ERMEHGERD BEROSHERK INFERNERT- Bioshock Infinite! (Spoilers warning!)

GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz QueenMountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
edited April 2013 in Gaming
First of all, major thanks to AMD, @Thracks, @Mertesn and @Canti for making it possible for me to even play the game at this point. Usually I'm six months to a year behind everyone else in major games because I can't afford them when they come out. Being able to play at the same time lots of other people are is super exciting!

Second of all-- has anyone else finished the game yet!? MY MIND IS GOING CRAZY RIGHT NOW WITH THAT ENDING.
oni_delsmertesn
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Comments

  • CantiCanti =/= smalltime http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9K18CGEeiI&feature=related Icrontian
    I haven't played it yet. My mind doesn't need "THAT ENDING" to go crazy, it just sorta does that on it's own. I gave it to someone else in a disguised attempt to make their mind go crazy. I suspect I have succeeded.
    GnomeQueen
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    MY MIND IS CRAZY YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian

    MY MIND IS CRAZY YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED

    Huh? I don't think I wrote this.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian

    MY MIND IS CRAZY YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED

    Huh? I don't think I wrote this.
    Yes you did. Alcohol is a hell of a drug.
    UPSLynx
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    Alcohol: Not even once.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    Just completed it - they succeeded in recreating my reaction to the first BioShock. I didn't see it coming until right before it happened.

    Still a bit confused with the whole thing, but great ending. Thanks to the same group from me, as well, for allowing me to experience it.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    ...so I just realized Comstock 'steals' his own daughter because he's become infertile. That's why he wants Anna/Elizabeth.

    I'm not going to be able to switch my brain off tonight, am I?
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    Dammit. Elizabeth can create these tears because of her pinky - she exists in two places at once.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited April 2013
    Every time Booker dies (including when the player controls him) the Lutece's use a different version of Booker to follow the exact same path doing the exact same thing but slightly different. That's why we see the door when we die, it's when Booker sells Anna to Robert Lutece which starts the chain of events that leads to the Luteces dragging us back to Columbia to redo everything (and we are then brought to the checkpoint before we died to regain control). The entire plot is about the Lutece's resetting the timeline to prevent their own demise (the male Lutece is not pleased that they are trapped in the void while the female Lutece doesn't mind likewise the male Lutece mentions that he wishes to reset what they caused while the female sees it as pointless because 'time is an ocean, why stop the tide' [to paraphrase]). This is the reason they know Booker "DOESN'T row" as opposed to "doesn't ROW" in the opening; they've done this a huge amount of times before. At this point, you regain control of Booker and avoid death by doing something different. With regards to the mandatory story points which feature the black and white office (such as after the entrance to Columbia via the baptism and before Battleship Bay) there are two theories:
    As we can see, prior to flipping the head, there are 122 chalk marks already on the board. This reveals to us that we are, at least, the 123rd Booker to reach the coin flip and thus are at least the Luteces' 123rd attempt to reset the timeline. Jacksepticeye has noted that the lighthouse combination at the beginning is 1-2-2. Whether this is just coincidence, a reference, or more, is never specifically state
    Constants and variables.

    Woah.
    ErrorNullTurnip
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    Right?! I never understood the whole flipped coin thing at the beginning until I read that, and then I was like SERIOUSLY OMG
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    Holy hell, this is even better:
    For the new page: SONGBIRD IS IN BIOSHOCK 1:

    You can hear his death cry in Fort Frolic: (at the 14 second mark).

    For comparison:

    Booker and Elizabeth were in the Rapture Metro while Jack was dealing with Cohen down in Fort Frolic...

    MIND. BLOWN.
    ErrorNullTurnip
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    Oh yea, I LOVE that bit. I seriously lost my mind when I saw that.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    So the question is-- was that just a random ambient sound they replicated, or did they really know when they were making Bioshock 1, six years before, that they would have a bird character with that sound in another future game? I'm inclined to believe the second; it's an awfully specific ambient sound.
  • BuddyJBuddyJ Dept. of Propaganda OKC Icrontian
    edited April 2013
    image
    ThraxGuppyMAGICErrorNullTurnip
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    I was really hoping that would be the dickbutt gif when it started loading. I was not disappointed. You are doing god's work, Pete.
    BuddyJ
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    I'm really confused by that gif. I never got a telegram during the game.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited April 2013
    Lutece tells you not to choose 77 (the numbered baseball you end up choosing moments later).

