Bioshock Infinite

@Fighteer To clarify, I'm not arguing what's realistic or not (I think Comstock the uber-Klansman is 100% realistic), just what they could have done if they wanted someone who was "only" as evil as Fitzroy as presented in pre-DLC Bioshock Infinite.

So, to be clear, this discussion is about whether we like the story, not whether we believe the story, right? Because there's not really any point to arguing about the former.

Magical quantum mechanics aside, the story is all too believable. I suppose that's uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it rubs me in all the right ways. I'm not a fan of stories whitewashing history (or historical allegories for that matter).

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 16th 2020 at 3:07:47 PM

I wouldn't recommend it. The crowd-appeasing Daisy retcon is just one of its problems, the combat is also clunkier and more tedious than the base game, when you finally get to play as Elizabeth she's a boring "stealth girl" instead of a superpowered badass, and the whole attempt to tie Rapture and Columbia together just feels like a mean-spirited, spiteful effort to cut BioShock 2 out of the story by a creator who's angry they've lost control of the franchise. Having the credits song be "You Belong to Me" isn't very subtle.

Also, the first-person lobotomy sequence is fairly unpleasant.

Edited by Tacitus on Oct 16th 2020 at 5:02:11 AM

On top of that... The issues we've been discussing in regards to Daisy dying for the sake of Elizabeth's character development... Those issues come up again in a more detrimental way to Liz herself.

Namely, Elizabeth is SOMEHOW killed and stripped of her reality warper powers... for convoluted and illogical reasons that don't really make sense except in the Doyalist context of "We want her to be the player character". Elizabeth then gets caught in the machinations of the original Bioshock's big bad, Fontaine, goes on a fetch quest for him, and ultimately becomes a sacrificial lamb giving him the key to return to Rapture and take it over from Andrew Ryan... but also the key that will eventually allow Jack to kill Andrew Ryan, Fontaine, (in good playthrough of BS 1) free all the Little Sisters.

Elizabeth, a female character who's development is founded on escaping a cage and discovering her agency and power in the world to eventually become a reality warper and the most powerful woman in existence... is killed off for the sake of the development of a characterless mute faceless white guy PC who will save the world in a way she just... couldn't for reasons.

I enjoyed Bioshock: Infinite as a fun but fairly flawed game with some memorable locations and characters, beautiful animation, and stunning visuals... I utterly loathe the DLC. Well, the second DLC mostly but kinda both in a 'sins of the father' kinda way. Can't really uncouple them. But the first DLC DOES give you a Rapture which is in it's glory days so...

At least they get the ammo management right, as I actually enjoyed finding ammo that time around because I wasn't constantly being showered with ammo from the slightest touch, and I had access to all weapons available. It's just a shame that it's so short.

The problem with the DLC for me isn't just that it throws away the agency the base game gave to Elizabeth, but that it's so mean-spirited about it. It really feels like whoever was writing it had a desire to take another writer's Mary Sue and crush her down into a pulp. "You've got godlike powers, Miss? We'll see about that. When I'm done with you, you'll regret every single moment of your misbegotten existence."

See that's interesting, because according to Torch the Franchise and Run:

Part two of BioShock Infinite's DLC Burial at Sea kills off by far the most developed and full of potential character, Elizabeth, who was also one of the only remaining protagonists, and inescapably ties the lore of both Rapture and Columbia together before all rights for the BioShock franchise are transferred to the people who made BioShock 2.

To be fair, if you're a protagonist in a Bioshock game, you're basically marked for death. Only Jack and Sigma/Porter escape this.

Bioshock 3 will involve Elizabeth taking her revenge on Ken Levine

Joking not joking

Edited by Ultimatum on Oct 16th 2020 at 12:02:37 PM

@Fighteer Well, it's more like "there is a flaw in the work in that it expects there to be serious moral equivalency between Daisy Fitzroy and Comstock". They flub this by making Comstock a bit too evil, so Fitzroy comes across as essentially a Lighter Shade Of Black.

So they should have either:

-Just say Fitzroy is less evil.

-Make Comstock less evil somehow and more of a well-intentioned extremist.

-Make Fitzroy eviller.

That third one actually would probably have been the easiest way to go about it and is also the most plausible.

Who in the world said there had to be "moral equivalency" between Fitzroy and Comstock? Nobody in the game says it. Booker draws moral comparisons between them, but not in a "they're both just as bad" sense. Also, he's a professional cynic, so we aren't necessarily expected to agree with him.

Booker recognizes the "full circle" aspect of what Fitzroy is doing. He believes that a revolution birthed in violence won't end peacefully. Once the oppressed have tasted blood, they get addicted to it. It's also not about Fitzroy; she's just riding the wave. Once she's dead, the violence doesn't magically stop.

