toblix

BioShock Infinite

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When people say Irrational created SWAT 4 is that strictly true? Seems a waste if those guys are still there working on stuff like Bioshock.

Has that been confirmed, because I've heard this idea suggested from the way the trailer was.

The stuff on RPS painted her as a vulnerable but powerful assist, sort of like your companion in one of the recent (painfully dull) Prince of Persia's.

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When people say Irrational created SWAT 4 is that strictly true? Seems a waste if those guys are still there working on stuff like Bioshock.

I'm not sure what you mean by "strictly" -- obviously not every person who worked on SWAT 4 is still there -- but Irrational definitely developed the game.

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They developed it sure, but are the core guys responsible still there is what I'm getting at. When I hear people comment on AI, or get excited over rumours of the X-COM license, and refer back to SWAT 4 it's a little irksome since the AI in Bioshock was comparatively very poor.

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It seems slightly absurd to be speculating while one of the game's creators is in-thread, but I would guess that Cigol and I are drawing conclusions from the same demo, in which it looks like she is going to be an AI character who is able to boost the player's plasmid-equivalents in semi-scripted (or environmentally dictated) ways. What else she is intended to do I think is unknown.

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What else she is intended to do I think is unknown.

Oh, i can think of a couple things. :yep:

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I finally read the RPS articles and I understand the AI partner now. It seems like a cool idea. I also like what they're doing with aggro mechanics. By the end of Bioshock, I didn't actually want to kill any of the Big Daddies and I never killed any lone ones. It wasn't because it was difficult, but because they never attack you unnecessarily. The specific example they use of a western style barroom is particularly cool. It also seems like the scale of the fights will be a bit bigger. You certainly face a lot of splicers in 1, but it's more of a steady stream than a huge mob just turning on you. Looking forward to it.

I realize this is a lot to infer from one super-early interview, demo and trailer, but, one thing that struck me was the implication that Bioshock Infinite might be less diverse than Bioshock. I really enjoyed the diverse cast of main characters in 1, it wasn't just interesting, but it actually helped to have a variety of accents when most of the story and background info is being given by VO. That's not the only way to differentiate characters' speech, but it is an easy one. It obviously makes sense for the setting they're proposing and the anti-immigration sentiments, so I'm glad that it'll be for in-game reasons. I don't think this actually will have any bearing on it's quality of the gameplay, it's just a weird thing I thought of when reading the article.

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From Shitaku;

Levine says, "She's an amplifier for your powers if you choose to have her be an amplifier for your powers. You can still approach all of the problems in a traditional BioShock way. Elizabeth doesn't need to solve this problem. She is there to enable things that of a scale that you just couldn't do in BioShock 1." Last week, as an example, I described her pulling a rain cloud over some enemies, a move that enabled DeWitt to fry the enemies with a lightning storm.

The computer-controlled Elizabeth is also a storytelling experiment, according to Levine: "There's no component of squad commands with her in the game. She is a self-driven entity. She will react if you go this way or that way on the field. She'll say different things; she'll react different ways verbally. She's kind of a combination of what you saw on the screen and there's a Left 4 Dead component about her in terms of her saying things that are driven by the simulation... she never kills anybody on her own. She sets you up to do things. We don't want her driving the game for you. Ever."

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Although Alyx was scene-breakingly indestructable - the quality of her animation and writing made you care for her safety, but that solicitude was undermined when she could be slashed repeatedly by mawmen or riddled with bullets and be almost totally undamaged. I guess that has to be balanced against the frustration of having an AI partner who dies as easily as a "regular" human NPC, and forces the player to restart the level each time.

Possibly one interesting thing you could do with a telekinetic AI partner is have systems that explain a greater survival capacity without the Vance damage soak effect kicking in - by attackers being automatically pushed back or projectiles deflected on a stochastic but not wholly predictable basis, say? So the player is incentivised to protect her in case of a(n) (un)lucky shot, but the consequences of minor failure would not usually be an immediate restart...

Sorry, wandering off again. The thought of a new world as detailed as Rapture, but with non-murderous people in, is pretty interesting.

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Probably not worth it's own post, but definitely related to what the guys at irrational are doing, and some of the wider discussions here at thumbs, is this series of Kieron Gillen interviews on RPS I'm reading instead of doing work: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/dark-futures/

Randy Smith, Harvey Smith (are these guys related??), Hock and Sock, Pagliarulo ... Good stuff.

