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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)
Booker's name suggests duality.
Booker Dewitt = Book or Do It
Book (Leave)
or
Do It (Accept The Baptism)
No, I want you to pick a tone and a major focus and develop it. There is a big difference between a well developed story with depth and a complicated one.
Oh I see. I really feel the need to replay this again already to pick apart the minutiae of all the stuff I've missed, but I imagine that is part of the intent of the creators.
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 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.
that's a thimble. smh i can't believe this game didn't get deep into sewing.
hey instead of novels or films it reminds you of how about you compare it to fucking video games.
Nah. Characters in Bioshock are known for meaningful names.Reeeeeeaching here.
that's a thimble. smh i can't believe this game didn't get deep into sewing.
Booker's name suggests duality.
Booker Dewitt = Book or Do It
Book (Leave)
or
Do It (Accept The Baptism)
Wow. Really nicely put. Damn, can we probably say this is one of the few games ever created that have been this philosophical?
just illusions. Yes we could make a better career going to this university than that university..yes you could be more happier with X wife, rather than Y wife..and so on and so forth.
But the final outcome, regardless of those choices you made, the same outcome occurs. You die.
Complication is in the eye of the beholder.
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?So, the Lutece statue at the beginning of the game changes gender. Does that mean that the rest of the game also changes the information to accommodate that new version? All the recordings are from the male Lutece if the statue is male?
Sure, that's reasonable.Given how central the ending is to "Tying all the parts together," anything that isn't explicitly addressed by the ending effectively had no resolution.
Strongly agree. It reminds me of novels or films that make hundreds of allusions to quantum physics and Shakespeare and free will and religion, and then sort of vaguely tie them all together, hoping one or two of them seem to strike a chord in the audience.
There is a very significant difference between a story that can focus on a complex topic and make meaning of it, and one that simply throws a huge number of big topics on the wall and hoping some stick.
Ladys and gentlemen, I give you Bioshock Infinite's narrative profundity.
Ladys and gentlemen, I give you Bioshock Infinite's profundity.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The game desperately needed some puzzles. take away 1/3 of the shooting and add smart puzzles in its place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can agree with that. I don't think the narrative is trying to ride on intellectual coat tails. It dies seem like it fits together and there is a raison d etre for most everything. It just desnt 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.
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 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.
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.
I understand killing Comstock during the baptism achieves the goal of eliminating him in all the timelines. What I'm getting at is the Booker who is used for that purpose wasn't really consenting to the baptism hence, he wasn't really Comstock, just a Booker. His intention was to kill Comstock, not accept baptism.
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?
Ok so I gotta go back to that ending after the credits where he is back at home. It's the part that throws a wrench in a lot of the storyline to me.
IS that a true "happy ending"? wouldn't it have put him back where it all started in debt?
Fair enough. And for the record, as "Unique Bullshit: The Ken Levine VideoGame" I can appreciate it for the quirky ambitious mess it is.
But the hogh 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 no 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.
The baptism is a focal point that then branches out into all the possible realities.
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.
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.
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.
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.