Let's Play BioShock Infinite: A Series of Lectures

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play BioShock Infinite: A Series of Lectures

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

This is one of those games where I think I took a completely different theme from it than a lot of the players. I figured, from the racism and other things that come up, the complete idealization of the Founders and their incorporation into religious cults, and the absolute focus on the redemptive and rebirth aspects of Baptism, this was a game about the dangers of whitewashing the past and forgetting the wrinkles and complications of history.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 19:31

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

I was going to say Chrono Trigger, but Chrono Cross ruins that.

Chrono Trigger did it well primarily by not really giving a gently caress about the 'rules' of time travel and having it run on plot. The time periods were different set pieces/settings, nothing more, that sometimes interacted in fun ways, and the focus remained on other things.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 19:37

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Bioshock's science never really went into detail beyond what it needed to do to exist. ADAM as a limited resource that provided seemingly unlimited 'self improvement' but at the cost of hollowing people out and driving them mad for more was more important to the story than the mechanics of any kind of genetic engineering. ADAM mattered for what it did to society, not how it worked, and how it worked was never necessary to the story, so the ridiculousness of a sea slug that allows you to shoot bees out of your hand never really needed to come front and center.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 22:50

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

rabiddeity posted:

So someone explain to me what exactly SS2 has in common with Bioshock 1 or 2 or BSI again, and how is this supposed to be a spiritual successor? Because I'm obviously missing it.

Nothing, really. SS2 was a horror game, after all. The Bioshocks have never really been horror. They have horrific happenings and all, but they do not focus on building tension and they certainly don't focus on shepherding limited resources while faced with theoretically unlimited opposition.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 09:26

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

HopperUK posted:

I don't think you're supposed to be reacting to the Comstock Cult in any way other than 'man, gently caress those guys'. Stealing from other religions is like, everything that cult does.

To be fair, it's what just about every religion in history does. People have neighbors, they talk to their neighbors, they share traditions and stories, they try to convince their neighbors their stories are better, etc. Every religion that has ever existed will display elements from other religions, and someone like Comstock is basically intentionally amping it up to try to create a cult that basically makes him the Christ figure. Thinking on the game, I don't think you ever hear Christ invoked, just The Prophet and the Founders.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 20:20

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

When Fink mentions using the prison system to acquire black convicts for menial labor, that is a practice that is in no way over. Firstly, convicting someone of a felony effectively disenfranchises them for their entire life, making them unable to vote, so there's no need for literacy tests or whatnot to keep a black man from voting if you can send him up the river. Secondly, for-profit or private prisons still lease labor and have a financial incentive to promote (or at least do nothing to discourage) recidivism since it keeps the prisons full and to pay or spend as little as possible on their prisoners, to increase their profit margins.

Whenever you see anyone say the Civil War was about 'states rights' or the confederate flag is about 'heritage, not hate', remember those figures on how many people were murdered in the slave trade, then remember how awful it was for the people who didn't just die outright. Not that the North was that much better. While the South practiced actual, legally sanctioned racial descrimination, up here in Detroit we had race riots over the idea that black people should have access to affordable housing (the 1943 housing riot was more destructive than the more famous 1967 Detroit Riot) and of course, it took the absolute necessity of as much labor as possible in WWII for blacks to get access to half acceptable levels of employment. Even then, they generally got shuffled into the worst and most menial jobs. Basically, in the North, they'd try to drive you out of a 'white' neighborhood, you wouldn't be able to get a job, you'd have a harder time finding services, and the cops would be suspicious of you. In the South, you'd get lynched if you stepped visibly out of line, the entire state apparatus was invested in keeping you from exercising your rights, and there was a strong cultural nostalgia for an older regime that sold your people like products and treated you as less than human.

And of course, nowadays we have folks like the Tea Party unironically using art from this game to represent their views on immigration. So that's awesome.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 19:22

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Andrew Jackson was called "Sharp Knife." by the natives for his complete love of murdering them.

