Bioshock Infinite - Spoilers thread

I agree, those aren't exactly positive examples of story telling, but my point is that they started conversations. Personally I really dig Infinite's story, but I almost more thrilled by the fact that it has made me discuss theories and points of views with people. It's been a long time since I've had that feeling, in any medium

Yeah, I hear ya. Just wanted another opportunity to mock the ending of Mass Effect 3 (for the un-initiated that notebook in the image is a ME3 writer's).

Quote from Puddy

But everything gets sort of tangled in this quantumy mess and when the end cinematic is shown it doesn't "click" unfortunately.

I didn't experience this at all. After I had finished the game I was in this semi-amazed/excited state where I incrementally realized more and more about how the game-story fits together (i actually had some difficulty sleeping that night). This is one of the advantages of not making everything clear-cut and easy to digest. The story stayed with me for several days because of this. If, however, most of the reflection on this game was fruitless after completing the game - then I would agree with you.

That's not to say I think your viewpoint is wrong. I've talked to some people who barely got the story at all. I don't think Irrational considered enough (or perhaps care) that some players will go through the game without listening to tapes or paying attention to the voluntary story exposition. It feels like the story was constructed with the "perfect" player in mind.

PS: i'm not saying you didn't get the story. my last paragraph is directed at this kind of storytelling in general.

I have the same point of view as Puddy. The story never clicked for me and I found the narration dull at best, and poorly paced overall. You have next to no information in the middle of the game, and when you arrive at Emporia (more or less) you are overwhelmed until the end. Besides I found this whole multiverse thing to be a poor excuse for all the inconsistencies in the plot. Not shitting on the game, I enjoyed it a ton, but I just didn't like the story nor the narration.

Lets all be honest and admit the story makes very little sense and isn't well explained. The skyhooks thing and the ability jump a million feet in the air to get on one bugged me. I guess its filed under "magnets, how do they work?" but then again its not discussed enough to put that cognitive dissonance out of my mind... this game doesn't communicate to the player sometimes. That bugs me. A lot of stuff in this game just plain bugged me on a subconscious level.

I will go ahead and state the fact that many times playing it I felt in love with it (right around the level where you're exploring the giant city and the bank) but after that things really took a nosedive. It became obvious the story wouldn't resolve well, and that mission where you're taking down the zepellins was a total pain in the butt for me, and the asylum, I just didn't get it. I didn't get the story I was supposed to be experiencing, I didn't get the enemies and the whole situation. I want things to be explained on a basic level like that, don't just throw me in this weird place with no grounding...

This game is a bit of a let down for me not intrinsically because it was obviously one of the best SP games and 60 bucks you can spend right now or any time. But this game had so much going right for it and it failed so terribly in a bunch of other ways that I feel just aren't right... it's a bit of a shame. I loved the game but my experience coming away from it is that it should have been so much better

I give it a solid 8.5 out of 10, but with some common sense changes I think that goes to 10/10, one of the most perfect games ever. But we've got that gulf there, and its so clear what went wrong... damn, its just a shame

edit: re-reading this thread, i agree with you guys who said the story never clicked for you.

this is not the sign of a good story to me, it's the sign of an author designing a world where they don't have to make difficult choices and commit to anything, and as a result the fun of a good story is lost in a muddled mess where the player is expected to "use their imagination" to design the plot. unfortunately some of us have shit to do, that's why we pay writers to write stories

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/MaHNjLo.jpg]

posting this here just to be safe--

i think we can all agree on that the story is for the most part interesting and the art is amazine. there's a few things that drag this game down for me, most notably the combat, enemies and weird clipping/collisions in levels.

let's start with the first: combat feels weird mostly because enemies appear out of thin air behind me all of a sudden or shoot me from some unknown position. before i get a chance to react or look around to see where they are shooting from, i die, or at the very least have 0 shield and quite possibly low (<5%) hp. this is not helped that kiting is practically impossible due to the collision on every object in the game. i get stuck constantly on the environment while moving around in combat, which is extremely frustrating. most of the times i can get free at a heavy loss of health, but sometimes if certain enemies are around (e.g., handymen), they can lock me against a wall/corner so that i get genuinely stuck and can only suicide to get free.

