Post-credits show that at least one booker is alive in some world, with Anna in his office -- with the luteces never coming to claim Anna, because there is no comstock/columbia.
That's one way to interpret that I guess. We don;t really know if Anna's in there or not since the game very lamely fades to black
Booker being drowned is sort of metahphorical. The actual drowning Booker is the one at the baptism twenty years ago. Since the universe constantly splits in infinite directions there have been multiple branching outs even before the baptism. Now Comstock is never created because the Booker at the baptism always drowns.
Post credits we see a Booker from a branch that never went to the baptism - those are the only Booker's that now exist, and Comstock will never be. At least some of the now existing Booker's would have Anna still and I think the post credits allude to her being there.
My brother finally beat the game the other day, so I could discuss it with thim
ENDING SPOILERS
The baptism was the anomaly that spawned the infinite realities, right? My brother seems to think drowning Booker at the baptism was pointless, because there should be another universe where Booker still goes to the baptism and accepts it/walks away.
the idea is that in any universe where Comstock is created now, elizabeths will be around to end him
As I saw it, you being drowned was just shorthand for all Booker's being drowned, thus removing Comstock from the entire multi-verse.
The problem with that is
If all the Bookers/Comstocks are drowned by Elizabeth, Comstock ceases to exist, so he never takes Anna, so she never becomes Elizabeth, so she can't drown Booker/Comstock, so Comstock can exist, so he can take Anna, so she can become Elizabeth, so she can drown oh my God I've gone cross eyed.
This game ended with a paradox which you really can't argue the 'right' outcome of, at least until we actually manage to create a paradox in the real world to see what happens. I'm sure someone's working on it somewhere. For Science!
The game does indeed showcase a Grandfather paradox: Elizabeth uses her magic powers to bring a Dewitt back time to a moment before he branched out into All Possible Dewitts/Comstocks. The player becomes that Prime Dewitt at that moment. Then, Elizabeth drowns the Prime Dewitt.
Of course, this means that Elizabeth can no longer exist. You see her pop out of existence towards the end of that scene in the river, as the camera pulls back.
This is a paradox, as you say. There is now an uncaused event -- the drowning of the Prime Dewitt. One school of thought would say that such events are impossible; another would say that it doesn't matter why an event happens, only that it happens. A girl appeared from thin air in 1890 and drowned a man named Dewitt. It doesn't matter where she came from, it only matters that she was there, and that it happened.
I know this is impossible, but it would be really cool (ending spoilers):
If they had had even some of this game in mind when making Bioshock, and if there was a point in Bioshock where you could look out a window and see Songbird's corpse at the bottom of the ocean. And no one knew what it was at the time, but it had been there all along.
My brother finally beat the game the other day, so I could discuss it with thim
ENDING SPOILERS
The baptism was the anomaly that spawned the infinite realities, right? My brother seems to think drowning Booker at the baptism was pointless, because there should be another universe where Booker still goes to the baptism and accepts it/walks away.
the idea is that in any universe where Comstock is created now, elizabeths will be around to end him
As I saw it, you being drowned was just shorthand for all Booker's being drowned, thus removing Comstock from the entire multi-verse.
About that...
My understanding (or rather, interpretation) is that going through with the baptism was a variable in Booker's life, albeit a VERY important variable. The Bookers that didn't go through with the baptism became, more or less, what we played as (how else could we be playing as a Booker in his late 30s? Obviously not all Bookers became Comstocks, and the baptism is clearly the branching point). These Bookers were largely variations of broken, depressed men who eventually sold their daughters to the alternate reality versions of themselves—The Bookers who did go through with the baptism and became the Comstocks.
My impression was that the drowning was (either literally or figuratively) a culling at the branching point of all of the Bookers who went through (would go through, will have went through) with the baptism before they can be "reborn" as Comstocks.
Thus, leaving the Bookers who did not go through (will not go through, will not have gone through) with the baptism to lead fairly normal lives, mostly with their daughters, Anna(s). Maybe some of them even get their shit together eventually. Maybe some of them spiral further into self destruction and abuse. But none of them end up as born again mad men who rain fire down on the mountains of men and bring about the end of days. So to speak.
Constants and variables.
minor incident on
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Where does Elizabeth get her power from? An early Lutece Voxophone says (in retrospect) that it's because she's not from this reality.
But neither is Booker. And neither is/was one of the Luteces.
Could he open tears? Is it a matter of developing the power over a period of time?
Or could a grown Anna, who was never taken to Columbia, develop the same powers?
SO MANY QUESTIONS.
(Just had a thought that it may be because part of her was actually left behind in her home reality thanks to the portal cut. If so, that's pretty goddam grim)
Popular theory is the severed finger means she is part of two universes, thus the powers.
