On one hand, this girl is supposed to be an innocent little child you are supposed to protect. On the other hand, she has big boobs showing out of her clothing like the hero's darling.
I agree, it's fucking creepy. She looks like a 10 year old with those huge eyes of hers, yet she is dressed as, and has the face and body of a woman in her 20s. What the fuck?
As a longstanding Irrational fanboy I hate to say this, but I got that bad feeling this might turn into a real turd. Why did it take so long to create the game in the first place? Kenny boy didn't have a clue first where to go with it? Internal crushing disputes?
Most disturbingly, the game moves away from the silent loner protagonist to some Pinkerton douchebag who has to babysit some mentally disturbed child with Super-Tits. The gunplay looks incredibly game-y and cheap, the jumping around on rail-lines just feels gimmicky and unnecessary, the strolling scenes where Elizabeth tells you some stupid story suggest a more linear, cutscene driven game, and they still haven't shown us some of the underneath mechanics like Plasmids (or whatever they're called here), upgrade system, different ammo types etc. Maybe my suspicions are unfounded, but I sure as hell won't make this a Day 1 purchase anymore.
First of all, BioShock sucked. Cool concepts, good art direction, but the gameplay was fucking awful. Terrible shooting mechanics compared to almost any other game (guns have really poor sense of impact, recoil etc.), the RPG elements were half-baked, but most damningly for me is the theme park world. It feels extremely unrealistic to me - the idea that you bump into a new set piece every 10 seconds is just artificial, over-designed, and not at all like an actual place that could or would exist. And then, when stuff happens, it rarely makes any sense.
For example:
- Come across a corpse holding a shotgun.
- Pick up the shotgun.
- All lights suddenly shut off and a spotlight appears.
- Hordes of melee enemies begin attacking you.
- After killing them, the lights magically turn back on.
It's kinda cool for a second, until you start thinking "if these guys were trying to ambush me, why didn't they just keep the shotgun for themselves and shoot me with it?" or "how did they turn the lights off?" or "how did they turn them back on after everyone was dead?"
Another section like that:
- Meet your first Little Sister, Tenembaum shoots a splicer trying to harvest her.
- Tenembaum is about to shoot and kill you over it, and then Atlas somehow convinces her not to.
- Tenembaum gives you the magic tonic thing that lets you rescue the Little Sister.
- Tenembaum walks away without actually seeing you use it to rescue the Little Sister and just assumes you did it.
- If you harvest the Little Sister, Tenembaum doesn't shoot you or hunt you down or anything.
- Atlas then says "better find a Gatherer's Garden to spend that ADAM"
- Immediately, a spotlight appears and shines on a curtain, which magically rolls up to reveal a Gatherer's Garden machine.
Like, what the fuck? Why didn't Tenembaum shoot Jack (the player) if she just got done shooting the other guy? Why did she not trust that one random splicer, but trusts Jack instead? Why doesn't she keep watching to make sure Jack doesn't harvest the Little Sister? Why does she apparently not care or do anything to you if you do harvest the Little Sister? How did Jack use the gene tonic without "installing" it into his forearm? Where did that spotlight come from? Who turned it on? How did that curtain roll itself up? How did the Gatherer's Garden machine turn itself on, if it was off before?
Shit like this happens
constantly throughout BioShock. I didn't notice it as much at first, but once I picked up on it, it was so fucking aggravating that I could not play the game anymore and uninstalled it in rage.
I get the sense Irrational is a developer where there are a lot of great artists and sound designers, and Ken is obviously kind of a visionary (of a sort), but nobody there has any real critical capacity to ask questions about things, point out flaws and holes so they can be fixed, that sort of thing. I also get the sense that Ken, for all his prestige, really is not a very good designer outside of envisioning settings and characters. BioShock, to me, feels like an attempt to be intellectual and artistic but without any of the knowledge, talent or wit to really back it up. Every time it tries something interesting it is always brought down by more "videogame shit."
That's why I have so little hope for Infinite. It seems like they have simply embraced the "videogame shit" angle, and as a result the game is beautiful, but completely and utterly vacuous.
