*inFamous 2 SPOILERS* Bioware eat your heart out!

[putowtin]

I love the game, & I want more! because appart from the AC series, inFAMOUS is the only game that's really gripped me over the last couple of years, but....
Make me kill Zeke again and they'll be trouble ( a cut scene I can live with, but making me press that button 3 times, man that's mean!)

 

[NightHawk21]

Heh, in order for me to consider a game to have better storytelling than the bioware games that I own it would have to first be interesting enough for me to consider using my valuable gaming time to play it... since infamous/infamous two have both failed in that regard the story cannot be as good.

How can you say the story of Infamous is bad when you haven't played the two games. By your logic Mass Effect 1&2 are horse shit because I haven't gotten around to playing them yet.

Its pretty simple, for my opinion of a story to be good, it has to interest me enough to spend time on it in the first place. Infamous did not accomplish this. Looks like a completely uninteresting and uninspired sandbox clone.

Pass.

Without experiencing both you can't form an informed and good opinion.

 

[Hectix777]

Ya I just beat the game bout two days ago (good ending, working on the evil ending now) but I totally agree. The story of Infamous 1 and 2 have to be among my favorites in any video game I've played. The last choice was also really well done where Kuo becomes selfish and turns on you. Just makes me sad that they essentially ended the series

P.S. Zeke doesn't have the conduit gene, because he tried to use the ray sphere in Infamous 1 and couldn't get powers.

That doesn't mean he couldn't be a carrier. Remember Punett Squares you may have learned in Bio? Maybe Conduit genes are recessive ya know cc=Conduit, CC=non-Conduit, and Cc=Non-conduit majority. Maybe Zeke is Cc and finds a girl who is also Cc and make a boy that is cc. See? It can happen? Just because the Conduits died doesn't mean that it's the end if the Conduits. In the X-Men universe a lot of the X-Men had parents that weren't mutants but they were. See what I'm getting at? It's not the end of ALL Conduits just that generation. And Cole could still be alive, if he's hit with a big enough bolt of electricity on that freighter, he could be brought back, it's worked the tens of thousands of times I was close to death.

My one complaint with this game is the AI on both sides, Nix and Kuo are the only smart ones.

Damn, you might be right. I just automatically assumed it was a dominant gene but making it a recessive makes a lot more sense, as it would decrease the number of conduits (by phenotype ratios). Good catch. While part of me hopes that Cole is still alive, I'm not too sure. Regardless if they choose to bring him back, I hope they handle the story properly and don't just throw something together that doesn't make any sense (however knowing Sucker Punch we probably don't have too much to worry about in that department).

PS. I'm playing evil right now and I find Nix infinitely more useful than Kuo (in terms of fighting). Maybe its just me but the combos with Kuo were weird and harder to pull off. That being said in terms of AI, I just dislike the larger swamp monsters and their semi-homing bile spit stuff.

Well they could hire one of the writers from DC or Marvel, preferably writers from when Batman and Spiderman died. I mean if they thought of sending Batsie back through time to revive him, I'm confident they can figure something out for Cole MacGrath and his lightning powers. I mean Bats had no power, I'm pretty sure it'll be a no-brainer for those guys

P.S. I know! They're really annoying, and so are those super fast Ice soldiers, and even the rebels THEY FIRE MISSILES RIGHT WHERE I'M STANDING, ya think the question,"hey, you think we should program the rebels to not hit Cole with a rocket when they're close to a baddy or atleast not have them swarm him or have the baddies hit Cole with a rocket while he's down?" Lousy AI design.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Sarcasm on this thread hurts, lol.

But just to be on topic, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen did this...fourteen years ago. Not to be a dick, just sayin.

Well that was 14 years ago, I was 2 back than, do the math. I'm fairly sure a large amount of the community has heard of this like some type of legend. But outta curiosity what was the choice

a) Sacrifice yourself to restore the corrupted land - but eradicating the vampire race in the process, since you are the last vampire in Nosgoth
b) Refuse to kill yourself and establishing your empire on Nosgoth's ruins.

