Board 8 > I am playing Bioshock Infinite (spoilers I guess)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mostly want to know how far I am into the game, I just rescued Elizabeth and got to a beach resort.

So far, the mechanics of the game seem way simpler than the first two games, and it's super ridiculously easy (and the first two games resurrect you instantly when you die!). I've got like three vigors and two guns in the time I would have gotten like five different guns and a million plasmids I wouldn't actually use.

Like 25%?

The game is definitely more streamlined, for better and worse

I'd say more like 20%

Finally got a shotgun, I actually can't believe you're limited to two weapons at once. I understand why people said this game is much more simplistic than the first two.

Met Fitzroy. Still not sure what I think of the game yet.

I don't think I've ever seen a faster turnaround on the industry's general reception of a game than this one.

"Legendary Masterpiece" for the first...two weeks, tops, before almost everyone decided it was lame.

And it's not like a professional vs public thing, reviewers and consumers were BOTH high as fuck about it and then they BOTH turned on it.

A wild ride.

I greatly prefer Infinite to the first two Bioshock games, personally.

I find Bioshock 1 and 2's combat to be awful because while yes, there is more you can technically do in combat in those games, none of it is ever actually useful. It's 100% of the time more effective to just shoot them or use a very basic plasmid, and the gunplay in Bioshock 1 and 2 is frankly just bad.

So Infinite streamlining the experience and making those basic combos more fluid with overall higher paced action did WONDERS for the combat. It completely and utterly blows the first two games out of the water.

It also just straight up has a better story and characters. The only thing I'll give the original is I guess it has a better twist. 2 just sucks.

Got to the part where Elizabeth learns she's not really Comstock's daughter and makes up with the ghost.

Just finished the game. I figured out partway through that Elizabeth was your daughter and that you were Comstock from another timeline, but I don't remember how far into the game I was. I didn't figure out what the reason behind her missing finger would be or any of the details, though, I just sort of understood that this was where it was going.

Positives:

• The entire aesthetic of Columbia is good, the colors and atmosphere are great, and I assume they chose this time period because they wanted old-timey classic America, and the 1800s were too steampunky and anything post-Bioshock 1 would be too modern. The idea of a religion based on the Founding Fathers and George Washington mask guys fighting on behalf of racism is solid, and the setting itself really sells everything.
• The game is just more polished in general? BS1 and BS2 feel really rough a lot of the time, this game does not.
• Everything having to do with the alternate dimensions is good. Elizabeth coming to terms with what she is, all of the twists (besides the rebels being just as bad as their oppressors) are all good, the way it's handled at the ending, all of that is really solid.
• Elizabeth and Booker are very charismatic. The first two games obviously have silent protagonists, so this was a good change.
• In general, I really like the story itself.
• Religious themes are well-handled.
• I like how a lot of things are left unstated, but still make sense. Easiest example: Booker feels bad about murdering Native Americans during the Battle of Wounded Knee. The version of himself who's baptized and forgives himself turns into an insane racist, whereas the version who refuses the baptism and stews in his own misery is disgusted by the racism he sees in the game.