I'm pretty sure there's a Voxophone that alludes to this. Yeah, here it is:
Rosalind Lutece: What makes the girl different? I suspect is has less to do with what she is, and rather more with what she is not. A small part of her remains from where she came. It would seem the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge.
Ending Spoillerrrrrsss!
Just to play devil's advocate: does this mean that Comstock could cut off his little toe and toss it in the sewer when he swings by Booker's universe, and end up with the same powers? I'm really not one to nitpick these things, in fact I would be totally fine with the game providing no explanation for Elizabeth's powers, but the one it does semi-provide does open up some questions. Just a thought experiment really.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
Also, goddamnit, this game had the best jump scare ever. That just came out of fucking NOWHERE.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Also, goddamnit, this game had the best jump scare ever. That just came out of fucking NOWHERE.
My friend told me a story about that moment. He said that he 100% knew it was about to happen, absolutely no doubt in his mind. He's not a fan of jump scares. Paused the game, got up, went to the kitchen, got himself a drink. Took a nice little stretch break. Sat back down, got hit with the jump scare, was still startled out of his mind.
I knew something was going to happen but didn't know when. By that point in the game it just completely went out of my mind that there'd be a jump scare and it fucking got me. Got me real good.
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BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
Just finished the Hall of Heroes, I really like the way combat mechanics are opening up. Sky-rails are awesome, game really rewards you for moving around, enemies are aggressive. Combat overall is a nice combo of cover shooting, repositioning, vigor use, tear management and skyhook chin music.
They've learned a lot about encounter design since the first Bioshock, and the whole thing feels like a weird, but satisfying mix of every shooter and shooter/RPG going all the way back to Doom. If you don't like the combat in this game, I'd be curious to know what you do like. Different strokes, I guess.
Of course, the rest of the game is awesome.
Anyway, I have a counter-factual industrial sky-plantation waiting for me,
What I liked most about combat are the sharp string sounds popping out of the music when you kill people. dam dam dam dam dam TCHRING dam dam dam dam. As if the music was dynamically blending around you. Games don't do it often enough.
Alegis on
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
What I liked most about combat are the sharp string sounds popping out of the music when you kill people. dam dam dam dam dam TCHRING dam dam dam dam. As if the music was dynamically blending around you. Games don't do it often enough.
Yes, I loved that. Wind Waker did it really well, too. It's a great effect.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
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Captain ElevenThe last card is a kronkRegistered Userregular
Elizabeth is really an amazing character. When (early-ish game spoiler)
Booker lied to her about going to Paris, I really felt like a complete asshole.
They've learned a lot about encounter design since the first Bioshock, and the whole thing feels like a weird, but satisfying mix of every shooter and shooter/RPG going all the way back to Doom. If you don't like the combat in this game, I'd be curious to know what you do like. Different strokes, I guess.
Well, you are nowhere near the end of the game so you haven't come up to the points that I feel drag. That said, I went back to play the game with a controller and the controls feel much more natural. The only problem is the look sensitivity is weird- it does that acceleration thing where it starts slow and then speeds up so I end up overshooting. Not sure if it's my PC or my controller or what.
Out of curiosity, what platform/interface are you using?
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Re: The Scare (and late game spoilers in general);
It reminded me of a similar thing in Bioshock 1, where you walk up to this desk or whatever, and suddenly the room fogs up. If you turn around, there's a splicer RIGHT FUCKING THERE.
In both cases, I responded by being startled and blowing them the fuck away reflexively.
Sometimes it's good to know which side of "fight or flight" you respond with.
And that whole section of Infinite was pretty traumatizing, listening to a character I've come to enjoy and appreciate for the last 7 or 8 hours being tortured, and having to deal with those bullshit Boys of Silence. I learned to sneak around them, but hearing Elizabeth suffering? Fuck 'em. I was a bit short on ammo and salt wasn't exactly plentiful either, but I had places to go and people kept getting in my fucking way.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Opinions opinions etc etc, but not only did I think the combat was improved, I actually actively enjoyed it, which is something I did not expect from a BioShock game. I played on Normal, and I can see it being less fun on anything higher than that, but I found it to be a blast once I stopped playing too conservatively. Standing back, plinking dudes while ducking in and out of cover? Eh. But keep moving, grab whatever weapons you end up standing next to, get on and off those skylines with reckless abandon, fling vigors around like they're not costing you anything? I loved it. I found myself switching vigors for no reason other than the fun of it, and it was... a lot of fun!
This is another one of those things that I could call a legitimate flaw of the game, much like the fact that so much of the most important puzzle pieces are hidden in easily missed voxophones. The game certainly doesn't force, suggest, or maybe even necessarily reward you for playing like this, but it sure is fun.
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Weapons:
Logically I understand why there were three very similar weapons mg/repeater/burst but gameplay wise I didn't like it. Now there are three random weapon drops for automatic riflemen and you probably only have one upgraded. Also they were so similar, like the reapeter seemed slower than the mg but other than that they felt the same.
