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I'm a couple hours in and they haven't really said anything except that her death was linked to the Boxers somehow. However, Booker mentions that his wife died in childbirth. It could possibly be the same situation.
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Mar 26, 2013 01:01
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Ofaloaf posted:I'm unlikely to ever get the game soon enough to avoid all the spoilers, and I like spoilers anyways and I'm already in this thread, so might as well ask-- what's the deal with the First Lady? There's screenshots that show portraits of her and there's that aerodrome named after her, so presumably she's dead, but... why? Is her death the cause of Columbia blowing up the Boxers in China? What was her part in the story? She can't have kids which is why Comstock goes and buys Elizabeth from Booker. Mrs Comstock gets mad because she thinks Comstock has been loving the Lutece woman and won't agree to keep up the pretence that Elizabeth is her kid so Comstock kills her to shut her up. I really enjoyed Infinite until it ended. 
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Mar 26, 2013 06:37
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I'm not going to lie, the blatant racist stone the sinner got me pretty hard. When that showed up, I knew I was in for a good time. No I did not try to throw the ball at the couple.
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Mar 26, 2013 08:08
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incoherent posted:I'm not going to lie, the blatant racist stone the sinner got me pretty hard. When that showed up, I knew I was in for a good time. Yeah that made me incredibly angry. On another note, just beat the game, and I'm trying to put the pieces together. It's starting to make sense, but a few bits - I'm putting these in spoiler tags because holy poo poo you guys who are like an hour into the game need to get out of here now. Did lucete create the technology that allows rift travel first, and then use it to do the crazy poo poo they did in the game? I was convinced for a good amount of that game that they were gods or something. Anna was an experiment to give a person these powers(?) Lighthouse, Man, City, guessing that gives this universe a way to tie all the stories together without having them directly affect one another? Edit : Nevermind, finished reading this thread and a few other things online. Ending is still dumb as hell. Ryen Deckard fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 08:20
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The start of this thread pissed me off with all the eye-rolling "I watched a stream and the end is dumb" talk, but I understand that not everyone is going to go through the whole game, even if they should, so apologies if things have mellowed out a little since, but I want to get back to playing the game a second time after the mock review I did a few months ago that left me dying to talk about this game. I hope someone who really adored the game won't sully the attitude of genuine dissection and apathy/anger about what went down, but I'll try to at least talk about things a little before/after GDC. I know this thread will explode in a day or two once people finish things, but for now, it's a neat calm-before-the-storm thing with folks still reeling from the end. Personally, I couldn't get this game out of my head for like a week after it was all done, and if ever there was an NDA that felt like a prison, it was this one, but why would you ever spoil an experience like this (probably why the first page of posts sort of disappointed/annoyed me). Anyhoo: Ryen Deckard posted:Yeah that made me incredibly angry. Sorry if I'm loving up names here, but I'll go off what you used. Lucete, did indeed invent a way of opening the tears. She used them to peer into countless worlds, and eventually found her double -- her "brother" (a male version of her) who also accompanied her through later studies. Re-listen to her logs and it's kinda neat. The Lighthouse bit was just a way to show the whole "Infinte" part of the title. Every time this has happened, Elizabeth is different and feels the connection between her infinite selves. This Booker just gets to watch her kind of piece it together. We have the luxury of seeing things play out as they have a bazillion times, but she finally breaks the loop.. For what it's worth, I don't think she drowns Booker, she just repeats the cycle in that time and he realizes that neither outcome can continue; it will fork and loop ad infinitum and he succumbs to the end of the loop to leave just the last Elizabeth from this game to continue exploring her ability to at least gently caress with tears, though it was the massive number of loops that were destabilizing things to allow stuff like Paris and the music to leak in in the first place, so who knows how this whole universe moves forward after this. The post-roll bit to me seemed to be the first time this new Booker, with the previous timeline broken, could have control and reject the original proposal, but that's purely me.
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Mar 26, 2013 08:45
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SamBishop posted:The start of this thread pissed me off with all the eye-rolling "I watched a stream and the end is dumb" talk, but I understand that not everyone is going to go through the whole game, even if they should, I understand where you're coming from, but there are issues with the ending that are not beholden to any greater sensation that holding the controller in your hand could provide. I had the game spoiled for me by someone, and yes I watched a playthrough of the game through a stream, but I don't think that in any way mitigates or lessens a chief criticism I have which is that the ending of the game largely boils down to a fifteen minute long exposition dump.