Option B is canon, naturally.

OT: Evil ending really grabbed me when I had to kill Zeke. I enjoyed killing Nix, though. For some reason I played Evil even if I prefered Kuo.

 

[Omnific One]

Wait, I hope no one here thinks Bioware is anywhere near the god of game writing. Seriously, they aren't that amazing.

It's all about presentation.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Sarcasm on this thread hurts, lol.

But just to be on topic, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen did this...fourteen years ago. Not to be a dick, just sayin.

Well that was 14 years ago, I was 2 back than, do the math. I'm fairly sure a large amount of the community has heard of this like some type of legend. But outta curiosity what was the choice

a) Sacrifice yourself to restore the corrupted land - but eradicating the vampire race in the process, since you are the last vampire in Nosgoth
b) Refuse to kill yourself and establishing your empire on Nosgoth's ruins.

Option B is canon, naturally.

OT: Evil ending really grabbed me when I had to kill Zeke. I enjoyed killing Nix, though. For some reason I played Evil even if I prefered Kuo.

Well, Kuo turned out to be a total hypocrite in the good ending, which really threw me for a loop.

 

[Deathninja19]

Are you kidding? Sure, Bioware gave us a scientist confronting his unethical bioweapons research, a woman relying on her religion to cope with her daughter's sociopathy, a man deciding between the woman he loves and his kingly duties, and (even in the worst game they made) clever use of a framing mechanism, but Infamous 2 gives us a choice between literal sainthood and literally sacrificing the entire human race for your personal benefit. That's just another level of storytelling, man.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Damn lack of inflections in text.

I think he's being sarcastic just don't tell Hectix it would break his heart.

 

[Beesejar]

InFamous is a good series but they should just stop right there screwing the entire series over, and if the lightning bolt does resurect him I will personally climb the nearest 30 story structure and throw myself off it.

 

[Andrew_Mac]

You know, Infamous 1 was OBVIOUS moral decisions, should i kill a millon people and eat this kitten or should i walk to the park and give bunny rabbits to orphans, kinda thing. The first moral choice thing in infamous 2 had me a itty bit worried that things would be the same. but from then on, it just got better.
oh, and thought i should let you all know, i played through as the good guy. now i'm REPLAYING both as the dickhead bad guy who get all the awesome powers.

 

[Bullmatthews]

I just hope there can somehow be inFAMOUS 3. Hell, they'd have to do some REALLY good writing to explain the two vastly different endings and tie them into one game, but even if it isn't written well, screw that! I want to go around zapping dudes in the bollocks again. Maybe in somewhere like San Francisco.

I prefer it if they just end the series. Very few games have ever done that, let it be remembered for it.

Ya i wish they would stop now but they won't, right before the credits roll lightning strikes the boat they are floating away on, am i the only one who noticed this? It seems to me they are going to bring him back with a lightning strike.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Listen, I know we all know tha Bioware is the golden god king of video game writing

You have low standards. Nobody deserves that kind of credit, least of all Bioware, and you really shouldn't make such a big deal out of them. Give it a few years of them releasing the exact same story with the exact same characters copy-pasted into the script you'll understand what I mean by the third time you're going "oh, hi Kaiden/Carth/Alistair! How's Bastila/Morgan/Ashley doing in THIS game? How about Minsc/Mordin/HK-47? Boy I sure can't wait to see what dialogue quirk he picked up THIS time. I just hope it doesn't bother Canderous/Wrex."

I do agree that Infamous 2 is better than anything they put out, though, by leagues.

 

[McNinja]

Whoa. I just had my mind blown man. No other game has ever given me the choice between sacrificing myself or sacrificing others. We might be witnessing the birth of a new form of storytelling.

There's a little bit more to it than that. The choice isn't solely self sacrifice, you have to kill, from a rough estimate, roughly 3% of the population of the entire planet, Cole being among them. Its also never garunteed it would save them, so you could have sacrificed yourself for nothing, letting the rest of the population die and essentially killing the only people who could have survived.

