Exclamation-One
Member
Booker's name suggests duality.
Booker Dewitt = Book or Do It
Book (Leave)
or
Do It (Accept The Baptism)
Booker Dewitt = Book or Do It
Book (Leave)
or
Do It (Accept The Baptism)
-
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SPOILER Bioshock Infinite SPOILER discussion
- Thread starter thomasmahler
- Start date
BannedEpisode
Member
This game certainly is divisive.
I'm very okay with that as long as everything ties together. This is opposed to Mass Effect 3 for example, where the developers do something random and off the wall in an effort to drum up speculation and discussion.
Most of the plot elements in Infinite are expanded upon, explained, or in some way or lead up to. When it comes to reception, it all comes down to how the player enjoyed the experience instead of going "wtf just happened?" (Or at the very least are able to piece it together if they put some time in).
I'm very okay with that as long as everything ties together. This is opposed to Mass Effect 3 for example, where the developers do something random and off the wall in an effort to drum up speculation and discussion.
Most of the plot elements in Infinite are expanded upon, explained, or in some way or lead up to. When it comes to reception, it all comes down to how the player enjoyed the experience instead of going "wtf just happened?" (Or at the very least are able to piece it together if they put some time in).
blame space
Banned
hey instead of novels or films it reminds you of how about you compare it to fucking video games.
Reeeeeeaching here.
I'd rather have a variety of notes hit extremely well than one note being hit perfectly, the story in Infinite nukes the stories in Bioshock 1&2, and I came in thinking that might not be the case.
I think many people are passing over the finger being cut part.
It was quite well illustrated on Elizabeth, with the metallic stubb on her pinky.
I agree with this. At that point it becomes personal preference and taste. But I thoroughly enjoyed that the game did explain everything and didn't leave things vague and open ended for interpretation because the writer didn't know how to wrap it up.
If you actually put time into playing the game and searching, the story unfolds really nicely.
blame space
Banned
that's a thimble. smh i can't believe this game didn't get deep into sewing.
piratepwnsninja
Member
Not a single voxphone on sewing. They didn't even have a sewing mini-game.
Well in that case it's better than most, but still ridiculously silly and a bit convoluted for the sake of appearing to be deep and complex.
The game kind of lost me for good once the ghost fights started. The whole premise of the game is ridiculous but I was playing along for the most part until they really tested my patience with ghosts and ghost zombies.
Exclamation-One
Member
Ladys and gentlemen, I give you Bioshock Infinite's narrative profundity.
Exclamation-One
Member
This is weird... wouldn't the statue be of the female Lutece in the first place? Why does the statue change from male to female, instead of the other way around?
Tummi Gummi
Member
I wouldn't go that far. Trust me, I can't stand the "let's throw lots of allusions to psychoanalysis and occultism and the golden bough and see what sticks" approach certain crypto-intellectual writers go for, and I don't think Infinite suffers from that. Pretty much all the sociopolitical themes and pop-science references have varying degrees of direct relevance to the core narrative of Booker & Elizabeth. My problem is that they fail to really enhance each other and resonate in harmony. The writing is generally in the right direction, it just falls a bit short.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I thought it all tied together well enough. I think the game is deliberately loaded with plenty of red herrings that can easily distract with tangent narratives that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter. Or do, but only as much as you want them to. It's not really a story of Columbia, racism, revolution, America, Comstock, or even Elizabeth. It's a story about fatalism, and never really loses sight of it. It's always there.
The fact you took blame space's post seriously sorta devalues your stance on context or meaning for storytelling.
ThusZarathustra
Member
While I'm not going to defend the game as particularly deep or original in its themes or exploration or them, because it isn't in either area at all really, they're still done well enough to be laudable in the medium and genre. But as Evilore's thread pointed out, all the game really does is expose the inherent storytelling flaws in video games as a whole, a concept with which I agree fully.
All that said, there's been far better discussion of the themes and ideas in the game than you're quoting here.
How come when I jumped into the other universes all the crates I had opened before are still open. Obviously for gameplay reasons they did that, but is there a fiction reason? Is Elizabeth "creating" these worlds from the previous one? This isn't some after the fact thing either. This was a sticking point for me as I was playing. Elizabeth even mentions during these moments that something is off. That maybe she is creating these worlds because she wants them to be. I've been reading theories where people stress that the other universes are not created. They are simply walked into.
I can agree with that. I don't think the narrative is trying to ride on intellectual coat tails. It does seem like there is a raison d etre for most everything. It just doesn't all fit together and many of the elements seem to actively serve as distractions from the development of others.
Honestly, it just seems conceptually flawed. If someone came to me and told me they want write a personal father-daughter narrative set in a world of socio-political satire where space time continuum presents alternate reality scenarios all with lots of shoot-bang I would tell them to start over.
I assume the Booker in that universe opened those just as you did. Really, it was just for gameplay purposes, but the fact that there are infinite universes conveniantly explains it away.
