BioShock Infinite

[SecretAsianMan]

Because I don't want to! I did all that back when the game had just come out, and at this point I don't remember enough to make any strong argument for or against anything. I'm sure my opinions are somewhere in the earlier pages of this thread.

 

I don't expect anyone to patronize my late playthough of the game, especially if they've already expressed their opinions in this thread before.  In that case it's on me to go back and read them, although I probably won't because there's almost 70 pages here and who has that kind of time.  So if you want to say something else now go ahead but certainly don't feel any obligation to repeat yourself.

 

 

Oh my god the Luteces were so awesome I am remembering now and I'm all tingly.

 

I do admit I am enjoying them.

 

 

I think in general I'm approaching this game in maybe the worst way, which is having seen/heard about the final product for months before trying it.  The art/graphics aren't stunning me because I've seen them before in screenshots or videos, and that amazing first hour wasn't that amazing to me because I basically knew what I was getting into already.  I'll try bumping up the difficulty because right now it's frankly too easy on medium, which means that any combat choices I make are fairly meaningless so I'm treating the game as COD in the Clouds.

[Dewar]

I can also say that I wouldn't be this upset (or even reading this thread) for a lousy game. What hurts about BI is that there were a lot of pieces there that were really awesome and could have been something special, but they ended up falling short. I loved the characters, but the story that they walked through was confusing and disjointed. I loved the art and the music, but the way that the rest of the world was realized (in a political/racial/economic sense) didn't really seem to fit. I actually liked the twist at the end, but all the setup before that didn't hold up so well.

 

Anyway, as I've said before, I liked it, I just didn't love it. I really wanted to love it.

[aperson]

When people call for more visibility I'm not really sure what they're asking for.

 

What do you want? Each developer to have a webcam? Monthly reports from some independent observer? Embedded journalists?

 

I would argue that Hollywood now is much more open that it was before and it hasn't helped anything at all - if anything it's made things worse. Now you get all sorts of set visits and photos from the set and early pictures of guys in costumes and such  - this has the effect of hyping up already hyped franchises and burying already obscure ones. You also get critics writing off a movie 8 months before release because of tales of "development hell" and not engaging with the finished product as a product that stands by itself. None of this is making movies any better or improving working conditions.

 

Gamasutra ran a piece the other day about the future of development being open, personality-driven development. I'm not sure that that's good for many developers. Some people are introverted and just want to keep their heads down and work. Some people are not photogenic. Sometimes people are women and doing work on a stream may open them to abuse. Often times these bits of open development are just another form of marketing anyway.

 

If you're arguing for something specific like not having onerous NDAs tied to severance packages I can maybe get behind that, but I don't even really understand what "greater developer visibility" means on a practical level. Maybe I'm not understanding - I'd love to hear someone explain what it means in practice.

[Stuart]

Look, I already know we're not going to end up agreeing and this will deviate into an endless, pointless debate (also not personally in the mood or have time to argue on anything on the internet right now), so I'll just say "Agree to disagree" and leave it at that. 

 

So anyway, second Burial at Sea episode is out. Anyone get to play it yet?

 

 

Here's Alec Meer's review. 

[sclpls]

Interestingly, the latest Idle Thumbs cast starts off with a discussion about why this sort of open communication about work process in game development is valuable.

[Twig]

I don't expect anyone to patronize my late playthough of the game, especially if they've already expressed their opinions in this thread before.  In that case it's on me to go back and read them, although I probably won't because there's almost 70 pages here and who has that kind of time.  So if you want to say something else now go ahead but certainly don't feel any obligation to repeat yourself.

I sort of lied! It's not actually that I don't want to explain. It's just that it was so long ago, and I have a terrible memory. I couldn't possibly do my own opinions justice. I really liked the game. A lot. It has its flaws, but in the end they did not matter much to me. But at this point, my memory of the game is so hazy that anything I say is going to be vague, wishy-washy bullshit. And so: BI is a great game!

 

Sno basically said a lot of things I'd probably say, anyway.

[aperson]

Interestingly, the latest Idle Thumbs cast starts off with a discussion about why this sort of open communication about work process in game development is valuable.

 

It's definitely helpful in many ways (something most developers should do, if for no other reason than strictly building word-of-mouth), I just don't see how it's helpful for things like the betterment of working conditions.I'm not opposed to open development processes, I just don't see them as making games or the the process of making them better.

 

It feels to me that a lot of the people with suggestions on how to improve game industry working conditions (and I'm not speaking about anyone specifically here) are well-intentioned but what they propose doesn't take into account what the main problems are - and probably the biggest problem with working conditions is that a lot of people, maybe even the majority, don't agree that their are problems at all. It's not uncommon to read threads (say on Neogaf) where a bunch of people are like "man, these guys have awful lives and really need unions" then four game developers post all saying that they hate unions and actually love never seeing their families.

