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

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Well yeah. Listen to Luttece's recordings a couple times and try not to exclaim "but it doesn't work like that".

 

[ohWOW]

This game is 2deep4 reality.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Bioshock's setting only works if you can accept the stupid idea that it's easily possible to advance 50+ years in technological development by finding some magic stuff and giving it to some prodigy scientist.

So its like a Bay movie? Turn off brain, watch explosions

 

[ohWOW]

being an idiot is the new way of being intelligent.

 

[sea]

Spoony reviews BioShock Infinite in his usual anal-retentive, long-winded fashion. Surprisingly he seems to think it actually pretty much sucks, which I did not quite expect at all.

 

[SearchEngine]

You're about 10 posts late, sea.

 

[Shadenuat]

Oh you gotta give Spoony credit, he used a plan for his review this time. That's why it's about a hour long, instead of two or three hours.
I was sure he would't like it. In heart, Spoony is still an old-school RPG fan (so System Shock 2 comparison was a given), regardless of his self-torture with new Final Fantasy games.

LUTECE BROTHERS HANDWAVE QUANTIUM PHYSICS

And it's not like old games were better than new ones... eh... (sighs) actually they WERE BETTER

 

[DalekFlay]

Of all the things to complain about in this game the realism of the science involved is the last thing I fucking care about.

I know for many people that shit's important, though.

 

[Jasede]

I'm ashamed I never heard of this guy before now. Great review.
The great pleasure of watching someone say the things you forgot about wanting to mention, well.

My memory is slipping.

 

[MicoSelva]

I like Spoony's review. I was afraid he will praise the shit out of this game, but it's surprisingly critical.

I'm not going to play this game myself, since the first Bioshock had many things that annoyed me (I still finished it, but barely) and according to Codex and Spoony review, this one has even more of them. And yet it's still getting perfect scores everywhere.

 

[Jasede]

It's just not a good game and I wouldn't play it. I couldn't even play Bioshock.
But it's because I was spoiled... I can't not compare these games to System Shock 2 and when they just feel inferior, there's no impetus for me to play them.

I watched most of this game and the only good parts (worth watching) were the first hour and the last hour. Everything in between was mind-numbing and repetitive.

 

[Azarkon]

Except that redemption is undone, and then you are left the drunken gambling addicted mass-murderer who would sell your own daughter to pay your gambling debts (but feel really bad about it)

Yeah it is, which is why I said earlier that the ending is depressing when put besides PST. PST was about the triumph of man and his choices. BI is not. Booker transforms himself TNO style through the course of the game, only to get screwed over at the end by forces beyond his control. The base redemption story - that of Booker seeing in Elizabeth an opportunity to correct his mistake with Anna - is therefore subverted by the fact that Booker ends up no wiser at the end of the game.

But then again, he is given a second opportunity. That plays into the game's question to you - does a man choose his fate / does he simply grow into it? It's a poorly asked question, but it's still there - free will vs. fatalism, one of the running motifs of the whole Bioshock series.

 

[Gelbvieh]

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Was hoping there was going to be some accidental incest between the protagonist and that anime chick he rescues, followed by discovery of the fact that he's her father and then regret, alcoholism, etc. Never happened. Also, space-time bullshit physics story was bullshit. And tiring. Otherwise game was purty and shooting americans is always pleasurable.

I too, weary traveler, was disappointed that there was no incest.

 

[DeepOcean]

Was hoping there was going to be some accidental incest between the protagonist and that anime chick he rescues, followed by discovery of the fact that he's her father and then regret, alcoholism, etc. Never happened. Also, space-time bullshit physics story was bullshit. And tiring. Otherwise game was purty and shooting americans is always pleasurable.

I too, weary traveler, was disappointed that there was no incest.

It would be an interesting mind fuck to discover that Elizabeth mother was herself.