Negatives

• The themes of racism and class inequality are completely abandoned halfway through, whereas they were more integrated throughout the entirety of Bioshock 1 and 2. The second Fitzroy dies, that entire part of the game just evaporates, and all of her minions turn into generic enemies to shoot.
• The racism stuff works by itself, but it's totally disconnected from the alternate dimension plot. Like, it has nothing to do with anything. Comstock being a hyper racist has nothing to do with the alternate dimension plotline, and it almost feels like it was added to make you feel better about the basic enemies being normal humans this time.
• Speaking of which, in Bioshock 1 and 2, the basic enemies being (basically) drug addicts who were exploited by a system and an ideology that sort of makes sense but was taken to a ridiculous extreme makes them sympathetic even as they're just mindless thugs, whereas the basic enemies now are basically just racist genocidal zealots? Andrew Ryan and Sophia Lamb having ideologies that make sense by themselves but are blind to the practical and moral problems with them, and how they hurt normal people, make them at least somewhat sympathetic? Nothing about Comstock or his philosophy is even remotely sympathetic, and even the Vox Populi, who are an army of oppressed working class people who've been discriminated against their whole lives, are completely unsympathetic and behave like total monsters. No one in the game besides Booker and Elizabeth makes even an attempt to be anything except a bad guy.
• You know, I agree that Bioshock 1 and 2 shower you in abilities you'll never actually use, but this game's solution to that is to basically just be almost a normal FPS? Partway through the game, all I was using was the rocket launcher and the volley gun, because you basically never run low on ammo anyway. There's also zero exploration or even attempt at horror, unlike the other two games. The game was constantly flashing "MAKE SURE TO USE YOUR VIGORS" and I basically just didn't. I never came even remotely close to dying on normal mode; I didn't even realize there was a resurrection mechanic until I found a piece of equipment that alters how resurrection works.
• Like 80% of the plot twists are dropped on you in the last part of the game. It could have stood to be more spread out throughout the whole game instead.

Overall, I did enjoy this game, but I think its ideas don't really mesh together with its themes very well. It's trying to deal with topics like religion, forgiveness, racism, classism, alternate dimensions, and personal decisions, and I'm not absolutely certain what it's trying to say about them? Say what you want about the first two games, but their message is crystal clear: "believe what you want, but don't take your ideology to an extreme." This game is much messier in that regard. Religion turns Booker into a complete monster, but the post-credits scene implies that he does receive his redemption and forgiveness and another chance? What am I supposed to draw from that, exactly? The game seems at first to be about racism and class exploitation, until that's completely dropped and it's about Elizabeth's identity instead?

I'm honestly not sure how to even rank this game, its good and bad aspects make it complicated. I enjoyed it, though, so I'll just say that.

Just popping in to say don't play the DLC. It's bad.

Nah the DLC is wild but I think it's experience worth having

Amazing game. Enjoy.

VintageGin posted...

Just popping in to say don't play the DLC. It's bad.

What's wrong with it?

Honestly you haven't seen the true ending of Bioshock until you've beaten the DLC.

Whether you like that ending is up to you!

The DLC is badly written fan fiction

Now I'm excited, I think I'll have to play it.

The DLC tries a little too hard to connect Infinite to Bioshock 1 in a wholly unnecessary way. There's also a really dumb retcon to a character's actions which somehow make the situation even stupider.

I think calling it fanfiction is pretty accurate.

UltimaterializerX posted...

This. The DLC does not exist. Just watch the plot on YouTube.

If there's anything good about it is that it's more bioshock gameplay! It even has a focus on stealth that I always think is pretty neat.

Got partway through the first DLC, but I don't know how far (got to what I think is the third area, just after you get the ice power searching for the girl). So far, it hasn't been terrible or anything, and the attempt to feel more like Bioshock 1 in gameplay hasn't been terrible. I even died once, though only because I didn't realize I could switch through weapons. I assume this is going to get worse.

I wonder how closely Bioshock 4 will stay to the other games' settings. Like, Bioshock 1 is about Ayn Randian capitalism gone mad, and Bioshock 2 is obviously about socialism gone mad. I can easily imagine Bioshock Infinite being about some other older ideology going out of control, like anarchism or something, where it's still set in Rapture, and instead it went in a different direction in a new sci-fi city with enemies who have a much less interesting philosophy, but I appreciate that it just decided to be about alternate dimensions and Elizabeth's power to create new ones instead of just being Bioshock 1 again (like the second game).

Basically, I'm saying that we've had an underwater city and a flying city, so I'm wondering what the next progression of wacky sci-fi cities is. It can't be space if you want to adhere to the old-timey feeling.

