toblix

BioShock Infinite

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I feel like I'm one of the only people that wasn't blown away by Bioshock. Granted, I've gone through that first intro a couple times because it's so damn amazing, and the atmosphere and art design are outstanding. I'm a guy that likes good game mechanics and more emergent design. I have yet to get further than maybe 2-3 hours into that game, despite trying numerous times. Between the sub-par gunplay, odd physics, and far too simple RPG elements I just don't find myself being pulled in at all. It's sad too, because as a socialist, I'd love to join in on any attempt to bash objectivism.

Now the next part of the point I'm making is based on the assumption that the core gameplay is going to be more or less the same. The idea that the talent at Irrational, the company that has played a part in the destruction of my two most favorite media outlets (GFW Radio and Idle Thumbs), is going to be spending the next 2 years working on something that I am probably not going to play too much makes me sad. I wanted something else.

I could end up eating my words and Infinite could end up blowing me away with it's open world, emergent gameplay, and addictive RPG elements. The rational side of me says that's not likely. But you know, it is Irrational. Har har.

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I caught on pretty quick that there was something wrong in that Mass Effect thing. It was pretty obvious, especially once you meet the crazy dude. If anything, I thought it was too obvious.

Hmmm, let me rephrase my comment.

That is a much more sensible position, and I can empathize with your situation, even if I don't agree. Floating city, sunken city, it's all the same to me. Self-contained awesomeness. As long as what happens WITHIN the city makes sense, then I don't give a rat's behind what happens below, as long as it looks pretty (or doesn't look ugly).

I feel like I'm one of the only people that wasn't blown away by Bioshock.

I can't imagine why, as it seems like the majority of the people in this thread have stated that they share your opinion.

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I caught on pretty quick that there was something wrong in that Mass Effect thing. It was pretty obvious, especially once you meet the crazy dude. If anything, I thought it was too obvious.

Well sure, but I got that line very early on and before I met the crazy guy. To me, the rest of the colonists acted like I would expect any colonist from Mass Effect universe to act when facing a geth attack. I might have missed some telling lines while conversing with the them, though.

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I feel like I'm one of the only people that wasn't blown away by Bioshock. Granted, I've gone through that first intro a couple times because it's so damn amazing, and the atmosphere and art design are outstanding. I'm a guy that likes good game mechanics and more emergent design. I have yet to get further than maybe 2-3 hours into that game, despite trying numerous times. Between the sub-par gunplay, odd physics, and far too simple RPG elements I just don't find myself being pulled in at all. It's sad too, because as a socialist, I'd love to join in on any attempt to bash objectivism.

As someone who lost his save near the end of Neptune's bounty, and recently restarted and got past that point, I would say try to push through. The game gets great after all the elements are introduced, and the gunplay improves because it's also linked to a few RPG systems. I like the game, but the way they slowly give out the systems can be frustrating, especially when you're trying to take out a Big Daddy with just bullets.

As for emergence, you might not do a single thing that seems emergent, but you can definitely set up fights so that you are combining the environment, weaponry, traps and plasmids in interesting ways.

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Maybe it was because I was playing on normal (without vita-chambers), but the emergent bits really didn't seem necessary or have enough of a payoff for the amount of effort it took to set them up.

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I love how each successive game in the Bioshock series gets closer to the moon. At this rate the Moon setting prediction will be correct.

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Maybe it was because I was playing on normal (without vita-chambers), but the emergent bits really didn't seem necessary or have enough of a payoff for the amount of effort it took to set them up.

Haha, basically we're at Clint Hocking's position on Far Cry 2: you have to be creative for yourself, and shouldn't expect the game to force you to be creative. (Or as it's been put more bluntly, "the game is boring for you because you're boring".) I don't know whether that's bad design or not, but it seems to frequently be the case with these sorts of games.

Personally, I didn't use the stuff a lot in Bioshock, but in the sequel I used everything for the gathering fights (when your Little Sister is gathering and the splicers attack en masse).