It is possible to overthink things. I know, it's kind of ridiculous to say about a game like this, but it's true. We as the players are not expected to see Fitzroy as just as bad as Comstock, but we are also not expected to see her as morally justified either. She's got a point, but she takes it too far.

She's also a plot device to force Elizabeth to commit her first premeditated murder, and that's fine, too, DLC retcons notwithstanding.

When we impose our own beliefs upon a work and start talking about what characters "should have done" or how they "should have been portrayed", we lose sight of the essential nature of creative fiction: the author has freedom to craft the story they want.

Now, it's entirely reasonable to criticize the coherence of the story, and the reality hopping does quite a number on that. It's quite difficult to follow the changes between timelines as we move through tears. You can put it all together fairly well with multiple viewings and a lot of thought, but it gets a little torturous.

The other problem is that it's harder to grow attached to the characters if we can pop into another timeline where they all experienced different events. It's the Opening a Can of Clones problem. As soon as you bring multiverse theory into a story, it loses a lot of its stakes, because there's always a replacement character in the next reality over.

What's easy to miss, though, is that this is actually part of the meta-narrative that the game is trying to craft. The Vox, the Lins, the revolution, all of it is a huge Red Herring for the player. The point is to illustrate "constants and variables", and how no matter what else is going on, there's always a Booker, a Comstock, an Elizabeth, a lighthouse, and a Songbird. The reality hopping is all used to set up the ending, which would otherwise be so esoteric as to be incomprehensible to most people. We are primed to accept it by experiencing it.

It's also easy to miss that the Booker we are following is not actually the original one. Far from it: there are hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of Bookers, all led down the same path by the Luteces. Remember the coin toss board near the start of the game? Yeah, all of those marks were different versions of Booker, who attempted to rescue Elizabeth and failed in some way. Each time we die (before Elizabeth starts reviving us), we hop into a new Booker who didn't die at that spot. The Luteces are quite literally Save Scumming. It's a brilliant bit of meta-narrative.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 17th 2020 at 8:10:59 AM

I mean, yeah, I get all of that meta-narrative stuff. I got it the first time around. I just think... it's not particularly interesting? Like, cool, in-universe justification for choice-consequence or dying-reloading and other things. But... it doesn't really say anything? What else? I kinda feel like Ken Levine's writing can be a little pretentious in that regard.

That's why I think a lot of people cite the meta-narrative world hopping as the weakest aspect of the story. There aren't really any characters to latch on to. Elizabeth has the powers and we care about her, but there's no one else. But then you run into the exact Clone problem discussed; we have a rather respectable Fitzroy in one world? Cool, let's suddenly jump to the world where she's now an insane child murderer for... reasons. Or, let's jump to the universe where this, that, and the other thing are different for a cool level concept.

Which is why I hate the Red Herring problem; it makes it REALLY hard to care about Columbia even though we spend MOST of the game interacting and exploring the world. It's simultaneously something we aren't supposed to care about, because multiverse, but also care about because we're exploring it and interacting with the world of Comstock and the Vox and the Handymen, Fink, and Songbird.

Especially since, compared to the multi-verse stuff which has basically nothing to latch onto and actively encourages you to de-latch onto everything else, Columbia itself has interesting locations and characters to latch onto. Or the potential for it anyway when it's not cribbing off of Rapture. I can viscerally feel an emotion when Booker wins that 'lottery' and we see the horrific hate crime we're thrown into the middle of. Or when walking around the beach and wat I (as a player of Infinite alone) feel nothing when dragged into Rapture. Or jumping around with the whole Finktown Portal Plot. There's no emotional core there.

There's a concept I remember discussing in a lot of my college courses about audience empathy engagement. That, if the stakes get too high to the point of planets, galaxies, and (multi-) universes, it's really hard for people to latch onto because the scale is far far too big for anyone to really comprehend and the scope is too vast and unknowable that they can't attach onto it. So, in face of that vast scope... we kinda just collapse back down to Columbia. Columbia has a face and identity to engage on.

In what way on that last bit? Columbia has no method of fighting any of its ills. Comstock literally has women suicide-bombing an air-ship to kill you. Fink has people dying by the dozens just for your "audition". Hell, even worse, Fink has people murdering each other for the possibility of working for him for cheaper in a hyper-capitalist show of some real world issues of the time. That city is so racist, capitalist, sociopathic, hateful, and indoctrinated; it is a cult on the scale of a metropolis and monsterous in basically every aspect. They literally kill people in the street for entertainment.

It's kinda why I question that empathy shot of some of the smaller ships trying to escape Emporia after the Vox start waging war. Like... no, there's kinda monsters. Fuck 'um.

