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[BIOSHOCK INFINITE]: Burial At Sea Part 2: March 25th!
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I'm disagreeing that it makes any amount of sense, because their implementation of their idea was bad.
No matter what you choose, the resulting events that "save them" or "kill them" are literally exactly the same as each other.
If you don't understand at this point, there's nothing left to say.
At least, that's how I'm interpreting it.
Really, the stronger candidate for constant in this situation is that you pick a ball, since there's no room for leeway implied in the note about that.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
The way I see it...
As far as we can possibly know one way or another, it certainly looks more like a constant than a variable.
Constants are the really big stuff; Booker, Elizabeth, Comstock, the Siphon, etc. Things that are unavoidable regardless of decisionmaking. If the fight happens at the raffle no matter what you do with the ball or the couple, then I guess it becomes a constant. If it only happens if you chose #77, I don't think that's a constant.
There's a weird grey area here between player action and options and character actions and options. If it isn't possible for us to avoid that fight, is it possible for Booker to do so if we're not controlling him? If he has to do it regardless, that's a constant, but we can't ever know that unless it is flatly stated for us.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I suppose I'm guilty of being too harsh, I'm not willing to fill in the blanks for the developers, I see the coding as I'm playing the game, and I"m looking at it purely from the perspective of: they didn't want to bother coding extra scenarios in, so they basically coded the game with one path only, throwing in an extra tidbit here and there, and then just added some pretty voice acting to bandaid over their own unwillingness to provide you with any real semblance of choice.
You all are viewing the game as an interactive visual novel, I'm viewing it as simply a game. If there was no graphics, or mouses and keyboardses, and this was just a book or a movie, then I'd probably be more in agreement.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
That's an assumption on your part, and without some evidence it isn't really a fair way to judge it.
Not every game has to be a choose-your-own-adventure game. They had a specific story they wanted to tell. That's not laziness, that just having a goal in mind.
Now, if they had advertised it as "Will you lead Columbia to greatness or will you strike it from the sky? Your actions decide the fate of the world!" and we got what we got, then there would be a problem.
With all the shining praise that this game gets I just, kind of expected more. So far it's just a regular shooter with lots and lots of pretty shiny things and some "magic" thrown into the mix. Granted, I'm not very far, so far I'm only to
So there may be something down the line that gives me that "wow" moment that I got from Bioshock 1. The story had better be told as well as it was in Bioshock 1, I already know the whole plot and it's interesting enough, but the delivery has to be top-notch in order for me to be able to truly appreciate it.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Despite games like Mass Effect and such video games still don't offer you a lot in terms of choice. Choice is nice, but it's not a requirement.
Bioshock is something I'm holding to a higher standard than the rest of the games, because, frankly, they've proven their worth to me. They've proven to me that I can play an "interactive movie" and enjoy the hell out of it....they just have to do it again :P
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Stayed up till 4:00 to finish it last night, and I haven't done that in a very long time.
My working theory as I played turned out to be false:
This also explained how Booker kinda floated through that glass wall after Elizabeth killed Fitzroy.
The actual ending was good though, and I think they did an excellent job of handling the racism and religion aspects of the setting without letting that overwhelm the basic story.
Do you expect developers to create games where every choice you make actually has real impact on a narrative? Because that would require exponentially increasing amounts of content for each choice you make in a game.
If you play sand box games that give players total freedom to do what they want, like Mount and Blade: Warband or Crusader Kings 2, you'll notice that they usually have no narrative and leave it up to the players to construct one for themselves.
Edit: Or what you do in the sandbox part of the game has no impact on the narrative at all, like Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Not to mention that her running around grabbing health, ammo, and salts is so useful that when she's not doing it you really miss her.
Seriously, I mean that in the most "wait and see how this amazing thing unfolds" way possible. All of my theories up until the very end turned out to be all wrong.
I've also been very closely following the discussions y'all been having about the ending and the crazy stuff that's around it, and that has gotten me a bit more excited about proceeding in the game. Like I said, I'm just kind of nitpicking choice, or the lack thereof, or, I should say, the lack of real impact of choices so far in the game.
Unfortunately, I'm not the type of player who sits through a game while forsaking others until I complete it. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through a 20-hour game because I'm always switching titles and playing something different on a daily basis.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
That seems pretty self defeating.
They are called spoilers for a reason. They spoil things.
God damn.
To me the ending never matters. I always read the story of a game before playing it. To me, what's important is how they tell the story, not really the story itself. Whenever I read a book, I always read the last chapter first. yeah, I know it's silly, but it's how I enjoy things.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
I can say I have never wanted to kill a fictional character more than Comstock.
Sorry Handsome Jack.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Example:
Ok it wasn't exactly in that order but yeah. I would've been happier with getting my Airship and then maybe getting shot down somewhere instead.
I respectfully disagree with you on this one. Storytellers often rely upon numerous techniques to carry an audience to a desired conclusion; skipping to the end of the journey will give you knowledge of the future, but at the cost of the enjoyment of the present. Especially in a game like this, the journey is at least as important as the destination, if not more so, as it provides all the context for the destination.
*edit* Essentially, while you're welcome to experience the content however you like, I feel you are unequiped to critique and comment on the story or design decisions when you've denied yourself the opportunity to experience them as intended. If you go to a five-star restaurant, order desert first, then only eat the crust, you're not really making a fair point when you say that the lack of pasta sauce options was not to your liking.
That sequence was probably the weakest part of the game for me.