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Haha, basically we're at Clint Hocking's position on Far Cry 2: you have to be creative for yourself, and shouldn't expect the game to force you to be creative. (Or as it's been put more bluntly, "the game is boring for you because you're boring".) I don't know whether that's bad design or not, but it seems to frequently be the case with these sorts of games.

Personally, I didn't use the stuff a lot in Bioshock, but in the sequel I used everything for the gathering fights (when your Little Sister is gathering and the splicers attack en masse).

Games seem to have this problem more than most things. People don't see inaccessibility in literature to be inherently bad--I mean, it would be super lame if there weren't books that demanded the reader think for himself--but games that don't lay everything out for the player are often criticized for have insufficient messaging or poor design. There's certainly a balance between being too obtuse and holding the player's hand too much, but there does seem to be a broad move toward the notion that the player shouldn't really have to actually figure much out himself.

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I think achievements have been to some extent a way to encourage some creativity - now someone's saying "Hey , we notice if you kill X in under 20 seconds" - but I'll agree that the way people play games has gotten more "straight-forward". Not to sound silly, but maybe storytelling has gotten to the point that people don't want to play around in sandbox as much as go through the game in a more linear fashion ? Or people want to be told when they're in a sandbox ? "Hey, this game is like GTA, make your own fun pls".

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There are people who like games stringing them along a direct path (no doubt the majority), and there are people who like games that open the world and allow for real creativity, both in gameplay and story.

There are also people who seem, for whatever reason, incapable of seeing the sandbox when it's right in front of their face, and then there are people who see the sandbox when it was never even intended.

I don't think it's a matter as simple as "people don't want to play around" anymore. You've just got dudes who prefer different things.

Also, while I agree that cheesemints might encourage some people to try new things, killing X dudes in 20 seconds is not a good example of that. A really good example is the Left 4 Dead cheesemints, where you get rewarded for things like killing people with cars as the tank, or dragging people through spit as the smoker, etc.

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Games seem to have this problem more than most things. People don't see inaccessibility in literature to be inherently bad--I mean, it would be super lame if there weren't books that demanded the reader think for himself--but games that don't lay everything out for the player are often criticized for have insufficient messaging or poor design. There's certainly a balance between being too obtuse and holding the player's hand too much, but there does seem to be a broad move toward the notion that the player shouldn't really have to actually figure much out himself.

Ok, gonna step in here to tell you how wrong you are, because I care.

Difficult content in literature is great, but only when it is parallel to accessible content. Two examples:

1. 'Gravity's Rainbow' could be an amazing book. We will never know, because it is goddamn incomprehensible.

2. 'The Sopranos' will reward all levels of investment. It supports interest both the superficial story arc and the oblique themes.

It is great that Farcry 2 has that depth of play experience, but it only rewards play that is exceptionally involved, which makes it kinda bullshit. If Clint Hocking really thinks "one of the primary problems with my game, is that the people who play it aren't creative enough", he should probably be ashamed.

Sorry to take this to academic armchair literature comparison land. I know it isn't a very nice place, and we shouldn't stay long.

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Please, Far Cry 2 is hardly Gravity's Rainbow or Ulysses. Or even Heart of Darkness, the short novel its story is based on. It just takes one step away from the completely popcorn approach of most shooters.

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If you are great, El Topo is great. If you are limited, El Topo is limited.

(from)

Applies to so many things. In other words, Gravity's Rainbow is incomprehensible only if you are incomprehensible... :eek: er...or something.

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I liked Bioshock mainly for the story and the atmosphere. Didn't get much enjoyment out of killing dudes in different ways since I was mainly playing to explore the world. I took a mostly pragmatic approach to the combat, and didn't much care how I took out the crazy people trying to kill me.

That said, I did appreciate how

Fontaine's reprogramming started randomly switching up your plasmids

, giving you temporary a taste of the different powers and forcing you to switch up your tactics. I guess I really am boring... ;(

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Difficult content in literature is great, but only when it is parallel to accessible content. Two examples:

Why "only"? I don't understand why that's the only avenue. You're basically claiming everything should be accessible to everyone. That's nuts as far as I'm concerned.