PSN: Honkalot
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BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
They've learned a lot about encounter design since the first Bioshock, and the whole thing feels like a weird, but satisfying mix of every shooter and shooter/RPG going all the way back to Doom. If you don't like the combat in this game, I'd be curious to know what you do like. Different strokes, I guess.
Well, you are nowhere near the end of the game so you haven't come up to the points that I feel drag. That said, I went back to play the game with a controller and the controls feel much more natural. The only problem is the look sensitivity is weird- it does that acceleration thing where it starts slow and then speeds up so I end up overshooting. Not sure if it's my PC or my controller or what.
Out of curiosity, what platform/interface are you using?
PC, KBAM. Yeah, the mouse sensitivity was really wonky to start with, but I turned the sensitivity all the way down, turning off mouse acceleration, lowered the DPI on my mouse, and it seems to work just fine. Installing the new Nvidia drivers seems to have helped too. I mean, it not head shot city, but thats also because I'm not an uberleet pro, even if I am playing on hard.
I'm willing to forgive a decent amount of wonkiness if a game puts me in interesting situations, and rewards creativity and movement. If you want to see tedious, watch Helloweens Doom 3 LP, see how long you last. He's terrific, but Doom 3 is a perfect example of a game where everything works fine, but it has no identity whatsoever.
Re: The Scare (and late game spoilers in general);
It reminded me of a similar thing in Bioshock 1, where you walk up to this desk or whatever, and suddenly the room fogs up. If you turn around, there's a splicer RIGHT FUCKING THERE.
In both cases, I responded by being startled and blowing them the fuck away reflexively.
Sometimes it's good to know which side of "fight or flight" you respond with.
And that whole section of Infinite was pretty traumatizing, listening to a character I've come to enjoy and appreciate for the last 7 or 8 hours being tortured, and having to deal with those bullshit Boys of Silence. I learned to sneak around them, but hearing Elizabeth suffering? Fuck 'em. I was a bit short on ammo and salt wasn't exactly plentiful either, but I had places to go and people kept getting in my fucking way.
The one in the first game didn't get me at all, as I'd just played System Shock 2 and they cue you hard for that one. Earlier in that room things get moved around whenever the fog appears, so I was like "oh man I bet a dude is gonna jump out behind me when that happens"
Picked up the shotgun, guy appeared, I immediately hit him with the Fire plasmid and then shot him in the face.
The difference with Infinite is that there's no cue at all, and the Boys of Silence are invincible AND they summon a billion bullet sponge enemies. A good 50% of that scare for me was a OH FUCK NO, NOT AGAIN because I was low on health and bullets and frankly the chainsaw hand isn't as good as the wrench.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
Exactly. And Infinite has no track record of jump scares (or, really, any "scary" bits) to that point (many hours into the game), so it's a total curveball, but it works really, really well.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
Infinite does have a track record of funny(unintentional) things happening, though.
Mainly odd or "glitchy" behavior from Elizabeth. Nothing happened too often, but some of the stuff was kind of funny.
I knew where the code book was on the way to The Hallf of Heroes, so I grabbed it. When we came upon the cipher, I triggered Elizabeth to toss me money at the exact moment she pulled out the book. It looked like she chucked he book at Booker and banked it off his face and caught it.
Also, when looting the sweets shop, I opened a very small, very thin box of almonds. Inside? Cake.
The mental image from that made me chuckle.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
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MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
Infinite does have a track record of funny(unintentional) things happening, though.
Mainly odd or "glitchy" behavior from Elizabeth. Nothing happened too often, but some of the stuff was kind of funny.
I knew where the code book was on the way to The Hallf of Heroes, so I grabbed it. When we came upon the cipher, I triggered Elizabeth to toss me money at the exact moment she pulled out the book. It looked like she chucked he book at Booker and banked it off his face and caught it.
Also, when looting the sweets shop, I opened a very small, very thin box of almonds. Inside? Cake.
The mental image from that made me chuckle.
Inside said box of almonds, I found a can of beans yesterday
Both me and wife were :shock:
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
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Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Just finished Infinite and since I did not find all the voxophones, I am left wondering something.
How do those vigors actually work? In the first two Bioshocks, the explanation of plasmids is kinda bullshit, but they're so important to the plot and the decay of Rapture that I'm willing to let it slide. But in Infinite? You drink a potion and suddenly you can toss people about? Doesn't make sense. And the impact of these products on society seems kinda low.
I get the feeling they were simply there because Bioshock 1&2 had them and nothing more. Which would be disappointing if that's the case. Not that I'm asking for a repeat of the Splicer plot, but some integration into the storyline other than "vigors exist" would've been nice.