That was sarcasm. The point of that post was that it wasn't anything new in the least. It's interesting how this goes straight over some peoples heads. See below:

Whoa. I just had my mind blown man. No other game has ever given me the choice between sacrificing myself or sacrificing others. We might be witnessing the birth of a new form of storytelling.

The Sucker Punch method? Because that's what I felt happen when hey dropped that on me I actually backed up a little like,"whoa, what a twist!" Yeah Bioware may have RPGs but Sucker Punch has everything else. We have found our gaming Tolkien, our Stephen King, our Brian Jaques, our gaming Eion Culfer!

No. No we did not.

 

[Rawne1980]

Only 1 thing stopping Infamous taking over.

Infamous = PS3 only

Bioware games = all platforms.

Bioware reigns supreme. Seriously, don't think they will be in a panic anytime soon.

 

[Asophetes]

You have low standards. Nobody deserves that kind of credit, least of all Bioware, and you really shouldn't make such a big deal out of them. Give it a few years of them releasing the exact same story with the exact same characters copy-pasted into the script you'll understand what I mean by the third time you're going "oh, hi Kaiden/Carth/Alistair! How's Bastila/Morgan/Ashley doing in THIS game? How about Minsc/Mordin/HK-47? Boy I sure can't wait to see what dialogue quirk he picked up THIS time. I just hope it doesn't bother Canderous/Wrex."

Just a quick question, not to insult you but, did you play any of those games? I mean, you seem to take that "Oh, these three dudes all are the main male party members who all happen to be good guys" or "All these women kinda ***** sometimes.". They do actually differentiate on a character level. Just because they all are similar in some aspects does not exactly mean that they're the same exact person in different clothes, and that those clothes are the only things differencing every BioWare character since 1998.

On topic: In terms of story writing, I don't think the so called crowned king of game writing(A throne I think doesn't even exist,) is going to worry about Sucker Punch's story. I mean, the whole "Kill a few, save the many" or "Kill the weak so the strong to survive" isn't exactly the greatest thing that has ever graced the script of a video game, especially since they seem to cop out on on the final choice a bit. I hope that Sucker Punch does something interesting in the story for their next game that doesn't rely on a Moral choice bar.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Just a quick question, not to insult you but, did you play any of those games? I mean, you seem to take that "Oh, these three dudes all are the main male party members who all happen to be good guys" or "All these women kinda ***** sometimes.". They do actually differentiate on a character level. Just because they all are similar in some aspects does not exactly mean that they're the same exact person in different clothes, and that those clothes are the only things differencing every BioWare character since 1998.

Yes. I have played them. I've played most of the games in Bioware's catalog since Baldur's Gate. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed back then either, to tell you the truth.

From where I sit, I've witnessed the same plot twists, the same characters, and the same themes more than a half dozen times. They don't just feel "similar in some aspects to me." They feel like they were produced with the same cookie dough recipe, the same set of cookie-cutters, arranged in the same order on a tray for each batch, and then maybe presented to me with slightly varying coats of frosting or occasionally sprinkles. It'd be one thing if their characters just kinda' shared one or two traits, but they nearly always share the same roles from story to story--if not on level of exact plot details, then in a meta sense.

Take Mordin and HK-47. Every Bioware game has to have at least one zany guy with an outrageously idiosyncratic point of view and a dialogue quirk to go with it. Doesn't matter what, you can write down silly ideas on bits of paper, throw them into a hat, and draw it at random. The more nonsequiteur, the better! Comic Relief Guy is always a favorite. Try it sometime, you'll see what I mean. You could be writing Twilight fanfiction and for including that one guy and letting him off the leash, people will ignore all your writing flaws and have a blast. And that's why he's there. That's why he's there in every game they produce, and always will be.