He also defied the supreme court by telling them he had an army and they didn't in order to attack a sovereign nation against their legal ruling and drive them from their land.

Andrew Jackson is one of history's big monsters. Up there with Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK and another lover of murdering people by hand who was astonishingly hard to kill.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 04:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Nathan Bedford Forrest and Andrew Jackson are people I am convinced may well have actually been demons considering their proficiency at causing human misery and personally surviving grievous injury and mortal combat.

And yes, 'I tried to destroy these people' is all it takes to qualify for genocide. The number of deaths caused is merely a measure of how successful the psychopath doing it was, not of what the practice was. Jackson's overall intent was the destruction or permanent banishment of entire peoples in the face of the advancing border.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 05:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Frederick II Barbarbossa holds the record for most hilariously anti-climactic death, though. Tripped and drowned in a river while in heavy armor at the end of a long march, if I recall.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 19:28

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The superman thing is amazing because it just outright shamed people out of it. Not just by exposing the silly rituals and all, but by making kids all across America go 'Hey, dad? Why are you fighting SUPERMAN?'

# ¿ Jun 16, 2015 02:11

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

bhlaab posted:

The first System Shock is the best one

I like System Shock 1 a lot, but I remember like the first three or four hours of playing it was just me frantically trying to get used to the crazy old controls.

System Shock 2 was the first horror game I ever played and when I first played it, the game scared the everloving poo poo out of me. I don't think any game has frightened me to the same degree since, though some of that was probably it being my first. I will always remember it fondly for not being able to play more than half an hour at a time until I kinda got used to it.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2015 22:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

anilEhilated posted:

Thing is, SS2 did horror right. Very few jumpscares, enemies aren't that monstrous until you take a proper look - but you can and will get ambushed repeatedly, there are no safe spots and ammunition is scarce. Everything on that ship hates you and wants to kill you and you constantly feel that. I don't think I ever played anything else that conveyed this sort of mood.

Don't forget your guns are all (in fluff and in practice) lovely lowest bidder crap that jams after a couple dozen rounds.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2015 22:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Like, I think a subtler part of the point is that Slate is all 'SOLDIER GLORY!' about essentially a pair of total massacres against people who were desperate and starving. Slate's kind of a pathetic rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 19:29

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mr.Morgenstern posted:

Fixed that for you.

Anyways, it turns out that the Cherokee went before the Supreme Court and argued their case against their forced removal. The Supreme Court sided with the Cherokee, and said that it was illegal for the US government to take the Indians off their lands without their permission.

Andrew Jackson's response? "If [the Supreme Court] wants to make the laws, they can try to enforce them." And then he kicked the Cherokee off their land.

Andrew Jackson was a loving psychopath.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 19:51

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I think it's a bit of a mistake to blame everything on Andrew Jackson. The Indian Removal Act that evicted the Cherokee was passed by the legislative branch, after all, and it was under pressure from the Southern states to do so. There's also the fact that by the time the Cherokee were forced to leave, Jackson's successor, Van Buren, was the sitting president. Culpability rests on a lot more than one man's shoulders here.

The main reason what he did didn't invoke a constitutional crisis of sorts (it's pretty non-kosher for a sitting president to tell the Supreme Court 'gently caress off, I have an army') is primarily that the southern states and the rest of the government were happy with his decision, yes, so it didn't really get contested.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 20:06

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

If you got whatever power you wanted, I'd want the ability to heal injuries in others. Screw medical school, bam, your leg works again.

Choosing between flight and invisibility, invisibility because I am terrified of heights.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2015 20:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

E: Wrong thread. Somehow mistook this for the Old Blood Thread.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Sep 23, 2015

# ¿ Sep 23, 2015 18:26

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kangra posted:

An easy mistake. The only difference between Bioshock and Wolfenstein is how you spell the name.

It was all the WWII discussion, actually.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2015 21:30

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I admit I thought it was hilarious to watch Scott 'Warren G. Harding 2' Walker go down in flames so fast.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 02:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play BioShock Infinite: A Series of Lectures