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Revisiting the mechanics of Bioshock Infinite in the era of Monty Haul open world first person RPGs

Efe

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Very high hopes for system shock 3..

MasterLobar right?
 

DalekFlay

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Bioshock Infinite was a shooter with barely any "shock" DNA left.

If we put aside expectations based on the words on the title screen though, is this some horrible thing? I only played it once right when it came out, but I remember it being a pretty fun shooter. Better than most of the crappy console focused shooters we got at the time.
 

Alpan

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
We now live in the era of the open world first person RPG

We don't. This only means that you played The Outer Worlds recently (and perhaps also that you don't have much time to spend actually playing games and unconsciously place extra emphasis on the ones you do play). As a larger statement on the game industry as a whole, it is inaccurate, and any list of RPGs released in the last five or even ten years will prove you wrong. More charitably, you are conflating the undisputed and massive influence of Skyrim (a first person open world RPG) on subsequent open world RPGs that, for the most part, aren't first-person.

Distilling your otherwise interesting post to a statement or two, it would be "Bioshock Infinite managed to meaningfully restrict player-character power." Which is accurate -- but I'm uncertain how much of that can be attributed to Bioshock Infinite's own innovations. The fact that we no longer have meaningful limits on character power is a reflection of the game industry's risk aversion, which is the sort of institutional decline, driven by deeper, structural concerns that will not reverse any time soon.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
We don't. This only means that you played The Outer Worlds recently (and perhaps also that you don't have much time to spend actually playing games and unconsciously place extra emphasis on the ones you do play). As a larger statement on the game industry as a whole, it is inaccurate, and any list of RPGs released in the last five or even ten years will prove you wrong. More charitably, you are conflating the undisputed and massive influence of Skyrim (a first person open world RPG) on subsequent open world RPGs that, for the most part, aren't first-person.

I don't think whether the games are first-person or not is particularly important - they could have also been third-person. The more crucial factor is that they're open world Monty Haul experiences. However, I think some of the most iconic ones are first-person, and the ones with guns are usually first-person. Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be a big fucking deal and that's first-person. So I think it's a reasonable statement.

Distilling your otherwise interesting post to a statement or two, it would be "Bioshock Infinite managed to meaningfully restrict player-character power."

Yes, but not just that. It's also a claim that BioShock Infinite managed to provide a better designed, more impactful character-building/roleplaying implementation than "real RPGs" within the context of its action game framework. It's a bit similar, I suppose, to Roguey posts about how puzzle platformers have better design than RPGs.
 
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Falksi

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All the Bioshocks were wank. Whatever positives they carry were all undone by quite frankly fucking awful gameplay, which is mindnumbingly shit at best.

One of the most overrated games series I've ever known tbh. Not only are it's entries a million miles away from the "classics" they are perceived to be, but they're one of the dullest modern shooters out there.
 

DeepOcean

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I found the Call of Duty-inspired two weapon limitation to actually be kind of good. Yes, good. Why? Because the combination of the aforementioned ammo cap and the lengthy, multi-wave ambush battles means you can run out of ammo for your weapon and be forced to scramble across the battlefield to pick up a different one. I think that's awesome - anything that forces you out of your comfort zone in these games is worthy of praise. So the two-weapon limit actually provides two functions here - it's both a roleplaying choice ("I'm a sniper who carries a shotgun for short-range encounters, and I'll upgrade those weapons exclusively") and a mechanic that forces you against the limits of that choice.
Really smart design, having you upgrade the weapons you like because you don't have money to upgrade all weapons, then the game forces you to use the weapons you didn't upgrade and sorry, I prefer to kill enemies with whatever gun I like than just following the script the developer overlord decided for me.
 

Grampy_Bone

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If we put aside expectations based on the words on the title screen though, is this some horrible thing? I only played it once right when it came out, but I remember it being a pretty fun shooter. Better than most of the crappy console focused shooters we got at the time.

Not at all, it was a pretty fun game for what it was, but the idea being explored here is that combining open world RPGs with Infinite's design would produce a superior RPG, which I find dubious.


