Bioshock

[Edgecrusher 91]

Not sure why we haven't got a Bioshock topic, so i'm making one. Anyway, as the title suggests, this thread will be for discussion of all things Bioshock, including the new game; Infinite, of which I just found a nice preview:

There's something I can’t tell you about BioShock Infinite. Not because it’s a spoiler – I’ll avoid those too – but because I can’t quite communicate it. It’s something I felt after playing Half-Life 2, and again after playing BioShock 1. It’s the sense you get after experiencing something so vivid and rich that you know you’ll never be able to fully describe what it felt like. But I’ll try.

That’s not how I expected to feel after playing Infinite for the first time. They’d kept it out of journalistic hands until suspiciously close to release, and the trailers and walkthroughs didn’t give a good sense of what kind of game it was. Somewhere in my head, I just copied BioShock 1 from the bottom of the sea and pasted it into the clouds.

Some of that is accurate. In BioShock 1, you played an outsider discovering a failed utopian city at the bottom of the sea; in BioShock Infinite, you play an outsider discovering a failing utopian city floating in the sky. Both games let you explore an extraordinary place, piecing together its story from evidence left lying around. And both games alternate that with combat: you wield both conventional guns and a suite of basically-magical powers that let you do interesting things to your enemies.

Once you arrive, though, it’s hard to call them similar. ‘City in the clouds’ doesn’t really express the sheer size of it: there seem to be several of those in every direction. Columbia’s huge districts are disjointed, drifting in loose formation as the impossible flotilla tours the world. The first one I explore feels disjointed in itself: half the buildings seem to be bobbing and lurching independently, like some weird dream. Curving skyrails take massive carriages of cargo, like sidewinding trains. Airships propel themselves slowly between districts on twin fans. And the smoke from every chimney streaks in the same direction: we’re moving.

But the most startling difference from BioShock 1 isn’t the views: it’s the people. Rapture was a failed utopia, Columbia is still very much in the process of failing.

Plenty of times in my five hours, I’d enter a new district of the city where no-one has any particular reason to hate, fear or shoot me yet. Columbia is full of civilians milling around, gossiping, griping, and going about their business. It’s exactly what Irrational Games had avoided doing not only in BioShock, but in its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2, simply because it’s so hard to make it work. I asked creative director Ken Levine: what changed?

“If we went back to that now, I think people would say we were just repeating ourselves. Listen, it would have been a lot easier. We would have been having this conversation two years ago… but exploring a dead place by yourself, with you being this cypher, we’ve kind of done that.”

Was it as hard as they feared back then? “So, I don’t want to bore you with my problems, but the writing task was monstrous. It was huge. I remember the first level I wrote, the first draft for this prologue, I sat back and looked at this script, and I realised this script alone was longer than my entire script for BioShock.”

As I’m playing it, though, it’s not a game of long conversations. A lot of that work seems to have gone into a depth of story, rather than length. Even more so than in BioShock, the density of information encoded into the world around you is overwhelming. Every poster is propaganda for a faction you’ll meet, or a product you’ll buy, or a cryptic hint to one of the game’s dozens of connected mysteries. Pre-television viewing booths show flickery greyscale government infotainment, with title-card dialogue and jaunty music.

Plot characters still leave audio diaries of their thoughts lying around, but now they’re joined by living people having normal conversations. And almost every line of their daily lives has some payload of information about this foreign place.

“It’s damned inconvenient when buildings don’t dock on time,” a well-dressed man complains to his companion as I walk by. “Yesterday I had to take a gondola, rubbing shoulders with all sorts.” If you’re ‘someone’ in Columbia, your destination comes to you.

Later on, I actually see it happen. As I’m walking towards a bridge, Chas White’s Home and Garden Supply shop floats slowly towards me and docks noisily with a pair of metal teeth jutting out of the street, clanking into place and steadying as it locks. A nearby troupe of a cappella singers harmonise over the noise.

It’s all terribly… nice. It has the atmosphere of a cheerful village fete, but in a village that couldn’t exist. At one point, we seem to be in a cloud: a thick haze turns everyone in the street to silhouettes, picked out by spectacular rays of golden sunlight. Confetti floats through the air, and hummingbirds pause to probe flowers. Two children splash each other in a leaking fire hydrant.