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MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
Imagine snake oil salesmen, except they had snake oil that worked as intended. That's kind of my take on it, however, there is a pretty significant omission of their importance other than some guy who designed them. In Bioshock 1 they were clearly described as something amazing, the byproduct of "unfettered minds" and whatnot, in this one, they're more toys than anything. They're just seen as a given by the townsfolk and nothing that impressive.
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
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Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Just finished Infinite and since I did not find all the voxophones, I am left wondering something.
How do those vigors actually work? In the first two Bioshocks, the explanation of plasmids is kinda bullshit, but they're so important to the plot and the decay of Rapture that I'm willing to let it slide. But in Infinite? You drink a potion and suddenly you can toss people about? Doesn't make sense. And the impact of these products on society seems kinda low.
I get the feeling they were simply there because Bioshock 1&2 had them and nothing more. Which would be disappointing if that's the case. Not that I'm asking for a repeat of the Splicer plot, but some integration into the storyline other than "vigors exist" would've been nice.
Given the tech that seems to guide everything else, I'm guessing it does horrible, horrible things to an alternate reality version of you (burning your flesh off, growing electric tumors in your hands, etc), and leeches the powers into this reality.
Via Science.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
Just finished Infinite and since I did not find all the voxophones, I am left wondering something.
How do those vigors actually work? In the first two Bioshocks, the explanation of plasmids is kinda bullshit, but they're so important to the plot and the decay of Rapture that I'm willing to let it slide. But in Infinite? You drink a potion and suddenly you can toss people about? Doesn't make sense. And the impact of these products on society seems kinda low.
I get the feeling they were simply there because Bioshock 1&2 had them and nothing more. Which would be disappointing if that's the case. Not that I'm asking for a repeat of the Splicer plot, but some integration into the storyline other than "vigors exist" would've been nice.
Given the tech that seems to guide everything else, I'm guessing it does horrible, horrible things to an alternate reality version of you (burning your flesh off, growing electric tumors in your hands, etc), and leeches the powers into this reality.
Via Science.
Yeah, the two prevailing theories are that they're either breaching to an alternate universe version of you where you have unspeakable powers/mutations, or that they ARE Plasmids, of a sort, but improved upon/fiddled with, just like the Handymen were made from Big Daddies.
I actually think that the parallel universe theory is more thematic, but, for the sake of argument/theorizing, let's imagine that they are, in fact Plasmid variants.
"Yeah but why isn't half the population fucking psychotic if they're based on Plasmids?"
A Theory:
> As an ingested compound, they're probably not permanent; or at least, the ones you drink aren't. The game seems to take about fifteen hours and it's actually reasonable to assume that's 15 hours of real-time in the game. When would Booker or Elizabeth sleep? The commercial versions of Vigors probably wear off in 24 hours as they get digested, unlike Plasmids, which fundamentally alter your DNA.
> Rapture was a crazy Objectivist society with no regulation. Columbia, as a theocracy, is in fact highly regulated. This means that should someone have gotten addicted to Vigors, they were probably, er, dealt with. This also suggests that most of the vigors that'd be really dangerous in the hands of civvies are, well, kept mostly out of the hands of civvies. Note that at the carnival, un-upgraded Possession and Bucking Bronco are the main ones around, and the unupgraded versions of those are fairly harmless in normal settings. Woo, you can float things / make machines give you money, you hooligan.
> This actually explains why you meet very few enemies with Vigor use, unlike Rapture, and that the enemies who do use Vigors are, in fact, batshit fucking insane, to a man. The crow guys? Fucking nuts. What's his face, your old friend with the lightning? Fucking nuts. The firemen? Fucking nuts. This suggests either actual plasmid-like modification (in the case of firemen and crows) or overdosing (lightning guy).
> This in turn might mean that the general population is actually well-educated on the potential side effects of Vigor overdose, hence why even the Vox doesn't seem to use them. The Vox have seen those crow-dudes, those guys are fucking crazy. Also crows to them would be a symbol of TEH MAN.
A different theory:
> Vigor-using enemies are actually plasmid-modified. The vigors YOU use are not only temporary as mentioned, but instead of modifying you, they're pulling through an alternate universe universe of you where you were the one who was plasmid-modified. So, a combination of the two theories. This is safer than being directly modified by a plasmid. Overuse can actually make the alternate-universe you INTO you, hence, again, why few normal enemies seem to use them.
And finally, a meta-theory:
I actually think that Vigors were originally meant to be one time use fire-and-forget items, and I think some of the early trailers suggest this. They weren't going to permanently modify you like Plasmids, but rather you'd find bottles much like you'd find weapons. Chug, fire, and done. This actually makes more sense given the way enemies work (everybody who uses a Vigor against you is a nutcase) and the way normal Columbians seem to regard them as toys. They're parlor tricks. Parlor tricks with the potential to be weaponized if taken in large doses.