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Mar 26, 2013 09:02
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Dan Didio posted:I understand where you're coming from, but there are issues with the ending that are not beholden to any greater sensation that holding the controller in your hand could provide. I had the game spoiled for me by someone, and yes I watched a playthrough of the game through a stream, but I don't think that in any way mitigates or lessens a chief criticism I have which is that the ending of the game largely boils down to a fifteen minute long exposition dump. Did that stream actually listen to all the audio logs scattered? That apparently is where I figured stuff out that makes some of the comments produce so much anger. I hate to insinuate that somehow listening to Elizabeth's comments or finding those logs somehow fixes all the stuff you guys are talking about, but I do think there are more points to be discussed once people have actually gone through the whole game. I do have to ask, though: why experience a game so passively? To me, this is a game that's intensely about the journey, not the outcome -- which is framed in some pretty great context if you do seek out those bits. Again, I understand if you don't want to spend the money yourself, but there's a ton in this game that was clearly designed for some discussion once the game was finished by people that may have found stuff others didn't. You're kinda missing the point in my mind if you just watch it passively. Those issues you have may yet be sort of filled in by people that went a different path and heard/found stuff others haven't yet. For me, the best part of the game after finishing it was talking about it, and for good or ill, at least we're kinda doing that -- but what kills me is that it's happening based on streams of one person's playthrough or a video of the end. It makes my head hurt, but hooooly poo poo do I understand given most video game stories. Is this a thing, though? Do people really fast-forward to the end of movies and then debate how stupid it was? Because even then, that's pretty dumb, and there's sort of the whole you-get-to-play-it aspect that makes the process innately stupider than skipping ahead to the end. Is it a dickish presumption to think people that skip to the end cutscene are the same that skip actual cutscenes? I don't begrudge either group (except to say that perhaps their opinions are a little ill-formed), but I know that devs struggle with the idea of making games where people just straight-up skip the exposition all the time. [edit] This post comes off as really terribly "well you haven't actually played the game yet so..." which wasn't the intent. I just want people to discuss the story after having played through everything, so I apologize. I really, really didn't want that to be the tone, so again, sorry if it came off that way. Everyone should play this game, honestly. It's really fun regardless of the final moments; it's the in-between bits that made me fall in love. SamBishop fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 09:20
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Why experience it passively? I was pretty on the fence about the game as it was and then I had it spoilt for me and was curious about specific aspects of it. All I've really said in this thread is that I thought the ending was dumb when I first had the spoiler revealed for me by some guy in the other thread not using tags and that I think the spasm of exposition at the end of the game is a poor choice; is there some sort of element of the ending that can't be gleaned from a video of it that remedies that complaint? I find that very, very hard to believe. Other people have had issues with the logistics and plot holes, etc. etc. and stuff like that which doesn't interest me that much, but I'm not seeing why all of the criticism was a problem for you, given it's nature. I certainly don't think watching a stream is a valid position to critique the whole game from and I don't think anyone here is doing that, unless I've misssed or forgotten some egregious posts, but I do think there's very genuine flaws which stood out to me in the stream that I saw that can't be mitigated by some element of activity, given the way it's presented and what the flaws are. Without having got to that part of the game myself, I can't really see anything of that specific stretch of the ending which could possibly remedy the fact that it is just a prolonged, passive exposition dump by being actively played. EDIT: I don't think you should apologize. 'Well, you haven't actually played the game yet...' is a perfectly acceptable response to criticism, I suppose really I'm just wondering if you felt there was anything to that specific very, very end sequence which positively affected your opinion of it and wouldn't be possible to glean from a video or stream or something like that.
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Mar 26, 2013 09:33
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I personally didn't really care about the game so watched the ending when i happened to come across a link. It made so little sense to me though that now i'm sort of interested in it because i want to straighten it out for my own satisfaction. I'm actually interested in if/how they resolve all those apparent plot holes earlier in the game because i'm interested in how they managed to do so without dropping huge hints about the twist(s). Not enough to pay £25 though, i'm quite happy to just wait for someone in this thread to explain it because the gameplay doesn't look too interesting from the preview footage i've seen.
