Bioshock Infinite - the $200 million 6 hour literally on rails interactive movie with guns thread

[chestburster]

Sarcasm detection fail. Someone could say that the art style of FEAR is boring, but I don't know if it is more of a problem of art style or is more of a problem of they cutting/paste assets because they didn't had the budget.

It's a deliberate choice of art direction.

A typical slum scene in FEAR 1 looks like this: --That "cold" color palette might look "boring" but is perfect to invoke the isolation and "fear."

A typical slum scene in FEAR 3 (with derpier developers) looks like this: --The yellowish "warm" tint and the random stuff with random colors (like the green bottles and the red box) may not be "boring" but do NOT help a bit with the horror element. Hence, bad art direction.

 

[DeepOcean]

Sarcasm detection fail. Someone could say that the art style of FEAR is boring, but I don't know if it is more of a problem of art style or is more of a problem of they cutting/paste assets because they didn't had the budget.

It's a deliberate choice of art direction.

On the FEAR 1 screenshot, the colors are dry and cold, the room is empty and decayed, I could see myself crapping on my pants there. The FEAR 3 screenshot is just full of junk that serve no purpose, the colors are warm and the lame HELP US written on the wall is just a case of developers having no idea about how to make a horror game. The FEAR 3 screenshot just make me think: It is just another day in Call of Duty

 

[Gelbvieh]

Is she casting Timestop?

She did, now she's spamming Imprisonment!

 

[DalekFlay]

LOOK, I JUST WANT TO TAKE A LOAD OFF AND RELAX AFTER WORK. I DON'T WANT TO WASTE TIME GETTING LOST, LOADING A SAVE, OR TO HAVE MY MINDLESS COMA SPOILED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF BRAINPOWER OR EFFORT. ALSO I HAVE KIDS AND A JOB SO THE GAME SHOULD ONLY BE THREE HOURS LONG, I THINK THAT'S A GOOD LENGTH.

This is pretty much exactly my best friend

 

[Metro]

inane opinions

Coming from you that's the height of irony.

 

[agentorange]

LOOK, I JUST WANT TO TAKE A LOAD OFF AND RELAX AFTER WORK. I DON'T WANT TO WASTE TIME GETTING LOST, LOADING A SAVE, OR TO HAVE MY MINDLESS COMA SPOILED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF BRAINPOWER OR EFFORT. ALSO I HAVE KIDS AND A JOB SO THE GAME SHOULD ONLY BE THREE HOURS LONG, I THINK THAT'S A GOOD LENGTH.

This is pretty much exactly my best friend

Also a large segment of so called game journalists.

 

[DeepOcean]

It's not a game if you can't lose. I can't get lost. There's no quest items to misplace. There's no critical NPCs to kill accidentally on purpose.

LOOK, I JUST WANT TO TAKE A LOAD OFF AND RELAX AFTER WORK. I DON'T WANT TO WASTE TIME GETTING LOST, LOADING A SAVE, OR TO HAVE MY MINDLESS COMA SPOILED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF BRAINPOWER OR EFFORT. ALSO I HAVE KIDS AND A JOB SO THE GAME SHOULD ONLY BE THREE HOURS LONG, I THINK THAT'S A GOOD LENGTH.

I don't know why people that evidently don't like games try to play video games, instead of demanding for the games to be dumb down, why they don't do something they actually like?

 

[Machocruz]

I became curious about this myself, and in the process learned that "muted colors" are synonymous with "desaturated colors". I then found this:

So essentially, bright colors = high saturation and "pure", and muted colors = the "pure" color with poop on it.

Seems legit. I think agentorange has the edge here, at least insofar as the definition of "muted color".

I will now take that screenshot, put it into Photoshop, and test the RGB/saturation/color curve values of various colors in it.

Bright colors = brightness

Purity of color independent of hue or value = saturation

The measure of colorfulness, dependent on hue and value = chroma

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't know why people that evidently don't like games try to play video games, instead of demanding for the games to be dumb down, why they don't do something they actually like?

In the case of my best friend he used to play games when he was younger, so he tries to hold on to that. He's got two kids though, a wife who hates him and a soul-crushing "for the money" job. He's set his life up in such a way that he can't just go to the den for two hours and play Arcanum, he's not "allowed." So he plays a quick 30 minutes of Skyrim on the living room TV while everyone screams and talks around him and all he can concentrate on is whacking dudes in a dungeon.

 

[DeepOcean]

I don't know why people that evidently don't like games try to play video games, instead of demanding for the games to be dumb down, why they don't do something they actually like?