I found the Call of Duty-inspired two weapon limitation to actually be kind of good. Yes, good. Why? Because the combination of the aforementioned ammo cap and the lengthy, multi-wave ambush battles means you can run out of ammo for your weapon and be forced to scramble across the battlefield to pick up a different one. I think that's awesome - anything that forces you out of your comfort zone in these games is worthy of praise. So the two-weapon limit actually provides two functions here - it's both a roleplaying choice ("I'm a sniper who carries a shotgun for short-range encounters, and I'll upgrade those weapons exclusively") and a mechanic that forces you against the limits of that choice.
Really smart design, having you upgrade the weapons you like because you don't have money to upgrade all weapons, then the game forces you to use the weapons you didn't upgrade and sorry, I prefer to kill enemies with whatever gun I like than just following the script the developer overlord decided for me.

Two-gun limit came from Halo and it was decline, even for shooters. Classic shooters have ammo management as a gameplay mechanic, Halo got rid of this by just giving you all the guns everywhere all the time. Knowing when to risk your rockets and how to kill enemies in the most efficient manner added complexity to level design and gameplay, but modern shooters have dumped this in favor of popamole casual appeal.

Modern shooters make most guns interchangeable. This also reduces encounter complexity. If you need a sniper rifle, the game can't count on you having one, so one is provided whenever it is needed, thus the player never has to worry about wasting all their sniper ammo before they need it. Giving you such a small load out also changes how players value weapons as its hard to dedicate a slot to something situational like a rocket launcher or shotgun. So you end up using the most ubiqitous guns for the whole game.

Fundamentally it's a design style which removes choices, which I am not a fan of.

In something like Fallout, better guns should be limited by ammo scarcity and standard RPG inventory conventions. In Fallout 2, you don't find 2mm ECC outside of Arroyo. Likewise, rockets and big guns are heavier than is feasible to carry all the time. If someone had simply translated Fallout 2's economy straight into a FPS, it would have been perfectly fine. But Bethesda games homogenize the guns and made the DPS on a rifle, pistol, energy pistol, and minigun all the same for some unfathomable reason, so which gun you use is primarily a cosmetic (!!!) choice. Outer Worlds went even further by homogenizing all ammo, much to the game's detriment. Didn't anyone on the dev team play Invisible War?
 
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DalekFlay

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2-4 gun limit is fine in stuff like Far Cry, which is trying to be "realistic" in a sense and since all the guns are kind of generic real world items you don't need that many anyway. It's only lame-o in more fantastical shooters like a Quake for example, where realism is out the door and each gun has fun and varied use cases.
 

JDR13

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Weird to see some people bashing Bioshock so hard. I think it's good for what it is... a shooter with a cool setting and decent atmosphere.

I can see it being a disappointment if you were expecting System Shock 3, but then that's on you for having unrealistic expectations. It was plainly obvious even before playing it that it wasn't going to be an immersive sim or something with a lot of RPG mechanics.
 

Machocruz

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I was one who was disappointed with BS and thought it paled next to SS, but still had a good time with it. But I reject the notion that Bioshock has any RPG stock in it at all.

In Bioshocks, you use types of currency to buy your not-RPG "uprgrades". But experience points in proper RPGs are not a currency. They are a numeric representation of the real life phenomenon of mental and/or physical adaptation to stressors, not something tangible you opt to pick up off the ground or get from a safe. You cannot turn down XP gain unless you and your GM (whether flesh or digital) are retarded. You don't spend XP, it accumulates and at certain thresholds you reach the next level in your physical and/or cognitive development, at which point you can select or raise as many skills as the rules allow/allot you points (which are also abstract, not tangible objects), not according to how much XP you have left in your wallet. Currency is not genre specific at all, its a universal concept in games, period. I can use money to "upgrade" Park Place in Monopoly. How can a game with a currency based system, which is external, tangible, and optional, inform a game with an XP based system, which is internal, abstract, and automatic?

Btw, the general concept of upgrading is not something invented with RPGs, which have specific forms of upgrading your character.