...which leads me to the second point: enemies. the heavy hit - heavy armor enemies especially are morbidly annoying and frustrating, because they seem incredibly imbalanced to face as a player. with a few of those around (say, 2), and a handyman on top of all of that i'm pretty much suppressed into a position i can't get out of basically anywhere on the map (assuming i'm not dead from standing in the open).

there's also something about the vigors, they seem less than useful in most situations because their powers do not directly affect the enemy. the plasmids in the original bioshock by contrast seem like a better version of these. makes you wonder if that was intentional, y'know, in the timeline or whatevs.

i gotta say though, the pacing is marvelous. i literally played the game for 12 hours straight without getting bored, and i usually hate pure combat games. there were a few times where i wished i could sneak past the combat, but it's all good.

still need to finish it, almost at the end.

Quote from PogoP

Does Ken have much of a presence in the office, Vivi? Just curious what he's like out of the public eye

Are you serious dude? xD

Quote

' timestamp='1365411702' post='328817']

Are you serious dude? xD

lol

edit: does he smell good

Just finished the game, took me around 30+ hours.

I'm glad I decided to play 1999 mode on my first play through, it made the game really challenging and I died just enough times.

This was a really special game, what a mind blowing and rare experience! Grabbing my favorite kind of game, (fps rpg) and wrap it around a really good story. I loved how rich and alive the world feels, you really feel you're in this city with its own twisted culture and beliefs, and I loved how you were there before everything went to shit, so you actually got to see the beauty and majesty of Columbia. I mean, the city breads believability, electronics all have a brand, and so does food, clothing, alcohol, tabaco, etc. I love how themed everything is, everything makes sense and its not only there to fill up the environment. From FINKs crates to Prophets propaganda props.

Another thing Irrational Games nailed once again, was what I like to call environment storytelling, the way dead bodies were placed and the destroyed stuff around them, if you take a second to absolve the room you're in, you can really picture what happened in there with you're mind. I like to all this the "half eaten donut moment" from the movie Aliens, you don't always need to tell a story, just present pieces of it, like puzzle pieces, and people will put it together in their minds, and IG artists and designers always excelled at this, it is so inspiring for me.

It really felt that the artists made the art of the game to support both the gameplay AND the story, and not only to make a pretty game, and for those who work on the games industry, you know how challenging that is!

Gameplay wise, I gotta say the combat is loads of fun! Weapons feel really good, and I found myself using a wide range of weapons through the game, but ultimately I used the Sniper/RPG combination the most. Enemies and AI are smart and challenging enough, Melee and shotguns guys strike at you while rifle and other dudes take cover and whatnot. Overall I found the combat really rewarding and fun, this is a shooter after all so I'm glad they made it compelling to just shoot at bad guys.

I gotta say though, the Vigors in the game are really poor. I found the Plasmids in Bioshock a lot better somehow and I found myself using pretty much all of them, whereas in Bioshock Infinite I pretty much only used a couple, and rarely.

Bioshock gave you a lot of temptation to use the plasmids, well placed oil puddles, water puddles, Telekinisis to get unreachable stuff and other things. Maybe the levels in that game were smaller and easier to design/play with plasmids, but still...

Another thing, the game never really forces you to use the Vigors, I remember in Bioshock they made you use the Electro Bolt to open certain doors, Fire to ignite certain areas and open frozen doors, etc, etc. On Infinite Vigors are exclusively used for combat, maybe they did that to simplify the game, make it more mainstream, along with the idea of removing hacking and lock picking.

Also, I kept waiting for that big moment when you had to fight the all mighty and feared Songbird, but that moment never happened, in fact, its curious how this game doesn't have many bosses, I can only think of one, Lady Comstocks ghost. You have those mini-boss guys with the crows and the handymans, but still, bit of a wasted opportunity there for a badass boss scene when Songbird kidnaps Liz and take her to Comstock.

And speaking of Comstock, anyone else think his death was extremely anti-climatic? You slap his head and drown in a water puddle? Again, wasted boss potential there, I was expecting the final fight with the Prophet to be one of a kind.

Still in the subject of bosses, wtf was that last boss scene? If I can call it that? They just trown enemies and Motorized Patriots at you, and that's it!! No epic climax boss scene... In Bioshocks last boss scene, they make you fight Atlas, this big ass mutated motherfucker, and the game makes you use all the Plasmids you've got to be able to beat all the stages of the boss, which is awesome cos it makes you use everything you learned during the game, where's in Infinite you just get normal enemies being trown at you... Again, wasted opportunity for a epic climax!