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Mar 26, 2013 09:34
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Dan Didio posted:Why experience it passively? I was pretty on the fence about the game as it was and then I had it spoilt for me and was curious about specific aspects of it. I'm really bummed (just now realizing where you're from by way of your text, that sounds like a far more hilarious reaction) that some dick spoiled things, but I will say that BioShock Infinite is absolutely about the experience and the journey rather than the end notes. That won't excuse any of those plot holes people are finding, but it does at least pave them over a little; this is a game that really dotes on the tiny moments to make the whole a much more enriching... ugh, I'm using "experience" again, but I swear it means something here. For one, I think Elizabeth will probably go down in history as the best so-called "protective" asset you'll see in games until she's beaten, which will take some doing. There's so much in the random banter, in the stuff that's just give-and-take about the dialogue. You really grow to love the characters, so that when the final moments play out, they have a context (which to me is a huge part of what makes this game), sure, but they also have some measure of gravity and.. eh, "subtext" isn't the right word, but the journey colors the dialogue a little if you've spent time just loving around; there's some neat dialogue/moments that make this feel like more than another game. Honestly, though, my comments about stream-watching and such came from early in the thread where people were trying to extrapolate from end-game videos and stuff, and so much of this game (as it was in the other BioShocks or the text logs in the other Shocks) really helps thicken the whole ongoing narrative (and yes, in this case that word really does fit). So much of this game for me was in the details, mostly because so many games just shove it in your face. All that said, you should totally experience the stuff that leads up to that info dump. It's not that the game doesn't say much until then, it's that the exposition expands on and really helps a lot of what you might have formed in your head along the way. Knowing the end before you get there absolutely fucks up the game because at many stops you think you might have figured it out either based on previous BioShock games or little bits they scatter (again, mostly through the recordings). It's sort of fun to think you know what's up, only to have that totally invalidated by the ongoing storyline. To me, it's like a smarter horror movie that zigs when you think it might zag just because of familiarity. Maybe it's just a beat, but when so many things you watch are so clearly going to follow a path, it's fun when it forks -- pun intended. I genuinely do think the whole "well, you just don't know because you haven't played it" approach is unfair and rude because, at least as of our talking about the game, there's nobody out there that has likely finished the game outside of press folk or testers or what have you. It's been out here in my time zone for less than two hours and even with time zones as they are, it's a pretty meaty game if you go exploring. For me to throw down the "I've played it and you haven't, so meeeeh" attitude isn't just elitist and dickish, it defeats conversation and I never, ever want to be that guy. I hate that guy, and he is the ruin of fun and conversation, so I always try to stay away from that, which can be tough if you get early access to a game and the embargo is up. So, again, sorry if I ever come off that way. I just really dig the game, and can't wait until people start throwing around ideas once they finish, because this was a game that was clearly made to evoke at least some kind of discussion -- if not about how they got through things, than at least what they pieced together at the end, which I promise is more than that final 15 minutes. SamBishop fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 10:00
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I think that's all perfectly fine, and if your concerns are about people extrapolating or because you want to talk about the breadth of the game as an entirety then I think being disheartened (I guess) at some of the conversation in this thread is perfectly fair. I'm just mostly interested in a few specific moments of the entirety that I've had spoiled and how that difference helps or hinders them, really. I think kind of where I got lost a bit is because from what I saw, that particular ending piece; those last ten or fifteen minutes or so, seemed really passive and you described stream-watching as a passive activity. I'm sure those segments are probably improved on a variety of levels by having them come as the culmination of a much-broader game, I just wasn't really sure if my very specific criticism of that ending would really be influenced by playing it as opposed to watching it. I'm not stoked that a guy spoiled it for me either, but I get the impression I'll probably enjoy the story on it's own merits, or not enjoy it whichever the case may be, by playing through it myself.
