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BioShock Infinite

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45 minutes of Chris looking bored. What was his purpose there? He's not a PR guy so he's not there to tell Levine what he shouldn't say. Did he do the play-through or something?

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45 minutes of Chris looking bored. What was his purpose there? He's not a PR guy so he's not there to tell Levine what he shouldn't say. Did he do the play-through or something?

He's the booth babe, duh.

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I assume everyone's noticed that the player-character in Infinite is voiced by Garrett from Thief.

This is Xerxes. Can you not feel the glory of the flesh?

Stephen Russell is insanely talented. We can only hope that he also voices one of the drunken bar patrons in the Benny Sinclair voice.

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That's what I meant by digital effects, you can see it in the beginning with the flag strewn on the ground, but what is it?

Uuuuunnnnnfortunately, it's probably the world of Bioshock Infinite's Splicer Effect.

Which makes me sad about the whole "Not everyone wants to kill you bit". The bit with the woman sweeping her house while it was blazing merrily away is, in general, a pretty potent image. But if they're just churning out Splicers 2.0 with some new gimmick. . .*Sigh*

Edited by Orvidos

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Interesting. I entered that in google's new image search and I found these:

[ATTACH]563[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]564[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]565[/ATTACH]

YtoEQ.jpg

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When you are surrounded by that mob of drunks and Elizabeth tells you to use one of your powers so she can electrocute them, what if you ignore her? What if you go up to all of them and shotgun them one by one? What if you run away?

In every interview I have seen where the subject comes up, Levine has emphatically stated that you can ignore her and do things your own way.

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- The crazy racist fellow giving out guns situation

Which was particularly ridiculous - he's giving out the guns, so why the hell would he get pissed off when you take one?

Also, it bothers me that patriotic Columbians would fire massive artillery weapons that damage significant sections of the city, just to kill one man. And it seems particularly ridiculous that they would fire a high powered weapon towards the ground level of the floating pontoon on which they themselves are standing. Do these characters have no sense of self-preservation?

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Which was particularly ridiculous - he's giving out the guns, so why the hell would he get pissed off when you take one?

Also, it bothers me that patriotic Columbians would fire massive artillery weapons that damage significant sections of the city, just to kill one man. And it seems particularly ridiculous that they would fire a high powered weapon towards the ground level of the floating pontoon on which they themselves are standing. Do these characters have no sense of self-preservation?

As someone pointed out. . .er. . .Nappi, it's entirely possible that either;

A. You are 'chaff' or a Non-American, or whatever epithet they use.

or

B. They are essentially Splicers that are slightly more in control of their minds, but they're still batshit.

And unfortunately, it's probably the second. Everyone is infected, or summat and goes crazy at the slightest provocation. Thus killing the "not everyone will want to kill you" idea.

I slowly sink into a pit of despair as to how they can pull that mechanic out of the fire.

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Well from the perspective of the Columbian, anyone one from the outside is a foreigner. It may not have to be a specifically ethnic divide as shown in the opening poster.

What I was pointing out specifically in the first picture was how his pin goes from an american flag to a soviet hammer and sickle and back.

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Well from the perspective of the Columbian, anyone one from the outside is a foreigner. It may not have to be a specifically ethnic divide as shown in the opening poster.

What I was pointing out specifically in the first picture was how his pin goes from an american flag to a soviet hammer and sickle and back.

(I'm posting way too much on this thread.)

Didn't notice that, nicely spotted. Hmmm, theories abound. Mind-control? Pesticides? Baba Yaga?

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How is it even up for debate whether or not that footage is captured out of the game engine, when it so clearly is? There are some nice environmental effects going on, lots of well executed things, but there is no single visual element in there that is on its own surprising as a realtime thing.

It seems like a lot of that video is on rails or at least "very convincingly performed" -- heavily reliant on NPCs and whoever is driving the player "hitting their marks" -- but it's clearly a thing taking place in realtime in a video game engine.

I don't know that anyone will have a gameplay experience like that video, as it seems like a huge stack of moneyshots more than an actual level, but I also don't know that that was the point. It you pull it apart to look at the individual elements it was showing off (the world itself, the return of Bioshock style interplay between weapons and magic, the skyhook system, the shifts in mood from indoor to out, the questionable combat with bar patrons, the chain attacks with your NPC buddy, crazy environment/elemental/weather effects, etc), it seems incredibly promising and interesting to me, even if the "holy shit per minute" ratio is way lower in the actual game.

I wouldn't want a Bioshock game with that madcap a pace, but I don't think that video was designed to imply that; they wanted to give a very condensed back to back to back dose of the sorts of things one will see in the game. Maybe that's obvious and I'm posting a ton of words for nothing...

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How is it even up for debate whether or not that footage is captured out of the game engine, when it so clearly is? There are some nice environmental effects going on, lots of well executed things, but there is no single visual element in there that is on its own surprising as a realtime thing.

It seems like a lot of that video is on rails or at least "very convincingly performed" -- heavily reliant on NPCs and whoever is driving the player "hitting their marks" -- but it's clearly a thing taking place in realtime in a video game engine.

I don't know that anyone will have a gameplay experience like that video, as it seems like a huge stack of moneyshots more than an actual level, but I also don't know that that was the point. It you pull it apart to look at the individual elements it was showing off (the world itself, the return of Bioshock style interplay between weapons and magic, the skyhook system, the shifts in mood from indoor to out, the questionable combat with bar patrons, the chain attacks with your NPC buddy, crazy environment/elemental/weather effects, etc), it seems incredibly promising and interesting to me, even if the "holy shit per minute" ratio is way lower in the actual game.