 

[Azarkon]

Yeah, Shyamalan bullshit still miles better than the story of this game. The characters of Columbia are crazy racists/elitists or boring oppression/revolutionary cliche machines. Hey, you know a great idea? Let's make a game to discuss racism/elitism/nacionalism/fundamentalism but make all characters unrelatable crazy caricatures. That industrialist Fink was terrible, you know a great idea, let's say this bullshit: "There is the lions and there is the cows and there is the hienas that stir the cows" or "You know the bee, they don't stop to rest so be the bee" or " industrialists like myself done a great job by using inferior man like you" to the whole factory for no reason, only to show the player how crazy elitist he is and how the poor workers suffer. There was an auction of labor where the worker that offered to finish the task for the the lowest amount of time win the job, it was used to show workers exploitation, it was so forced and ridiculous that made me ask: How nobody saw how ridiculous all characters sound?The only character that don't talk fundamentalist/nationalistic/elitism/oppression butthurt gibberish is Elizabeth. I made a rule for myself, next time I hear that someone want to discuss serious issues in their game, I'm going to stay the hell away because game developers are terrible at it. Boy, I'm so butt hurt to the see such awesome art direction go to waste in such a mediocre game.

See, this is the sort of criticism that I don't get. This game was never about racism, and people who mistake Levine's setting the game in a racist era for him wanting to make a game about racism are doing themselves a disservice.

There are only two characters in the game who even talks about racism, etc. -

Comstock
Fitzroy

Fink is your average industrialist / Andrew Ryan lite. He's got little to do with racism.

Comstock - being a racist is not Comstock's gimmick. Using racism, fundamentalism, dimensional travel, etc. to gain political leverage, THAT is his gimmick. Comstock is a racist because everyone in the early 20th century was a racist. Racism was the fad at the time. Levine said this in an interview -

As a student of American history, it is a much broader story than what’s shown in Columbia, but I don’t feel that it’s the purpose of the game or the responsibility of the game to be a survey of American history. Certainly there are many things that are in Columbia that were very prevalent at the time, whether it’s charismatic religious movements, whether it’s a sense of growing nationalism—which was very present at the time. I’ve talked about that before, so I won’t bore you with that again. Or the deeply institutionalized racism and classism, which were… It was so prevalent that when you go back and read the writings of known figures like Teddy Roosevelt, who was extremely progressive in so many ways… I’m not using “progressive” in the sort of “Fox News versus MSNBC” way. I’m just saying that he was involved in anti-trust, in splitting up large corporations like Standard Oil. He was also a champion of the rights of the poor. But he was also what you would call a neoconservative in a lot of ways. He was very keen on American expansion. When you read his writings as sort of what you would call, at the very least, an extremely compassionate conservative, he would refer to Jews and African-Americans in the most horrible of terms. He was a man of his time. Abraham Lincoln, if you read his writings now, you would ascribe him? Even though he’s the most important abolitionist of all time, and a great man, he was a man of his time. He viewed African-Americans as a lesser race. He just thought they should be free. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. George Washington owned slaves. People were men of their times, and this is a game that’s set in a time where, if you don’t have those elements in the game, it’s just dishonest, you know?

In short, Levine's not trying to 'have a dialogue about racism' in this game. He's including it in the game because when you set a game in the early 20th century, you HAVE to have racism. Not doing so is disingenuous. People back then were racists, and Comstock just happened to know how to exploit it for his own benefit. One of Comstock's speeches stuck with me -

To tax the black more than the white, is that not cruel? To forbid the mixing of the races, is that not cruel? To give the vote to the white man, and deny it to the yellow, the black, the red -- is that not cruel? Hm. But is it not cruel to banish your children from a perfect garden? Or drown your flock under an ocean of water? Cruelty can be instructive, and what is Columbia, if not the schoolhouse of the Lord?

This quote is racist, but its main topic is not racism. It is a demonstration, rather, of how people use / abuse religion to defend the status quo. It is political speak, the sort of spin that you see everywhere in politics to this day, mixed with Christian imagery which were ubiquitous in Western politics a century ago.

