Ishal said:
Therumancer said:
Robeltu said:
I told myself after all the out roar of Aliens that I would stop preordering games and waiting, but the steam prepurchase will most likely come with TF2 items, bioshock and Xcom Enemy Unknown, which if I sold Xcom to my friend would end up with it costing £20. I don't know what to do about it.
Now before anyone jumps on me and says "it won't be like that!" understand the game isn't out yet, we don't know, and it seems like it very much MIGHT be like that, which is why I want to see it come out first.
That and it seems like it might go a little too far with the US bashing, that's in of itself not enough to ruin me on a game (as I'm already looking forward to it) but combined with annoying design, wandering through a giant treatise on ignorant bashing of the right wing, in an enviroment that seems like an eternal 4th of July celebration gone insane, might just be a little more than I can take.
They have repeatedly stated that it won't be an escort mission. I'm not jumping on you about this, just citing what I've heard and seen. Ken Levine has cited Alyx from HL2 as an example of where they drew some inspiration... that AI is wholly different from RE4 president's daughter whats her face. Also, I have yet to see in gameplay where the enemy AI's target liz overtly over Booker(you). But as you say, it is wise to be skeptical. No arguments there.
I'd urge you to not pigeon hole the theme of the game as "right wing bashing" though it might be true to an extent I think people tend to take it a bit too far. Bear in mind that what we know about Columbia, it is a "deathstar" in that it has weapons and is generally not going to be a safe place with some wacky stuff happening. The original idea behind Columbia was that it was a floating worlds fair, literally a flying celebration of America that goes around the world bragging about our success as an "experiment". That right there is open to heavy criticism and is indeed how many people felt during the time of 1912. I think back to Comstock, who must have had to pitch the idea of Columbia in order to build it. What would he have said to get people to back him? It is a city with a purpose to travel around the world and promote America, so the aesthetic of it would be much as you say "eternal 4th of July". Columbia is a city, but a city that existed to sell/celebrate an image. Perhaps its just me, but a 4th of July celebration with the knobs turned up to 11 is Americana overcharged and would fit perfectly to do what Columbia was meant to do.
The best thing I've heard them (Irrational) say is that Columbia is the America that politicians always talk about in the sense of "the good ol' days" , "the way it used to be". They spout off about a vision of America that everyone has an idea of ... but never really existed. This game will criticize that vision of America. I acknowledge that I'm fully open to such criticism because my own political beliefs do not align with the right wing. Also, the America at that time had a lot of problems that would not make it a pleasant place in the slightest for a lot of people. Patriotism is fine, nationalism ehh not so much. I don't see the founders of Columbia as analogous to the the current "Tea Party". I think its going to be WAY more over the top than that. But thats just me, each person has limits to what they consider too much and I respect yours.
I'll just say this. Bioshock games as I'm sure you know are about Ideas taken to the extreme and having their believers crushed under their weight.
Bioshock: Objectivism/Un-regulated Capitalism
Bioshcok 2: Socialism
Bioshock Infinite: Nationalism
Though Infinite is not out yet, I grant I could be wrong and all this could be rendered mute..but thus far thats the vibe I'm getting.
Well, opinions vary, I'm mostly just advising caution, given the hype. I mean sure the game developers are telling us that this won't be an annoying AI partner that gets under foot, but they always say that. I mean to hear the hype before the game came out Ashely wasn't going to be what she actually was either, and then we had Sheeva in RE5 who was touted as being this great AI partner who wound up being just as bad in her own way. In general your never going to see game developers say "yeah well, the AI is spotty, but we think it will wind up having more pros than cons in the long run" or even flat out "The AI sucks, but it's still a good game". Every single time they saddle you with something like this it blows chips, yet is supposed to be an exception, the question is do you take Visceral's word for it? My advice is don't, maybe it will work out, but it's better to see that before you wind up blowing the $60.
As far as th political criticms in Bioshock go, I think that the point is kind of being missed. See, the big surprise that a lot of left wingers miss in "Bioshock" was that it really wasn't a slam on the things it appeared to be at first. The big reveal is that what Ryan did worked... and it worked REALLY well, perfectly in fact, the problem was entirely an X factor that nobody could have accounted for, and the bad guy winds up ultimatly being the dude who was arguably leading you to be most critical of what had happened up until that point.
With Bioshock 2, the writing was just generally bad. I think at the end of the day they were trying to be pro-socialist actually, trying to retroactively insert problems into the game that were never there to begin with. On a lot of levels it was pretty much Bioshock for those who never really "got" Bioshock and the eventual reveals, which if anything slammed both sides super hard, and at the end of the day made the Capitalists/Objectivists look like the lesser of evils if nothing else.
The thing with Nationalism is that it's only generally bad when nobody else on the planet happens to be Nationalist or looking out for their own interests. I get what they are trying to say with Bioshock: Infinite, but unless there is a surprise twist (which seems increasingly unlikely given the setup not being anywhere near as mysterious or ambigious as what they did with Bioshock... they are pretty much defining everything clearly right from the get go). One of the reasons why I generally tend to lean towards the right in real life is because I feel in a world of bastards, you kind of need to watch out for your own people and interests. Being the nice guys while everyone else is a self serving jerk doesn't tend to work out. Being nationalisticly pro-America and promoting our interests even when it's mean and cruel is really nothing differant than what nations like China... or pretty much anyone else for that matter, does. I feel that a lot of our problems, especially recently, have come from not being Nationalistic enough, and treating Nationalism as a bad thing, when very few other people have anywhere near the same attitude. It's a problem when people can go around screaming "Mexican Pride" and even have the US flag banned in US schools during Mexican holidays, and yet doing the same thing from a pro-American perspective, while still in your own country is considered to be a bad thing.
Now, time will tell how it's all going to play out, and chances are I'll appreciate the game on it's own merits, but really it does seem like a giant vehicle for US bashing. It will doubtlessly have some valid points of view somewhere in there, but at the same time when your looking at alleged American citizens being educated on taxpayer money, demanding the ban of what is supposed to be their own flag now in favor of a foreign holiday, this is hardly the time where we should be critical of alleged American hubris.
In theory they could do something like what Bioshock did, and pull a "wow" role reversal, but the problem with that is that it worked in Bioshock because at the end of the day you didn't really know crap about Ryan or Rapture except what someone else wanted you to see, someone with their own less than benevolent agenda. That's not the case with "Infinite".
That said, we'll see what happens, I'll play it eventually, but I very much doubt I'm going to pre-order it. I might have been tempted if I hadn't already bought X-Com (I just found the deal people were talking about) since I know that's a good game, and might be worth the risk, but as things stand now it's one of those cases where pre-ordering just seems to increase the chances of being pre-screwed... with me being more worried about game quality than the message/writing at this point to be honest. There isn't much lost by waiting.
If I change my mind on pre-ordering it will be because my Dad or someone like that decides they want X-com or whatever, assuming the promotion gets that far... and that doesn't seem all that likely at this point.
