Poll: Elizabeth or Alyx Vance?

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

If you would...

Do not use quotation marks when quoting something that wasn't said (IE "existentialist")

Do not assume you are the only person in the world capable of playing anything other than AAA games

Do not condemn a story based on its message (unless it's like... nazi propaganda, or something)

Besides,

Spoiler

Booker and Anna live, if you wait until after the credits. The story isn't about fatalism, it's about the power of choices, and the infinite potential for good and ill people hold within their simple lives. Thus the subtitle.

Super-dimension-powered Elizabeth probably lives too. Look closely at her necklace in the ending sequence.

 

[joshuaayt]

Elizabeth, hands down. She is, without a doubt, the best leaner I have ever seen.

Her leaning prowess is completely without competition- I have seen her leaning on things that, if I'm being honest with myself, I didn't think could ever be leant upon. I've seen her leaning on doors, on carriages, on walls, on those walls that are around stairs, scaffolding- She really is quite exceptional.

And don't even get me started on her looking skills. I'm honestly astounded at all the things I've seen her look at.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

Spoiler

Well, except it was broken. It was a thing that happened in the game. Did you see it? Do you remember?

Bioshock's many-worlds interpretation is totally internally consistent.

Cycles can't be broken eh? Well, clearly they can in BSI, but only by choice. That's the point of the chalk board and the lottery. It points out that only choice can change anything. I'm confused as to how you speak with such authority on the many-worlds interpretation, considering it is a field that is almost entirely theoretical at the moment. Your declarations have no qualifiers. You speak as if they are irrefutable.

Booker goes through his cycle only 122 times exactly, and then dies. Then, there is only one possible universe left for him, where he awakes in his home, Anna still in his possession.

If we're going to get science-y here, the real many worlds interpretation states any given time-planck can diverse into an infinite number of realities, so really there's rarely a situation where a cycle CAN'T be broken.

 

[dagens24]

*snip*

Spoiler

Well, except it was broken. It was a thing that happened in the game. Did you see it? Do you remember?

Bioshock's many-worlds interpretation is totally internally consistent.

Cycles can't be broken eh? Well, clearly they can in BSI, but only by choice. That's the point of the chalk board and the lottery. It points out that only choice can change anything. I'm confused as to how you speak with such authority on the many-worlds interpretation, considering it is a field that is almost entirely theoretical at the moment. You declarations have no qualifiers. You speak as if they are irrefutable.

Booker goes through his cycle only 122 times exactly, and then dies. Then, there is only one possible universe left for him, where he awakes in his home, Anna still in his possession.

If we're going to get science-y here, the real many worlds interpretation states any given time-planck can diverse into an infinite number of realities, so really there's rarely a situation where a cycle CAN'T be broken.

Yes, the hand waving it does.

The hand waving for paradoxes. The hand waving for the incessant need to be mystic. That's its problem.

Thee thing is about the multiverse, if you read what is there on the topic, that probabilities always exist. trying to go into pseudo time travel evokes the same paradoxes that time travel has. Comstock still exists, because he exists in millions of worlds. To try to destroy that is ludicrous.

Even the Luteces agree, and the scene cuts out before we see anna. So as far as we know the cycle restarted again, just like the luteces elude to in the light house.

I've been following your discussion in this thread and you've perfectly summed up what I just can't enjoy Infinite. Thank you good sir.

 

[jpoon]

Elizabeth for me, she was a far more interesting character and did pretty well running around my wake of destruction.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

You're simply not looking at it from the established rules of BSI. It doesn't claim to have anything to do with the real MWI. It's internally consistent, that's all I need, so long as it's clever. I don't understand your repeated criticism of too "mystic".

I mean, this in a series where inject-able stem cells give you telekinesis. You're trying to impose your own conception of reality on a game world that has it's own already established laws.

It's just grasping criticism. It would be like me dismissing the entirety of Half Life 2's story because the G Man can freeze time. And Half Life is far closer to the "science" part of science fiction than Bioshock is. It'd be like dismissing hamlet because 'pwah, ghosts?! That can't really happen. Too mystic.' You're simply rejecting the game world's established setting.

I really don't know how much hard science you were expecting from a game that used the ability to telepathically summon crows as a selling point.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

*snip*

Spoiler

Well, except it was broken. It was a thing that happened in the game. Did you see it? Do you remember?