As far as her waging complete war on them... Yeah, she ain't wrong. I see no other solution and, to be honest, Booker really isn't doing that much different in the end. He might think of himself better, but how can he not with the rivers of blood he leaves in his wake? Either it's wrong to murder your way out of that city or it isn't, but Booker is on the same side of that equation as Fitzroy in that regard.

It's not morally comfortable, but that city is kill or be killed. Do or die.

@Fighteer There doesn't have to be, but it's clear that the game wants there to be. For example, Elizabeth says "they're perfect for each other".

Book is not much diferent but in the end booker HAVE to die, so if anything the game is kinda consistent in that front, in that way fitzroy because the same part of the equation of brutality, they become a symptom of what is columbia, which I guess is why they decide retcon out of existence was the best solution.

I will guess another problem is that just as columbia is antithesis of rapture, comstock is antithesis of ryan: Andrew was an narcisist and grandilocuent men who nonetheless actually belive in objetivism, sure he broke many of the thing like nationalizing fontaine industry but he let himself die by his sons hands, which is pretty damn ballsy, but ryan really stick to his guns and is sociaty colapse because of it.

Which compared to comstock who did columbia in what can be call a city-size racist safe space were he can hugbox himself about how good he did all this time, making his racism incidencial because what matter of comstock is not what he belief but what he hide in that, unlike ryan.

A couple of points:

1. The quantum universe stuff is completely uninteresting compared to the racism and Old Timey classicism. The thing is, that clearly Ken Levine thought all of that was window dressing and seems annoyed that people ONLY care about the racism and Old Timey classicism. Because the multiverse stuff is...nonsensical and uninteresting.

2. Columbia is doomed and Daisy is going to burn it to the ground. She's really just an obstacle to their escape, though. In the end, Comstock is going to win against her revolution because he has fucking magic at his disposable. It's kind of the irony of the whole thing that Columbia is unimportant save for Elizabeth and his plan to wipe the world clean.

3. Ken is tapping into some really awesome themes for his games but he also doesn't actually seem to know much about what he's parodying either. Thankfully, he lucked out because his Artistic License – Religion where Elizabeth is Apocalypse Jesus is only slightly less crazy than some actual cults that have gained traction today.

Qanon proves that Comstock could get his own army.

I think what's further frustrating about the multiverse plot is that it never really gets complimented by the setting very well. The thematic elements never really merge anywhere, which is why it can kinda feel like the game was more than a little hijacked by it.

Columbia is emblemic of American exceptionalism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, unchecked capitalism, and bolstered by a deification of the founding fathers and 1900s Christianity. Comstock puts himself as a profit of God and created this racist horrific society which... inexplicably and unremarked upon apparently isn't sexist purely because Comstock wants Liz to take his place (and that's all the game really gives on that front). But, whatever, big ol city full of problems to dig into.

The multiverse experiments and everything never really... converges with the society. It feels like it's just kinda... there? The multiverse never really feels like it compliments the racism or anything? They KINDA maybe do something with it with Fink just stealing Plasmids from Rapture to make Vigors, but that feels more like a handwave excuse for the Rapture-Columbia comparisons than an actual compliment.

If I wanted to throw multiverse into such a society to exaserbate the problems, I'd probably do stuff like... Happy couple has a baby and the baby comes out deformed. Instead of accepting the baby and raising it, the rip through reality itself... just to take a "healthy" version of their child. Or a woman who loses her husband and rips reality apart to get another husband and treats him like the one she always had. Stuff like that.

It could be a comment on the inability to accept truths and forcing a "happy"/"perfect" reality despite the damage. The power to make everything how it's "supposed" to be in the hands of a genocidal religious nut job could be horrifying. That they're clinging so desperately to ignorance and choosing lies and stupidity that it'll destroy everything. Eventually the fabric of reality in the city is so fucked that it's dangerously close to bringing the city crashing to the ground. That could be interesting. That could have teeth.

I think the misstep was, while the gameplay utility is interesting, giving Elizabeth the reality warper powers. Or at least not letting Comstock have them in equal or greater control (but even that is a can of worms of "why hasn't he won?"). Because the stakes become impossibly harder to keep up and the only limits are on Elizabeth's control (which will kinda always be based somewhat on plot demands) or the character's understanding of the powers and what is possible. Which they *kinda* try that in the Finktown level but the problem is that the players are probably smarter than the characters in that moment and realize that jumping realities DOES NOT solve the Chen or the Gun problem... And they should realize they could just take a portal to Paris or New York a lot sooner.

It's about as dumb as trying to challenge Sonic, a character who can run impossibly fast, but putting him in a road trip movie.

Edited by InkDagger on Oct 17th 2020 at 3:42:18 AM

See, these are all excellent thoughts. I appreciate that we're talking about this rather than whether Fitzroy's actions are "believable" or "justified".