I dunno I'm just throwing ideas at the wall here.
*edit* It's times like this that I wish I'd grabbed the username TealDeer instead of making this account when I was an angsty teen and going for Lucid Seraph because I thought it sounded mysterious or something. TL;DR really fits me better
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
Eh? I thought the PC had become the platform to play multi platform releases on these days. At least for single player games.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
Eh? I thought the PC had become the platform to play multi platform releases on these days. At least for single player games.
Wildly varies from game to game, depending on the quality of the "port". The fact that things are ported to PC rather than the other way around is the reason why this is the case. Even a half-hearted job is usually enough to make PC the best platform to play on, but when companies drop the ball, they really drop the ball. Although I guess to be honest, even a horrible shitty PC port like Borderlands 1 is still preferable to me over a console version so maybe my point is irrelevant.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
Eh? I thought the PC had become the platform to play multi platform releases on these days. At least for single player games.
It's a bit expensive, both in terms of design resources and programmer time, to create legitimately good PC menus, controls, etc.
And when games intend to get a huge chunk of their revenue from PS3 and 360, they really just don't even try to develop a legitimately good PC port these days. They build everything from the ground up to be good within the constraints of an XBox controller, then at best they do a less-than-awful job of converting those button inputs and menus into KBAM.
At least speaking for myself, I can't think of a single blockbuster multi-platform game in the last 4 years that didn't have mediocre UI for PC. Even Skyrim, for example, had really awful mouse hitboxes in their made-for-console inventory menus. Frustrating!
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
Eh? I thought the PC had become the platform to play multi platform releases on these days. At least for single player games.
It's a bit expensive, both in terms of design resources and programmer time, to create legitimately good PC menus, controls, etc.
And when games intend to get a huge chunk of their revenue from PS3 and 360, they really just don't even try to develop a legitimately good PC port these days. They build everything from the ground up to be good within the constraints of an XBox controller, then at best they do a less-than-awful job of converting those button inputs and menus into KBAM.
At least speaking for myself, I can't think of a single blockbuster multi-platform game in the last 4 years that didn't have mediocre UI for PC. Even Skyrim, for example, had really awful mouse hitboxes in their made-for-console inventory menus. Frustrating!
Its not just the development costs, its also the cost to maintain. Its hard enough to keep one version of a UI system bug free.
}
"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!".
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Yeah, it annoyed me quite a bit in things like the gear change menu and vending machines. Took me out of the game as I realized the controller limitations.
Thanks again btw for the game gift! It was thoroughly quite the ride, I'm glad I got to play it now and partake in the discussions than wait for the bargain bin as I'd probably have done otherwise.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Rambling Theory on the weapon limits:
I was actually thinking about this last night. So, through the game, you can only hold two weapons, but you can flip between all your vigors. Seems an odd choice, but then it suddenly made sense to me. This is a game that spends a lot of time dealing with the themes of choice and regret; the weapon limitation is just another facet of it. Booker is a man on a mission due largely to his regret over the choices he's made (or at least, in his head he is), and imposing a small limit on the weapons you carry causes the player to frequently make similar choices, albeit on a smaller scale. How many times did you trade your sniper for an RPG, only to wish you had the sniper back a short time later?
On the other hand (literally), you can use any Vigor you've collected at any time. Vigors are basically MAGIC!, and like all MAGIC!, they don't have to follow the rules of the world. Just like Elizabeth; Chen Lin is dead? Let's just use MAGIC! to circumvent the normal order of things.
You can very neatly tie each back to Booker, a man who is, after all, just a man, and defined and haunted by the choices he must make, or to Elizabeth can disrupt the natural order of things and for whom no choice has permanent consequence.
The weapon limit feels weird but also kinda forces you to play more aggressive because you know you have an ammo pool waiting for a gun that's just OVER THERE if you push forwards.
I think it feels awkward considering Vigours are on full selection but it works for the gameplay even if I feel having a 3-4 weapon limit would have being better.
... I liked the limited weapon selection, actually, it made more sense than somehow carting around a grenade launcher, a crossbow, a shotgun, a machine gun, a pistol, and a wrench, all at the same time.
I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Rambling Theory on the weapon limits:
I was actually thinking about this last night. So, through the game, you can only hold two weapons, but you can flip between all your vigors. Seems an odd choice, but then it suddenly made sense to me. This is a game that spends a lot of time dealing with the themes of choice and regret; the weapon limitation is just another facet of it. Booker is a man on a mission due largely to his regret over the choices he's made (or at least, in his head he is), and imposing a small limit on the weapons you carry causes the player to frequently make similar choices, albeit on a smaller scale. How many times did you trade your sniper for an RPG, only to wish you had the sniper back a short time later?
