Bioshock Infinite Catch-All

God bless you, Mr. Levine. You're doing it right.

I hate when I'm unable to turn the hype off. I am having difficulties lowering my expectations for this title.

demonbox wrote:

I hate when I'm unable to turn the hype off. I am having difficulties lowering my expectations for this title.

That's OK, because this game will be better than any human being is physically capable of anticipating. There is literally no danger in getting your hopes up, because it cannot possibly be worse than you'd imagined.

LobsterMobster wrote:
demonbox wrote:

I hate when I'm unable to turn the hype off. I am having difficulties lowering my expectations for this title.

That's OK, because this game will be better than any human being is physically capable of anticipating. There is literally no danger in getting your hopes up, because it cannot possibly be worse than you'd imagined.

You're not very good at lowering someone's expectations.

Over a year after release, I got a copy on the cheap strictly out of curiosity. To my utter amazement, BioShock 2 kicked all kinds of ass!

I think expectations are a major part of how jaded gamers see a new title. If you have high expectations, it doesn't take much to sour you, but if you think it's gonna be crap, and it ends up being decent, you'll usually really like it.

I thought B2 was very noticeably inferior to B1; it made much less sense, was less compelling, and overall just didn't hang together nearly as well. But there were set pieces and individual bits that were extremely good, better than anything in the first game. I can't really get into them without spoilers, but there was definitely some very cool stuff in Bioshock 2.

Looking forward to this title very much; I got enough mileage out of the first two (I bought B2 later, on the cheap) that I suspect it's a Day One.

B2 was inferior to B1 in every meaningful way, and was still one of the best games I've ever played. So there you go.

rabbit wrote:

B2 was inferior to B1 in every meaningful way, and was still one of the best games I've ever played. So there you go.

I'd say that shooting mechanics are pretty meaningful in a shooter, and I found B2 to have significantly better shooting mechanics than B1.

CptGlanton wrote:
rabbit wrote:

B2 was inferior to B1 in every meaningful way, and was still one of the best games I've ever played. So there you go.

I'd say that shooting mechanics are pretty meaningful in a shooter, and I found B2 to have significantly better shooting mechanics than B1.

Concurrence. Bioshock wins out overall due to the fact that everything was shiny and new, but B2 had better (often hilarious) combat and gave it such a hell of a try that I have real trouble deciding which one I like best. Plus, Minerva's Den. A little John Greenleaf Whittier over the fact that Minerva's Den was the only single-player narrative-driven DLC that the Bioshock game canon managed to receive.

CptGlanton wrote:
rabbit wrote:

B2 was inferior to B1 in every meaningful way, and was still one of the best games I've ever played. So there you go.

I'd say that shooting mechanics are pretty meaningful in a shooter, and I found B2 to have significantly better shooting mechanics than B1.

I agree as well, even have a decent pair of posts in the BioShock and Bio2 threads trying to explain what I felt each game did right and wrong.

Bio2 was the better game for me, and if Bio1 had ended immediately after the meeting with Ryan it would have been greater experience.

The latest trailers and interviews have me excited. Ken was saying (to Giantbomb I think) that they're setting up the combat situations so you'll be making use of all the weapons rather than being able to tackle everything with the same weapon and plasmid throughout the game.

That kind of overtuned game design can really backfire, though. It turns into a puzzle game, "what weapon do I use for enemy X", instead of an action game.

I like the idea that you should be able to succeed with almost any weapon, and that the weapons should be tuned to fit specific roles. The player should want to switch weapons, because they're all useful in different ways, rather than being artificially forced to. I thought both B1 and 2 did pretty well with that. The ideal weapon to take out Big Daddies, for instance, was probably electric buckshot. But armor piercing rounds also worked, and you could use anything in your inventory if you were low on other options. It would be slow, but it would work.

B1 probably did suffer a bit from the over-useful crossbow. It seems like most games that have a crossbow end up using it as a silent sniping weapon that's fearsomely effective. And you can usually retrieve your bolts afterward, so once you get it, that's all you use, to save ammo.

All they'd really have to do is make it much less accurate at range. That'd mostly fix it, right there. Sniping with a crossbow is kind of silly.

I typically didn't use active plasmids that much, so I'm not sure what was really good there. I mostly stuck with the passives.

You know, that was something I thought they really messed up in both those games -- there should have been a fundamental tension between splicing yourself and staying fully human.

I'm excited for Infinite, but I'm still trepidatious. I haven't played the Freedom Force games, but bothwith System Shock 2 and Bioshock suffered from some pronounced mechanical flaws and had absolutely atrocious endings. I'd like to believe that Infinite will be brilliant from top to bottom, but I'll be surprised if it holds up over the course of its running length and doesn't get significantly weaker the longer it goes on.

Malor wrote:

You know, that was something I thought they really messed up in both those games -- there should have been a fundamental tension between splicing yourself and staying fully human.

I agree. I thought the same thing about System Shock 2 and the cybernetic modules. Upgrading your character made you more mechanical, thus more like SHODAN. Shouldn't there have been some tension there?

