PixlBit

Bioshock: Infinite, In Closing

 

This post will probably have spoilers... so I’m gonna put a random video I found on youtube of the voice of Booker DeWitt playing guitar here to block the eyes of those who don’t want to know anything about the game or haven’t finished it yet.  

 

Ok.  Still here?  Ok.

I don’t really play first person shooters.  I’m not competitive, and I’m also not particularly good at them.  Third person shooters with cover I’m fine with, I play those and I’m okay at them.  Stick me in first person and I’m getting stuck in corners and falling off ledges.

The things that make a person like me pick up Bioshock are people lauding it’s story and the characters.  Combine that with it being single player and I can make an idiot of myself without getting screamed at by anyone, except maybe my parents for the loudness of the gunshots and stuff.

So, with that hype and praise in mind, here we go.

New coat of paint, old framework.  The problems with the technical and the gameplay:

Here is a beautiful world created.  A city in the sky, bright colors, weird setting.  An interesting backstory, a mysterious contract.  All of that is fine.  It’s lovely.  The opening being a call back to the original Bioshock is cute.  (I only played the demo of the original Bioshock, I had the twist spoiled on the game long before that even.  I’ve been avoiding stuff on the internet until now so that I have a reason to play this 60 buck game I purchased.)

Then the immersion is ruined when I realize my interaction is limited to take and hit.

“Hi random weird person, can I initiate a conversation with you?  No?  You’re just gonna stand there and stare at me like a dead fish.  Okay, this place is supposed to be creepy and all but you’re like a mannequin or marionette.”  

It has nothing to do with the slightly cartoonish aesthetic of the game, but the characters outside of Elizabeth all look like wax figures.  They are stiff automatons.  It’s jarring in a top tier game for npcs to behave this way.  

And then you’re attacking people in the most EXTREMELY GORY EXPLODY manner possible, and the corpses still look like mannequins.

I’m seeing the seams in reality, and not in the way the game wants me to.

Suddenly the suspension of disbelief is broken.  I’m seeing the strings and the matting.  Suddenly every location is a room with obvious cover that isn’t cover because you can sorta hide behind it but doing so will get you killed when the ‘I don’t give a shit’ bullet sponge enemies rush you.  

After awhile your brain gives up.

Why is there a bullet vending machine in a bank?  It’s a game, shut up.

The game originally made a big deal about Elizabeth’s ability to pull in objects to use in the environment.  Yup.  Cool right?  It’s the same ten things she can change for the entire game outside of story beat shit.  Supply shit, automated killing things, geometry.  There’s one sport where, for no real reason, you hear music.  If that stuff had been scattered throughout, shit that did NO GOOD AT ALL, how much more awesome would that have been?

“Elizabeth there!”  Boom, she opens a portal to fucking space and kills everyone.  Or brings through a parade float, or a bunch of cosplayers... or a snickers bar.  Goddamn it guys, you could’ve gone the full nine yards and a kitchen sink yet you just... sat on the ball.

Speaking of sinks, did those goddamn things have a point?  When making text-adventures there’s a rule you’re supposed to follow:  NO RED HERRINGS.  Don’t put in an object that does nothing, it just confuses people.

Also, Booker is a vampire after the opening of the game.  He has no reflection except when it suits the story.

A Play in 3 Acts.

Hey, remember how much they talked about Songbird before the game came out?  How about the entire second act where no one mentions him... barely... at all. 

(I went back and dug up the original game trailer, before Troy Baker was cast and the game was just a target render.  No Songbird!  Instead it’s a handyman that grabs Elizabeth as she tries to LIFT Booker with her powers.  Weird huh?) 

Elizabeth and Booker have plenty of conversations during the course of the game, but they’re clearly broken into weird if=then statements.  

“Hey, you want to tell me about that mechanical bird monster that almost killed me?  No?”

Songbird shows up for the second time later... much later.  THEN the conversation sorta shifts.  The game is broken into very clear acts.  Intro, Gunsmith, Emporium, etc.  AND THEY ARE ALL FETCH QUESTS.  Go find the girl... go find an airship, oh, but go get this vigor first!  Okay, AIRSHIP GOT! SHOT!  DOWN!  A new air ship?  Go get the guns... er, gunsmith, er.... here... awh, fuck it.  Really?  This is the bold mind bending stuff I kept hearing about?

Where is it guys?

I’m starting the final 3rd of the game and I’m still not seeing it.  Yeah, Columbia is fucked up but in an expected sort of way.  

Ok, the entire narrative is back loaded into what is, essentially, the game’s ending. 

Alright, so story spoilers start here:

Let’s break this ending down.  This ending that everyone was like “OH MY GOD WHAT A MIND FUCK!”  No, no or you guys don’t get out much.  The only fuck going on here is the lack of fucks I gave for the story after I watched the ending play out.

Let me clarify:

First, I ended the game with about 54 of the 80 recordings, so I probably missed something, despite searching a lot of the game for shit.

Second, I accidentally advanced the end credits and missed the after credits thing.  =/  OOPS.

Anyway, I had to go read the neogaf thread, which supports the whole ‘universe won’t allow for a paradox’ rational.  At first I thought there was shoddy scifi going on... Now I feel better about the whole thing.

So, the game ends with the Hitler question.  Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a child?  You would do so with the hope it would save millions of lives, but in reality you would probably undo your existence by doing so.  Not only that, you’d be changing the future/present as you know it.  You might even be creating a worse alternate future!  

By the way, modern science has pretty much proven that time travel wouldn’t allow a paradox.  You cannot go back in time and kill yourself.  They’ve done experiments with quantum  particles, the universe won’t allow it.  YEAH BUT MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS!... which all lead back to a branching point so it’s STILL time travel.  

If what is going on in that neogaf thread is indeed what is going on, forcing a constant where Booker never becomes born again, then it all jives with the universe and all is right in the world.

I’m complaining a lot, so what do I like?

I like the music.  Taking modern songs and having them leak through to 1912 dimension X only to be covered in early 20th century style was cool.  I wish there was more of them.

The voice acting, it’s great.  Even if I keep hearing Troy Baker as Kanji Tatsumi.... that’s my problem, not the game’s.

In Conclusion (TL;DR):  I still don’t like first person shooters.  Maybe Booker will finally let the girl go to Paris someday.  Hoping DLC explains Songbird.  I’m gonna let a coworker borrow the game, then maybe later this year I’ll go back and play it on hard, or try to.