Half an hour later, for reasons I won’t go into, I’m ramming a metal gear into a man’s eye socket until blood geysers all over my face. I’m drenched. Everyone’s screaming. Four more men are coming for me, and this blunt steel prong is all I have to kill them with.

I skipped ahead there for two reasons: one, I don’t want to spoil why violence does finally break out in BioShock Infinite. It’s a moment that will become notorious in gaming, and a hard one to forget.

Two, I wanted it to sound jarring, because it is. Extremely, intentionally and upsettingly so. When I ask Ken about it, he describes the intended effect as “biting into an apple and finding the worm at the core”.

It works as that. But it’s also jarring in another way. A moment ago I’d been enthralled by this place, fascinated by how different and fresh it was, hanging on every word of these people’s everyday lives. When I realised my next task was to ram a piece of metal into eight different people until they were all dead, part of me thought, sadly, “Oh yeah. Videogames.”

It’s not a new thought, it only stands out here because Infinite is so superb at conjuring this place and luring you into its story. When I mention it to Ken, he’s sympathetic. “It’s an intensely bizarre concept that you play a character – whether it’s Uncharted, or this game, or even like an Indiana Jones movie – who’s essentially a psychopathic mass murderer. You’re fucking insane. I’m very aware of this issue… it’s something we actually attempt to confront at some point.”

The other thing Infinite confronts, with surprising directness, is racism. I’m so used to games having some orc- or elf-based analogue for it that it’s strange to see regular white-on-black discrimination so unflinchingly depicted.

“I didn’t want a game that just had some racism in the background,” says Ken. “I wanted you to be engaged and confront those issues – in the same way we confronted you with what capitalism does when it goes to its maximum extreme.”

“In this game we think it’d be honest to deal with these topics, and these aren’t topics we take lightly, and they’re not necessarily going where you think they’re going. This is not… I don’t want to spoil anything.” Well, mission accomplished.

source

[jobo 100]

Is infinite going to be a whole new story line or will I have to play the first 2?

[Edgecrusher 91]

Don't think you need to play the first two really, it's new characters in a new location. If you play and enjoy it though, it is definately worth picking up the first two at some point as they are both very good games and not too expensive now either.

[Synch 476]

I completed the first two, what a different type of location. (Look down) Pretty unique game.

Had some infamous scary/creepy scenes in it as well.

Infinite appears UN-related to the events of the first two, and is staged in a different location. (Look up)

[sillkent 17]

You know, I've never been a huge fan of Bioshock, but I do own the first two and have beated them both. It's one of those games where I don't really like it that much, but i still play it anyway.

*cough*COD*cough*

[angeal18 138]

This game sounds fucking awesome, I only planned on getting GTA V this year but I might have to make an exception for this. People are calling it one of the best games ever made.

[DuPz0r 5361]

I loved the first one. The second felt slightly repetitive an i gave up, didn't even complete it, as i only rented it. Infinite does look like it has that magic the first one had though. I may well pick this up when i get paid.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Its gotten really good reviews so far.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

I completed it on normal mode, And I almost never play a games story through more than once, but infinites gameplay is so fun, I'm playing it again in 1999 mode.

[OptimumPx 329]

Play Bioshock Infinite, but this time its Rapture and not Columbia!

Play as Booker? Check.
Need to get Elizabeth out of the city? Check.
The city hasn't fallen yet, but it's about to? Check.

It's the same plot, just underwater...why didn't they make a Vox Populi DLC?

I mean, don't get me wrong...I'm going to get this, but did we really need to go back to Rapture when we've still got the entire city of Columbia waiting for us?

[Ace Of Spades 1182]

Just in case you wanted the song from the trailer.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Meh.

[Ace Of Spades 1182]

Just bought this game today, been playing it for about an hour and i must say it's fucking righteous.

[Ace Of Spades 1182]

I just beat it, it fucked me up.

[Ace Of Spades 1182]

I found this and I had to put this somewhere.

[Jizzy 633]

http://kotaku.com/bioshock-studio-irrational-games-is-winding-down-all-1525186316

[Vesperdae 3]

I played through the first one and the first little bit of the second. I found the first to be waaay better. Gameplay was actually pretty boring but the story was fantastic.