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Probably not worth it's own post, but definitely related to what the guys at irrational are doing, and some of the wider discussions here at thumbs, is this series of Kieron Gillen interviews on RPS I'm reading instead of doing work: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/dark-futures/

Randy Smith, Harvey Smith (are these guys related??), Hock and Sock, Pagliarulo ... Good stuff.

Edit: Oops sorry this is probably what the rest of you were talking about in this thread earlier, didn't get that.

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Randy Smith, Harvey Smith (are these guys related??).

Brothers, I think

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I have to add that Gamasutra made the best decision possible when they hired Chris "CNN" Morris to take Chris Remo's place as the editor-at-large in Gamasutra.

Chris = Chris, as in they are both awesome writers and I couldn't agree more on the choice. I'm thrilled and happy that Remo got a chance to go in to actual development side at a respected company like Irrational Games.

Also excellent to see Chris Morris get a big job at a respected site like Gamasutra, this means he will get even more people to see his writing.

I wrote this first in the Duke Nukem thread, but I guess it's more appropriate here.

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Do you have some examples of some good pieces by this Chris Morris? I'm sorry to say I've never really seen his stuff before.

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He used to write gaming and technology column Game Over for CNN Money, and has been working on writing stuff since 1996. He has written to various other sites, to quote from Gamasutra article: Variety, Official Xbox Magazine, CNBC.com, Yahoo! Games and other sites.

I found his Game Over column a long time ago through Shacknews, he has been a very active member there for a long time.

Chris Morris has covered consumer technology and the video game industry since 1996, offering analysis of news and trends and breaking several major stories, including the existence of the Game Boy Advance and the first details on “Half-Life 2” (after a five year cone of silence from the developer). He currently writes and edits “The Cut Scene,” Variety’s video game blog and writes the “Business of Xbox” column for Official Xbox Magazine. His work also regularly appears on CNBC.com, Yahoo! Games and AOL. He also edits VentureBeat’s “Entrepreneur Corner” section.

Previously, Chris was the author of CNN Money’s “Game Over,” which was the site’s most widely read commentary column and has also written for Forbes.com and other publications. He has appeared on The CBS Evening News, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNN fn, G4 and Spike TV.

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So we've seen a city built with the principles of Randian Objectivism, and we are going to see a city based on American manifest destiny (or something).

When will we see a city built on Rock and Roll?

I'll show myself out.

Edited by Cult of Jared

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Here's the long full video:

H0fDEA0BFSM

I believe this is the video that was showcased to selected people earlier "behind closed doors" or so?

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Looks great but I hope the final thing isn't as overwhelmingly scripted as this appears to be... because I don't even like Half Life.

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He seems at peace.

That gameplay video looks pretty neat but I can imagine my playthrough differing quite a lot from that. For one, I would be looking at the wrong direction all the time. Also, dying. Looking forward to the gameplay video where an actual person is playing the game.

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Someone on GWJ forums brought this up, but it is SO TRUE.

Bioshock Infinite = American McGee's Ratchet & Clank

Think about it. Sky cities. Grinding on rails. Only darker

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That was a sweet line that he dropped. Chris still has it.

I am looking forward to being crushed by that bell. That will be my litmus test for how free everything is.

Edit: I love how excited Ken gets when he describes that combat encounter with the skylines. Bioshock has some extremely gratifying combat when you explore several tools and an expanded tool-set would be amazing. I do hope that they look at how restrictive the power delivery system is. In the first game when you're handing out new powers with an unknown effect along with tonics that have a more defined effect (like more wrench damage, or more health or eve) it becomes a hard choice, and I ended up missing out on some of those abilities. I also think the extra options that Elizabeth hands out will be really great. For me Bioshock is kind of a hard game to think about replaying, because I know that for that beginning section, I won't have access to the wide variety of weapons, ammo, powers and tonics that make the combat so fun. Apparently there's a new game plus option if you have ps3 dlc, but otherwise you have to just slog through it. With Elizabeth providing additional combat depth that's a way to get that awesome combat without having to front load all the equipment and powers.

Edited by CaptainFish

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