This is another great thing about the game, Levine and his team built a game where interpretation is a huge part of the player's involvement with the game. Most videogames don't leave any room for interpretation, there aren't themes or pivotal thoughts that can be observed or discovered by a player.
Infinite allows the player to find meaning with the events in front of them, Infinite isn't the first game to do this, but the fact that interpretation or observance was a main philosophy with the game is refreshing.
blame space
Banned
i just can't believe someone doesn't know what a thimble is. i'm old i guess.
I recognize that. I don't doubt that there are intricate puzzles to unravel in the small details but I am not convinced that this makes it a better or more meaningful narrative.
I do not agree that it exposes "inherent flaws in the medium," though. Just recently off the top of my head, have you played Cart Life? Go play Cart Life.
mgarnica89
Member
The game desperately needed some puzzles. take away 1/3 of the shooting and add smart puzzles in its place.
To be frank, almost any topic -- no matter how grand -- could be loosely tied to the central thematic elements of choice/determinism because those are such broad ranging topics.
But "loosely tied" is about as generous as I'm willing to be here. Very, very rarely can a single work tackle that many big topics and remain coherent.
I can agree with this. Most of the 'puzzles' were having enough lockpicks on you at all times. That and hunting for code books.
Thanks for reminding me to play more Cart Life. I played about an hour of it last year and I loved it, so I'm not really sure why I stopped. It's certainly among the very short list of games that actually uses its mechanics to help tell its story (like one of the characters having his walking animation interrupted constantly by his hacking coughs).
Yes, I agree with this. I said this in a different way, but my opinion remains "this is about as good as storytelling gets in this particular medium."
That doesn't mean video games aren't great or that I can't have fun with them, but all mediums have their strengths and weaknesses. No one thinks of sculpture as a lesser art form, but at the same time no one would laud it as a good medium to choose if you want to tell a complicated narrative. The same basic concept would apply to video games. Video games do a lot of things well, but telling complex, sophisticated narratives laden with exquisite and deliberate meaning isn't really one of those things.
I agree, but I do think (some) of those quotes are symbolic of the problem with the game's story telling; it touches on so many grand themes that someone who wants to see deep meaning in it will be able to reach through the piece and do so.
ThusZarathustra
Member
I should have been clearer and said "mainstream big-budget genre video games" rather than just left it so general with just the two-word term. The medium at large has endless storytelling potential, but Bioshock Infinite is a very particular and strange amalgamation of a beast, as you so correctly point out, and I'm not particularly in the habit of being thematically rigorous in the literary sense for such obviously unique bullshit as a Ken Levine video game.
It feels kinda disingenuous to me to hold it to too high a standard considering what it is. But everyone's mileage is going vary on that one.
Exclamation-One
Member
Ehhh, Cart Life is too flawed itself to have much of an impact. Oh, you have to wait at the bus stop, oh, now you have to eat. Is there a reason I couldn't eat my sandwich while waiting for the bus?
"B-b-b-b-ut cart life is hard and stuff! There's not enough time to do everything!"
Anyway, derail.
People should still play Cart Life. It's cool.
It may not be your cup of tea, but I loved the mash up of stories and tropes, although I do feel a different mechanic could have been used rather than a shooter, even though I found most of the battle gameplay to be reasonable and the rails gave some new life to the genre.
I felt that I gave myself enough time to immerse myself in the story and dig up most of the pertinent voice logs. The game got the player to search for loot in order to survive and in doing so tried to get them delving deeper into the story by finding the voice logs. To add to your loathed mashup, the game is also a mystery, so making the player put the pieces together as you mentioned in a previous post is actually a plus for a lot of us. For those who don't like to do that kind of thing in a game, the game allowed the player to breeze past it with only a superficial understanding of what was going on.
The ideas weren't fully fleshed out but I don't think the game tried to be anything other than a game with a personal and thematic narrative set against a certain backdrop. That backdrop was painted richly and with enough detail to let the me get a feel for the location and time, without bombarding me with turn of the century American history or with a myriad of metaphysical philosophies.
(edit) wow - don't drink and post folks.
Tummi Gummi
Member
I'm personally a bit tired of those particular themes simply because they're recycled so much. But as was said, they're a natural fit for games, like voyeurism and perspective are for cinema. And I certainly wouldn't argue that Infinite did anything new in that regard.
Fair enough. And for the record, as "Unique Bullshit: The Ken Levine VideoGame" I can appreciate it for the quirky ambitious mess it is. Kind of like why I had a bit of a soft spot for Prometheus, which incidentslly had some of the same problems.
But the high standards, as per usual, come from the high critical praise and reception. So many reviews, so much hyperbole about Bioshock Infinite's "weighty themes" and narrative accomplishments. I know I should know better by now than to trust the game media's discourse, but it still irks me.
Had Bioshock Infinite been pitched to me as the former rather than the latter, I'd probably say thumbs up.
