Bioshock Infinite

I'm not too hot on the design myself. Apparently that's not just some plastic mask with gears behind it though, that's an actual dude's face. At least the Body Horror the Big Daddies suffered was out of sight.

I like the idea of multiple parallel universes, although it doesn't look very complex gameplay wise.

Also, was that cinema at the end showing 'Revenge of the Jedi'?

edited 23rd Jun '11 9:45:28 PM by edvedd

It seems to me that (thematically at least, being an overly protective guardian and whatnot) the Songbird is the Big Daddy equivalent more than the Handymen, even if there's only one of him.

We don't even know what the handymen really are at this point. Do they work for the Founders or the Vox Populi? How aggresive are they exactly? Why where they built? Are there other models? What do they do?

They'd be less silly if it weren't for the moustaches.

@Edvedd: Yes, it was Revenge of the Jedi. parallel/alternate realities. :D

They just aren't as creepy as the Big Daddies.

When I first saw a Big Daddy in Bioshock, I was like "HOLY COW THAT THING BEAT THAT DUDE AGAINST A WALL AND DRILLED HIM! LITERALLY!"

I first thought that when I saw the Handyman throw Booker out of the window, but now that I saw their design they aren't as cool.

The Songbird seems more like the original design for the Big Sister, really.

I didn't like the idea of the Big Sister at all. The entire idea behind them is stupid.

I'm curious as to why you think that. I thought it made sense from a story perspective (Little sisters age after all) from a gameplay perspective (Always need a new challenge) and a design perspective (Jesus christ she just jumped on a wall and is throwing fireballs at me after she speared a random splicer to heal!)

The Big Daddies were a sign of how fall Rapture itself had fallen. They felt like a tragic monster. The Big Sisters just felt like an attempt to make things tougher (they could have used the other Delta Series for that) and to show that the many of the little sisters came back.

They just didn't have the same affect on me as the Big Daddies.

True. That was their point to a degree: The devs said that Jack couldn't survive in this new Rapture. By the time Delta came along again Rapture has taken natural selection to the upteenth degree. The splicers where stronger and smarter, the Big Daddies where pulling out new tricks, Lamb had unified much of the bad guys. The Big Sisters are a culmination of that: Predators that make Prey out of superpowered psychotic monsters. Dangerous as hell. Considering i went through the first Bioshock practically begging for a stronger opponent that made me really happy.

Anyways, i'm starting to see some parallels between the Bioshocks here. The Big Daddy/Little Sister dynamic really focused on a parental feeling that had been twisted beyond all measure. Songbird and Elizabeth are noted to act more like a messed up husband and wife. And there's no genetic experiments gone awry to blame here, it's purely psychological. Just like the war between the two factions. Unless the tears have anything to do with either one.

edited 24th Jun '11 11:02:30 AM by ShirowShirow

Wonder if they'll have something like Vita Chambers. If so, FUCK.

EDIT: I can see it know. "Oh noes, my friend died, I will just summon a version of him that isn't dead."

edited 24th Jun '11 12:26:20 PM by Kev-O

Booker DeWitt revealed.

Yeah, he looks like he's been through hell.

Huh. I imagined him as wearing... well, a suit.

He is. Notice the red tie? He's just wearing an odd formal leather vest over it.

Although there was no way of knowing that from the first look we got.◊

Face it, at this point in the game, Booker's undergone a few days of serious shit. He has the Thousand Mile Stare in that pic.

15 minute demo!

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/gametrailers-tv/124?ch=2&sd=1_hd

This looks AWESOME. Just one observation:

Is it just me or is Columbia 3 times scarier than Rapture? Maybe it's how the trailer makes good use of tension but part of it may be because it looks more..."plausible". In Rapture you fought against mutants who looked partly human but were still kinda fantastical. In here you fight against human beings who have been driven crazy apparently solely by political extremism in the middle of riots that definitely invoke what you sometimes see in historical footage. Granted, you fight them in an implausible turn of the century flying city but still.

edited 8th Jul '11 4:11:00 AM by Psyclone

It looks amazing, and — astoundingly — like there's a lot of unscripted content. I wonder just how much of Brooker's dialouge and intructions are directed by player interactivity and intelligent AI. That's pretty cool. Hell, that entire fightin the middle of that section looked completely optional!

I wonder how interactive it actually is — and given the ammount of uniteractive type sequences it seems it'll be hard to tell until people start getting their hands on copies. What would happen if Booker revealed himself at the start, hmm? Is he capable of going through that entire sequence without fighting anyone at all — not stealthy it, per se, but just not interacting with the characters.

Where have I heard her voice before? It's distracting as hell.

Oh god fucking damnit all, they added regenerating health and that arbitrary 2-weapon limit. Oh it might be pretty to look at with "atmosphere" and "scenery", but the gameplay looks like linear bullshit.

I think it's large world open arenas. Notice the way Brooker missed the Blimp the first time. He could have just taken it out from the ground, or stopped anyone from calling on the Blower.

With that many people shooting at you from that many directions I'd be surprised if you didn't have regenerating health. You seem to have a longer health bar than Bioshock too.

Ken Levine mentions the interactivity in this interview:

http://www.giantbomb.com/e3-2011-ken-levine-interview/17-4372/

Apparently not all choices in the game boil down to those "interrupts", to borrow the Mass Effect 2 term. If you want you can in fact do nothing and walk by or even start shooting which may or may not stop the actual execution.

There's also choices where there isn't a prompt at all. You can apparently rescue the dentist you see being thrown out the window in that demo if you kill the thugs harassing him. If you do that in the finished game, you see him in a later level pulling the gold teeth from a stack of corpses. He then recognizes you and gives you a bag of teeth as "thanks".

My question is how Booker was able to use telekinisis and things like that. Does he have some of Elizebeth's power?

That's where Vigors and Nostrums come in. They're the equivalent of Plasmids, the main difference being that they're drinkable potions and have only a set number of charges instead of drawing from a unified "mana" pool.

The "telekinesis" one is "Bucking Bronco" (though unlike telekinesis it only serves to make groups of enemies float in the air) and the birds one is "A Murder Of Crows"

edited 8th Jul '11 11:38:21 AM by Psyclone