If that's the case, you basically have to set some kind of minimum accessibility bar. Should we tune all works to have, say, a vocabulary only accessible to...people with a grammar school education? People with a high school education? People with a college education? How do we decide which is right? Should authors not write novels for people who already have a strong understanding of a given theme or subject matter? Should jazz composers have avoided writing any music beyond a certain level of complexity once it would cross some theoretical accessibility boundary?

I know a lot of people who find certain David Lynch films to be too alien and off-putting to enjoy. Fuck it. I'm glad David Lynch didn't have those people in mind, or I wouldn't have as many awesome movies to watch.

I really don't like the increasingly prevalent notion that everything needs to be accessible. Not everything should just be digestible by everyone, because you're inherently limiting the range of creative expression. If someone wants to write a book that's dense as hell, go for it. A bunch of people probably aren't going to be able to read it, but I'm also not going to be able to run a marathon without a lot of work and I don't begrudge people who are actually capable of doing that because they aren't as lazy as I am.

Umberto Eco addressed this; I forget if it was in an interview, or if it was in the appendix at the end of In the Name of the Rose, where he discusses some of his thoughts about writing. He basically says that his books tend to include a fairly long chunk at the beginning that just throws the reader directly into the deep end of his rich, dense, historical fiction, rather than ease them in. He knows that will scare some people off, or be too tangled for them to get through, but he's fine with that; the idea is that if they can't make it through that initial gauntlet, they probably aren't going to enjoy the rest of the book or get much out of it.

That's a harsh attitude to have, but whatever. The result is that Eco's books are unlike anything else by any author I've ever read, and part of it is because of his uncompromising attitude. I almost hate to admit it, but my volume of reading had really declined a lot in recent years, and Eco's stuff has completely reenergized my drive to read more fiction again, and I'm pretty sure if it had just been more accessible fiction, it wouldn't have made nearly an impact on me, because it wouldn't have been as unique.

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Why "only"? I don't understand why that's the only avenue. You're basically claiming everything should be accessible to everyone. That's nuts as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with this - however, I do sometimes feel that it is not enough for this to be the only case. There are some beautiful, wonderful, amazing pieces of art, literature - even video games - that not everyone will be able to understand. I just think it's a shame that not everyone will be able to understand it. Something I plan on doing in a future career is to take complex scientific ideas and make them accessible to the layman. If something is beautiful and amazing, why should it be restricted to just one particular audience?

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I agree with this - however, I do sometimes feel that it is not enough for this to be the only case. There are some beautiful, wonderful, amazing pieces of art, literature - even video games - that not everyone will be able to understand. I just think it's a shame that not everyone will be able to understand it. Something I plan on doing in a future career is to take complex scientific ideas and make them accessible to the layman. If something is beautiful and amazing, why should it be restricted to just one particular audience?

The answer, to me, is that because sometimes, the thing that makes it beautiful and amazing is also what demands it be experienced in a certain way.

That said I think there's a big difference between science and fiction in that respect. It's awesome to make science accessible to as many people as possible. Science deals in revealing objective truths (or trying to), so if you can successfully convey those truths, you've succeeded in education.

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The answer, to me, is that because sometimes, the thing that makes it beautiful and amazing is also what demands it be experienced in a certain way.

That said I think there's a big difference between science and fiction in that respect. It's awesome to make science accessible to as many people as possible. Science deals in revealing objective truths (or trying to), so if you can successfully convey those truths, you've succeeded in education.

I guess you're right. A lot of the time something that is beautiful is only so because the perceiver is of a certain mindset, something only available to people of that group.

When I read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere last year, I was struck by the beauty of the language contained therein. Someone who didn't enjoy the English language as much as I did (or studied it to A level) probably wouldn't get the same enjoyment from it.