 

Great example of what I'm talking about:

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/20ivqv/the_hard_realities_of_working_at_riot_games/

 

From the perspective an an older person this reads a little crazy, like Riot is some awful cult, but this guy is actually super jazzed about it. Reading this you'd think Riot was in the business of curing AIDS, but actually it's just an incredibly inefficient developer stumbling along trying to maintain their one product. "Riot has a mission that I believe in." Like...come again?

 

IMO the biggest issues with working conditions stem from culture and demographics, not sexy problems like tyrannical bosses. And at this point that culture is strongly self-reinforcing. The same is true in things like TV production or the fashion industry. (Although it's probably worse there as those take less specialized skills) Lots of young people want to do it and consider it glamorous, willingly accept awful things, then get burned out and quickly replaced with a new batch.

[Sno]

i think you could point to Metro Last Light as a successful heavily scripted FPS, that also had mechanically driven elements.

 

I also didn't hate the combat in itself. I enjoy that kind of retro FPS style, without cover. But I also agree that there was less option for strategy than BS1. BS1 also had more situations where the vigors were useful. You get like 8, but I pretty much only used crows for the stun. I wish there were more contextual/environmental reasons to use the others. 

I haven't played Last Light, but i have played 2033. I love it, i think it's great, but it was an achingly linear excercise with regards to its encounter design. As such, i'm not sure it's actually very relevant with regards to these games. Infinite's battles unfold much more dynamically than you're perhaps giving them credit for.

As for BioShock and Infinite, i have the exact opposite impression of the two games.

I think the first BioShock is a tremendously non-demanding game. Even on its highest difficulty, i have to be playing incredibly poorly to feel like the game is pushing back at all. I felt that it kind of created a situation where you have all these tools, and none of them matter because everything is the solution to every problem. Having acquired knowledge from exploration of its systems is not at all rewarded.

BioShock even held onto that thing from System Shock 2 where all the guns had multiple types of ammo to exploit enemy vulnerabilities, but it basically never matters in BioShock because the player is already so empowered and resources are never scarce.

I feel like Infinite does a much better job of pushing the player to make gameplay choices, because it has a tighter resource economy and because its tougher enemies drive the abilities towards being more situational.

[eot]

I'd be surprised if this video hasn't been posted at some point or another, but I think it does a fairly good job pointing out some of the problems with Infinite.

(spoilers!)

[Bjorn]

 Infinite's battles unfold much more dynamically than you're perhaps giving them credit for.

 

I actually agree with you to some extent about the combat in Infinite, it's potentially much better than most people think, and I've had some mild curiosity to try the combat DLC to see what that's like.  But I don't think it starts to shine until mid-game, which is a shame.  I also think that some of the criticisms you had for the original Bioshock apply to BI.  Maybe on 1999 the game pushes you, but below that, you can just pick a few guns that you like and focus on them.  There are also some really game breaking gear combinations starting around mid-game that render everything else obsolete if you choose to go that route.  I do suppose that's dependent on getting that gear, since it's randomized.   

 

I'm not exactly clear what people even wanted Bioshock Infinite to be, it often seems as though it was expected to be a kind of game Irrational has never made. BioShock Infinite certainly doesn't betray any studio legacy, at least, as Irrational has made many very disparate kinds of FPS over the course of its history.

 

That's being really dismissive.  I'd argue that a lot of people have been very clear about what they wanted, and it's not unreasonable.  A world you can interact with more.  A more coherent story.  Less racism. An Elizabeth who isn't just a walking vending machine, gameplay wise.  More gameplay elements besides murder and dumpster diving.  On that last one, sure Bioshock was mostly the same, but Columbia feels like a city that you ought to be able to interact with in a way that Rapture didn't. 

 

Ultimately, I can pin my disdain for the game squarely on the handling of the Vox Populi and Daisy.  I certainly have other criticism and problems, but I can't really think of a game that made me more angry and more uncomfortable (and not in a good, interesting way) than BI did. 

[Sno]

Infinite still more or less ends up with you picking a few abilities and focusing on them, yes, but i'm not necessarily saying that's bad, the issue is how it arrives at that. Infinite's resource economy generally being much tighter and the powers themselves having more clearly defined roles makes choosing the few abilities and weapons you're going to invest in somewhat more involved. I think it's so much more fulfilling to play around with than the "You can kind of get everything, it's all pretty effective" present in the original BioShock.

It's a bit of a "less is more" thing in my estimation.