    Happens after heads/tails.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    OOOOH. I remember now. Thank you @Nights!
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    That time when Elizabeth sings the plot twist. MY FEELS.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    Finished the game last night in around 21 hours. Pretty satisfied with the game overall, and can't wait to see what the DLC brings.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    mertesn said:

    Finished the game last night in around 21 hours. Pretty satisfied with the game overall, and can't wait to see what the DLC brings.

    I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE DLCSSSSS
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    I just started last night. Playing on PS3. Forgot my fps console HATE. Might have to pick up a PS3 motion controller to finish.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited April 2013
    I enjoyed the game. The plot twists weren't entirely unpredictable, but I really enjoyed the attention to detail, and the reflective foreshadowing is nearly perfect. It's a well written story which appealed to my sci-fi sensibilities. The plot is well crafted for the interactive medium. Many games try to tell a cinematic story, ignoring the interactive elements. Bioshock Infinite successfully uses the agency the player is provided with to create and compelling narrative, and ensures that when our agency is removed, it is for good reason, and flows with the story. It's an incredible example of how to create a narrative in which interaction is used as a true part of the story, rather than as a ludic crutch or gimmick. The first two Bioshock games did this as well, but neither quite as nicely as Infinite has done.

    I thought the mechanics of the game were among the best designed I've ever encountered. The weapon variety and scarcity was great, and though it occasionally annoyed, it was a really great choice to limit the player to two weapons at a time. It really made me think about which weapons I really needed, and it occasionally forced me to go long stretches without my preferred weapon, when I had to drop it, and use something else due to a lack of ammo. It took me out of my comfort zone for long stretches, and kept me searching. I kept a Carbine and a Sniper rifle for most of the game, but I once had to go for nearly an hour with a repeater and a hand cannon, fruitlessly searching for the weapons I wanted. My sense of relief upon locating each of them was tremendous, "Now I can fight properly again!".

    I was a little annoyed occasionally by the lack of a save-anywhere, since it occasionally meant I had to lose progress when I wanted to stop playing, but hadn't reached an auto-save point recently, but the death penalties are set up well the way they are. Loosing $50 to respawn was just enough penalty to make me really not want to die, but not so much that dying made me want to go all the way back to the last auto-save

    I'm glad that I saw an article before playing which warned to start one's first playthrough on 'Hard'. I usually play on 'normal' assuming that this is the 'intended' gameplay level, but I can see that playing on normal, I would not have needed any sky-hook combat, nor had to worry about any cover. As it was, I only had to lower the difficulty for one fight.

    The first fight against Lady Comstock, in which there is no Dollar Bill or other good source for ammo, I simply could not kill her with the ammo I could bring in. I tried several times, and I would always run out of ammo long before she was even half-dead, switching it to 'normal' difficulty for that one fight, I was able to kill her without reloading my carbine more than twice - that's a steep change between difficulties. The second time you fight her there is a Dollar Bills nearby, so I just kept buying more sniper ammo, and shooting her in the head. (Of course, that means I didn't get the achievement for beating it on 'Hard', but I don't mind.)


    UPSLynx
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    Yea, I felt the same way about the difficulty. I usually play on normal, but ended up switching part of the way during the game (at Memorial Island) to hard, because normal was too easy. I probably should have just started over, to get the achievement on hard, but it felt like I had already come a decent way. I'm replaying it now on 1999 mode. We'll see how far I make it on that; I can see the siren and handy man fights being an absolute pain.

    The siren was definitely annoying; I managed to snipe her to death in the first fight, but it took a couple restarts, because you needed pretty much every shot the gun had.
  • IlriyasIlriyas The Syrupy Canadian Toronto, Ontario Icrontian
    Guppy
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    That video makes a lot of great points, but it feels kind of like it's critiquing just to critique, because so many people have liked the game. Additionally, they make the claim that part of the reason why they're critiquing the game is to prevent people from buying a game that's "sold as gospel," but they also spoilered the ending of the game.

    My main problems with the game:

    --Lack of interaction with environment and populace-- In the trailers/game play, you see the people doing a lot of things; throwing chairs through windows, conducting a hanging, etc. In reality, the populace of Colombia is mostly absent whenever there is conflict, except for a few instances. It's a far more static place than I expected.

    -- The amount of copied populace faces was a bit jarring. I understand it must take incredible resources to make individualized characters, but I think that they could have at least made a few more ones. People standing in the same groups together would be copies.

    --Lack of choice? I'm actually not sure how much this bothers me. In the previous Bioshock games, the choices that you made were reflected in the games, which I do think that I missed a bit in this game. That being said, there are plenty of fantastic games where you don't get choices either. I think I'm mainly thinking about the Half Life series in comparison, right now. The guy in this video does say that in "new games" you need choice, so perhaps HL is too old for his purposes as a comparison. Everyone has been comparing Mass Effect to BI, and I haven't played that; does that storyline allow for a lot of choice?

