You know you're a fan in your Grandpa's basement when you ask him, "You ever read a book or seen a movie that ever made you sit down for a good long while and think about it?" and his answer is to simply shrug and say "No."
It's officially been 3 weeks since I finished Bioshock Infinite, and I hope that's given everbody who wants to play the game spoiler free enough chance to finish it and know what's going on. If not, This is your official Spoiler Warning. (Goodness, I hate that term, but what can you do.) The ending that everybody's heard so much about will be discussed in detail, along with the variety of mindbending stuff that goes down throughout the game, so you've been warned. (Everything after the jump.)
If I haven't made it clear yet, Bioshock Infinite blew me away for a variety of reasons. It's filled with an exhuberant amount of big ideas, engaging (if messy) combat, and a supporting character who is not only endearing and compelling in her own right, but has also spawned such image macros as the one below (appologies for the language), inspired by just how much people were happy to have the tables turned on the clasic "Save the Damsel in Distress" model. (IMO, even though I know how much hard work was put into making her AI, if a game is going to have a support AI in their game, if they can't make it as good as Elizabeth, they might as well not even bother.) I've played through the game twice and I am simultaneously watching two different sets of people playing through for the first time.
It's a fascinating game. But the only thing that's been more fascinating is the discussions happening around it. Some people love it, some people dispise it. Some people call it pretentious to the point of rediculous, some people call it the paragon of Games as Art. And many, many, many people are somewhere in between. And that is why I'm going to putting their discussions here for all to see. The sheer fact that it's taken me this long to actually sit down and write something about it should be clue enough that I have heard a lot of different opinions, some of which I agree with, some I don't, and I would just be regurgitating what's been said already. The biggest problem about talking about this game has been the fact that it's not something that's easily discussed in the first person perspective. (Irony?) It's just that, a Discussion. Something to be talked over the dinner table or in a comments box. Whatever you're opinions, I'm pretty confident that this will be the most talked about game of the year, and my personal best game of the year. Call me a hack if you will, but I'm going to be outsourcing most of this blog.
This is a basic breakdown of the chronological Timeline(s) of the game, as well as some postulations on the reasons for why things happened the way they did. If any of you are thinking of the Back to the Future 2 segment where Doc is talking about Skewed Tangents, you're doing it right.
Another nifty thing to come out of this is, while I haven't been able to have the sort of round-table discussion that I would have liked, many other intelligent people around the internet have. This is a good way to get a feel for just how polarizing this game is; hearing everybody give different reasons for choosing similar actions, having completely different reactions to the same experience, etc. I like to think of it like Cloud Atlas, in that way. (I loved the movie, can't believe that the DVD isn't coming out till the end of July (maybe) even though it came to theaters the week before Wreck-It Ralph.)
A point that they bring up that's very interesting is on the subject of Choice. In the first Bioshock game, whenever you encountered a Big Daddy and a Little Sister, once you eliminated the Daddy, you got the very black and white binary choice of whether to Free them or Harvest them, both giving you different rewards, the evil being good in the short term (and the fact that you're killing a freaking 6-year-old), with the good not giving you as much tangible reward, but making you feel like less of a monster and a better ending overall. This was one of the first instances of a Moral Choice system in Games where the choices had a direct impact on the final outcome, spawning countless variations on that idea, with varrying degrees of success, including that of Bioshock itself. Infinte, on the other hand, pays a decent amount of lip service to that notion, but the game itself doesn't do anything about those choices. Many people see this as a missed opportunity, where they either should have had the choices make more of an impact or not have any choices at all. But after I first played through, I understood very quickly that a lack of impact from those choices was actually kind of the point. I've heard lots of discussion as to what makes that point such a compelling one, but one that I really like has a very unique viewpoint that talks about how those choices were actually a sort of sleight of hand on the part of the developer, playing on the game design notion of "The Illusion of Choice" explained very well by the guy behind Borderlands at this past years DICE. (It's been said that this guy's the Rob Liefeld of Video Games; he loves the medium, and he knows all the parts that go into a good example of it, but a good number of his body of work is almost complete garbage.) That illusion of choice, combined with the Big Idea's that the game bombards you with throughout the game, eventually circles down into a story that's alot more personal than what many people were wanting and/or expecting.