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Mar 26, 2013 10:10
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Dan Didio posted:Why experience it passively? I was pretty on the fence about the game as it was and then I had it spoilt for me and was curious about specific aspects of it. I just finished the game and can say for absolute certain that the entire plot is actually extremely well foreshadowed. Almost nothing that happens in the end is out of left field when put together with the whole game leading up, and it's handled extremely artistically. The baptism/drowning theme is repeated so many times that if you didn't catch onto there being something there you were doing it wrong. In fact, at the half-way point I correctly managed to guess that Booker was Elizabeth's father, and even earlier than that I actually thought for a second that it was possible that Booker was Comstock but dismissed it in my mind as too unlikely. I definitely still have questions, though: 1. Why does Comstock know the future? All the other "omnipotent" characters were displaced to a different dimension. We don't really know anything about Comstock's life history, so we don't have any idea what happened between the baptism and the events of the game and apparently it was a hell of a lot (what with the entire existence of Columbia, etc). Was it just through his use of the powers he was harvesting from Elizabeth? 2. Was songbird another Booker? At one point Lucete shows you a picture relating to the songbird and I didn't see it long enough to be able to tell if it was a diagram showing someone who looked like Comstock under the suit. It would make sense both with songbird's drive to protect Elizabeth and the way that the songbird dies (he is drowned by Elizabeth while she comforts him). 3. Is it meant to be implied that Rapture and the Jack/Andrew Ryan relationship is a mutant spawn off of the Booker loop? It makes sense if you imagine that so many loops were propogated that they began having subtle changes in a direction and just over time got twisted into an entirely different yet strangely similar set of events. This would have to imply that the Bioshock 1 story involves dimension crossing that we didn't know about, unless maybe that timeline got thrown off as a dead end. The similarities between Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite are huge and if you pay attention most of the characters in Bioshock have a direct correlate in Bioshock Infinite.
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Mar 26, 2013 11:33
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To SamBishop: I get what you are saying regarding experiencing the game passively but the ending is EXTREMELY passive. You just sit there, move forward, get more info. Move forward. It's really a bad way to express it. I like the idea of the ending. I watched the stream last week, but ow that I've played the game itself it's even more disappointing. Elizabeth loses all her character and turns into a plot robot right at the end. She doesn't react to discovering everything at all. Booker's her dad who sold her to Comstock? No reaction at all. That's really, really sloppy. It's the same problem the first Bioshock had: it thinks it has a heart but drops it at the most important part. And the more I think about the ending the more holes I find: I don't think it's internally consistent at all. I'm still unclear as to when the baptism takes place compared to Booker selling Anna. If he sells Anna before getting baptized, then the loop couldn't have started (but I'd be willing to buy "the whole thing is a paradox" explanation). If it's after, then the ending effectively means everyone dies and the post credits scene makes even less sense. It also creates another loop: Elizabeth erases herself from existence. Which means she never comes back to stop Comstock. which means Comstock IS created. Which means she IS sold to him, etc. Also, if Elizabeth can meddle with the baptism event, why can't she just prevent Booker from selling her to Lutece? There are also other inconsistencies. You see the markings for the coin toss, which seems to imply the same thing always happens. But Elizabeth directly tells you this isn't the case (a million million worlds, all slightly or largely different), and you see a different future in the game itself.
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Mar 26, 2013 12:08
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Was the initial choice of bird or cage broche actually important, or was it just hinting stuff? I gotta say though, that I like Bioshock Infinite sticking to one ending - the trend with games having multiple endings is a pet peeve of mine. If they really want to leave it open, do a cliffhanger like Chapterhouse of Dune and leave it fully open. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 18:31
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Winky posted:1. Why does Comstock know the future? All the other "omnipotent" characters were displaced to a different dimension. We don't really know anything about Comstock's life history, so we don't have any idea what happened between the baptism and the events of the game and apparently it was a hell of a lot (what with the entire existence of Columbia, etc). Was it just through his use of the powers he was harvesting from Elizabeth? 1. This all started with Luctene's invention, Comstock probably used those rifts for his predictions. 2. No idea, can't comment on this, and that is such a crazy theory it's probably accurate. Really want to know more about the songbird. 3. Yeah, that's the implication. I like how they explained it to, because having two libertarian paradises both end essentially the same way in the same world not thirty years apart seems super far fetched. Edit : Spite posted:
The baptism was the splitting off point, that's when Comstock/Booker split. Stopping the sale still means there's a Comstock running all of those awful things in Colombia. Ryen Deckard fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 19:25
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I liked Elizabeth's calm demeanor after you destroy the siphon: She's omnipotent. She came to terms with this and what she'd have to do a "long time ago" what with how she perceives all time at once. EDIT: And Elizabeth does explain the coin toss, there's "constants and variables", some things are always different but some things are always the same. And if she just stopped Comstock from stealing baby Anna she would've still had an evil, insane tyrant running around with technology that can cross into alternate universes. Winky fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 19:37