At the end of the day, that's what Comstock is - a politician. He uses religion the same way he uses racism, the same way he uses Elizabeth, Wounded Knee, and Peking. His antagonism does not come from him being a racist, which ridiculously I've heard on several review sites, but from him being a cutthroat megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. He's not an ideologue. He's not Andrew Ryan. He's a neocon. You want to make an analogy, think about him being George W. Bush, because that's what Levine was thinking in the back of his mind.

There is only one character who even remotely is about racism in this game, and that's Fitzroy. You know this because her voxophone records are replete with it, from the moment she steps off into Columbia and thinks it's heaven but for the 'sea of white faces', to her final moments trying to murder a little white boy. This is one of the cleverer moments in the game, because normally when modern society deals with the topic of racism it's about white oppression and how everyone else is a victim of the white man. But that's not what racism is about. Racism is ubiquitous, it's tit-for-tat, and it boils down to fear and hate. Fitzroy was every bit the racist that Comstock was and through her, the game was in a position to provide insight about how racism begets racism, the cycle of abuse and hate, etc.

Too bad Fitzroy gets next to no screen time, thereby showing again that, whatever its overtures, Bioshock: Infinite doesn't give two shits about this stuff.

What BI is, is a story about a man, a city, and his daughter, who he has to save. A story with infinite variations but which ultimately boil down to the same thing you played through in Bioshock 1 and 2.

 

[Azarkon]

Was hoping there was going to be some accidental incest between the protagonist and that anime chick he rescues, followed by discovery of the fact that he's her father and then regret, alcoholism, etc. Never happened. Also, space-time bullshit physics story was bullshit. And tiring. Otherwise game was purty and shooting americans is always pleasurable.

I too, weary traveler, was disappointed that there was no incest.

It would be an interesting mind fuck to discover that Elizabeth mother was herself.

Yeah, but the multiverse logic in BI doesn't support that. Wherever time travel was involved, their logic is that kill person in the past = he disappears in that universe's future. That's why, for example, killing Booker during the baptism destroys all future Comstocks AND Elizabeths. There is thus no way for Elizabeth to be her own mother because the moment you fuck with her mother in an universe, Elizabeth herself disappears in that universe. It's very Looper in that area.

Being her own foster mother, though, is doable because their multiverse logic has that memory thing. So technically Elizabeth is able to travel back in time and be the foster mother of herself without breaking the multiverse.

 

[DeepOcean]

Yeah, Shyamalan bullshit still miles better than the story of this game. The characters of Columbia are crazy racists/elitists or boring oppression/revolutionary cliche machines. Hey, you know a great idea? Let's make a game to discuss racism/elitism/nacionalism/fundamentalism but make all characters unrelatable crazy caricatures. That industrialist Fink was terrible, you know a great idea, let's say this bullshit: "There is the lions and there is the cows and there is the hienas that stir the cows" or "You know the bee, they don't stop to rest so be the bee" or " industrialists like myself done a great job by using inferior man like you" to the whole factory for no reason, only to show the player how crazy elitist he is and how the poor workers suffer. There was an auction of labor where the worker that offered to finish the task for the the lowest amount of time win the job, it was used to show workers exploitation, it was so forced and ridiculous that made me ask: How nobody saw how ridiculous all characters sound?The only character that don't talk fundamentalist/nationalistic/elitism/oppression butthurt gibberish is Elizabeth. I made a rule for myself, next time I hear that someone want to discuss serious issues in their game, I'm going to stay the hell away because game developers are terrible at it. Boy, I'm so butt hurt to the see such awesome art direction go to waste in such a mediocre game.

See, this is the sort of criticism that I don't get. This game was never about racism, and people who mistake Levine's setting the game in a racist era for him wanting to make a game about racism are doing themselves a disservice.