Thinking about it, I probably now have to agree. Non-fiction, in my opinion, should be made as accessible as possible, so that everyone can choose whether or not to immerse themselves in it - barrier of entry shouldn't be an issue. Fiction is more lenient. It's exactly like you guys were talking about on the latest Idle Thumbs about gaming - it's a choice as to whether or not you want to pursue that experience.

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It's also worth noting that inaccessible (in non-game art) doesn't actually mean that. There usually a superficial (not the right word, basic maybe?) enjoyment that can be taken from just the plot of a book or the beauty of a piece of music or art, even if you don't understand all the embedded themes and allusions. For that deep understanding it usually just requires some extra knowledge beyond the text itself, that can be found out with some effort. That knowledge is also a benefit as well. If someone wants to experience a great art, but is completely unwilling to learn the prerequisite info, you can't really blame the artist. Especially now when what you need to know is probably well documented on the (capital I) Internet.

For games, it never even means any effort outside of just learning the mechanics or using them in new, creative and interesting ways. I guess there are beginning to be games like Braid and Limbo that are more interesting in comparision to early work like Mario and Another World, but that is never required to enjoying the game itself.

It would be kinda cool if there were games that required intense knowledge of a genre, or a certain developer's games, or even a historical period or specific literature or art.

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Though I'd say it's not impossible to have great works of art that aren't very accessible, and often some of the really good stuff is. I think I could say confidently that any work that's able to have that complexity as well as an avenue of accessibility is better off. Sometimes it seems impossible to pull it off, but it bugs me when people use the high barrier of entry as a velvet rope and claim they don't have to cater to anybody who isn't hip.

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Though I'd say it's not impossible to have great works of art that aren't very accessible, and often some of the really good stuff is. I think I could say confidently that any work that's able to have that complexity as well as an avenue of accessibility is better off. Sometimes it seems impossible to pull it off, but it bugs me when people use the high barrier of entry as a velvet rope and claim they don't have to cater to anybody who isn't hip.

Well, they don't. Nobody has to cater to anyone. People can use all kinds of excuses to defend bad art. It doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of good art where that excuse would be a legitimate defense. The same is true on the complete other side of things; something can be overly simplistic in a negative way, or it can be elegantly simplistic in a positive way, or it can be erroneously accused of or defended as either.

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Well, they don't. Nobody has to cater to anyone. People can use all kinds of excuses to defend bad art. It doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of good art where that excuse would be a legitimate defense. The same is true on the complete other side of things; something can be overly simplistic in a negative way, or it can be elegantly simplistic in a positive way, or it can be erroneously accused of or defended as either.

People shouldn't think of accessibility as some corruption of artistic intent. It's a noble goal, and if done well shouldn't reduce the quality of the experience.

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I have to take issue with this idea that Bioshock is somehow more "demanding" or inaccessible for not responding appropriately to the amount of effort the player puts in to it, and that it should be celebrated for it. From where I stand, that just looks like a cheap way to rationalize a lack of gameplay depth.

Bioshock definitely has a lot of breadth, in that it gives the player a wide variety of tools with which to tackle any given situation, but it offers no particular reason to use most of them over any others; a condition that is commonly known as shallow gameplay. Even in Far Cry 2, if I figure out some clever way to complete an objective without setting foot in the enemy base protecting it, I'm at least rewarded by not having to enter that base. Contrast that with Bioshock, where putting all the time and effort into a complex "creative" plan actually leaves me with less resources than I would have if I had gone with one of the ever present simpler solutions.

I get that I'm supposed to put something of myself into the game, but with that comes the expectation that the game will respond in kind. Otherwise I'm just playing with myself, and I don't need a video game to do that. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation; not when I've played games that manage to do both just fine.

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Otherwise I'm just playing with myself, and I don't need a video game to do that.

Wait, what?

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People shouldn't think of accessibility as some corruption of artistic intent. It's a noble goal, and if done well shouldn't reduce the quality of the experience.

I'm not thinking of it that way. I'm saying it's not mandatory.

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