As for the Vox Populi and Daisy Fitzroy, i think the death of Daisy Fitzroy might be the most frustrating element of the game's story for me. Booker and Elizabeth turn on her at the drop of a hat, completely ready to throw her in with the likes of the Founders, and do so at a point in the story when you have not seen the Vox Populi do anything worse than the player has. It's completely unearned and shockingly tone deaf. It feels like a moment that was meant to come much later in the game, but it probably would have still had some pretty ugly hurdles to get over, and i'm not sure the final implication would be any more appropriate. It's the worst part of the game's story, it absolutely doesn't work.

[Forbin]

re: the Errant Signal video

 

1. I don't like the meelee combat violence either.  I think it's gratuitous and feels completely out of place.  I also didn't use it beyond the tutorial section.

2. It may be valid to compare this game against it's predecessors, but I often find it a bit weak when someone argues what's been "removed" in a sequel.  That may be valid for discussion of why a game is a disappointing sequel, but doesn't really condemn the quality of the individual game.

3. I agree the vigors are prettymuch identical up until the point that you get undertow.  IMO, nobody has nailed FPS magic powers as well as Dark Forces 3: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast.

4. I think if you're having that many problems with the combat systems, you should turn down the difficulty.  Not that that's ever an excuse for the balance of a game that is on "Normal", but I don't think people realize how much they're being annoyed by balance decisions they have the power to alter directly.

5. In my experience, Elizabeth threw me exactly what I needed.  If I was low on health, i got a health pack, and if I was low on salts I'd get salts.  If you're low on everything, then it may be a bit of a random roll, but in my experience it was deterministic.

6. I agree that the Vox Populi were poorly executed.

7. I actually didn't mind the ending to Battlestar Galactica. Lost was garbage though.

[SecretAsianMan]

Is the combat really that difficult?  I started on medium, which was way too easy.  I bumped it up to hard and while it's no longer what I'd call easy, it's still not that hard.  Elizabeth so far has proved largely useless to me.  She never really gives me anything I need because I never really need anything from her.  In fact, a couple times grabbing one of the items she throws me has actually been detrimental because I had to stand in place while the animation played out and basically let a bunch of enemies swarm me.  

 

Playing on hard is encouraging me to use my vigors more, but the use of them is more like the various types of offhand grenades in a game like Halo or COD than actual powers.  I think I would have actually preferred those in this instance.  In Rapture, the plasmids, little sisters, Adam, and splicers all match the genetic engineering theme.  In Columbia, the vigors seem more out of place because everything is so much more mechanical.  I can see Columbian science inventing a lightning grenade or a fire bomb or something that summons crows, but a magic elixer that gives you super powers feels like it was only there because the game has Bioshock in the title.

[Architecture]

The difficulty spikes are such that while I enjoyed routine combat on hard, any time a boss or scripted sequence occurred it was like getting kicked in the balls repeatedly.

 

I even had the end meat-grinder scenario break on me to the point where I'd killed everything but the finale wouldn't trigger, so I had to play it all over again.

[Sno]

I think the hard difficulty is the way to play it, it feels comparable to playing the heroic difficulty in a Halo game. 1999 isn't actually that much more difficult just outright, but the resources are restricted to such a degree that you actually do need to go into it with a plan and some advance knowledge of the game.

 

For both, the late-game vigors are game changers and should not be ignored, they provide you the ability to make a lot of those tougher enemies and scenarios completely manageable. (For example, use Return to Sender to set up shields in front of the thing you're trying to protect in the final battle.)

The siren fight is a pain in the ass no matter what, however. If you don't go in there with lots of ammo and end the fight quickly, there aren't really enough supplies in that area to get you reasonably back up to speed once you burn through your ammo, die, and respawn.

Also, dying does actually hurt you, that money loss adds up. Elizabeth's found coins seem to be there to kind of normalize the economy to a degree. I believe she'll give you more money if you're behind on things, and less if you're ahead. In 1999, however, she gives you virtually nothing, so don't die in 1999 mode.

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm now in the universe where Booker was a martyr for the Vox Populi.  One thing that's still frustrating to me is the whole stealing thing.  Half the time I'll end up triggering people to start shooting at me just by being near a thing without even realizing I wasn't supposed to be there.  If someone in the game had told me to move away, I probably would have but in most instances I'm basically forced to kill in self defense.  It's rather annoying.

 

There's a moment in the game where you can go to a basement behind a bar in Shantytown where there's a kid trying to get some oranges off of a high shelf.  When you come down, he hides under the stairs.  There's a guitar leaning against a chair you can interact with, which causes Booker to sit down and start playing while Elizabeth sings and gives the kid an orange.  It was a nice moment, but it felt totally random and I don't quite get why it was there.  Are there other things like this that maybe I've missed or have yet to encounter?

