So...I played through Bioshock: Infinite recently.
If this is the pinnacle of AAA gaming, then burn the whole thing to the ground right now. For a $200.000.000 game, it never took off. It never managed to amount to anything, even though there were bits and parts that looked like they ALMOST had what it takes. With that kind of money they would have been better off making a Hollywood blockbuster out of this, instead of a lacklustre puddle of nothingness that the game is.
Let's give a little backstory first. I played Ultima Underworld when it was new. I remember the dialogue system, although primitive, being pretty neat. I recall a magazine preview of System Shock where they said there was no dialogue system, only "audiologs". I played System Shock when it was new. I played both the floppy disk version AND the updated CD version. I played System Shock so much that I managed to break the narrative flow, leading to me getting email messages from people whose cold, lifeless bodies I had looted hours before. I remember thinking "This is a neat way to establish a narrative and a story, but it's not an all-encompassing solution".
That last fact is something that's completely lost on one Ken Levine, as I'm about to demonstrate.
5 years later System Shock 2 is released. Although a *breakthrough* is established by allowing the player to meet others in-game, there's never any dialogue taking place on the level of Ultima Underworld. So it's mostly down to audiologs and e-mails again. Since this is the sequel to System Shock, that's OK. I even faintly recall there being somewhere in the backstory a sort of mandatory obligation for the crew of the Von Braun to record their thoughts and experiences - if not for the sake of historical posterity, then at least to help the crew figure out what went wrong when something DID go wrong. So yeah, audiologs are OK in SS1 and SS2.
Then Ken Levine decides to resurrect his old hit and make it into a AAA title. For some strangely bizarre messed-up reason, someone thought it would make sense for the inhabitants of Rapture to have audiologs. Except it made almost no sense, it requires the notion that a majority of the population of Rapture to be so narcissistic AND so naive that they think it's perfectly fine to keep an audio diary. But since Bioshock 1 had some degree of freshness and originality still in it, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. That does not explain or justify the two sequels (plus DLCs) to Bioshock. By this point the trope of using audiologs has become nothing more than a lazy excuse to avoid writing character interactions and sensible dialogue, that horse has been beaten down to a fine, sticky paste. And yet Irrational Games persisted in using it.
But by the time Bioshock: Infinite rolls out, even Ken Levine realizes that audilogs have run their course, so he sees a need to add something more. So we get a protagonist with a name, a face and a backstory (a welcome change, I have to say) and someone for that protagonist to talk to. And that is the lovely plot-device-with-a-gaping-hole-in-it named Elizabeth. Unfortunately for us players, Booker DeWitt has really nothing to say, he's just a ruffian, a hired gun. Sure, he has a sad and tragic backstory, but 95% of the time he's spouting generic nonsense one might find in any FPS game. "We have to go there, we have to do that, we don't have time for this, Elizabeth, do this!", etc. So it's up to Elizabeth to have all the depths, all the interesting things to say - and yes, to be the eye candy. The problem is, it's so obvious that Elizabeth is the centerpiece of the game and the story, she's designed by committee to be as attractive and likable as possible. She feels fake as a result. Alyx Vance has come and gone, girl, you're not fooling anyone. One of the few things that did impress me in the game was how her dress changed to reflect what she and Booker have gone through - it gets dirty and torn, then it gets bloody and she changes into another dress, etc. But that, to be honest, was one of only a handful of items about BS:I that impressed me. For all the effort put into it, all that money, the game left virtually nothing behind with me. No memorable events, no good memories, and only one "Ooh!" moment - the scene right at the end with all the lighthouses, the starry sky and the other Bookers and Elizabeths walking around.
After seeing that end sequence, I can understand - note, only understand - that (gaming) journalists wanted to run around like headless chickens and proclaim Bioshock: Infinite as "the Citizen Kane of gaming". That scene is pretty powerful, an almost magical moment where Irrational Games manages to make something extraordinary - but then the scene ends and all that's left is the inevitable destruction of Comstock. Kind of a letdown, but not something that leaves a bad taste in the player's mouth, I reckon.
