically dumbed down at this point.

[Oner]

Linking it, because why not?

[HoonDing]

Looking at some screenies of this, I wish for a decent modern Space 1889 or Hollow Earth RPG instead.

[Maria Caliban]

Why would screen shots of BioShock Infinite make you wish for Hollow Earth?

 

[SadExchange]

Just finished it.  Was a good story from start to finish with a couple places that just felt pushed, however I really did enjoy the end.  I guess it was nice that they took the time for the ending sequence to really go through a lot of different aspects and I will say it struck me sentimentally due to having a little daughter (14 month old) of my own.  Didn't bring me to an emotional wreck, but definitely hit a nerve.  In a good way, which meant the story telling was good.

 

I have to agree with Bokishi, what they did for fans of the series at the end was nice.  The whole setting and atmosphere was very well done and while you could see some story elements before they took place, I'm definitely happy with the overall game.

[AGX-17]

Hilarious "text adventure" satire of the game, spoilers, obviously, but pretty dead-on about the negative (false choices, illusion of player agency where there is none,) and trite (shoot & loot) aspects of the game reviewers have tended to overlook. Most telling line: "You jump out and hook onto the rail thing that I didn't mention earlier. It's literally a rail shooter, clever!"

http://crypticsea.com/twined/bioshoot1.html#

 

Also multiple uses of "Put a bird on it!" = +1 in my book.

Edited April 9, 2013 by AGX-17

[entrerix]

Hilarious "text adventure" satire of the game, spoilers, obviously, but pretty dead-on about the negative (false choices, illusion of player agency where there is none,) and trite (shoot & loot) aspects of the game reviewers have tended to overlook. Most telling line: "You jump out and hook onto the rail thing that I didn't mention earlier. It's literally a rail shooter, clever!"

http://crypticsea.com/twined/bioshoot1.html#

 

Also multiple uses of "Put a bird on it!" = +1 in my book.

 

 

wow this is absolutely amazing, and sums up the game better than actually playing it!  great find

[Tagaziel]

I absolutely love the game. I think it's currently the best high profile mainstream game on the market, at least as far as shooters are concerned. The 1999 mode is a fun challenge (yes, even the bossfight with the red Handyman, where I went from $807 to $7), while the design... The game's basically one big Chekhov Arsenal. 

 

I like the multiple interpretations the best. Yes, the game is one big escort mission, like Episode One, but the question is: who escorts who? Elizabeth's fine on her own, can manipulate reality at will, open locks, and has no problem finding stuff to survive. It's Booker who constantly runs out of ammunition, salts, health, and gets shot down by people, forcing Liz to get him back into the fight. I think there's only two instances where Elizabeth has to be saved by Booker, the first being Monument Island and the other the endgame. 

 

As for choices, I never felt that it detracted from the game. You make a few throughout the game and at least one, Slate, bites you back if you don't make the right choice. I don't see a problem with the limited amount of choice: not everyone's cut out to be a leader who makes great changes. And as you discover, DeWitt is not one that should be making them.

[AGX-17]

As for choices, I never felt that it detracted from the game. You make a few throughout the game and at least one, Slate, bites you back if you don't make the right choice. I don't see a problem with the limited amount of choice: not everyone's cut out to be a leader who makes great changes. And as you discover, DeWitt is not one that should be making them.

You just said that "not everyone's cut out to be a leader who makes great changes." Then what is Comstock? If "DeWitt is not the one that should be making them," then why shouldn't the player be making them? Booker is proof that Booker is capable of making decisions. The Booker you play is one who didn't become Comstock, one who obviously made a different choice from "Comstock" at a critical juncture. It's a matter of the designers presenting you with false "choices" whose only purpose is to give an appearance of player agency when, in fact, it's a linear shooter in the fashion of Half-Life 2 or CoD.

 

It's a great game, but aside from adding to the narrative a little in one or two instances (like the coin toss,) the choices have no true relevance. Getting rewarded with a pair of pants for choosing to throw the ball at Fink is nonsense, the scenario plays out the same way no matter what choice is made, and Booker's intentions are unknowable unless they're psychic. And Slate exists just to extend the length of the game. The Hall of Heroes would have had the same expository value without him, and anything that happens to Slate is irrelevant once you've started walking through tears into parallel worlds where people you've killed are simultaneously alive and dead. Besides which, that's the last you ever hear of that Slate. Then you hear about a Slate who's a member of the Vox Populi, and a Booker who made different choices and ended up dying a Martyr for the Vox.