Excellent point re: the natural themes for films and games. The way games play with free will theme often irks me not because it is over played, though, but because the game attempt to use it to make players own predefined narrative choices, which is a cheap trick.
Only game I can think of where I really enjoyed that theme's employment was The Stanley Parable.
He consents numerous times to the deathly baptism. Elizabeth asks before he opens the door are you sure you want to do this? She is giving him a way out even though the reality is he needs to commit the sacrifice to fix things.
He is just as bad as Comstock in that he sold his daughter etc. He accepts that he is both Booker and Comstock even as 2 Anna's seemingly struggle with his identity which each calling him a different name.
He allows himself to die as both booker and Comstock to make penance for his sins so to speak and as such prevents Comstock from ever existing in any mirror universe.
The problem at the end is we see a Booker calling for Anna and what is not disclosed is if she is in fact there or lost to oblivion like Comstock leaving this Booker with the potential memory of a daughter that never existed.
Just beat it. Ending was crazy, weird, and also somewhat corny in some places. (A city under the ocean, how silly!)
But anyway, do we ever know who the archangel who told Comstock/Booker everything is? Am I just dense and missed a simple plot point? Also, why does Elizabeth need to sit on the throne and attack the earth? Because Comstock knew he would die?
But anyway, do we ever know who the archangel who told Comstock/Booker everything is? Am I just dense and missed a simple plot point? Also, why does Elizabeth need to sit on the throne and attack the earth? Because Comstock knew he would die?
Apropos of nothing; two things I liked and hadn't seen mentioned:
- The little girl who idolizes Lutece is named Constance Field (Constants, Field); I wonder if she just idolizes the female version???
- I also liked opening the one mausoleum in the cemetery by lighting both torches. It brought be back to the proud history of games, starting at Zelda I maybe.
GoddyofAus
Banned
The "Archangel" isn't actually an angel at all. It's visions of another Universe that Comstock is seeing in his mind, similar to Bookers vision of New York being attacked.
Watch it on youtube - it's like 20 seconds, although there's a singing part in the credits which is also pretty cool.
(edit) Re-reading your post, seems like you've seen it. I don't know if it's a "happy" ending - if that's what it is. Kinda sad to think Anna will grow up to be just a normal girl with an dysfunctional father. I think the ending is something else though and they've opened the door, so to speak, to DLC there.
ThusZarathustra
Member
Oh totally! It's very irksome, and those are the growing pains of the medium. Likely we'll continue to get these weird form/content dissonances, as well as occasional form/content harmonies with many weird internal dissonances to them (like with Bioshock Infinite), for quite some time to come too. And they'll probably be overlauded then as well, unfortunately.
I personally don't believe the game (or any other medium) is likely to beat the novel for raw thematic depth. That is, of course, unless you wrote multiple novels and set them within the context of game world and... and... well, that would just be the greatest adventure game ever! Which is why I say that the medium really does have endless potential. And why I say it's unlikely to ever be realized.
Why write multiple novels and place them within the context of a game? Just have them be separate novels! The formal idea of interactivity that games have as a medium isn't likely to exploited fully, if at all, for decades.
The pulp-approach to narrative is here to stay in games that have big budgets and genre roots and high as we'd prefer our standards to be, it's generally best if they're balanced between relatively realistic and reaching for the stars. In analyzing pulp fiction it's best not to extend the bounds of your expectations too far beyond market realities and genre conventions, whether you're talking about action video games or one hour television dramas.
Then whats the meaning of the post credits scene?
I also found it a bit odd that there wasn't much emotion between Booker and E once it was made clear that he was her father.
Outrage247
Banned
Just finished the game and I'm stunned at how fucking good it was. It's so rate or basically never that a whole game blows away every expectation I had. When I first saw the song bird and sky hooks at E3 I laughed. My god did it come through. And the story, wowowowow. Hands down best game I've ever played.
GoddyofAus
Banned
1. Open to interpretation. Either it is suggesting that Booker went back to his normal life or the cycle started again. You, the player, decides whether Anna is in the crib or not.
2. You've just found out you have a daughter who is an adult who can see across space time. How would you react?
Well the ending could be looked at a lot of ways.
His sacrifice allows for a Booker somewhere to have a potential happy life with a daughter
or the really sad fucked up possibility is that like with Comstock never existing Anna will never exist yet some fluke in the whole time/space thingamajig allows Booker to remember a daughter he never had.
See, this is why I don't like time travel/dimensional travel stories. Which was the first comstock that built Columbia so that all the other comstocks could view it and know that was what they had to do?
I'm just missing a part in between baptism and I'M GOING TO BURN THE WORLD.
While there's a lot of "themes", not sure I can consider the story "good". Interesting, sure, but I feel that it fell apart at the end in order to have some twists. Having all these dimensions makes it unclear what people's motivations are, and that's kind of the whole driving point of a story.
GoddyofAus
Banned
The only theory we have for that right now is PTSD is a bitch. Otherwise, maybe a subject for DLC.