Bioshock Series Discussion Thread (SPOILERS)

[LoA]

Okay, I'm a huge fan of the Bioshock series and I love the first Bioshock, and Bioshock Infinite (Haven't played Bioshock 2 for the record, and I don't care too). But with things you love you must eventually notice blemishes here and there. and BOY does Bioshock Infinite suffer from Fridge.

For the record this thread is for the Bioshock Series in general, but I do feel like I need to gripe about a couple of things about Infinite so here goes.

No spoilers ahead

I remember reading somewhere that the original plan for the game was that you were actually going to play as Elizabeth, and use her powers to solve puzzles and try to escape Columbia and sneak your way around the songbird. But then a bunch of college guys complained about it, and they changed it to the shoot em'up that we all know and love.

Am I the only one who thought that would've been more awesome? I would happily play a game where you play as Elizabeth, as apposed to the psychotic, alcoholic, monstrous ex-Pinkerton...

But hey, A game set in first person perspective starring a female protagonist, where you use quantum science to escape from an insane robot? That would never sell.... Especially not well enough to spawn a sequel....

[Steerpike]

But hey, A game set in first person perspective starring a female protagonist, where you use quantum science to escape from an insane robot? That would never sell.... Especially not well enough to spawn a sequel....

I think it's possible that would have sold.  Portal sold.  Tomb Raider is huge.  Metroid has done pretty well for itself.  I don't think it was just sales that made them go with Booker as the protagonist.  And I've heard it said that in part of the upcoming Burial at Sea Elizabeth will be playable.

[spoiler=Infinite spoilers]Booker did let them do some very interesting things with Elizabeth and with identity - being simultaneously her father, captor, and rescuer at the same time.[/spoiler]

[LoA]

But hey, A game set in first person perspective starring a female protagonist, where you use quantum science to escape from an insane robot? That would never sell.... Especially not well enough to spawn a sequel....

I think it's possible that would have sold.  Portal sold.  Tomb Raider is huge.  Metroid has done pretty well for itself.  I don't think it was just sales that made them go with Booker as the protagonist.  And I've heard it said that in part of the upcoming Burial at Sea Elizabeth will be playable.

[spoiler=Infinite spoilers]Booker did let them do some very interesting things with Elizabeth and with identity - being simultaneously her father, captor, and rescuer at the same time.[/spoiler]

Sorry I was trying to sound eye rolling sarcastic through my writing hence all of the ".....". I was referencing Portal there, and I was going to write "just ask Valve... *Drops the mic, walks away*"

Really if Burial at Sea has a cool playable section with Elizabeth, that would make me very happy, but I still feel like a huge opportunity was missed here. That part where you play as Elizabeth has to be very good.

So now that i know you know what we all know...
[spoiler=Infinite spoilers] Understand that when I played ICO it only made me tear up a little, Bioshock Infinite made me cry. I had so much investment in Bookers and Elizabeths relationship, that the scene after the credits made me shed manly, hope filled, tears of joy. Before you point me to Spoony's review, I like hope!!!!! So despite all of the bile I'm about to spew, I love this game, it got a real emotional response.

So here goes.
Out of all the fridge logic that this game evokes, there's one scene that is just unforgivable for me, and completely ruins the narrative for me.

When I first got to the "Bad Future" scene where Elizabeth is old and is attacking New York... I genuinely thought it was the early twenties. I really sincerely thought it was only ten years into the future. "Well how could Elizabeth be that old?" Because Comstock exposed and brainwashed her with a tear machine, and made her deteriorate like he did! It's genius!

Except that someone pointed out it's really 1984...... I could sit here and rant about the sheer illogical stupidity of sending a blimp armada to try and destroy New York in the middle of the cold war, but that would last forever.. Needless to say: F-16, Helicopter, Battleship, laser guided missiles, and nuke > Blimps

So yeah I'm left with no other alternative but to say that Bookers having a heck of an alcoholic fever dream...
 [/spoiler]

I'm sorry there's nothing more annoying than a whiny fanboy, and I sincerely like this game. I hate that my brain won't leave that part of the game alone. Everything else was good. The combat was solid (although I kind of agree that it's overdone), and the characters are great, So sorry if I come across as whiny.