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I just finished the game after having unlocked it early, and context is a fantastic thing. The ending, while an insane, shocking twist that results in a bitter downer of an ending, workss really drat well with the context. There's also some amazing subtlety - the mark of the False Shepard isn't anything but a self-inflicted brand to remind Booker of his never-ending guilt. AD, for Anna Dewitt.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:00
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I'd guess the Bioshock segment is more a wink. This game isn't really a loop - it's a bunch of dimensions that occur simultaneously and interact with each other. And Elizabeth's powers are because she's displaced in time and space, right? I don't recall where this is said. As for constants and variables, sure. But there are some major differences that you see in game. The dimension where Booker abandons Elizabeth and she destroys the world, for example. Maybe the Luteces try different things? As for Elizabeth stopping the sale of Anna: I think Comstock is using her to power the machines. She says this in one part (the lab I think?). So if she isn't there he doesn't have any timewarping powers. I'm still unclear as to when the baptism takes place. Wounded Knee is the very end of 1890. Booker gets his Pinkerton license in 1892. Booker probably sells Elizabeth in 1892 or 1893 and she's like 1. Columbia is founded in mid-1893. Columbia flies into the sky in 1902 after the Boxer rebellion is put down by Comstock. Elizabeth is 20 or 21 in the game. Comstock telling Booker "I know all the things you did, Wounded Knee, gambling, Anna..." is kind of ambiguous. He clearly sees himself as a different (and better) person than Booker. But he includes Wounded Knee, which he was definitely at, with selling Anna, which he may or may not have done. Is there a calendar in the office when Booker sells Anna? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I wouldn't describe the AD band as subtle in any sense. I'm not even sure the ending is supposed to be a downer with the after credits scene. But I'm also not sure it's internally consistent enough to judge.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:15
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Wait second...The Elizabeth in the row boat, the final time we row up to the Lighthouse... HAS A DIFFERENT NECK PENDENT!  I gave her the songbird and THIS one has the loving cage! Edit: But she has the right one after I climb up and she teleports onto the dock. In the final scene itself, she doesn't have any pendent, none of them do. WTF Irrational? BuhamutZeo fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 21:17
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Spite posted:And the more I think about the ending the more holes I find: I don't think it's internally consistent at all. I'm still unclear as to when the baptism takes place compared to Booker selling Anna. If he sells Anna before getting baptized, then the loop couldn't have started (but I'd be willing to buy "the whole thing is a paradox" explanation). If the baptism is the point where Booker and Comstock diverge it must be after. The way I understood it Comstock gets baptised, starts up Columbia, hangs around Lutece's experiments leaving him infertile and uses their SCIENCE to cross over and buy Anna. Booker refuses the baptism and goes on to have Anna, sell her and later gets brought across universes. EDIT: Also dates may not have to line up exactly between universes with all the displaced music and technology that passes through the tears. Remf fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 21:24
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Spite posted:I'd guess the Bioshock segment is more a wink. This game isn't really a loop - it's a bunch of dimensions that occur simultaneously and interact with each other. And Elizabeth's powers are because she's displaced in time and space, right? I don't recall where this is said. I don't know if it's explicitly stated that Elizabeth's powers are for that reason, but it is explicitly stated that the Lucetes' powers are due to the fact that they're displaced. Lucete mentions in an early vox something that gave me the impression that Elizabeth can open up the tears because she's trying to get home or something to that effect. Also, Comstock was only able to get Anna in the first place because of Lucete's invention, which he would still have access to. He'd still be a villain with dimension-hopping powers. EDIT: This is the vox transcript: "What makes the girl different? I suspect it has less to do with what she is, and rather more to do 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." Winky fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 21:27
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Remf posted:If the baptism is the point where Booker and Comstock diverge it must be after. Right, but then the game collapses in on itself. That would mean the baptism is in 1891 or so, and Elizabeth/Anna is never born. Which means the after credits scene (that says it's 1893 from what i recall. the checkpoints mean i can't easily check) can't ever happen. So the game never occurs. You could also argue that means no one will kill Booker before his baptism, so Comstock will be created. And then the game will occur. But if Elizabeth is omnipotent, why would she even bother killing her dad? It could be before though: Booker could sell Anna and that could be his reason to get baptized/not and search for redemption. I seem to remember it saying Anna's mom died in childbirth somewhere, but I don't recall where that was now. That's what I meant when I said I'm not sure the ending is internally consistent. I think it simply doesn't work, unfortunately Hopefully I'm looking at it wrong. @Winky: yeah, that was my thought too - poor Anna just wants to get home. And Paris.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:33
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Well, a way to take it if Anna is born after the baptism is that drowning Booker collapses the whole infinite series of timelines so they can't possibly exist: In any timeline in which Booker would go through with the baptism Elizabeth would also ultimately drown him to prevent it from happening, so it's impossible and can't happen. In no universe can Booker possibly be baptized, so he never is, and he goes on to have Anna but Anna is never taken away from him because there are no timelines in which Comstock exists. This, of course, means that the game couldn't have occurred because the timelines in it wouldn't exist even for an outside observer to view, which is a mindfuck but not necessarily inconsistent because we can just say that the player is witnessing the counterfactual (these are the things that would have happened if they could have happened, explaining why they can't).