On the other hand (literally), you can use any Vigor you've collected at any time. Vigors are basically MAGIC!, and like all MAGIC!, they don't have to follow the rules of the world. Just like Elizabeth; Chen Lin is dead? Let's just use MAGIC! to circumvent the normal order of things.
You can very neatly tie each back to Booker, a man who is, after all, just a man, and defined and haunted by the choices he must make, or to Elizabeth can disrupt the natural order of things and for whom no choice has permanent consequence.
That's an awesome view of it, personally, I'm more utilitarian:
the weapons are rather large and bulky. I thought it was pretty silly that you carried around a metric ton of metal with you towards the end game. Sure, you're a Big Daddy, but how goldurn big are your pockets to fit a flamethrower, rocket launcher, crossbow, tommy gun, etc.? This is very simple, I find it very reasonable that you can have a Carbine in hand, and a Shotgun slung around the back. It can be argued that you can also holster a pistol to your waist, but you also got that Sky Hook already taking up space. There is a lot of hardware on your character at any given time. Having two weapons makes a lot of sense from a physical realism perspective on a giant floating city, which already streches the limits of what is theorhetically possible. Also it keeps the pace of battle vigorous, as your emptying out a gun, throwing it to the floor, picking up another one and just going through that way. I tend to Occam's Razor a lot of things, though :P
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
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I do want to go on record as feeling that this game is very console-port-ish. The weapon limit, lack of inventory etc. I dunno, it just rubbed me up wrong. Its a great one but a port imo nonetheless.
Rambling Theory on the weapon limits:
I was actually thinking about this last night. So, through the game, you can only hold two weapons, but you can flip between all your vigors. Seems an odd choice, but then it suddenly made sense to me. This is a game that spends a lot of time dealing with the themes of choice and regret; the weapon limitation is just another facet of it. Booker is a man on a mission due largely to his regret over the choices he's made (or at least, in his head he is), and imposing a small limit on the weapons you carry causes the player to frequently make similar choices, albeit on a smaller scale. How many times did you trade your sniper for an RPG, only to wish you had the sniper back a short time later?
On the other hand (literally), you can use any Vigor you've collected at any time. Vigors are basically MAGIC!, and like all MAGIC!, they don't have to follow the rules of the world. Just like Elizabeth; Chen Lin is dead? Let's just use MAGIC! to circumvent the normal order of things.
You can very neatly tie each back to Booker, a man who is, after all, just a man, and defined and haunted by the choices he must make, or to Elizabeth can disrupt the natural order of things and for whom no choice has permanent consequence.
That's an awesome view of it, personally, I'm more utilitarian:
the weapons are rather large and bulky. I thought it was pretty silly that you carried around a metric ton of metal with you towards the end game. Sure, you're a Big Daddy, but how goldurn big are your pockets to fit a flamethrower, rocket launcher, crossbow, tommy gun, etc.? This is very simple, I find it very reasonable that you can have a Carbine in hand, and a Shotgun slung around the back. It can be argued that you can also holster a pistol to your waist, but you also got that Sky Hook already taking up space. There is a lot of hardware on your character at any given time. Having two weapons makes a lot of sense from a physical realism perspective on a giant floating city, which already streches the limits of what is theorhetically possible. Also it keeps the pace of battle vigorous, as your emptying out a gun, throwing it to the floor, picking up another one and just going through that way. I tend to Occam's Razor a lot of things, though :P
Whereas I think there are weapon limits
since why would you ever need anything but the Carbine and the Handcannon. Once I got those I never dropped them for the rest of the game and never really had ammo issues. Incredibly powerful.
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Post credits we see a Booker from a branch that never went to the baptism - those are the only Booker's that now exist, and Comstock will never be. At least some of the now existing Booker's would have Anna still and I think the post credits allude to her being there.
Of course, this means that Elizabeth can no longer exist. You see her pop out of existence towards the end of that scene in the river, as the camera pulls back.
This is a paradox, as you say. There is now an uncaused event -- the drowning of the Prime Dewitt. One school of thought would say that such events are impossible; another would say that it doesn't matter why an event happens, only that it happens. A girl appeared from thin air in 1890 and drowned a man named Dewitt. It doesn't matter where she came from, it only matters that she was there, and that it happened.
Huh, that is really interesting. I don't think that it's really true, but I'll pretend that it is.
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About that...
My impression was that the drowning was (either literally or figuratively) a culling at the branching point of all of the Bookers who went through (would go through, will have went through) with the baptism before they can be "reborn" as Comstocks.
Thus, leaving the Bookers who did not go through (will not go through, will not have gone through) with the baptism to lead fairly normal lives, mostly with their daughters, Anna(s). Maybe some of them even get their shit together eventually. Maybe some of them spiral further into self destruction and abuse. But none of them end up as born again mad men who rain fire down on the mountains of men and bring about the end of days. So to speak.
Constants and variables.