 

Just like in that text parody, it's full of "But thou must!" moments. Not 5 minutes before the raffle part, you receive a telegram from "R. Lutece" specifically instructing Booker not to make his presence known, and "DON'T PICK #77 STOP" is easily memorable by players, who are ostensibly Booker, but the game makes you take a ball (#77 at that,) regardless. They might have intended it as some kind of "fatalism," but the end result just looks like poor game design, because presenting something as player agency makes players think they're getting some kind of agency. Bioshock was ostensibly all about choices (not well-executed,) yes it's "cute" and "subversive" to make BI a game where choices don't matter (outside of combat,) but it's pointlessly misleading to add a rarely-used "choose one or the other or make no choice" mechanic that adds nothing more to the experience than a pair of pants for Booker and a cosmetic difference to Elizabeth's appearance.

Edited April 10, 2013 by AGX-17

[Tagaziel]

Comstock is precisely the reason DeWitt shouldn't be made a leader. He has too much trauma and bad history in his life to trust him with leadership. 

 

As for the rest of the point, Bioshock Infinite was never advertised as a game with C&C. I wager that's because your choices wouldn't transfer over to the parallel worlds. I don't really see how that's relevant to the narrative either. Booker doesn't get to make real choices, because he's in no position to make them. His hand is forced at every turn. It's fine. Not every game has to have non-linear narratives filled with choices. It certainly wasn't the case with previous games, all the way back to System Shock 1 (Bioshock 2's multiple endings are an exception, since it was made by a separate studio).

 

Bioshock, with its fake binary morality, is hardly a game of choices.

[Gorgon]

I found it problematic when you were being scolded or taunted for choices you never made, especially when you finally meet Comstock. They were still dangling the plot over you at that point and at one point the game commandeers the PC into just another agent for telling the story.  When you have no imput at all the sense of disconnection from the advancement of the game is pretty overwhelming.

 

I don't recall any choices except false ones, that is with cosmetic or no consequences at all.

[Orogun01]

I wish there had been a choice to kill Elizabeth, she obviously was planning DeWitt's murder since the beginning and across multiple dimension. To spare  your life just so she could make you suffer with the truth and kill you; now that's evil.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I wish there had been a choice to kill Elizabeth, she obviously was planning DeWitt's murder since the beginning and across multiple dimension. To spare  your life just so she could make you suffer with the truth and kill you; now that's evil.

She obviously wasn't. To be fair to her she had reason to in the end, DeWitt has a debt to pay.

[Bokishi]

She only killed Comstock, booker still lives on after the credits

[Fighter]

She killed herself too. Elizabeth we know will never have existed.

[Tagaziel]

I wish there had been a choice to kill Elizabeth, she obviously was planning DeWitt's murder since the beginning and across multiple dimension. To spare  your life just so she could make you suffer with the truth and kill you; now that's evil.

She didn't know who DeWitt was until she was free of the siphon. 

 

Even then, it's an interesting question to ponder: is it really murder? Columbia and its version of Elizabeth wasn't supposed to exist in the first place. These are alternate realities that were not supposed to exist. You are removing alternate futures by drowning Comstock, removing Columbia's root. This snaps back to 1893, which is where Booker's reality diverged and he's given another chance at living his life with his daughter. 

 

In the end, did Booker redeem himself? It's left open.

[Bokishi]

She killed herself too. Elizabeth we know will never have existed.

Only the Comstock-raised Elizabeth is dead, she is now only a baby again and will be raised by booker (hopefully)

[AGX-17]

Comstock is precisely the reason DeWitt shouldn't be made a leader. He has too much trauma and bad history in his life to trust him with leadership. 

 

As for the rest of the point, Bioshock Infinite was never advertised as a game with C&C. I wager that's because your choices wouldn't transfer over to the parallel worlds. I don't really see how that's relevant to the narrative either. Booker doesn't get to make real choices, because he's in no position to make them. His hand is forced at every turn. It's fine. Not every game has to have non-linear narratives filled with choices. It certainly wasn't the case with previous games, all the way back to System Shock 1 (Bioshock 2's multiple endings are an exception, since it was made by a separate studio).

 

Bioshock, with its fake binary morality, is hardly a game of choices.

You've just twisted everything I said to suit your own position without addressing anything legitimately. Comstock isn't the only possible result of Booker DeWitt in any form of leadership role. You're deliberately ignoring the Vox Populi DeWitt, you're deliberately ignoring the infinite parallel worlds aspect (infinite possibilities means every possibility is true, i.e. there are infinite worlds where DeWitt is the Progressive Party president of the U.S., there are infinite worlds in which he doesn't exist, committed suicide, never sold Anna, never joined the army, was never at Peking or Wounded Knee, was a mild-mannered tailor, etc.,) you're deliberately ignoring the fact that I was specifically referring to false dilemmas. I didn't say BI should/must be non-linear, I never suggested it was sold/advertised as "C&C," I said it shouldn't disingenuously present "choices" when there are no significant effects or results. Unless you count receiving a free pair of pants as a significant moment of player agency in a video game narrative. You also don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "ostensible," or variations thereof. Edited April 10, 2013 by AGX-17