I would agree with you if there wasn't always a crazy motherfucker talking fundamentalist/nationalist/elitist/racist/oppression gibberish all the time in the middle game, the approach of Levine on the setting was let's hit everything with a sledgehammer. It is not enough to see the racism, seeing blacks having only the lowest of the jobs or separated bathrooms or other more subtle ways, you have to have a crazy bastard yelling bullshit on your ears all the time, I'm not against the game trying to show the racism of the time but it was forced as fuck. Many times I was: I know game, this guy is racist/elitist, I already understood that, please stop talking bullshit! I wanted to see the hypocritical side of the characters more than the cliche evil racist/elitist villain 101, to understand them, why they are the way they are, so their flaws would be more interesting and you are able to relate with them in some level, because the way they are, they are just splicers that aren't mutated by adam. Only Comstock gets a development and it only happens at the end, most of the game he is just a crazy fundamentalist/racist bastard.

Fink was one of the worst and saying: "Work for me your worthless scum, blah, blah." all the time to the whole factory is WAY more extreme than the average industrialist even at that time.

So, you have a plot at the beginning that stop, then you have to do alot of stupid bullshit to barely developed caricatures in the middle game, then the plot continues at the end. If you cut the bullshit middle game (all of the Fink factory, Hall of Heroes and atc.) there is only interesting plot development for a 2 hours game. If the middle was remotely interesting gameplay and story wise, I wouldn't mind the story taking a deviation but you just shoot alot of dudes on tedious repetitive, boring shooting arenas with dumb down shooting mechanics from Bioshock (that weren't great either on Bioshock 1). The enemies want to murder you with a fanatical religious or revolutionary, almost suicidal zeal that made me remember the splicers from Bioshock 1,yeah, they are just a reskin of the splicers.

 

[Azarkon]

I would agree with you if there wasn't always a crazy motherfucker talking fundamentalist/nationalist/elitist/racist/oppression gibberish all the time in the middle game, the approach of Levine on the setting was let's hit everything with a sledgehammer. It is not enough to see the racism, seeing blacks having only the lowest of the jobs or separated bathrooms or other more subtle ways, you have to have a crazy bastard yelling bullshit on your ears all the time, I'm not against the game trying to show the racism of the time but it was forced as fuck. Many times I was: I know game, this guy is racist/elitist, I already understood that, please stop talking bullshit! I wanted to see the hypocritical side of the characters more than the cliche evil racist/elitist villain 101, to understand them, why they are the way they are, so their flaws would be more interesting and you are able to relate with them in some level, because the way they are, they are just splicers that aren't mutated by adam. Only Comstock gets a development and it only happens at the end, most of the game he is just a crazy fundamentalist/racist bastard.

Fink was one of the worst and saying: "Work for me your worthless scum, blah, blah." all the time to the whole factory is WAY more extreme than the average industrialist even at that time.

So, you have a plot at the beginning that stop, then you have to do alot of stupid bullshit to barely developed caricatures in the middle game, then the plot continues at the end. If you cut the bullshit middle game (all of the Fink factory, Hall of Heroes and atc.) there is only interesting plot development for a 2 hours game. If the middle was remotely interesting gameplay and story wise, I wouldn't mind the story taking a deviation but you just shoot alot of dudes on tedious repetitive, boring shooting arenas with dumb down shooting mechanics from Bioshock (that weren't great either on Bioshock 1). The enemies want to murder you with a fanatical religious or revolutionary, almost suicidal zeal that made me remember the splicers from Bioshock 1,yeah, they are just a reskin of the splicers.

Comstock is a caricature, but he isn't a caricature of the social issues people think Bioshock is wrestling with. See the difference? Bioshock isn't about social issues. The 'crazy bastard yelling bullshit in your ears' is a propaganda machine, and that's how propaganda used to work - via loud speakers and repetition. It's there to add atmosphere to the setting, not to provide insight. This is the flavor text, not the main course.