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Mar 26, 2013 21:47
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Winky posted:Well, a way to take it if Anna is born after the baptism is that drowning Booker collapses the whole infinite series of timelines so they can't possibly exist: In any timeline in which Booker would go through with the baptism Elizabeth would also ultimately drown him to prevent it from happening, so it's impossible and can't happen. In no universe can Booker possibly be baptized, so he never is, and he goes on to have Anna but Anna is never taken away from him because there are no timelines in which Comstock exists. The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Bioshock Infinite SPOILERS Thread: How you did not just play this game.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:50
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I should note that in the very beginning of the game Lucete does describe it as a "thought experiment".
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Mar 26, 2013 21:57
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I noticed she hits you with a book about quantum physics and this would not leave my head sorry
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Mar 26, 2013 21:59
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Winky posted:Well, a way to take it if Anna is born after the baptism is that drowning Booker collapses the whole infinite series of timelines so they can't possibly exist: In any timeline in which Booker would go through with the baptism Elizabeth would also ultimately drown him to prevent it from happening, so it's impossible and can't happen. In no universe can Booker possibly be baptized, so he never is, and he goes on to have Anna but Anna is never taken away from him because there are no timelines in which Comstock exists. I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel I hate time travel This at least looks to be an improvement on Bioshock's "thirty-second cutscene, smash to title screen" ending.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:59
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Winky posted:Well, a way to take it if Anna is born after the baptism is that drowning Booker collapses the whole infinite series of timelines so they can't possibly exist: In any timeline in which Booker would go through with the baptism Elizabeth would also ultimately drown him to prevent it from happening, so it's impossible and can't happen. In no universe can Booker possibly be baptized, so he never is, and he goes on to have Anna but Anna is never taken away from him because there are no timelines in which Comstock exists. That's true. We're only shown a specific branch of the tree, so to speak: one where Booker goes off to be baptized. The act of that happening also eventually results it in getting destroyed. Personally, I think it's more interesting if the sale happens before the baptism. It provides more interesting motivation for Booker and Comstock, and makes Comstock even more entitled. It has its own mindfuck since the loop would be started by itself in that case.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:02
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I enjoyed the story parts of the game with Booker and Elizabeth adventuring through Columbia more than the crazy timey-wimey stuff at the end, honestly. The universe shifting part halfway through where you're trying to save the weapon-maker was genuinely interesting, but when the game got into the Comstock and post-apocalyptic future stuff it kind of lost me. I don't feel like they used the multiverse concept as well as they could've in this game, there was a lot more potential there. They did do a good job foreshadowing the ending though. Admittedly I was spoiled ahead of time, but there are enough hints for at least some of the stuff to make it seem not like a complete asspull.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:04
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From what was explained earlier with the chart, I thought time travel in this particular case, and the branching universes, weren't retroactively affecting themselves as a loop- it's an ever-growing multiversal tree. By breaking the cycle, you're not undoing everything that's ever happened before, you're cutting the branch you're currently on right off that multiversal tree, preventing it from growing further into more multidimensional occurances of this same situation(or any far-off permutations like Rapture). It's not strict 'time travel' so much as it is 'looping' into another, similar timeline, over and over, further and further away from the original. And then you stop it.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:08
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AlternatePFG posted:I enjoyed the story parts of the game with Booker and Elizabeth adventuring through Columbia more than the crazy timey-wimey stuff at the end, honestly. I think the biggest problem with the ending is really that Elizaeth is the heart of the story. And she's turned into emotionless exposition robot for 15 minutes at the end. She never gives you her thoughts or reactions to any of it. And that's a huge shame, since they do such a good job earlier. I think Levine is more of a writer of the head than the heart if I can borrow a cliche. It's a problem with Bioshock 1 as well. I heard Rhianna Pratchett helped with Infinite. It would be interesting to get the breakdown of who wrote what. Also: Terbulus posted:I noticed she hits you with a book about quantum physics and this would not leave my head And for more time-fuckery, that book wasn't written until 1930. Quantum mechanics itself didn't really exist until the 1920's. Though you could argue that Planck's Law sort of kickstarted it, and that was in 1900 I believe.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:10
