Bioshock Infinite [MAJOR POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING]

[I am Harbinger]

Alright, just beat Bioshock Infinite, and I'm really just curious to see where some other folks are in terms of head space after getting all the way to the end.

Again, in case you didn't see it above, there is a category 5 spoiler warning in effect. I'm going to try and avoid spoilers, but not everyone may have my level of restraint.

So yeah...wow. My mind is officially blown beyond recognition. I thought the mind-fuckery of the original Bioshock's twist could not be topped. Hush my mouth it seems. Normally I would have more to say, but it's only been a few minutes since I beat it and...yeah...my brain is still pretty much a gooey mess on the inside of my skull...more so than usual, I mean.

So, my fellow gamers, what have your reactions been? And, please, let's try to avoid major spoilers.

Oh, and hands up for who else got a massive kick out of the nostalgia trip there near the end?

 

[DionysusSnoopy]

I finished it last night right after I was the same my mind was just a gooey mess.
But I generally think that it was a good ending and an awesome story, though I called one of twists early but the other one got me.

Spoiler

I called Booker as Elizabeth/Anna's dad about midway, though the fact that Booker is Comstock sneaked up on me and hit me round the head with a blackjack

Really liked that the theme of this one contrasted (almost the opposite) with the first Bioshock (and the second one as well I guess).

Also the Luteces are may favourite characters hands down, just the bizarre manner in which they conversed and appeared. As someone who studied science you catch on real quick that to them the whole story plays out like an experiment.

Also the nostalgia trip was great but it wasn't until I walked through the door towards the exit that I truly knew where I was in the place at which I was just thinking this is awesome.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I think they kinda sprang the ending out of nowhere. I feel like it could have been a better game if they slowly allowed for the pieces of Booker's memory to fall into place as the story progressed. The middle of the game easily could have started telling us a little more of the twist openly, because for a while there it was really just battle after battle with not much happening in between.

Once I got over the initial shock of the abruptness of how much was revealed, I started to appreciate it a bit more. I see no reason why there couldn't have been multiple endings, as the "it never really happened because you closed the loop" is never a good way to end something. Seriously, just have it so there's a different ending the next time you play through the game at least. It would fit the theme of "Infinite".

 

[Exterminas]

Here is how I figure the story is supposed to work:

Spoiler

In some universes, Brooker did make the choice to accept the baptism after Broken Knee. He then became Comstock in those worlds and eventually met up with that wierd sciency lady. Since he became Combstock, he never fathered Elizabeth in this universe. Since the magical science stuff had rendered him sterile, he needed an heir. So he used the magical science stuff to get into an alternate dimension to get Elizabeth.

In this alternate dimension, Brooker had rejected the baptism and never became combstock. He eventually ended up selling his daughter to the Combstock from the other dimension.

Here is my problem with this grasp of the story, and I would be happy if people helped me understand it: Where does the magical science stuff come from? That giant Siphon-Thiny gave me the impression, that Elizabeth's gift was somehow vital for the whole tear-buisness. How could Combstock travell through the worlds and get Elizabeth, if Elizabeth was needed to travel through the worlds and get Elizabeth?

There were a few mindblowing moments in the game, especially once we stood in Rapture and I was like "What the fuck?! Is this for real?" - But overall I must say, I disliked the story. It was too complex and hard to follow, while not having the same impact as the big twist in the original Bioshock. Remember that? The story was simple and easy to follow, until it suddenly turned on you and tore itself to pieces. THAT was good story telling. Making things more complex with alternate dimensions and Qunatum-Insanity doesn't neccesarily make things better. The game's story remembered me of Lost, in the sense that most of the time I could barely tell if I was too stupid to follow the plot, or if the plot wasn't really all that good.

Regarding the actual gameplay: That too has the same problem too me: It is just too much too fast. They have these huge, sprawling environments, that are a stunning to look at, but a pain in the ass to fight in. Especially, when Brooker is made out of cardboard, and they dump loads of enemies inside them, which often requirre very specific tactics to defeat. Crow-Guy, I am looking at you!

For my tastes, both story and gameplay suffer somewhat in comparisson to the original Bioshock by having too much stuff crammed into them.

 

[flarty]

Story was great, loved the ending.
As for the game, it seemed a little more streamlined than the previous Bioshock. The rpg elements seem to have been scaled back massively so it feels just like a shooter and I never felt hard pressed for resources. I think scaling back on these mechanics and focusing on giving players more combat choice with multi-tiered environments and sky lines makes this game nothing more than a shooter.

But ultimately the story is the star of the show.

SPOILER

Did anyone else guess Booker and Comstock were one and the same early on? The distortion on Comstocks voice gave it away for me.