Personally, while I don't really agree that "A jumbling of interesting topics with the illusion of cohesiveness." is what they were going for, I honestly think that the big Ideas were there because it's really cool to think about those big ideas, and while the main point of the story is the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth (or more specifically Booker and his past), the cool ideas presented were probably not as well implemented as they could have been. But then again, that's like complaining about there only being one and not two rainbows when you look up to the sky after a storm; There could have been more, but what's in front of you is already amazing.
Something that's been fascinating to no end about the discussion surrounding the game is the negative feedback. People who legitimately despise the game because of how much it didn't "click" for them, and what's more, they do have some good points. Before I post the link, I just want to say that, if by some small miracle you're down here and haven't played it but still may want to someday, there's a chance that you won't "get" the game. It's not that it's complex, which it kind of is. It's that the idea's presented are sometimes, if not oft-times, in direct juxtaposition to what is happening in front of you, and that really does require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. It was next to no problem for me, personally, but some people, like this commentator, found that to be the defining part of the game that makes it contemptible beyond belief, to her, especially after all the praise that's being poured on it. (then again, this person dislikes the Metal Gear Solid games for much the same reason, so take that as you will.)
Another conversation was had by people who came at the game from opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, there's somebody who thought that the game was tedious, poorly executed mess, and was unable to be engaged enough in what was going on to care about anything, and in my opinion, only looked at the game from a robots perspective of "Does this meet my 'rational' expectations? No? Then it's broken." And on the other hand, there's somebody who, while coming across similar instances that"broke the immersion," and even had some of the same expectation issues, still enjoyed the game, thought it was brave, mostly brilliant (if pretensious), and that he had a good time with the characters, the themes and the setting, even the parts of those that weren't perfect.
All of these guys bring up amazing points, and none of them are wrong, but with each piece of discussion that I see about the game, the one truth that it holds is this: No two people will have the same experience. This is what hundreds of games have strived for over the past few years, be it through an incredible multitude of options in terms of characterization, customization, oodles and oodles of gear and weapons slots, multiplayer experiences, multiple endings, community based games, etc. But I think the real triumph of Bioshock Infinite is that it accomplishes this with limited use of these systems, and for the most part, all out rejection of many of them. The unique experiences are instead created by each person looking at this with his or her own set of eyes and each person seeing their own interperetation. The experience is based on the uniqueness of the players, and the fact that, even though many of us fall within a similar demographic, there are still so many diverse viewpoints on the game is a testement to the unique thought patterns of each person who plays it, and that gives me hope for us yet.
I heartily encourage discussion here or on my Facebook page, as the only other person I've been able to actually talk to about the game is the afformentioned Grandpa and my siblings. The more people talk about Bioshock, the more we can learn from what it has to say (or doesn't say, depending on how you saw it.)
PS. My favorite parts of the game were where the Lutece twins showed up. While they're not neccessarily my favorite characters, the parts where they come in and do a half-teasing coded exposition dump, sometimes just through their physical acting, just struck a chord with me in the best way.
PPS. Immediately after posting this I'll be starting up playing through the original Bioshock from Start to Finish. I've wanted to before now, but I thougth it would be best if I maintained my unbiased stance througout, avoiding the "well it's not as good as the first one" rhetoric of many of the games detrators and celebrators. Possibly will mention any thought-changing if I do a bit on that game as well.
PPPS. The one-man-wonder-band Miracle of Sound, who makes video game based songs on everything from the heroic lays of Skyrim's adventurers to Call of Duty's silly game mechanics, will be releasing a song based on Bioshock Infinite tomorrow morning, along with a digital album containing all the songs that he's written in the past year. You can find his body of work with the Machinima Music Video treatment (and the intended venue for the Bishock song) HERE, or they're available for listen and purchase from his bandcamp.com page HERE. His stuff is really awesome, and if you have any love for a video game (or the occasional movie/tv show/cool nerdy thing), you should listen, cause he's probably done an amazing song about it.
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