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I believe it's said somewhere that Elizabeth is 17, which would put her being born in about 1895 - five whole years after Wounded Knee, and she gets bought sometime during her infancy, and is imprisoned in the Siphon Tower from age 5 onward. What I want to know is why did someone else at the station where you can potentially get your hand stabbed also mistakes Elizabeth for "Anna" when the only one who would logically have ever called her that is Booker.  And yeah, the Elizabeth/Booker branch has been sawn off. It still exists, but can't further mutate/branch off. That doesn't mean that the entire multiversal concept has been pulled up by the roots, so to speak. There's still always a man, always a lighthouse, and always a city.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:10
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Monathin posted:I believe it's said somewhere that Elizabeth is 17, which would put her being born in about 1895 - five whole years after Wounded Knee, and she gets bought sometime during her infancy, and is imprisoned in the Siphon Tower from age 5 onward. No, she's at least 20. Elizabeth says this at the end - "You sat in your office for 20 years until a man came and offered you a chance at redemption: a chance we could be together" She has to be born in 1891 or 1892, I think. Also Booker's birthday is like 1875 which means he's 15 at Wounded Knee. I wonder if that's a mistake in the loading screen art. Comstock is way too old, but that can be attributed to exposure to SCIENCE, I think. And I took the ending to mean there is no longer a man, lighthouse and city - at least as it relates to Booker. I don't think it's a loop like that image showed; it's a bunch of things proceeding simultaneously.
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Mar 26, 2013 22:20
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Does it really matter how old Elizabeth was when she was taken by Comstock and/or when the Luteces came back for Booker? Any timeline inconsistency between those events can be explained by time-travel, as Comstock didn't necessarily have to steal Anna from the same point in time nor did Booker have to travel to Columbia at the same point in time. EDIT: Booker's birthday is 187X (the X is covered over), and it looks to me like it's actually 1871, which would make him 19 at Wounded Knee and make perfect sense. Winky fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 22:46
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People not liking time travel stuff in narrative is fair enough, but people bitching about the ending without having played the game are just chumps. I really like the ending, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's specifically addressed to the player as opposed to chumpy chumperson reading what happens on wikipedia. For me, at least, it was a satisfying conclusion in purely narrative terms but what I really loved about it was the way it reflects on narrative driven video games. It's good because it makes you think about the 9-10 hours you've just spent playing the game. All the stuff about choice and outcomes - I really liked the part near the ending where Elizabeth comments on how you have to hand over the baby to proceed, and that you can by all means just wait there forever if you want - in fact that whole end sequence just seems to be a big reflection on the (quite narrow) boundries and possibilities of games. That bit with all the lighthouses surrounding alludes to other versions of the game running at the same point in the story, and the jump to Rapture reinforces this notion. There's a lot of subtext like this throughout the ending. Then there's the way it ties into things like the choices you make during the game - choosing between the cage or the bird, for example, presents two alternate worlds both in the text and in the actual code of the game. When you're asked to flip a coin by the twins, it comes up heads, which according to the scoreboard its done tens of times in a row. Obviously, it's going to come up heads because that's what the game is programmed to do. just like the two characters trying again and again and getting the same result, so would the player if they replayed that scene. The self-reflexivity of it all isn't too sophisticated - this isn't the ulysses of games, it wears its allusions on its sleeve - but it's a great deal more sophisticated than just about anything else I can think of. I can't remember where I heard it, but there was an interview with Paul Barnett from Mythic who said that all these so-called 'deep' games are kind of awkward and juvenile, in that 'meaning' in games is kind of going through that embarrasing teenage poetry phase. At the very least, Infinite, though it comes on a little strong, has a subtext that goes beyond the 'this is deep because we are pointing out that you are playing a game' and instead is an often thoughtful exploration of the narrative limitations of games. It's great, I love it, I love the plot and the narrative and the artifice of it all but I think the problem is with the combat - not in the 'it's not fun sense', because it's perfectly fun. But it doesn't fit in with any of the above, it's not synechdocal in that same way. It's just a big fun set of rules that let you fly about and shoot baddies and get coins and upgrade your gear. It's really exhilarating but it's completely separate to what the game is actually about. Like if you think about what a game such as Dark Souls is about, you could say stoicism, pessimism, bleakness - these are all reflected in both the game mechanics ('how to win') and the 'text' (visuals, dialogue, context). It's a pity that's not the case in this, but at the same time I can't imagine how you'd do that and keep the suspense and surprise of all the twists and turns. In terms of the narrative itself though, there's a couple of things that I think I might have missed - the main one being, why does the quantum physicist co-operate Comstock in the first place? Why would she want to help found this nutty religious cult city with a crazy man? I couldn't find anything in the audio logs that explained their working relationship beyond the fact that she didn't fancy him in the slightest.