It's part of the formula. So's "Meathead," so's the "Safe Guy," the "Ice Queen," the "Nice Girl," and whatever other archetypes I'm forgetting. They're RPGs, so you need characters filling certain party roles; Bioware believes you want to hear from these characters in every single game they make, weighing in on whatever issues they've come up with for them to bicker about, so they bring them in every game and marry them to the most superficially fitting character classes every single time. The variation comes when the "random quirk" they pull out of the hat happens to fit a different character class than usual.

I'll readily admit that maybe I'm being unfair. There was a point when I was fond of them, otherwise I'd not have played as many games as I have to reach this conclusion. But, I've grown very, very, very tired of their work of late, especially with all the overexposure they're getting. Maybe it's just a pet peeve, I tend to react poorly to developers getting over-exposure. You might have a point on me, for all I know, but I've gotten so numb to these games at this point that the differences I can see and admit to feel really, really superficial.

 

[Asophetes]

It's part of the formula. So's "Meathead," so's the "Safe Guy," the "Ice Queen," the "Nice Girl," and whatever other archetypes I'm forgetting. They're RPGs, so you need characters filling certain party roles; Bioware believes you want to hear from these characters in every single game they make, weighing in on whatever issues they've come up with for them to bicker about, so they bring them in every game and marry them to the most superficially fitting character classes every single time. The variation comes when the "random quirk" they pull out of the hat happens to fit a different character class than usual.

It seems that your putting too much emphasis on tropes and the such, which most can be fit in almost every form of media. A character, for the most part, is a person. Yes, Mordin is a funny character, but he also is the doctor who invented a new strain of a disease that causes stillbirths in the thousands in another species. HK-47 is also funny, but he's also a murdering assassin. He kills because he is ordered too, not for some cause like Mordin does. The other character stereotypes do exist, yes, but they are not what defines a character, merely categorize them. They are all strongly characterized, and it's that characterization is what BioWare is known for. They are not the greatest writers ever, but they are really good ones, and that's fairly uncommon in this industry.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Look Bioware is good and all, and they're a little bit more consistent at character, but Sucker Punch really delivered with Infamous 2. However, both of Bioware's most recent titles had the same issue for me as Infamous 2 did--namely, they felt fairly weak until the end stretch, when things really became the glorious example of character and story that we think the game have. But, I will give Inf2 that at least it holds true to the game it wants to be and the audience involved, rather than trying to pander across the board.

 

[pspman45]

seriously?
A game with a forced moral choice system depending on being entirely good or entirely evil with about as much BS in the plot as a long running comic series has a better story then Bioware RPGs?
excuse me for asking
but have you ever played a Bioware RPG?

In Infamous, the choices you are required to make to be evil are absolutely unnecessary, and there is no reason behind it, it just means that Cole is a complete moron with no moral values whatsoever.
It made sense in the first one, where it paid off because the Evil powers kicked so much ass, but In this one, the evil powers kind of suck while the good powers are the superior ones

I have a few nit-picky complaints about the story, shall we begin?

Spoiler

At the very end of the Evil ending, the beast just suddenly stops and goes "I don't really feel like doing this anymore, I'll just die now and give it to you!
wat? that just came out of nowhere! he spent the entire last hour of the game convincing you that his solution was the best, only to decide not to want to do it anymore?
That's just stupid -.-

Support character time!
oh, how original Sucker Punch, the "Ice Queen" good character (do you see what I did there!) is the bossy, never pleased but still good hearted one who turns evil out of fear, but then goes right back!
and the nice flirty one used to represent temptation is the evil one decides to be good after something bad happens
their character arcs happened at the very last second, and not progressively

Time for gameplay and story inconsistencies!
If I have Ice powers, why does water still kill me, can't I just freeze the water below me?
Why can't fire powers melt Ice soldier structures?
If you destroyed the Ray Sphere in the first game, then how did it activate John?
why didn't the EMP from the nuclear missile turn off Cole's power?
How the hell does that guy have a Nuclear Missile?
The original Ray sphere killed a large number of people on a single island, how is it that the Ray inhibitor, a device of the approximately same size, was able to cleanse the entire planet?

I mean, yea the game is good, sure the story is good, but It wasn't THAT good