In the case of my best friend he used to play games when he was younger, so he tries to hold on to that. He's got two kids though, a wife who hates him and a soul-crushing "for the money" job. He's set his life up in such a way that he can't just go to the den for two hours and play Arcanum, he's not "allowed." So he plays a quick 30 minutes of Skyrim on the living room TV while everyone screams and talks around him and all he can concentrate on is whacking dudes in a dungeon.

Man, your friend is on a really fucked situation then. How can he survive all this shit?

 

[ohWOW]

Is she casting Timestop?

She did, now she's spamming Imprisonment!

She's summoning a devil to kill them all.
Just because science magic.

 

[DalekFlay]

Finished the game. Pretty good for what it is, as they say. About the ending and some comments others made a few pages ago...

Spoiler

I'm pretty sure it's implied that Anna/Elizabeth led Booker through worlds to sort of combine all the Comstock's and kill them all. No we did not walk through infinite worlds but in general tone and meaning that was the impression I got. Some logs and stuff talked about people becoming one across worlds and Booker is obviously crossing worlds throughout the game.

Or perhaps she just has the power to combine it all into one decision, that seems quite possible too. Lutece mentions a bunch of times that they have done this before, charting out the probabilities, like in the coin scene. Toward the end of the game Elizabeth says this has happened countless times and Booker always fails. This time you, the player, win, and thus the statue is destroyed and Elizabeth has the power to see all, change all.

Edit: The real question that's never really explained is where she gets this power from to begin with.

Anyway, philosophical stuff was interesting but not OMG MIND BLOWN really. Game was best when it was just an awesome Disney World to shoot people in.

 

[Tzaero]

Well I was doing some research for some alternate history and found this.
I reckon the game would have been good had they did more work on it.
We wouldn't have had Bioshock.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...er-for-irrational-s-scrapped-zombie-game.aspx

Spoiler

Trailer For Irrational's Scrapped Zombie Game




Anyone who has played Valve's Left 4 Dead knows the dread and exhilaration of cooperatively blasting through an undead horde. However, gamers might have been able to experience the zombie apocalypse years earlier if Irrational Games’ Division 9 had been completed.

The premise was this: Division 9 would have put players (and their friends) in the middle of an ever-encroaching zombie menace. Co-op gameplay, scarce resources, base-building, and strategic rescues were a part of the conceptual blueprint. In our recent visit to Irrational Games, we talked to the team about how the game started and what it could have become. We also saw a slice of Division 9 in action – and with our exclusive demo trailer at the end of this feature, you can see it, too.

“The reason we were frustrated with zombie games at the time was they never had the sense that you got for Dawn of the Dead, because there was really only Resident Evil at that time,” explains Irrational’s creative director Ken Levine. “That there was this group of survivors and they had to gather resources. They’d lock themselves up in the mall, and then be like ‘Oh, s---. We don’t have any food. We have to go out into the world and take these risks.’ And that was the game design, basically. You have a group of survivors, and these resources. You’d have to take on risks to get more supplies, ammo, and people. You sort of build up your group of survivors.”

“It had strategic elements, too,” adds lead artist Shawn Robertson. “Like getting the power back on for a certain section of the city. From then on, any missions you’d do at night would be lit.”

Art director Nate Wells adds: “We also had some really odd notions of base-building mechanics. At some location, you could get a transmission from a doctor who was trapped. If you went out and got him and brought him back, you would have a doctor installed at your base. Or you’d find an engineer who could make new weapons. There was going to be a whole RPG-style base-building mechanic. But the real innovation was the concept that the zombies never stop. The zombies are infinite. And now, just a few years later, there are plenty of games that treat zombies that way.”
“It was about holding back waves of enemies – I always think of Robotron – and you make these decisions moment to moment,” says Levine. “Do you stop to reload? Do you stop and heal each other? Do you stop and barricade a door? All these tactical decisions where the enemy was time, because there’s always going to be more zombies.”

Essentially, Division 9 was an expanded version of the Left 4 Dead formula – years before the Left 4 Dead phenomenon started. In the history of Irrational Games, this falls somewhere between the release of SWAT 4 and the studio’s acquisition by Take-Two Interactive.

Division 9 started as SWAT 5. Levine explains: “We were finishing SWAT 4, and Vivendi actually wanted us to do SWAT 5. This is one of those points where the money would have been really nice, and they were really good to work with, but I looked around and thought ‘What else have we got to say about this game?’ We didn’t really have anything else to add to what we did [with SWAT 4]. But I wanted the money really badly.”

In an effort to land SWAT 5 while still retaining Irrational’s signature style, another game concept in the works at the studio – tentatively called The Infected – was adapted to the SWAT universe. “Nate [Wells] and I were toying around with a pitch for a game called The Infected, which we brought to Ken, and we basically had the idea to turn it into Zombie SWAT,” says Robertson. “Vivendi was like, ‘What’s your pitch for SWAT 5?’ ‘Zombie SWAT.’ Crickets.”