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Mar 26, 2013 23:25
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Yes, I really do love the kind of cheeky meta-commentary on games that goes on in this. Much like the "Would you kindly?" of Bioshock reflects on the player's inability to self-determine, the alternate realities and the "constants and variables" of Infinite is a reflection on how each individual playing through the game will experience a different but similar universe, where some things always happen but some things happen differently. Also I feel like there is a very large portion of the story we just didn't get. I don't know if this might be something that they intend to fill-in with DLC (which would be a pretty good use of it). We don't know why Lutece worked with Comstock except for possibly the simple fact that Comstock was willing to fund Lutece's experiments, but then we don't know why Comstock was so rich and powerful except through his exploitation of Lutece's work. There's a lot of blanks to fill in regarding how Comstock became the man that he was and what Lutece's motivations were. EDIT: Oh, and songbird. If there was ever something that screamed "I DEMAND DLC TO EXPLAIN ME" it would be songbird.
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Mar 26, 2013 23:35
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Have they said whether the season pass DLC is going to be story stuff, or stupid jungle gym challenge map packs? If it's the former, then I wouldn't mind something that focuses on Lutece and her twin, who were my favourite characters. As for the songbird: at one point you are quickly shown a diagram of where to implant a load of freaky cybernetic poo poo onto the face of a guy who looks an awful lot like comstock - I guess the implication would be that inside the songbird is a Comstock from yet another universe? Or maybe it shows a chunk of Comstock's brain lobotomised and shoved inside the thing?
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Mar 26, 2013 23:41
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Here is a simple timeline as i understand it.
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Mar 26, 2013 23:54
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The selling of the baby needs to happen before the baptism - that's why the game's called bioshock 'infinite', because baby 1 is sold to timeline 2, in which baby was sold to timeline 3, in which baby was sold to timeline 4, etc. This only works if sellin' babies happened before the 'split'.
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Mar 27, 2013 00:00
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The Grumbles posted:The selling of the baby needs to happen before the baptism - that's why the game's called bioshock 'infinite', because baby 1 is sold to timeline 2, in which baby was sold to timeline 3, in which baby was sold to timeline 4, etc. This only works if sellin' babies happened before the 'split'. That's what I'm wondering. It makes much more sense to me if the baby is sold BEFORE. But there's really nothing in that game that indicates it is. It could be either (see my above posts). I'd actually lean more towards the game indicating that the baptism happens first after playing through it. And I get what you are saying vis a vis the game commenting on games. I just don't think there's really much there - I'd put it firmly as of those 'juvenile' games. I mean, all it's doing is pointing out that games lead you by the nose. Bioshock 1 did this as well, but then undermines its own argument because after you are free of the hypnotism you still have to follow the linear game to get Fontaine. You could argue that's a comment in and of itself. but I don't see them making that connection, personally. It's really easy to point things out ("Hey dudes, you're playing a game"), but that's not enough to really make a statement. Games are young and it's good that people even realize this stuff, but to treat this as some sort of great commentary is really overselling it, in my opinion. I'd say Dark Souls did the "many people are playing a slightly different world" in a much, much better fashion. It's coherent with the entire design and play of the game, instead of dropped on you through clumsy exposition at the end.
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Mar 27, 2013 00:15
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