[Steerpike]

Oh my bad!

I'm sorry there's nothing more annoying than a whiny fanboy, and I sincerely like this game. I hate that my brain won't leave that part of the game alone. Everything else was good. The combat was solid (although I kind of agree that it's overdone), and the characters are great, So sorry if I come across as whiny.

[spoiler=more spoilers]I always figured they had some means of protection for the blimp armada, like some variant of the Lutece Field or even the Return to Sender Vigor, that would deal with missiles and whatnot.  I mean, many years have passed and Columbia was already crazy advanced in 1912.  I figured they knew what they were doing.

Alternatively, I wondered whether perhaps the whole thing was a kind of suicide attack, like a mass terrorism thing, and old Elizabeth didn't really hope to survive.[/spoiler]

[LoA]

Oh my bad!

I'm sorry there's nothing more annoying than a whiny fanboy, and I sincerely like this game. I hate that my brain won't leave that part of the game alone. Everything else was good. The combat was solid (although I kind of agree that it's overdone), and the characters are great, So sorry if I come across as whiny.

[spoiler=more spoilers]I always figured they had some means of protection for the blimp armada, like some variant of the Lutece Field or even the Return to Sender Vigor, that would deal with missiles and whatnot.  I mean, many years have passed and Columbia was already crazy advanced in 1912.  I figured they knew what they were doing.

Alternatively, I wondered whether perhaps the whole thing was a kind of suicide attack, like a mass terrorism thing, and old Elizabeth didn't really hope to survive.[/spoiler]

Yeah, I can actually see the logic in that.
However there's one more thing that kind of bugs me (no spoilers). This wasn't like Rapture where a single guy secretly built a city under the ocean. Columbia was a national effort that congress backed. So you'd think they'd demand a copy of the blueprints so if anything goes wrong they'd have a spare, and you would think they'd have built a flying military base to go hunt down Columbia after it went rogue. This was right after the time of Reconstruction so you'd imagine the Federal government would do everything in it's power to make an example out of Comstock.

[Steerpike]

My guess is taht while they might have the blueprints they wouldn't have had the means - I don't think the exact functioning of Lutece Fields was public knowledge.  If you look at aviation technology in 1912, it was pretty damn primitive.  That was the first year anyone had used an aircraft to drop a bomb or constructed an all-metal aircraft.  In WWI aircraft were used mostly just for reconaissance and a bit of strategic bombing.  The fist air-to-air combat was just guys lobbing grenades and using hand-held firearms at each other from their planes.  The governments of the time would have been incapable of building a flying military base.

[LoA]

My guess is taht while they might have the blueprints they wouldn't have had the means - I don't think the exact functioning of Lutece Fields was public knowledge.  If you look at aviation technology in 1912, it was pretty damn primitive.  That was the first year anyone had used an aircraft to drop a bomb or constructed an all-metal aircraft.  In WWI aircraft were used mostly just for reconaissance and a bit of strategic bombing.  The fist air-to-air combat was just guys lobbing grenades and using hand-held firearms at each other from their planes.  The governments of the time would have been incapable of building a flying military base.

Except that they could build a flying city. But okay, maybe Lutece's a once in a lifetime genius. But given a about one hundred years no one could crack the secrets about Quantum Levitation? It's kind of a stretch, that's all i'm trying to say.

You know what would've been interesting? Had they told two or three separate but interconnected stories? The game feels like to me they had all kinds of cool ideas but they couldn't figure out how to make it all work together in one story. So why not tell three short stories in the same game? One campaign focuses on Booker and Elizabeth, and the other focuses on the founder/Vox conflicts. Maybe another focuses on the Boxer Rebellion.

I don't know, ICO was actually pretty short in comparison to other games, but I still play it to this day. What would've been wrong with a shorter Bioshock Infinite?

And yes, I know about Burial at Sea. Cool idea.

[Steerpike]

Except that they could build a flying city. But okay, maybe Lutece's a once in a lifetime genius.