“It started as a joke,” admits Wells. “Arrest five Draculas. Kill all Frankensteins in this level. Universal movie monsters versus SWAT.”

“I remember going around pitching it and the person would be ‘Zombies? Who wants to play a zombie game?’” remembers Levine. Joe McDonagh, Irrational’s director of creative development, adds with a laugh: “Someone said to me, ‘We don’t think zombies will be big in 2005.’”

Despite initial resistance, Division 9’s innovative ideas and (theoretically) fun gameplay brought it to the edge of production, only to be stymied by unfortunate timing. “We had a week to put together a demo, and we saw an opportunity there, and we actually sold it to Vivendi,” Levine tells us. “They were ready to buy it, but we had just sold the company to Take-Two. I think we would have been very successful with it. It would have come out around the same time as BioShock, maybe a little sooner.”

 

[HanoverF]

Has anyone posted this?
Idiot and tranny idiot spoiling/discussing the ending. Prepare to hear your braincells cry out in pain.

 

[DalekFlay]

I like this post on the Steam forums:

Spoiler

"Booker does not die. The reality in which Booker chooses to be baptized and takes the name of Comstock dies.
The Booker you play as lives on in his own reality which he returns to after the reality that Comstock was created in, dies.

The sad part is that Elizabeth does die. As the only realities where Elizabeth exists, stem from the reality where Booker becomes Comstock, killed Comstock kills all realities of Elizabeth as with Booker, she will only ever be Anna."

If all Columbia realities stem from that decision to become Comstock, and that Booker dies every time, then the alternate Booker still lives. Neat.

Good explanation.

Edit: Another:

Spoiler

"- Debt was real, to Comstock or someone else, doesn't matter. Booker sold the baby to Lutece to rid himself of the financial debt. This caused a moral debt. He tried to stop it, couldn't, Anna loses a finger and becomes Elizabeth in the other world.

- Years later Lutece, as part of experiments he/she/they are running, bring Booker into the second world where he is Comstock to save Elizabeth and wipe away his moral debt. Lutece monitors him throughout and he usually fails, Elizabeth becomes the sword, destroying the world.

- This time the player actually wins because Elizabeth sends a message to herself about the songbird. With the songbird's help you finally win, destroy the siphon and free Elizabeth to see all realities.

- Seeing all realities Elizabeth learns Booker and Comstock are the same person and you are from another world. She sees the only way to kill Comstock forever is to kill Booker before he can ever decide to be baptised, ending all possible futures where Comstock could exist and therefore Columbia could exist.

- The post-credits seem to suggest Booker from the game is reset as he never chose to be baptised and was not from one of the worlds that he died in. Or perhaps killing Comstock in all worlds reset his timeline in general. Either way without Comstock stealing the baby he presumably raises her."

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

BioShock Infinite is a storyfags shooter and in that it accomplishes what it sets out to do wonderfully, it doesn't claim to be anything other than it is...I would never play it cuz i hate shooters but I did watch an LP and its not only pretty but dat ending was mind fuckingly great. (the Infinite Lighthouses, the return to Rapture...the baptism. Its a high level RPG story only wasted applied to a shooter) Wouldn't doubt it wins GOTY easily.

It's one of the few AAAwesome titles whose existence I can acknowledge as an actual incline to its genre as opposed to yet another mind numbing Call of Doody game.


also, eagerly awaiting the Torment screenshot...I hope it stands up to the P:E one cuz that was gorgeous.

 

[Excidium]

The story is p. terrible. You have some serious shit taste. The twist was incredibly poorly delivered compared to the original Bioshock.

 

[ohWOW]

I'm at Finkton right now and Jesus Christ, how lazy they are They copy-pasted every worker so they're doing an every move in the exactly same way and time, plus the floor washing guys get their arms distorted.

 

[aris]

They were trying to recreate a run-down industrial district, with the rusty machines, generic offices and the ghetto houses with wood planks boarding up the windows.

It reminds me of the year I lived in Baltimore.

Not every game can benefit from a colorful and varied environment. Especially not for a game like FEAR.

I know that, but it doesn't make an art direction good, when they mostly copy and pasted grey corridors throughout the whole game. At almost any point of the game, you are looking at a corridor like this:

which is grey and featureless using simple tiled textures. It doesn't take a lot of skills nor a lot of art direction to make it.

A game with a good art direction is one where you put a shitload of thought into how every level looks. Don't get me wrong, I liked F.E.A.R, but it isn't its art direction that made it good.