As for the gameplay, it's drivel. It's such a generic FPS with rechargable shields and
gameplay, it's borderline insulting. Choices are provided at certain points, but they're all fake, have no meaning. The gameplay is so piss-easy (I played on Medium) that there's no point to go and explore the levels, as your only reward is maybe some pittance of ammo, an even less pittance of cash and respawnings mobs of dumb-as-bricks AI. I went through around 60% of the game using only the Carbine and the Sniper Rifle, only resorting to other weapons when I did not have a choice in weapon usage. Vigors? I only used the Possession one in a pinch, the others were only used when and where the game demanded it. Videobooths and listening to people's senseless prattle? No reason, I quickly learned to ignore them. While I started out paying some attention to architecture and level design, I quickly gave up as it all just gave away and stopped making sense - just like the other two Bioshock games before it.
By now I guess there are many of you (myself included) that wish that my tale of Bioshock: Infinite was over. But I had yet to play the Burial at Sea DLCs...
Part 1 is about as banal-shit-boring as one can imagine. Somehow we're back as Booker DeWitt, only this time we're in Rapture 50 years since the events in Columbia - giving Elizabeth a light. So much for sense and reason, and we haven't even started. Part 1 is just more of the same as the main campaign, except for fewer weapons and Vigours, no upgrade options and ITZ RAPTURE!!! instead of Columbia. Absolutely nothing of value happens for a couple of hours, or until the big revelation at the end that allows us to watch the death of the last Comstock. This felt like a gigantic waste of time.
But then Part 2 starts, and things pick up a bit.
In Part 2 the player controls Elizabeth, but she has no omniscience to tear reality a new asshole. She's just plain old Elizabeth, trying to escape a sunken deathtrap and return to Rapture. First order of the day: Realize that playing Burial at Sea requires stealth; just barging in gets one killed really quick. So I shift a few internal gears and I'm playing Thief: Burial at Sea. The splicers even use some of the same phrases as the Thief guards use when they think I'm around. Unfortunately the stealth mechanics aren't up to much, but at least it's a different change of pace from what counts as "normal gameplay" in Bioshock. The new weapon is nice, but quickly enough I'm down to the shotgun and the microwave gun to realiably get rid of enemies when I can't clobber their heads in.
Sadly, while the gameplay in Bioshock: Infinite finally picks up here, the story sinks to the bottom of the sea...almost literally. In order to provide exposition, Elizabeth is made to talk to herself most of the time. Elizabeth finds herself in Rapture during events that directly lead up to the events in Bioshock 1. What a twist! And while going back to Columbia for a spell was a nice touch, it all just felt like a guided tour, with no meaning or purpose. Speaking of lack of purpose, there comes a scene near the end where Elizabeth is captured and tortured by the antagonist. This scene, graphic and gruesome as it is...serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. The player has no control, no choice about whether to spill the beans or suffer horribly. If this was part of the main campaign, and we were made clear that this would change the way we had to play the game, that there was a real sense of loss, this scene might have worked. But when all we can do is watch and listen, it becomes nothing more than torture porn, it's as if Ken Levine is making a statement that Elizabeth is his and his alone to mess with. So she's made to suffer...and then suffer some more. And the ending? "Anti-climatic" doesn't even begin to describe it. A player is made to go through all of this, just for that? "Ah, but it wraps up everything so nicely, now it's a complete story from Bioshock: Infinite to Bioshock 1!" Meh, whatever. I never got the time to bond and feel anything for Elizabeth anyway, so no big loss that this is the end of Bioshock.
Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make the games, dozens of hours spent on playing these games - and in the end they leave less behind than a 3-hour session of Eversion did, which cost only a fraction of the cost of Bioshock to make.
Pack it in, Mr. Levine. You're done.