For my tastes, both story and gameplay suffer somewhat in comparisson to the original Bioshock by having too much stuff crammed into them.

I feel the problem is quite the opposite, I preferred the story in infinite, but I feel the gameplay is/has become too much of a streamlined shooter compared to the previous Bioshock.

 

[I am Harbinger]

... and I would be happy if people helped me understand it...

Here's how I understood it:

Spoiler

From what I understood, the Luteces were actually already in the business of making tears prior to Elizabeth being around, however, the process required a lot of equipment and power, as seen in the Lutece home. Notice that they used one such tear to return with Elizabeth in the first place. After that, for reasons unknown (although I do have my own theories) it was discovered that Elizabeth could manipulate and generate tears all on her own. To me it seemed the Syphon was built initially simply to contain and restrain Elizabeth's power, and the thought of taking and using that power came along as an afterthought.

As to why Elizabeth can do what she does, well, they never say, but through a few things I noticed, and think I can hazard a guess. Early on in the game you can find a recording of Lutece talking about Elizabeth, and how 'some part of her remains' where she came from. At first I thought this was some metaphysical mumbo jumbo, but, if you'll recall, a part of Elizabeth was indeed left behind, her pinkie. In theory, this could very well be the cause of her tear-manipulating abilities, presumably because the multiverse doesn't like that she is basically in two places, universes, at once. We are talking about quantum physics, of which I know very little, though, so I really can't say any of this is really true.

 

[Abomination]

For my tastes, both story and gameplay suffer somewhat in comparisson to the original Bioshock by having too much stuff crammed into them.

Your interpretation of the story mirrors my own. Same with the gameplay and story assessment.

Bioshock had a major twist to it but it didn't become so complex that everything falls apart on itself. "Would you kindly..." will always be a phrase that evokes the key themes of the game for me.

That being said the writing in Infinite was great, the symbolism and political satire hit all the right notes. It's just a shame the story started to trip all over itself at the end.

 

[MercurySteam]

Spoiler

Here is my problem with this grasp of the story, and I would be happy if people helped me understand it: Where does the magical science stuff come from? That giant Siphon-Thiny gave me the impression, that Elizabeth's gift was somehow vital for the whole tear-buisness. How could Combstock travell through the worlds and get Elizabeth, if Elizabeth was needed to travel through the worlds and get Elizabeth?

Ok, I'm going to try and explain this with my best understanding:

Spoiler

Rosalind Lutece being a brilliant Quantum Physicist, came up with the technology that made Colombia fly and which also created the tears as a side-effect. Lutece built a machine that could open these tears and this is how they 'acquired' Anna/Elizabeth. When Elizabeth lost her finger through the tear she was able to then manipulate them and the more they studied her the deeper their understanding of the tears grew, which led them to eventually building the siphon.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I just finished it too, I'm hopping on these threads because I, well, WANT TO DISCUSS IT!
I'll try to avoid an ending explanation since I'm pretty sure there's another thread for that but as for how I felt about it:
HOE
LEE
SHIT
That was one of the most mind-blowing endings my puny brain has ever experienced.
How the writers came up with that stuff is just beyond my mortal comprehension.
And did anyone else get a very Donnie Darko feel from it?
Anyway.
If you want one, this if my favorite explanation so far.
And never mind the spelling and grammatical errors, this explanation is actually pretty good.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

 

[The Madman]

Don't know why, but I came away feeling pretty... alright with Infinite. It was alright. Setting was great, story was fun, combat was pretty good, I don't have any major complaints really and yet still I'm merely left shrugging my shoulders when it ended.

Maybe it's just because the game never really packed the sort of emotional sucker-punch I was expecting. I liked Elizabeth, sure, and hell I even liker Booker. But while the ending was a neat little bit of mind-bending, it didn't really leave me feeling much of, well, anything other than; huh, cool.

Reminds me of Dishonored's ending, although that one has the option of multiple endings. Still Dishonored left me with a similar feeling of having enjoyed myself without experiencing anything spectacular. That is opposed to games like Walking Dead, Bastion, or hell, even Spec Ops which all had endings that left me thinking and feeling satisfied.

 

[Zhukov]

See my post here: (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING) http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.403785-BioShock-Infinite-Steam-Pre-Orders-Now-Include-a-Copy-Of-XCOM?page=2#16707581

We already talked about this a week ago.

Spoiler

We hate the interdimesional shennangins. We hate on how nothing is achieved, as it all cancels out in the end. We all hate the OP Elizebeth.

This is a place for those who ostensibly enjoy games to discuss them.

You came here and made a post for the express purpose of ruining other people's enjoyment. You stood to gain nothing but malicious satisfaction from doing so. You didn't enjoy something so you set out to ensure that other people wouldn't enjoy it either. You posted huge spoilers unmarked spoilers in a news thread.