Yeah new bioshock is one of my most anticipated titles for a franchise, just to see what direction they take it

An airlock glitched out and wasn't opening (it rotated endlessly), so I had to reset, and lost like twenty minutes of progress. Bleh.

Finished part 1. That was unexpectedly vengeful for Elizabeth?

I remember the airlock glitch. Happened to me, too.

I got halfway through, then gave up when I encountered another glitch, and just watched the rest on youtube. Thoughts:

• The image of a baby getting its head cut in half by a portal made me laugh at how absurd it was. It's played for drama, but it's so silly.
• I think I agree with the majority here. The idea of connecting Elizabeth and Infinite into Bioshock 1's plot is just plain old bad. It's similar to Bioshock 2, which also tries to fill in things from Bioshock 1 that don't need filling in. Like, the question of how Fontaine got to the position he was in at the start of the first game doesn't matter at all, and the idea that he didn't already know the first game's protagonist's activation code is bizarre? My impression is that he knew it long before the game started. It also makes Fontaine less impressive as a villain (when he was already the lamest of the villains as it was) that he needed Elizabeth to do absolutely everything.
• Killing both protagonists is a very ballsy move, but I think it's a bad one. Besides the fact that it just generally leaves a bad taste, I don't know quite how to say this, but it kind of renders things pointless? They go through all of this hardship, they grow and learn as people, Elizabeth becomes some kind of cosmic being, and then the culmination of their journey is that one random little sister they barely know gets to live, and that Fontaine is able to cause the first game to happen? This feels like tragedy for the sake of tragedy, rather than an attempt to say or mean anything.
• To be clear, it makes complete sense thematically for Booker to die -- he's a man who's done bad things, and his redemption can only be found in death. But killing Elizabeth is a completely different matter. The whole bad 80s future where old Elizabeth sends you back to give her younger self another chance is rendered meaningless if young Elizabeth only lives for another six months before being beaten to death by a drug dealer.
• I'm also really uncertain if it's in-character for her to so brutally kill the last Booker the way she did. I sort of interpreted her actions at the end of the main game as this tragic necessity to ensure Booker can't become Comstock, but here she clearly feels vengeful toward him and does not at all regret her actions, and it doesn't seem like this version could possibly become Comstock.
• Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, but I thought the point of drowning Booker at the end of the main game is to stop Columbia from happening in all universes? Because it apparently still happens if she can just go back and visit it. But at the start of part 2, Elizabeth explicitly says this was the last Booker, so... I don't really know what's going on?
• The 'revelation' that Fitzroy wasn't crazy, and was just acting that way to harden Elizabeth, cheapens Elizabeth's character development in the main game and contradicts the entire 'the rebels are as bad as the oppressors' element. I refuse to believe that was intended when they wrote the original game. And I mean, while I could possibly maybe sort of kind of not really buy Fitzroy sacrificing herself, it seems super out-of-character for her from this perspective to tell her people to attack Booker? Was she just okay with getting dozens or hundreds of her people killed to further Elizabeth, a girl she literally had not ever met?
• And what's the Luteces' motive here? They want to ensure that Elizabeth becomes a harder person, but why? I sort of interpreted their motive in the main game as being to give Booker another chance at redemption, not that they were trying to preserve timeline shenanigans or whatever. Because here, their actions directly lead Elizabeth to die in a really pointless, mean-spirited way.
• I'm unclear why Fontaine, a complete monster who just has zero morals, even lets Sally live at the end? It seems way more in-character for him to kill her for the trivial amount of ADAM he'd get, or even just to be evil for a laugh.
• This is more minor, but I dislike the idea of Andrew Ryan knowing about alternate universes. His philosophy is so material and worldly that him acknowledging something so heady and abstract just seems out-of-character.

tl;dr this DLC is really, really bad. It's almost impressive how much its twists and endings ruin everything. I'm going to say that if I take the DLC into consideration, Bioshock: Infinite easily slides down to be the worst game in the series.

LMAO nice.