As far as RPGs are concerned, a "build" is permanent. . Sure, a lenient GM will, once or twice, let you change some things around if you're not liking your character composition, but what they will not allow is constant swapping in and out of abilities according to the player's everchanging whim. That's video game shit implemented by video game designers to solve a problem of video games. Now you could relate a DnD Wizard and his spellbook to Bioshock's Vigors and Plasmids...but the wizard also comes with several categories of permanent character development. Permanent choices require more careful consideration than transient ones, and the hazards of choosing poorly are greater than choices that can be altered every 10-30 minutes. Else no one would have ever lamented fucking up a character in a RPG, something that never happens in Bioshock.

These games may have something to teach open world games (in general, not RPGs specifically). But can we stop diluting and degrading genres, concepts, and terminology? I don't see how anyone can implement these lessons if they don't understand and acknowledge the importance of the Whys and Hows of the Whats.
 

orcinator

Liturgist
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Jan 23, 2016
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Republic of Kongou
I was one who was disappointed with BS and thought it paled next to SS, but still had a good time with it. But I reject the notion that Bioshock has any RPG stock in it at all.

In Bioshocks, you use types of currency to buy your not-RPG "uprgrades". But experience points in proper RPGs are not a currency. They are a numeric representation of the real life phenomenon of mental and/or physical adaptation to stressors, not something tangible you opt to pick up off the ground or get from a safe. You cannot turn down XP gain unless you and your GM (whether flesh or digital) are retarded. You don't spend XP, it accumulates and at certain thresholds you reach the next level in your physical and/or cognitive development, at which point you can select or raise as many skills as the rules allow/allot you points (which are also abstract, not tangible objects), not according to how much XP you have left in your wallet. Currency is not genre specific at all, its a universal concept in games, period. I can use money to "upgrade" Park Place in Monopoly. How can a game with a currency based system, which is external, tangible, and optional, inform a game with an XP based system, which is internal, abstract, and automatic?

Btw, the general concept of upgrading is not something invented with RPGs, which have specific forms of upgrading your character.

As far as RPGs are concerned, a "build" is permanent. . Sure, a lenient GM will, once or twice, let you change some things around if you're not liking your character composition, but what they will not allow is constant swapping in and out of abilities according to the player's everchanging whim. That's video game shit implemented by video game designers to solve a problem of video games. Now you could relate a DnD Wizard and his spellbook to Bioshock's Vigors and Plasmids...but the wizard also comes with several categories of permanent character development. Permanent choices require more careful consideration than transient ones, and the hazards of choosing poorly are greater than choices that can be altered every 10-30 minutes. Else no one would have ever lamented fucking up a character in a RPG, something that never happens in Bioshock.

These games may have something to teach open world games (in general, not RPGs specifically). But can we stop diluting and degrading genres, concepts, and terminology? I don't see how anyone can implement these lessons if they don't understand and acknowledge the importance of the Whys and Hows of the Whats.

XP is a spook.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
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New Vegas
Weird to see some people bashing Bioshock so hard. I think it's good for what it is... a shooter with a cool setting and decent atmosphere.

I can see it being a disappointment if you were expecting System Shock 3, but then that's on you for having unrealistic expectations. It was plainly obvious even before playing it that it wasn't going to be an immersive sim or something with a lot of RPG mechanics.

See the Cyberpunk 2077 thread for more examples of people judging shit based on what they wanted it to be because of the name, rather than on how good it is at being what it is.

Coming soon: Baldur's Gate 3.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
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Jan 25, 2016
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2-4 gun limit is fine in stuff like Far Cry

The funny thing is this is a better example of creating meaningful choices in a shooter/rpg. You have limited options but they can be expanded, increase your holsters from 2 to 4, increase your ammo capacity, and find more types of guns as you progress. Once you unlock a gun it stays unlocked, so even if you never use it it feels like you've leveled up and expanded your power.

4 slots is enough to give you plenty of freedom but still always feels like you can't quite cover all your bases. You need a gun for stealth, something long range, something good in all-out firefights, something for vehicles, potentially for aircraft (homing), something to deal with heavily armored enemies, and something for animals. Putting a build together that meets all those requirements is fun and engaging, and so is experimenting with different guns.

With the open world design you can always quit a mission and try with a different setup. In bioshock infinite it's a linear corridor shooter so if it's not lying on the ground in the level, you can't get it.
 

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