Also:

[spoiler]Also, a lot of the other technological advances in Columbia are dervied from glimpses into the future and/or parallel universes.  So it makes sense for Columbia to have a huge technolgoical edge over the rest of 1912 - which I figured to be pretty close to "normal" 1912.[/spoiler]

[SA]

The most irritating thing about Infinite is that:
[spoiler]From the moment Booker steps through the tear and gains the memories of Alternate Universe Booker he is no longer the character we were playing up to that point. Also, why is he not going nuts like everyone else who remembers being dead?[/spoiler]To say nothing of the climax in which:
[spoiler]Elizabeth attempts to stop a character from making a choice by killing an individual who is the direct product of that choice rather than by preempting the choice itself. The game offers no explanation for how killing Booker, who remembers having already made the choice not to become Comstock, could prevent another Alternate Universe Booker from becoming Comstock. Its logic contradicts the expressed sequence of events.[/spoiler]

[LoA]

The most irritating thing about Infinite is that:
[spoiler]From the moment Booker steps through the tear and gains the memories of Alternate Universe Booker he is no longer the character we were playing up to that point. Also, why is he not going nuts like everyone else who remembers being dead?[/spoiler]

It gets worse the more you think about it...
[spoiler]

If you got the DLC "Clash in the Clouds", once you unlock both of the Lutece Statues, there are a bunch of unused Voxophones from Rosalind. One of them talks about how violently Robert hemoraged after being brought into Rosalind's universe, and she had to use classical music to pull his psyche back together.

So why didn't Anna (Baby Elizabeth) hemorage to death when she wen't through the portal to Comstocks side? A baby losing that much blood would surely kill her.[/spoiler]

To say nothing of the climax in which:
[spoiler]Elizabeth attempts to stop a character from making a choice by killing an individual who is the direct product of that choice rather than by preempting the choice itself. The game offers no explanation for how killing Booker, who remembers having already made the choice not to become Comstock, could prevent another Alternate Universe Booker from becoming Comstock. Its logic contradicts the expressed sequence of events.[/spoiler]

Okay here's how I think of the time line.
[spoiler]
Bookers life is a tree. It starts out normal, born in the late 1800's, goes to wounded knee, feels bad about it. The tree is growing up normally.

But then he decides to go to a baptism. The tree trunk is beginning to split now.

One branch is Comstock who now shelters his guilt with religion and becomes unhinged.

The other outgrowth is our Booker who remains the same guy, and becomes a Pinkerton so violent that even the Pinkerton's have to throw him out. Then his wife dies in childbirth, and has Anna. He becomes an alcoholic gambler.

Now here's where things begin to go wrong.
Through Lutece's science Comstock is able to come to Booker and buy Anna. Then the tree begins to grow into itself and become mutated.


Eventually the tree becomes so gross and disjointed looking that something just has to be done about it.


So after the events of the game, and Elizabeth goes super sayan after the Songbird destroys Monument Tower, she can completely see the tree for what it is. and she can pinpoint the area where the tree started to branch out. She now uses her chainsaw (Godlike powers) to whack the mutated tumor off of the trunk of the tree. I don't think Elizabeth eliminated the choice at the Baptism, I think she eliminated the baptism itself. No acceptance or rejection, just flat out eliminates the universe where Booker went to a baptism at all, and therefore cuts off the intertwining branches right at the place where it split and began growing in separate directions.

What I think we see at the end of the credits is a Universe where Booker decided not to go to a baptism at all, or at least at that moment, because it doesn't exist anymore.

Or Booker is just waking up from a bad liquor dream, and well decide to throw away the bottle, get his crap together, and reallize that Anna is the most important thing in his life, and to cherish her.[/spoiler]

I prefer the latter, it's more hopeful... and less headachey...

[Steerpike]

Can we post out of spoilers?  Is anyone reading this thread, really, who doesn't want things spoiled?

[LoA]

Can we post out of spoilers?  Is anyone reading this thread, really, who doesn't want things spoiled?

It seems more polite this way.

[Steerpike]

I guess, it just seems like a whole conversation of spoilers, and I can't imagine what a  person who didn't want things spoiled could be getting out of it :P

[sparkletwist]

I have been reading the thread, but I've only played the first Bioshock, so, personally, I appreciate the spoilerization.

That said, I do admit I'm not getting terribly much out of it, so I could just stop paying attention to the thread too. :grin:

[SA]

I like the spoilers.
[spoiler]Very clandestine.[/spoiler]