Ending Spoillerrrrrsss!
My friend told me a story about that moment. He said that he 100% knew it was about to happen, absolutely no doubt in his mind. He's not a fan of jump scares. Paused the game, got up, went to the kitchen, got himself a drink. Took a nice little stretch break. Sat back down, got hit with the jump scare, was still startled out of his mind.
They've learned a lot about encounter design since the first Bioshock, and the whole thing feels like a weird, but satisfying mix of every shooter and shooter/RPG going all the way back to Doom. If you don't like the combat in this game, I'd be curious to know what you do like. Different strokes, I guess.
Of course, the rest of the game is awesome.
Anyway, I have a counter-factual industrial sky-plantation waiting for me,
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
Yes, I loved that. Wind Waker did it really well, too. It's a great effect.
Well, you are nowhere near the end of the game so you haven't come up to the points that I feel drag. That said, I went back to play the game with a controller and the controls feel much more natural. The only problem is the look sensitivity is weird- it does that acceleration thing where it starts slow and then speeds up so I end up overshooting. Not sure if it's my PC or my controller or what.
Out of curiosity, what platform/interface are you using?
In both cases, I responded by being startled and blowing them the fuck away reflexively.
Sometimes it's good to know which side of "fight or flight" you respond with.
And that whole section of Infinite was pretty traumatizing, listening to a character I've come to enjoy and appreciate for the last 7 or 8 hours being tortured, and having to deal with those bullshit Boys of Silence. I learned to sneak around them, but hearing Elizabeth suffering? Fuck 'em. I was a bit short on ammo and salt wasn't exactly plentiful either, but I had places to go and people kept getting in my fucking way.
This is another one of those things that I could call a legitimate flaw of the game, much like the fact that so much of the most important puzzle pieces are hidden in easily missed voxophones. The game certainly doesn't force, suggest, or maybe even necessarily reward you for playing like this, but it sure is fun.
Edit: Also make sure you turn off mouse acceleration, and try out the fix for mouse sensitivity on this page here. I found the default settings to either be way too quick or way too slow, the fix on this page gives you some finer control on the low end. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/27/bioshock-infinite-tweaks-let-you-skip-intro-videos-increase-fov-and-adjust-sensitivity/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0
PC, KBAM. Yeah, the mouse sensitivity was really wonky to start with, but I turned the sensitivity all the way down, turning off mouse acceleration, lowered the DPI on my mouse, and it seems to work just fine. Installing the new Nvidia drivers seems to have helped too. I mean, it not head shot city, but thats also because I'm not an uberleet pro, even if I am playing on hard.
I'm willing to forgive a decent amount of wonkiness if a game puts me in interesting situations, and rewards creativity and movement. If you want to see tedious, watch Helloweens Doom 3 LP, see how long you last. He's terrific, but Doom 3 is a perfect example of a game where everything works fine, but it has no identity whatsoever.
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
Picked up the shotgun, guy appeared, I immediately hit him with the Fire plasmid and then shot him in the face.
The difference with Infinite is that there's no cue at all, and the Boys of Silence are invincible AND they summon a billion bullet sponge enemies. A good 50% of that scare for me was a OH FUCK NO, NOT AGAIN because I was low on health and bullets and frankly the chainsaw hand isn't as good as the wrench.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Mainly odd or "glitchy" behavior from Elizabeth. Nothing happened too often, but some of the stuff was kind of funny.
I knew where the code book was on the way to The Hallf of Heroes, so I grabbed it. When we came upon the cipher, I triggered Elizabeth to toss me money at the exact moment she pulled out the book. It looked like she chucked he book at Booker and banked it off his face and caught it.
Also, when looting the sweets shop, I opened a very small, very thin box of almonds. Inside? Cake.
The mental image from that made me chuckle.
Inside said box of almonds, I found a can of beans yesterday
Both me and wife were :shock:
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
How do those vigors actually work? In the first two Bioshocks, the explanation of plasmids is kinda bullshit, but they're so important to the plot and the decay of Rapture that I'm willing to let it slide. But in Infinite? You drink a potion and suddenly you can toss people about? Doesn't make sense. And the impact of these products on society seems kinda low.
I get the feeling they were simply there because Bioshock 1&2 had them and nothing more. Which would be disappointing if that's the case. Not that I'm asking for a repeat of the Splicer plot, but some integration into the storyline other than "vigors exist" would've been nice.
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
Via Science.
Big multi-console games have habitually felt bad on PCs for a long time now.
I know this is a side-point to yours, but I just bite the bullet and play with an xbox controller these days.
I actually think that the parallel universe theory is more thematic, but, for the sake of argument/theorizing, let's imagine that they are, in fact Plasmid variants.
"Yeah but why isn't half the population fucking psychotic if they're based on Plasmids?"