Bioshock's many-worlds interpretation is totally internally consistent.

Cycles can't be broken eh? Well, clearly they can in BSI, but only by choice. That's the point of the chalk board and the lottery. It points out that only choice can change anything. I'm confused as to how you speak with such authority on the many-worlds interpretation, considering it is a field that is almost entirely theoretical at the moment. You declarations have no qualifiers. You speak as if they are irrefutable.

Booker goes through his cycle only 122 times exactly, and then dies. Then, there is only one possible universe left for him, where he awakes in his home, Anna still in his possession.

If we're going to get science-y here, the real many worlds interpretation states any given time-planck can diverse into an infinite number of realities, so really there's rarely a situation where a cycle CAN'T be broken.

Yes, the hand waving it does.

The hand waving for paradoxes. The hand waving for the incessant need to be mystic. That's its problem.

Thee thing is about the multiverse, if you read what is there on the topic, that probabilities always exist. trying to go into pseudo time travel evokes the same paradoxes that time travel has. Comstock still exists, because he exists in millions of worlds. To try to destroy that is ludicrous.

Even the Luteces agree, and the scene cuts out before we see anna. So as far as we know the cycle restarted again, just like the luteces elude to in the light house.

Well you can hand waive paradoxes and the like if you establish rules in the plot, which Bioshock infinite has demonstrated throughout the game with "constants and variables" So it's more or less required to adapt real world knowledge to meet the fictional world's rule set, in order for the plot not to fall apart.

The post credits does not set anything into stone it's deliberately ambiguous to spark discussions via different interpretations of the plot. So if you say it restarts the loop, I can say it's a bittersweet ending with a Pyrrhic victory.

 

[BNguyen]

*snip*

Reading this, I honestly don't believe that you've actually played it, or at least, maybe there's some alternate dimension warping going on here.

But whatever, I still like Elizabeth better than Vance. Personality wise eh... Alyx is perhaps a bit more independent.

From a strictly mechanical viewpoint I found Elizabeth worlds more useful. First thing I remember Vance doing when she became target-able by enemies is running out into a bunch of them and nabbing me a game over.

yes I did. On hard, I was stuck in the vault, waiting for liz to get me more hand cannon ammo. Which can snipe pretty well. I was waiting for a long time to kill the ghost, and was forced to rambo and pick up guns, empty their clips, and get another. Every fight I mostly forgot liz was even there, until the vault when I saw her run back and hide behind a safe and stay there.

By the time I was getting to the atrium where they posted the skinned scalps on the sign, I abandoned mosquito turrets entirely.

You can't say "but but how can you not love the story and characters? You played it."

Story wise, I play more than just AAA. I play indies, and the most obscure games . When you are obscure, you don't have to worry about offending anyone, and you can be more honest and brutal. When you play a game that literally tries to convey the message that life is meaningless, and too painful, and you would be doing them a favor if you kill them, it kinda skews what you find a "existentialist" message.

Character wise, I explained above with others.

based on your posts, it seems you got a buggy version of the game - Elizabeth regularly handed ammo, money, health and salts right when I needed them, the turrets and mosquitoes also added a lot of help.

 

[BNguyen]

*snip*

You're simply not looking at it from the established rules of BSI. It doesn't claim to have anything to do with the real MWI. It's internally consistent, that's all I need, so long as it's clever. I don't understand your repeated criticism of too "mystic".

I mean, this in a series where inject-able stem cells give you telekinesis. You're trying to impose your own conception of reality on a game world that has it's own already established laws.

It's just grasping criticism. It would be like me dismissing the entirety of Half Life 2's story because the G Man can freeze time. And Half Life is far closer to the "science" part of science fiction than Bioshock is. It'd be like dismissing hamlet because 'pwah, ghosts?! That can't really happen. Too mystic.' You're simply rejecting the game world's established setting.

I really don't know how much hard science you were expecting from a game that used the ability to telepathically summon crows as a selling point.

Its not so much real multiverse, but actual paradoxes. A paradox you find through logic and deduction, not actual science.

Killing Comstock has the same effect as a grandfather paradox. Though that's not the biggest criticism, where what I said was correct and the loop restarted.

Because you can't destroy a loop, if its destroyed it goes back to the beginning and goes on again. Its the same reason the luteces say alive, died, will die. Elizabeth only reset the loop, she didn't destroy it. Which the luteces keep mentioning that it failed and they need another try.