Art direction in F.E.A.R was shit and generic

FEAR is 1000 times a better shooter than this game could ever hope to be. Oh OK I get it. If it has better Art it is a better game.

Got it.

Nope. You got it wrong as usual jaesun.

 

[Monocause]

So ITT instead of useful feedback on the game's quality we mostly get the usual banter about non-related shit and bitching from people who claim to haven't played anything for the past five years or so.

Seriously guys, could someone who actually finished the game post more detailed impressions, about the combat, difficulty, level design? I don't give a fuck about the story, I wanna know if it's got fun mechanics and shootan'.

sea?

 

[skacky]

Combat is very basic but gets the job done. The feeling is a lot better than BS1/2 and the weapons are for the most part okay in that department, except the volley gun and rpg that just downright suck. Most monsters are really boring to fight except bombers (the fire dudes, wish there were more of them), the motorized patriots and the Handymen. The difficulty is non-existent even on 1999 mode provided you explore a bit, and given how linear the level design is until you reach Emporia, you shouldn't have any trouble finding overpowered gear.

 

[aris]

So ITT instead of useful feedback on the game's quality we mostly get the usual banter about non-related shit and bitching from people who claim to haven't played anything for the past five years or so.

This is the codex, what did you expect?

As an FPS it is far superior to bioshock 1 and 2, with better shooter mechanics, less tedious hacking mini games (there are zero mini games in this game), much better level design where you can quickly take advantage of height and different strategic resources that you can summon one at a time. There are better shooters to be sure, but this one is competent, and one of the few classical style FPS games released in recent memory.

In 1999 mode many of the games can be intense as hell, at least they were for me. You can exploit the AI in many areas by moving in and out of the areas that the enemies are bound to, but you can't do that in every fight, especially towards the mid-end.

Combat is very basic but gets the job done. The feeling is a lot better than BS1/2 and the weapons are for the most part okay in that department, except the volley gun and rpg that just downright suck.

I really agree with the volley gun, but a fully upgraded rocket launcher is fucking godly. With the item that increases weapon payload, it is probably the best weapon in the game, takes down 3/4 guards in one shot and takes about 3/4 shots to take down a mechanized patriot.

 

[DalekFlay]

Some people are too angry and seek too much perfection to see the enjoyment possibilities before them. It's okay, human beings and all that.

 

[abija]

So ITT instead of useful feedback on the game's quality we mostly get the usual banter about non-related shit and bitching from people who claim to haven't played anything for the past five years or so.

Seriously guys, could someone who actually finished the game post more detailed impressions, about the combat, difficulty, level design? I don't give a fuck about the story, I wanna know if it's got fun mechanics and shootan'.

sea?

Combat - decent, reminds me of half life. Abusing rails and spells has its moments (rails would be even better without so much "visual feedback").

Difficulty - played on 1999 and it's not as advertised. The spells allow you to control fights really well and definetly didn't have to master any fights before getting past them. That's the main "requirement" for me for a "ultimate" difficulty setting, mastering the game. You should know exactly what the fuck you're doing, the weakness of the enemies and layout of the levels and be forced to optimize as much as possible, not playing with barely any issue the first walkthrough, adjusting things mildly as you go along.
I'd say it's what normal should be, or a difficulty between normal and hard if you want normal to be mindless fun.

Level design - bad. It's basically a chain of arenas that are well done with beautiful "props" and quite fun to fight in, but still feels linear as hell.

 

[Minttunator]

LOOK, I JUST WANT TO TAKE A LOAD OFF AND RELAX AFTER WORK. I DON'T WANT TO WASTE TIME GETTING LOST, LOADING A SAVE, OR TO HAVE MY MINDLESS COMA SPOILED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF BRAINPOWER OR EFFORT. ALSO I HAVE KIDS AND A JOB SO THE GAME SHOULD ONLY BE THREE HOURS LONG, I THINK THAT'S A GOOD LENGTH.

This describes a good 90% of the AAA popamole-buying public to a T. You've no idea how often I've read similar sentiments in various gaming forums.

I find it strange that 'cinematic' is used as a positive quality when describing video games - when, in most cases, it means that the player has very little to no freedom at all. Like waywardOne said - if there's so little interactivity then it's hardly a game, is it? In ye olden days (the 90s ) when CD-ROMs went mainstream, there was a surge of interactive movies, very similar gameplay-wise to today's AAA releases (press a button - watch cutscene - press a button - watch cutscene), but they were also marketed as such. I haven't played the new Bioshock (and I don't intend to), but I did play Battlefield 3 to see what all the fuss was about and I had the exact same realization that, judging by this thread, probably also applies here: this isn't a game, it's a movie.