This is behavior befitting of a spoiled and spiteful little child who, upon dropping their ice cream in the dirt, throws a tantrum and proceeds to run about knocking the ice creams from everyone else's hands.

I would appreciate it if you were to remove yourself from this forum since, tragically, I am only able to add your name to my own ignore list and not everyone else's.

...

(Hello moderator. It needed to be said. If you feel that this post is worthy of your wrath then I shall take my stamp on my left buttock please. I regret nothing!)

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

Upon finishing the game, I reacted really negatively to the ending. If I can remember correctly I screamed "WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?!!" and threw my controller across the room.

It was mind-blowing and clever, yet suffered the same fundamental storytelling flaws that Mass Effect 3 (and to a lesser extent AC3) did.

It's a complete deus ex machina, introducing major plot elements in the last minute that do not correlate properly to the preceding game (albeit despite flashes of foreshadowing). All development of the world and characters is dropped in favour of an over-ambitious, genre-changing, "look how clever we are!" stab at the audience. Everything is ultimately erased, with all the themes of racism, religion, capitalism v. communism, slavery and patriotism completely and utterly abandoned.

The ending is less BioShock and more Mass Effect 3. Besides, Phillip Pullman did it better. The developers felt that, in order to please the high expectations of fans, they had to make the ending overtly transcendent. To quote the Bard, this was a case of "Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on t'other side."

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

I admire the ending if only for its audacity. I don't feel it really fitted the tone of the game, though.

 

[Doclector]

... and I would be happy if people helped me understand it...

Here's how I understood it:

Spoiler

From what I understood, the Luteces were actually already in the business of making tears prior to Elizabeth being around, however, the process required a lot of equipment and power, as seen in the Lutece home. Notice that they used one such tear to return with Elizabeth in the first place. After that, for reasons unknown (although I do have my own theories) it was discovered that Elizabeth could manipulate and generate tears all on her own. To me it seemed the Syphon was built initially simply to contain and restrain Elizabeth's power, and the thought of taking and using that power came along as an afterthought.

As to why Elizabeth can do what she does, well, they never say, but through a few things I noticed, and think I can hazard a guess. Early on in the game you can find a recording of Lutece talking about Elizabeth, and how 'some part of her remains' where she came from. At first I thought this was some metaphysical mumbo jumbo, but, if you'll recall, a part of Elizabeth was indeed left behind, her pinkie. In theory, this could very well be the cause of her tear-manipulating abilities, presumably because the multiverse doesn't like that she is basically in two places, universes, at once. We are talking about quantum physics, of which I know very little, though, so I really can't say any of this is really true.

Spoiler

Could also be because she came through as a baby. We already know, from comstock's infertility, that the process of going through a tear changes people biologically. It could be that, because she came through when she was still at a highly developmental stage, it changed her greatly, to the extent that she could generate tears herself.

Overall, I liked the story, and the ending.

Spoiler: my interpretation on the ending

It makes a little more sense, I find, when you think more about the previous bioshock games.

So, usually, multiple universes exist without effecting one and other. Every outcome creates a different universe, subtley, or massively. There are some constants though. "There's always a city, always a girl, and always a man". In infinite, that girl was Elizabeth, that city was columbia, and that man was Booker. In bioshock 1+2, that girl was Eleanor Lamb, that city was Rapture, and the man was Jack.

I theorise that it's a little less simple than the bare bones explanation offered by Elizabeth. The man doesn't think he's ever been to the city, and comes there by some circumstance that wasn't fully under his control, but he actually has a link to the city, and to the person ruling it. Booker was, in effect, Comstock from another world where he never became religious. Jack was created and "programmed" genetically in rapture from Ryan's DNA. The girl has something special about her that makes her important to the city, and to the world. Eleanor Lamb was formally a little sister, and being trained by Sofia Lamb to become a kind of vessel, a leader of the hive mind that Sofia wanted Rapture, and possibly the world, to become. This gave her special powers and made her incredibly intelligent.

There's always a scientist, too. Remember Tenenbaum? I'm not too sure where Delta fits in though...There is, of course, the Revolutionary who turns out to be no better than the tyrant. In infinite, it was Daisy Fitzroy. In the first game, it was Atlas, AKA Frank Fontaine.

This all suggests that because Comstock tore down the barriers between worlds, he always linked them all, and they all led to the destruction of the established world by forces from the city. You could take the "bad endings" of the earlier games as the true ones in this case.

So, Booker rejects baptism, and spirals further into his trauma regarding wounded knee, thus ending in him giving away the child to Latuce (who, I think, in bookers universe was born a man, and in comstocks, a woman. Thus they're not brother and sister, but effectively the same person) and if he takes the baptism, he becomes comstock. Neither can come to be, otherwise countless worlds are doomed to the same destruction, only in a slightly different way.