    --I CAN see this guy's critique that in a game called "Infinite" you don't get infinite choices. But that's also kind of explained by the storyline? You have infinite choices, but you really don't, too. He will flip that coin a million times, and still get heads.

    --Pacing of the story-- The story is really amazing, and I love it, but I wish it were a bit better paced. You spend the first 3/4ths of the game slowly learning what's going on, and then everything else is packed into the last 1/4th, and the main, huge realizations of the game are given to you by a godlike Elizabeth. I think it would have been better if Elizabeth and Booker slowly learned things together throughout the story, instead of everything being back in at the end, with a lot of it simply being told to you.

    But really, I'm still giving it 9/10. I can't stop thinking about it!
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited April 2013
    The faces bothered me as well. If Bethesda can do a facial randomizer for enemies and commoners, why can't Irrational? In the end, I decided to take it as symbolic of Columbia's strong push for conformity of its citizens, especially since the Vox actually had a bit more variety to their faces.

    --

    A lot of people harp on the idea that choice is of some utmost importance in interactive storytelling, but I think they've got it a bit off. What's important is 'agency', not simply choice. I can make choices all day long, but if those choices don't provide agency to me as the audience, then they serve little purpose other than to make people feel better about how 'interactive' the game is (they also provide replay value in some cases, but I don't put stock in that from an analytical perspective). Agency is more about giving the audience a sense that their actions are important to the story and the setting. I think Infinite is a good example of a game that delivers a lot of agency without delivering a lot of choice, while games like Mass Effect give the player 'choices' out of their wazzooo, but these choices are just moving a little needle on a badometer, and provide very little agency.

    One of the most interesting things about Bioshock Infinite is how it plays with the player's agency, essentially turning that agency into one of the mechanics of the story (rather than the game. The player is given the power to act most of the time, but that power is taken away for key moments in the story, as Booker's power over his own destiny is being taken out of his hands; as his own personal power is revoked, so to is the player's agency being slowly eroded. It's sort of the opposite of what the original Bioshock did, in which the ending of the story showed that all of the moments when the player had felt empowered, were in fact the very moments that power was being taken away from the protagonist, and that the only moments in which the protagonist had free will were the times the player was not controlling him, thus turning the player into an unwilling taskmaster for the protagonist, rather than an empowered ally. The game essentially tricked you into doing something which was inherently wrong, and wanted you to feel powerless for having done it (whether it pulled it all off is up for debate; personally, all I think they really ended up doing was creating a serious narrative disconnect (though I still loved the game)).

    As a series, Bioshock is basically built around messing with the agency of the player in interesting ways. I look forward to seeing what they do next.

    --

    Also: I don't agree with the voice in the video: Taking something seriously does not require destructive critique. It instead requires careful analysis. We should not be looking at a narrative and saying "here's what is good and here's bad", rather we should look at it and say, "Here's what this explores in the human condition and here is how it relates to the artform as a whole."
    UPSLynx
  • UPSLynxUPSLynx :KAPPA: Redwood City, CA Icrontian
    NiGHTS said:

    Holy hell, this is even better:



    Booker and Elizabeth were in the Rapture Metro while Jack was dealing with Cohen down in Fort Frolic...

    MIND. BLOWN.
    Well, not quite. When you and Elizabeth are down there, it's after crap gets nuts in Rapture, but before Jack ever gets down there. Booker and Elizabeth take the bathysphere on the right, and Jack arrives in the one on the left. You'll notice in both games, the opposite side craft is missing.

    I just finished the game, had my progress delayed for a bit with lots of RL stuff. This game is a masterpiece. I loved every moment of it. I didn't see the twist coming until right when it happened. I have never been so stunned by a twist before. The ending was perfect, the music, the scene, everything. I sat with my mouth hanging open just as it faded to black.

    That whole final sequence as you're going through the doors, piecing it all together was one of the best revelation moments I've experienced in any medium. Holy cow, that was so well done.

    I was similarly shocked in Bioshock, but continuing the game after the big twist kind of ruined it for me. To have this massive reveal and then just take you to the credits... flawless. I love it.

    Non-story point - the combat was a little meh (some of the 'powerful' guns didn't feel worthwhile), and the plasmid powers weren't as cool as Bioshock. I basically stuck with 2 of them through the game. Difficulty was a little weak, too. Hardly complaints though, fantastic game.
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