Bioshock was one of the best and the most memorable games of the last decade for me, Infinite builds on top of that legacy and makes it better in many many many ways, unfortunately it was also a bit streamlined in many ways.

With that being said, this was one motherfucking awesome game that will live in my memory for many years, if not ever! I might have sounded overly negative or critic, but it was only because I care about it so much and was able to see the tiny flaws of it. I can't praise this game enought though! I'll be playing it a second time soon for sure, and I can't wait for the dlcs, curious to see what they'll come up with.

Oh... And the end cutscene, with the plot twist and all, you being a younger version of Comstock, walking on Rapture for a few seconds and ultimately dying by Elizabeth's hands?! Wow... Just, wow.

Quote from PogoP

Errr, yeah? I was just wondering if he's the kinda guy that walks around and has a hand in everything. Was wondering if Vivi has chatted to him much!

What's wrong with asking that?

i mean its not a crazy question. just came across as funny. also ifyou think about it, he must obviously be extraordinarily involved given all the shit thats clearly taken straight out of his brain. just my thoughts

Quote from FMPONE

Are you serious dude? xD

lol

edit: does he smell good

Man you two can be real dicks sometimes. What's wrong with him asking that as a question?

Just finished it and this is some heavy shiet !

but still mind blowing

I just don't get how people can not get the story. If you didn't understand why you were doing what you were doing, then you weren't paying attention to the dialog or environment. The only time you should be confused is when you enter the asylum - gee, I wonder if thats intentional, you think? But you aren't completely blind as you walk in and its snowing, Booker says "Snow? In July?" So you know we're in the future. As it goes, if you pay attention, Elizabeth is basically explaining everything that happened. You really don't even have to use your brain if you listen to her announcements, the video and especially if you pick up the voxaphones in the place.

Not really dude, some ppl wont get how da fuck you got parallel universe and how the same person (at least looking like the same guy) can do different shiet, and how they can time travel betweent those worlds (but will think that game is just minute after minute, they wont probably get that you are in Columbia like X'th time). Stil yea, i've watched this ending 2 times and you stil have some small details - like the part on the beach, i did forget that when you woke up, you were saying Anna over and over again (realised that when watching the ending for the 2nd time) I'm sure some ppl wont figure out by them selfes that AD stands for Ana Dewit (or how the hell this is spelled)

game is mind fucking with you!

And my personal question, why they couldn't just run away after killing THAT ONE Comstock !? stay low in paris ? They were afraid ?

any ways, my big wow was when i was SURE at some point in the game i will fight the BIG BIRD (creepy as fuck !) but when he started do help us, and afterwords when Eli took it with us in to rapture, when he was drowning, i srsl felt sory for the creature !

//Edit

can just someone explain to me, bleeding nose - what reference is this ?

Quote from dux

Are you serious dude? xD

lol

edit: does he smell good

Man you two can be real dicks sometimes. What's wrong with him asking that as a question?

hahahha oh come on dude...

we love liam. just teasing him a bit, lighten up geez fwiw i actually expected somebody to answer it, but at the same time if people were talking about my presence in the office or whatever on a forum behind my back, it might not be fair to that person. anyways back to the thread...

i think the very initial part of the game where you're ogign to the lighthouse was pretty, but was anybody else completely stunned by how gorgeous the section where you descend into the city was? With the light streaming through the letters, and the watery church area? I think Irrational took the approach of making light as central to this game as they made water as central to bioshock 1, because by far the most exceptional part of this game for me was the god beams. Visually they are just above and beyond everything i've seen in a game

one thing about columbia isn't believable: at the height of where the city supposedly is situated, (est. 20k-30k ft), temperatures are on any given day around -50 degrees celsius/ -58 F. People walking around in their summer clothes or being at the beach would be extremely unlikely unless they wanted to contract instant pneumonia and die within a few hours/days. there's a point where a dude remarks that it is set in july. fun fact: at those altitudes, seasons don't matter as temperature isn't going to drop below -40 degrees either how. It is also mentioned that columbia swerves all over the world, hypothetically the temperature could easily get below -100 degrees celsius/-148 F. for as much as other things are explained in the game, nothing is offered on how people survive this.