A lot of people think Bioshock is a message game and I simply don't think it is. Rather, I think this is what the gaming media wants it to be, and try desperately to paint it that way. Yet there is nothing in Bioshock that makes me think it's a message game beyond the setting itself, which just by not being a generic fantasy / sci-fi setting, is enough to get poppamole critics to declare it the Les Miserables of video games.

Think about it this way - does Bioshock NEED to be set in the setting that it's set in for it to work? The answer is no. At the end of the day, the dimension hopping, father-daughter story works no matter the setting, and the social issues people love to bring out in Bioshock ultimately have little to do with the game / plot itself.

 

[sea]

I was under the impression that one component of good writing was the effectiveness in which the setting a story takes place in ties in with the themes or events of the narrative. How silly of me.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, once more people read way too much into game, or game make people read way to much into game with shallow design?

 

[DeepOcean]

Comstock is a caricature, but he isn't a caricature of the social issues people think Bioshock is wrestling with. See the difference? Bioshock isn't about social issues. The 'crazy bastard yelling bullshit in your ears' is a propaganda machine, and that's how propaganda used to work - via loud speakers and repetition. It's there to add atmosphere to the setting, not to provide insight. This is the flavor text, so to speak, not the main course.

A lot of people think Bioshock is a message game and I simply don't think it is. Rather, I think this is what the gaming media wants it to be, and try desperately to paint it that way. Yet there is nothing in Bioshock that makes me think it's a message game beyond the setting itself, which just by virtue of not being a generic fantasy / sci-fi setting, is enough to get poppamole critics to declare it the Les Miserables of video games.

I understand that it was propaganda, I just found it terrible boring. It made sense to try to indoctrinate people but there is not enough contrast and this made it boring as hell. You see the propaganda but barely see the real motivations of the characters (with exception of Comstock) because when they could show their more interesting side , they are just forgotten by the plot. Comstock barely interacts with you in the beginning and middle game and when he appears he doesn't have anything interesting to say and only gets interesting at the end because of the whole Booker/Comstock thing. Fontaine and Andrew Ryan used alot of propaganda themselves but there was more contrast, you could see the man behind the mask, not so much in Bioshock infinite. The game have one or two audiologs showing their hypocritical sides while you spend alot of time hearing gibberish. Without enough contrast, you only have the propaganda to form an opinion on the characters and most of the time I thought: Why I'm doing this for those boring idiots, why I'm fighting those boring idiots, why I'm wasting my time hearing those boring idiots?

 

[retardation]

The lack of intelligence in this thread is amazing. Ken Levine can't talk about certain stuff because he would ruin his career.
However, he already said somewhere that the problems in Columbia are universal and relevant in today's time. "Plot holes" in this game are present because this is not so much a game about Elizabeth and Booker but more about current world affairs - and not only involving USA. If you view it that way, plot holes suddenly seize to exist. It is VERY obvious if you READ stuff. People who criticize this game at length are either butthurt or have a hidden and very political motivation to bring it down in the mainstream media.
As for the people complaining the science in the game is not realistic enough - for fuck's sake, WTF.

 

[Gelbvieh]

The lack of intelligence in this thread is amazing.

Oh the irony.

So:

1. You lose your job if you discuss things intelligently
2. BSI is an intelligent discussion of current world events that should be admired, this is the correct analysis but
3. Analysis is pointless, don't bother.

Edit: read name. I lose. 10/10, I am most terribly trolled.

 

[abija]

This game was never about racism, and people who mistake Levine's setting the game in a racist era for him wanting to make a game about racism are doing themselves a disservice.

So why the scene with the couple at the start? Why is Elizabeth analyzing the bathroom situation?
If racism was left in the background sure... but it's brought forward in retarded scenes like that, trying to stir emotional engagement or w/e. They even stick out like sore thumbs, gives the impression someone had to fill a quota. Slaughter, slaughter, slaughter, racism is bad mkay?, slaughter, slaughter, slaughter...