So, was he killed? Maybe, maybe not. The end of credits sequence seems to suggest not. I think it's possibly that he was pushed into the water, but for too long. he survived, but from such a bad experience, he didn't delve as deep into religion as comstock did. Similiarly, it bought him back from the brink enough for him not to gain the debts that forced him to give away Anna in the first place.

Undoubtedly, there were universes where columbia happened, rapture happened, and some even where they went to destroy the world regardless, but without them being linked all together, with the natural order maintained, this didn't happen in EVERY universe.

or I'm overthinking things. maybe.

 

[daveman247]

Oh, and hands up for who else got a massive kick out of the nostalgia trip there near the end?

I really enjoyed infinite. But i enjoyed the first bioshock more. I think its more a personal thing: Played the first bioshock with zero expectation and somehow managed to avoid all spoliers months after it had come out. - The ending for infinite was partially spoiled for me the day it came out (damn trolls.)

I really liked the religious and racist themes at the beginning, but i felt they could have ran with that a little bit more. The ending was pretty good ( much better than previous bioshock). I too share the view that they threw too much in at the end - i can see why they did it since the first bioshock blew its load about two thirds of the way through. The problem here being that infinites story is much more complex and so i think needed a bit more explanation throughout the game. Nothing major (storywise) happened in the middle-act of the game.


The combat feels better, but i don't like how they stripped out the choices in the upgrade system. The first bioshock (and system shock 2 i guess) made it a thing that you had to make a choice, and stick with it. There was not enough adam/ cyber XP to get all the upgrades so you had to commit. In infinite everything just ran on money, which was fairly plentiful.

The vigor and gear upgrades were done better, providing useful abilities. The guns were just boring upgrade-wise, 25% this 50% that. i miss the guns visibly changing too. I do however think they got the difficulty balance right - no becoming OP half way through the game this time


TLDR : An overall great game that improves some things, but messes up others a bit. I liked the setting of bioshock 1 more. I liked ryan more than comstock - comstock was a more out and out badguy while ryan you could identify with him somewhat. I also felt with rapture you NEVER forgot where you were, with water leaking in or the sounds of groaning metal constantly reminding you. Parts of comumbia i honestly forgot i was in the sky.

 

[daveman247]

snip

Pretty good explantion i think I have some things to add :

Spoiler

Great idea in the game to have all those different lighthouses. All different bioshock universes means lots of sequals They've done underwater, they've done the sky, where next? Space? (too system shock maybe) underground? (similar to underwater.) One of the audio logs mentions how fink opens a tear to see a woman making the powers (possibly tenebaum from bioshock one making plasmids) so fink himself makes vigors. Pretty cool references

Delta turns out to be elanors father - so they become little sister/ big daddy who delta ends up trying to save. - so that fits kind of with the themes in infinite too. Universes!

For the little bit at the end of the credits im going to go with what another user suggested: Booker and anna/ liz are both indeed dead (Liz sort of being dead through never existing) and are trapped in some sort of void. The end sequence is in black and white with nothing outside of the windows of the office, much like what happens when booker dies in-game or when he's knocked out. So a kind of happy, kind of sad ending.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

Spoiler

I really hated the Booker = Comstock thing for two reasons

1. Predictability: When I heard the ending was mind blowing and surprising I though "I bet I turn out to be the main bad guy" This was before the game was released and before I even knew who any of the characters were. (I wasn't following the game)

2. Pointlessness: From what I remember, there are no major clues towards or implications of Booker being Comstock. They could be two different characters or the same guy and it would not affect any part of the story. They could have, at the end of the story, pulled any two random characters X and Y from a hat and said, "X was Y all along". That would have made as much sense and had just as much impact.

 

[daveman247]

snip

Yeah when you pick it apart it starts to get silly. The way its presented is quite good though


I also think every bioshock is going to be at a disadvantage after the first one. We are ALWAYS going to be looking for "dat twist". The first set a precedent.

 

[Piorn]

I actually like the implication of this fractal lore.
It could give game developers a lot of freedom in designing their games, and they still can connect it to the other games without getting conflicting lore, because they can just decide what happened and what didn't, based on what's important for the plot.

I wish more franchises would do this. Treat lore as more of a pattern, than a strait-jacket. Then they wouldn't have to explain every little detail that popped up 3 games prior.
Batman fights the Joker, Chell does Portals, and the Bioshock-guy finds a magic city next to a lighthouse.

 

[dagens24]

Saw the Booker = Comstock twist coming a mile away, but didn't really have any concept of how it would all come together.