A Theory:
> As an ingested compound, they're probably not permanent; or at least, the ones you drink aren't. The game seems to take about fifteen hours and it's actually reasonable to assume that's 15 hours of real-time in the game. When would Booker or Elizabeth sleep? The commercial versions of Vigors probably wear off in 24 hours as they get digested, unlike Plasmids, which fundamentally alter your DNA.
> Rapture was a crazy Objectivist society with no regulation. Columbia, as a theocracy, is in fact highly regulated. This means that should someone have gotten addicted to Vigors, they were probably, er, dealt with. This also suggests that most of the vigors that'd be really dangerous in the hands of civvies are, well, kept mostly out of the hands of civvies. Note that at the carnival, un-upgraded Possession and Bucking Bronco are the main ones around, and the unupgraded versions of those are fairly harmless in normal settings. Woo, you can float things / make machines give you money, you hooligan.
> This actually explains why you meet very few enemies with Vigor use, unlike Rapture, and that the enemies who do use Vigors are, in fact, batshit fucking insane, to a man. The crow guys? Fucking nuts. What's his face, your old friend with the lightning? Fucking nuts. The firemen? Fucking nuts. This suggests either actual plasmid-like modification (in the case of firemen and crows) or overdosing (lightning guy).
> This in turn might mean that the general population is actually well-educated on the potential side effects of Vigor overdose, hence why even the Vox doesn't seem to use them. The Vox have seen those crow-dudes, those guys are fucking crazy. Also crows to them would be a symbol of TEH MAN.
A different theory:
> Vigor-using enemies are actually plasmid-modified. The vigors YOU use are not only temporary as mentioned, but instead of modifying you, they're pulling through an alternate universe universe of you where you were the one who was plasmid-modified. So, a combination of the two theories. This is safer than being directly modified by a plasmid. Overuse can actually make the alternate-universe you INTO you, hence, again, why few normal enemies seem to use them.
And finally, a meta-theory:
I actually think that Vigors were originally meant to be one time use fire-and-forget items, and I think some of the early trailers suggest this. They weren't going to permanently modify you like Plasmids, but rather you'd find bottles much like you'd find weapons. Chug, fire, and done. This actually makes more sense given the way enemies work (everybody who uses a Vigor against you is a nutcase) and the way normal Columbians seem to regard them as toys. They're parlor tricks. Parlor tricks with the potential to be weaponized if taken in large doses.
I dunno I'm just throwing ideas at the wall here.
*edit* It's times like this that I wish I'd grabbed the username TealDeer instead of making this account when I was an angsty teen and going for Lucid Seraph because I thought it sounded mysterious or something. TL;DR really fits me better
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
It's super spoiler heavy, so don't watch it till you've beaten the game.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/bioshock-infinite-roundtable
Eh? I thought the PC had become the platform to play multi platform releases on these days. At least for single player games.
Wildly varies from game to game, depending on the quality of the "port". The fact that things are ported to PC rather than the other way around is the reason why this is the case. Even a half-hearted job is usually enough to make PC the best platform to play on, but when companies drop the ball, they really drop the ball. Although I guess to be honest, even a horrible shitty PC port like Borderlands 1 is still preferable to me over a console version so maybe my point is irrelevant.
It's a bit expensive, both in terms of design resources and programmer time, to create legitimately good PC menus, controls, etc.
And when games intend to get a huge chunk of their revenue from PS3 and 360, they really just don't even try to develop a legitimately good PC port these days. They build everything from the ground up to be good within the constraints of an XBox controller, then at best they do a less-than-awful job of converting those button inputs and menus into KBAM.
At least speaking for myself, I can't think of a single blockbuster multi-platform game in the last 4 years that didn't have mediocre UI for PC. Even Skyrim, for example, had really awful mouse hitboxes in their made-for-console inventory menus. Frustrating!
Its not just the development costs, its also the cost to maintain. Its hard enough to keep one version of a UI system bug free.
"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!".
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Thanks again btw for the game gift! It was thoroughly quite the ride, I'm glad I got to play it now and partake in the discussions than wait for the bargain bin as I'd probably have done otherwise.
Rambling Theory on the weapon limits:
On the other hand (literally), you can use any Vigor you've collected at any time. Vigors are basically MAGIC!, and like all MAGIC!, they don't have to follow the rules of the world. Just like Elizabeth; Chen Lin is dead? Let's just use MAGIC! to circumvent the normal order of things.
You can very neatly tie each back to Booker, a man who is, after all, just a man, and defined and haunted by the choices he must make, or to Elizabeth can disrupt the natural order of things and for whom no choice has permanent consequence.
I think it feels awkward considering Vigours are on full selection but it works for the gameplay even if I feel having a 3-4 weapon limit would have being better.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
That's an awesome view of it, personally, I'm more utilitarian:
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
Whereas I think there are weapon limits