Don't forget:
So, hey, newsflash: the reason you're soured on this story is, I'm pretty sure, your own fault for seeking out these spoilers.
I've actually even had cases in other games where I sought out spoilers, went "THIS IS DUMB," then when I beat it went "This isn't actually so bad?" That actually happened to me with Mass Effect 3; I was taking up pitchforks with everyone else, but then when I beat it went "Well I mean that was still pretty terrible but I don't think it's worth all THIS hullabaloo..."
Same with Bastion. I thought I wouldn't be moved by the choices and that such a simplistic choice was dumb, but then I GOT there and WHAM
So uh
Beat the damn game first and see how the music, motion, and game all match up to sell you on the idea, THEN you can come back in here and bitch about how it doesn't "work"
(Those of you who beat it and are complaining: Every right to, I respect your opinion, etc)
Also? You know what? I'm frankly tired of so-called "player choice" in games. The ONLY game I've ever played where that stuff mattered was Planescape: Torment. If you want ~player choice~ go play that instead. In fact, Bioshock has ALWAYS been a meta-commentary on the lack of choice in games. In the first game, you're a conditioned puppet designed to go along with the whims of someone else; your choices don't really matter. In this game, you're at the mercy of forces beyond your control (without spoiling anything). You think you have choice, but in reality all this was set in motion long ago.
And you know what? It was actually refreshing to have a game that came out and said "Nah, this actually doesn't matter" instead of pretending I have a choice, like Mass Effect. Mass Effect didn't really give me any damn choice at all, it hid those so-called choices under some pretty menus. This game goes "You can make small choices, but they don't matter in the larger scheme."
And funnily enough, I got way more emotionally invested in this game, in Elizabeth especially, than any game which offered me so-called choice. The first Bioshock? I gave exactly zero fucks about Little Sisters, they were non-entities to me. Kill, save, doesn't matter, not really, it's just a ticker to get an "ending." With Elizabeth, even though there's NO GAMEPLAY EFFECT that comes from being nice to her, taking the time to let her look at stuff and do things like eat cotton candy and put on goofy Lincoln heads or whatever, I did those things because they made me feel good.
Maybe the point here is that while the larger actions don't matter and you'll always be at the mercy of greater forces, it IS those little moments that matter a lot more.
*e* Blargh ignore me I'm in rant mode and being a goose again :V
I wonder how many players
/rimshot
man I was this close to deleting that rant, glad y'all stopped me
Edit: Heh, when one of the guys down with Elizabeth begged me by name to turn the machine back on before they got hit with the tornado I thought that was pretty cool. Like, I'm infamous! Felt weird having some bad scientist talking to me directly by name, as if we knew each other more intimately.
I see an absolute lack of goosery in your post and think you're being respectful, but passionate.
I understand what you guys are saying. There are a few reasons why I do what I do. To me, knowledge is key, and having knowledge of how an event turns out beforehand actually gives me a warm-fuzzy. Obviously it doesn't ever affect anything, other than, perhaps allowing you to choose a "good" outcome faster, however I am good at imagining myself as an ignorant entity in the world. The person sitting at the computer is an omnipotent god, the player on the screen, however is not, and I actively make that distinction. You know that age-old superhero power question? yeah, my answer to it, from my youngest memory of that question, has been "clairvoyance."
Second, I get that most games usually only ever give you an illusion of choice. In fact, if you peel the layer back a little bit you see that almost all games with choice in them are just a multiple choice-type of thing where if you perform actions A, D, and F you'll get ending 1, but if you perform actions B, C, and G, you'll get ending 2. With the way that my weird little mind works, I can see those gears, yet still enjoy the experience fully because I can suspend my knowledge long enough to take the sights in as an ignorant participant.
There was a long time ago when I had an argument with my friends about "spoilers" and why I hate the fact that the word "spoil" is included in there. The ending is fine, it has to be there, the little surprises and gotchas and twists are cute and all, but if that's the only thing that makes a story have anything interesting to it, then I'm not sold. The exposition is 100% what a story is. Let's face it, every story that could possibly be told has already been told, and the final is going to be a variation of only a couple of different variables: good guy wins, good guy loses. You can add all kinds of specifications to it, but, in the end, that's what the meat and potatoes of the finale always are. Where true creativity shines is in how something is told. I "spoiled" myself silly about Bioshock 1, yet the execution of that plot was so amazing that I fell in love with an entire franchise because of it.
Things that are created in your imagination are key to any game, and I am very fine with that, because I'm a roguelike player, therefore it's kind of an evolution through necessity. I was just nitpicking that there is a little bit too much left to the imagination, and I wish that there was a teeny tiny little bit more that they would code into the game, if nothing else, but to give me a little warm fuzzy. As I said, I hold BIoshock to a very high standard because of their success.
Even for those that have beaten the game, do you think the ending was the coolest part, or was it everything else that was leading up to that ending? I can comfortably predict that, for a majority of you, it was the game as a whole that was fantastic.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
2. Holy shit that is the perfect way to tie this back into Bioshock 1.
3. Holy shit everything that is happening right now is fucking amazing.
4. Holy shit that's what they were talking about then, and then, and then, OH AND THEN!
5. Holy shit.
6. Stupid credits, go faster. (I was told to wait until after them).
7. Is it just a song? At least it's pretty.
8. Holy shit.
So yea, the ending influenced my overall perception of the game, but I had a tremendous amount of fun getting there as well.