I understand why people might find the multiverse part of the story abstract and confusing — it's actually my favorite hands down, because I love playing around with narrative structure. I regret not having played the original Bioshock first because I got spoiled about the plot twist long ago, and because it didn't carry the same meaning when we went there at the end of Infinite.

Anyway, while I love a good central conflict, what I like even more is meta-narrative: subverting expectations and going on explorations of abstract concepts by applying them to real events and people. Ken Levine's "pretentiousness" is right up my alley, so I can't feel bad about liking it. It's the same reason I love The Last Jedi (well, parts of it at least) while a lot of other people hate it.

That said, by the end of the game, the Vox and Columbia have clearly run out of purpose. All the leaders are dead, the city is in flames... there's no coming back from this. We might have had some kind of showdown, but then what? It's not like there's anything left for Elizabeth to lead or Booker to save. It's not like we're going to fly Columbia over to New York City and the cops will come and arrest everyone, then our heroes will go back to the detective agency and piece their lives back together. That's not where the story is headed. If anything, the world-hopping teaches us that none of this actually matters.

It's totally fine if you don't like that. I do.

Edited to add: Sorry, another thing I wanted to point out is that Infinite really rewards players for finding all the audio logs and other lore elements. I've watched a lot of Let's Plays of it and the ones who rush through the story bits are always confused at the ending, while those who take time to explore and think about the world-building connect the dots very quickly.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 17th 2020 at 8:42:02 AM

Somewhat off topic, but: To treat Christianity as the source of societal ills of the 1900s is overly simplistic at best, as it ignores the role of religion and religious leaders in major reform movements, from abolition to temperance to early conservation efforts. It kind of bugs me that the story shows Booker as an antihero with relatively modern views if he doesn't practice Christianity, but becomes a Complete Monster amalgamation of every social problem if he gets baptized. And this is after the writers supposedly toned down the anti-religious themes? What did the early drafts look like?

More on topic: One thing they could have done to tie the multiverse and racism plots together would have been to emphasize Columbia seeing other universes as resources to plunder and exploit, like colonialists with superscience.

Also, I don't think that "playing with narrative" is necessarily a good thing. It's like asking, "Why are ladders always made of steel or wood? Why isn't anybody making a ladder of tinfoil?"; the reason something is commonplace is that it's what works best. Deviating from that gives you something less effective. People generally want a climax to a story, so it's understandable for the audience to be disappointed if there's an obvious setup for a final boss that never happens.

And, also, I suspect that the lack of a real boss battle with Songbird was another symptom of the game's Troubled Development.

But at times by asking why a ladder is usefull you can devopt elevators, sometimes is a very good thing.

But indeed the problem with this that the supersicence element never convert well with columbia, I mean I find hilarious the idea columbia having all this supersciene given how much of a religious nutjobtery it have around.

Is like creating trump land and tell me they can multiveruniverse hopping, it takes a lot to belive that.

1. Well the two elements aren't opposed in Columbia, which is fine because some of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth are highly religious. Trump's anti-intellectualism is because fighting against science not because of religion but because it's inconvenient to his corporate looting dictatorship.

2. Ken Levine admitted that he didn't understand Christianity to any real extent as the "Forgiveness for horrible sins means you can never do anything wrong again ever" is apparently how he thinks it works.

3. I wonder if it should have gone further with Daisy planning to take Elizabeth for her own and using her to enact worldwide communist revolution.

2: Regardless, Booker/Comstock apparently believed that, which is all the plot needs to work.

3: Isn't that the plot of Bioshock 2?

In that case, it could have leaned more into the idea of Bioshock as a Thematic Series- as long as they ensured it played out differently in some way.

Sophia Lamb is a collectivist, which is slightly different.

I actually think Bioshock 2 is criminally underrated and also note that B:I has a surprisingly similar plot.

I loved Minerva's Den.

The ending of Bioshock Infinite has quite the thematic tie-in, doesn't it? I'm not sure where this is going exactly. Also, the reason I bring up Bioshock 2 in this context is that it's fairly universally reviled by fans, so I'm pretty sure Levine wouldn't have wanted his masterpiece tarnished by association.

When I finally got around to playing Bioshock 2, I did find it interesting how Eleanor is very much a prototype of Elizabeth... eerily so, in fact. It then occurred to me to wonder why Elizabeth doesn't exist in that timeline, since the ending of Infinite would seem to suggest that she should. Thus, the DLC would have to tie that particular problem off, and does.

I didn't hate BS2 either, which led me to wonder why it got so much negativity, and the best I can conclude is what Zero Punctuation said: it failed to innovate in the same way as the first game. It was more of the same, just swapping out Objectivism with Communism as the strawman ideology of the villain.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 17th 2020 at 12:06:44 PM