I wouldn't want a Bioshock game with that madcap a pace, but I don't think that video was designed to imply that; they wanted to give a very condensed back to back to back dose of the sorts of things one will see in the game. Maybe that's obvious and I'm posting a ton of words for nothing...

Thank you for summarizing that far more verbosely than I could ever have, there's no doubt it's in engine but obviously the game isn't going to be that intense 24/7.

The lighting effects blow me away. -Me (Read -IGN.com)

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I can't write a forum post without reiterating most points at least twice. I don't mean to but i almost always say things two or sometimes three times. Can't resist doing it.

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When I saw the youtube movie linked earlier, I was 100% sure it was pre-rendered. Having later seen a better quality version, though, it turns out I was fooled by the old Blurry Footage Bamboozle™, in which my eyes interpolate all sorts of sweet details from the image. In the high-definition version you can see the graphics may well be in-engine. However, the amount of huge, detailed assets on the screen (and in the level) at once still makes me think this can't be possible. I mean, the way I remember it, theres' so much detail, so many models and textures, deformations and stuff happening at once – could it be one of those sequences that are pre-rendered within the game engine, like those sweet Crysis clips some men made?

Or are these new engines just super-powerful and able to load gigantic, sweet assets just whenever? I hope it's this.

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Seeing the weird effects within the Infinite world I can only think of one thing: interface with the Animus confirmed.

I, also, wasn't planning on watching this thing, but I did. It was incredible highs coupled with incredible lows. The first minute is so great. Walking about that world, seeing burning houses with that Irrational brand of people-gone-mad that gets a woman to sweep the floor while the world is crumbling down. Crow guy. The gun rally. Super great.

Then it devolves into everyone wanting to kill you and the same extremely combat-based gameplay that Bioshock offered. In fact, apart from the difference in themes it reminded me all too much of the feeling I got when seeing Bioshock trailers for the first time. It reminded me how incredibly elated I was watching it at the time, and the disappointment that the whole thing eventually revolved around shooting instead of interacting in a more interesting, earnest way with the world.

I know it's stupid, insane, pointless to keep expecting these guys to make something the game is obviously not: an atmospheric RPG instead of a shooter. But it's just too goddamn painful to see all these wonderful ideas and brilliant themes of turn-of-the-century racism, manifest destiny and what have you, and then have that serve only as the wonderful coathanger for another shootey action game. It's like you're making the Mona Lisa to use as really supernice toilet paper. Fuck fuckerdyfuck.

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I'm intrigued people here are surprised by the way the trailer is being presented, they did the exact same thing for the first Bioshock except it was narrated :

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I'm intrigued people here are surprised by the way the trailer is being presented, they did the exact same thing for the first Bioshock except it was narrated :

But that's nothing like the Infinite trailer... here the guy is walking around, standing still a bunch of times. The Infinite one is like a short film or something.

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As someone pointed out. . .er. . .Nappi, it's entirely possible that either;

A. You are 'chaff' or a Non-American, or whatever epithet they use.

or

B. They are essentially Splicers that are slightly more in control of their minds, but they're still batshit.

And unfortunately, it's probably the second. Everyone is infected, or summat and goes crazy at the slightest provocation. Thus killing the "not everyone will want to kill you" idea.

I slowly sink into a pit of despair as to how they can pull that mechanic out of the fire.

It's got to be (B), simply because he doesn't mind seeing you wandering about until you grab the gun. Also, the whole 'Standing up and ranting to an empty audience' thing doesn't exactly vouch for his sanity.

It occurred to me just now that what bothers me from this trailer is the extent to which they're trying to make a living, breathing world (and the level of boasting about that too), so much so that it just seems to draw attention to its own limitations. In particular, the overtly game-y and scripted parts like that guy's reaction.

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It occurred to me just now that what bothers me from this trailer is the extent to which they're trying to make a living, breathing world (and the level of boasting about that too), so much so that it just seems to draw attention to its own limitations. In particular, the overtly game-y and scripted parts like that guy's reaction.

I agree. Levine has the track record, but we have to wait and see. I always get worried when developers are so high on their own supply so early.

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Well what they're not showing yet is the alternate gameplay path that starts if you decide to pick up a straw hat instead of a sniper rifle. Saltonstall hires you as his campaign manager and you go on a fascinating journey as you and Charles attempt to win over the constituents of Columbia. Instead of knocking him off the ledge onto a skyline car, he [Charles] tells you about how his mom died and you hug tenderly.

Edited by CaptainFish

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... He tells you about how his mom died and you hug tenderly.

GOTY 2012

Irishjohn: Ken Levine is all about story, so those things bothering you and Thorn are outside of his concerns.

If you listen to Levine's appearance on the Three Moves Ahead podcast, you can actually hear his eyes glaze over as he's asked about how his origin stories for Freedom Force influenced the gameplay. That's fair; the gameplay's not his job. But it really does hurt Bioshock if his story can't be supported by what you play.

It also makes the game so much less than it could be. You spend most of your time in Gears of War ducking behind things. Splinter Cell has many silly take-down maneuvers---and ways to avoid those takedowns entirely. And you do all sorts of goofy ice climbing and bomb placement in Modern Warfare. Bioshock really is the only modern game where you're expected to shoot (or zap) everything all the time.*

*Or hack, or take a picture, or shop, I guess. But to do any of those things the rest of the game stops cold.**

**I haven't played it, but isn't Uncharted a game with a ludicrous amount of shooting, too? And didn't that get dinged for unrealistic, excessive violence that distracted from the game's aesthetic?

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Much in the vein of what I was saying earlier. It bums me out that the utterly artful world of Infinite is only used to support the verb 'kill'. Whereas there are a thousand verbs that I'd rather pronounce when I'm thinking about a turn of the century city in the clouds based on Manifest Destiny gone berserk.

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