Can you count something they could have done against a product? There's lots of stories that could have been done differently in retrospect, at some point you've got to draw a line under it and release it. Some times there's going to be missed opportunities, or LGS/IG didn't want that in there.

I don't fault the games for not including that. It just seems like an odd omission.

Higgledy wrote:

The latest trailers and interviews have me excited. Ken was saying (to Giantbomb I think) that they're setting up the combat situations so you'll be making use of all the weapons rather than being able to tackle everything with the same weapon and plasmid throughout the game.

In other words, "Stop! Hammer time?"

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I haven't played the Freedom Force games...but both with System Shock 2 and Bioshock suffered from some pronounced mechanical flaws and had absolutely atrocious endings.

Personally the first Freedom Force game has one of my favorite video game endings of all time.

I didn't give a toss about this until I heard Levine speak in e3 interviews. I liked the way he talked about the game using the word simulator and his about skylines and a Zeppelin being an AI you can get into. Still have no interest n the story; it actually seems the least interesting part so far.

1Dgaf wrote:

I didn't give a toss about this until I heard Levine speak in e3 interviews. I liked the way he talked about the game using the word simulator and his about skylines and a Zeppelin being an AI you can get into. Still have no interest n the story; it actually seems the least interesting part so far.

Perhaps you missed that she has boobs.

IMAGE(http://www.gamingzap.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/bioshock-infinite-1.jpg)

See? Two of 'em! They match and everything. There, now you're interested in the story. You're welcome.

That aside, I didn't think we knew all that much about the story, other than that this lady can do some totally crazy stuff that surprises even her. I think it's an interesting take on the "escort" mechanic, where she is basically a game system that exists as an NPC. Either way, Levine has proven he can craft a good story. More than that, he's proven that he won't craft a bad story.

LobsterMobster wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

I didn't give a toss about this until I heard Levine speak in e3 interviews. I liked the way he talked about the game using the word simulator and his about skylines and a Zeppelin being an AI you can get into. Still have no interest n the story; it actually seems the least interesting part so far.

Perhaps you missed that she has boobs.

IMAGE(http://www.gamingzap.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/bioshock-infinite-1.jpg)

SOLD!

I found a couple of the E3 recaps (Weekend Confirmed most noticeably, though it was not alone) odd. There were some strong declarations that there is still no indication of what the gameplay is. While that's true with any hands-off demo, I have expectations of movement and character control that would surprise me if they were not simply as they seem presented. Still, just mentioning that there were some concerns that moment-to-moment player-agency seemed to be a question in some journalist's minds.

I'm using Bioshock as a starting point for how BI works, and then considering the various changes like the skyhook, open environments, etc.

New video about the factions up at http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/videos

More about the tears:

ClockworkHouse wrote:

More about the tears:

Holy Crap! That's like a huge spoiler: it explains what's so special about her and why it's called Infinite.

I kinda wish I had gone of media blackout after watching that Skyline video...

Falchion wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

More about the tears:

Holy Crap! That's like a huge spoiler: it explains what's so special about her and why it's called Infinite.

I kinda wish I had gone of media blackout after watching that Skyline video...

I've been ignoring BI since its announcement, out of laziness, and I think I'll keep it this way. I was so late to BioShock I knew everything going in, so if this one is supposed to be a bajillion times better I fully expect a blackout to result in some sort of the Raiders of the Lost Ark-face melting on release day.

So since I know nothing, I'll assume the "tears" are because Neil Young and Steven Spielberg are working on the game. Sweet!

Falchion wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

More about the tears:

Holy Crap! That's like a huge spoiler: it explains what's so special about her and why it's called Infinite.

I kinda wish I had gone of media blackout after watching that Skyline video...

I don't think it does, or at least it's not fully spoiling everything. Knowing about the little sisters doesn't spoil you on Jack/Fontaine/Ryan from Bioshock. They're telling you about a central part of the gameplay, or rather more detail on something they had previously said about what's-her-name assisting you and presenting opportunities rather than being a passive bystander.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

More about the tears:

I've been avoiding the video because I don't want to know too much more than I already do. Does he only cover what was shown at E3, or pontificate and elaborate on the subject?

The little sisters are a good comparison for what's in that video. Levine explains a basic gameplay mechanic that'll likely be on the back of the box and talks a bit about what inspired it. There's nothing from the plot being revealed here.

If anything, it's probably required for the publicity to distinguish the game, so you don't get "Oh, it's Bioshock in the sky" or "Oh, it's Bioshock with another philosophy being examined" or worst "Oh, it's just another shooter".

GAAAAHHHH! I WANT THIS GAME SO BAD!!!

And as a serious response-- I don't think Levine is going to reveal anything that would truly spoil the game on a whole. I feel like everything he reveals about this is going to simply build up anticipation, but he's smart enough not to spoil his games, as they're heavily story-based. Not that I want to watch every little detailed snippet released because I too want to be surprised when I first play the game, but I'm sure no matter what there'll still be some "holy sh*t" moments as that's what Bioshock does so well.