 

I'm still not super into the combat in this game, with the major exception of areas with lots of skylines.  Zipping around on those things to get to new positions is probably my favorite part of the game so far.  Unfortunately it renders the vigors I currently have almost entirely useless but I'm not finding them super useful to begin with.

 

Elizabeth continues to be useless other than as a key to open doors, although I do enjoy that she simply doesn't understand racism at all.

[osmosisch]

The guitar moment is lovely, and unfortunately unique.

[SecretAsianMan]

That's a bummer.  It seems like a weird easter egg type thing someone randomly decided to put in.  I'm fine with those when they're just extras that don't really relate to the game but this was a nice moment between the two main characters.  I was hoping to get more of those and hearing there's only one sucks.

[Dewar]

I'm now in the universe where Booker was a martyr for the Vox Populi.  One thing that's still frustrating to me is the whole stealing thing.  Half the time I'll end up triggering people to start shooting at me just by being near a thing without even realizing I wasn't supposed to be there.  If someone in the game had told me to move away, I probably would have but in most instances I'm basically forced to kill in self defense.  It's rather annoying.

 

My experience is that there's usually someone telling you to get away, but the sound mix and surround sound position for a lot that stuff is off and it's hard to hear. On top of that, the game's subtitles seem to be on-again off-again for any ambient dialog.

[SecretAsianMan]

My experience is that there's usually someone telling you to get away, but the sound mix and surround sound position for a lot that stuff is off and it's hard to hear. On top of that, the game's subtitles seem to be on-again off-again for any ambient dialog.

 

If there is someone telling me to move away then I'm clearly missing it.  The best indicator I got was in the aforementioned bar in Shantytown.  The bartender not so subtly pulled out a shotgun but didn't immediately start shooting me so I had time to move away and not start a confrontation.  The cops on the other hand are all too eager to just shoot me for no good reason even though I was walking around peacefully and without incident just seconds before.  Maybe there's some kind of message here.  The supposedly good cops are all rather trigger happy while the bartender in the bad neighborhood is much more civil.

[blackpostcards]

Chalk me up as another defender of Infinite, albeit in totally subjective ways.

 

Most of all, I found Columbia enthralling. Say what you'd like about not living up to plot expectations, but I'll take a stroll through Columbia over most other shooter settings. That goes for both the visuals and the lore. Actually, my biggest disappointment was that the story DLC failed to return to Columbia. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I've always felt the setting of the first two Bioshocks were not all that improved from the days of Doom, really. Gameplay aside, it just felt like another dark corridor shooter. The world of Columbia at least drew me back for multiple playthroughs mostly on the merit of the world. I've never had the desire to return to Rapture.

 

Also, the Booker/Elizabeth relationship worked for me personally. I was relieved when it became apparent they weren't going the romantic route and was fairly touched by the portion of the ending that wasn't all sci-fi, especially the epilogue. I can see how that connection would not be made for one and all, but in my personal circumstances, it did the trick. At least as affecting as Clementine and Lee in my mind.

[BobbyBesar]

That's a bummer.  It seems like a weird easter egg type thing someone randomly decided to put in.  I'm fine with those when they're just extras that don't really relate to the game but this was a nice moment between the two main characters.  I was hoping to get more of those and hearing there's only one sucks.

I may have been generally disenchanted with the game at that point, but it felt like an awards-bait moment to me. "We have to remind the peons that this is Not Just Another Shooter^TM, and that we are an Important Game^TM that is Saying Something^TM. So let's add a scene where you're nice to an orphan and folk music plays. That shows that war is bad."

 

I suppose that if there had been more opportunities like that it would have felt more organically part of the world. But by that point, the game had already revealed so much dissonance and internal inconsistency that it was hard to take it seriously.

[I_smell]

To me the song felt stupidly out of place, like how the protagonist in a Disney movie would stop being a person to become a performer, and all the background characters just kinda stand around and smile.

Who is this a performance for!?? Why would you do this, as a person? I get that people sing for the fun of it sometimes, but not this :I

Would've made more sense for her to sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun when they were on the beach!

 

 

But yeah man, sky-lines, woah! Infinite- yeah!!

[Gormongous]

Would've made more sense for her to sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun when they were on the beach!

 

To wit, I adore the calliope cover of that song and wish all songs in all games were played by calliopes.

[Golden Calf]

To me the song felt stupidly out of place, like how the protagonist in a Disney movie would stop being a person to become a performer, and all the background characters just kinda stand around and smile.

Who is this a performance for!?? Why would you do this, as a person? I get that people sing for the fun of it sometimes, but not this :I

Would've made more sense for her to sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun when they were on the beach!

 

 

But yeah man, sky-lines, woah! Infinite- yeah!!

 

Ya the song didn't work for me either. It came so far out of left field. There was no discussion from either character about it. Aren't they also running for their lives at this point too?