But after 122 tries, you'd think a pair of geniuses would conclude that breaking a cycle is impossible and try another way. They even say what happens WILL happen regardless.

122 tries is definitely not enough to conclude that breaking a loop is impossible - after all, Edison failed over 2000 times before making a workable filament. If we regard his experiments as a loop by your logic, he should have just given up after the first few tries and said "it's impossible". A loop is not impossible to break, have enough starting points and enough variation, with time, a loop will not occur, and instead a multitude of different outcomes will occur.
And just because they say "What happens will happen regardless" is more like they expect it to happen because they'll seen it only so many times

 

[StupidNincompoop]

of course elizabeth is going to win here, because everybody in this forum seems to hate HL2.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

I fail to see how this is a paradox, I presume you mean the killing in the ending scene, right?

Well, Elizabeth does have powers not bound by the laws of lower spacial dimensions. The Luteces clearly are not bound by causality and have powers nearly identical to hers.

For reasons why the Luteces continued their experiment, see BNguyen's post. Also Ms. Lutece was a fatalist, but Mr. Lutece was not, for further reasoning.

Also evidence that choice changes with each dimensional iteration; the necklace, which the luteces are always surprised by your choice, no matter which it is.

 

[Innegativeion]

If liz went back and kill Comstock, the only reason she, the Luteces, and Columbia even exist, then it nullifies everything that brought her to that point.

No luteces, no funding. They'd be stuck with no one believing them.

No Comstock, no powers given to anna, and no Columbia.

It only restarts the cycle. It would be exactly like killing your grandfather. Which is why the luteces keep score of what past bookers did, and why the Luteces were arguing over the experiment in the lighthouse.

The only thing you can do in a multiverse is be happy your version of the villain is dead, because you can't do much about the millions of other villians.

You're totally mis-interpretating what happened.

It's nothing like the grandfather paradox. The motivation for

Spoiler

drowning all versions of Booker that come to be baptized is not removed by doing so, because the luteces (and probably the Elizabeth whose siphon was destroyed) are scattered throughout probability space. They are not subject to 4th dimensional (time) causality. Therefor the motivation for the event

is preserved. It is logically sound.

Besides, there's no time travel involved here. I'm pretty sure the rules are different anyway.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

You're wrong, I'm afraid.

Spoiler

Lutece has a Voxaphone that pretty explicitly states she (and by extension her brother) exist across all probabilities. She even uses the term "possibility space"

Elizabeth explains her newfound abilities to be essentially the same way during the lighthouse tour. She sees all and is not constrained by the bounds of lower dimensions.

also wrong about Anna,

Spoiler

since you can hear her crying in the final scene. I'm pretty sure most people will affirm that.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Alyx Vance, and I never played whatever Half-life game she was in.

Yes, Elizabeth had a character arc, but I just found her 'Press X to get stuff' mechanic very annoying, like when I reload and I hear her call out that she found health and I can't hit X to get it because I am reloading. The 'protect the thingie' mission was frustrating because the ally that helps you only does it when Elizabeth says it is ready, DESPITE the countdown timer indicating it could be used.

The number of times, she would find ammo when I needed health was frustrating as well.

I never had Alyx as an NPC ally, but I prefer her to the one I was allied with.

'Engage flameshield!'

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Elizabeth, no question.

Alex is ok, but I've never really seen the appeal. She's kind of irritating with that perky ass attitude and she never does anything very useful beyond opening doors.

As far as gameplay is concerned, I feel Elizabeth is the best NPC of all time. No, really. For one, I don't have to worry about her AT ALL. I can run through a crowd of shotgun toting enemies, jump off a ledge, ride from building to building over a multi-thousand foot chasm and dual with giant fuckoff robot and she stays right with me without taking damage. Alex is tough, but if I run away in a tough fight, she'll die. Furthermore, while Alex helped a tiny bit from time to time, Elizabeth gave everything from health to money to goddamn miniguns.

On top of all that, I feel like she's a character with an actual arc. I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but (other than the, shall we say, daddy issue) the Alex at the beginning of HL2 is identical to the Alex at the end of Episode 2. Elizabeth begins as a frightened little girl and hardens throughout the game before finally performing the final dark act.

Funny thing is, I greatly prefer Half-Life over Bioshock if we're talking about the games as a whole.

snip

inb4 Glorious Mod Wrath.