Bioshock Infinite

Linearity I'll give you, although you can absolutely lay Vigor traps in Infinite. Doing so can be ridiculously effective.

As for the story role of Vigors vs. Plasmids... frankly it's window dressing over gameplay. Yes, Adam is crucial to the plot of Bioshock, but at a moment to moment level you're still zapping people with lightning or burning them with fire.

My point is that it never occurred to me as something missing from Bioshock Infinite. Rapture falls because its utilitarian ethos means that it employs a disenfranchised underclass that eventually revolts, and Columbia falls because its white-supremacist ethos means that it employs a disenfranchised underclass that eventually revolts.

I don't really see the ammo situation as a problem, though. It's not a survival horror where you have to count every bullet. Running out of ammo and scrounging the battlefield for guns isn't a primary gameplay element, and that's fine. It's more of a secondary one in specific situations, or something you do after a fight when you pick your loadout for the next one.

Heck, nobody complains about Half-Life 2's generous ammunition handouts.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:02:55 PM

Half-Life 2 was also generally an example of having too much ammo that caps out for me, usually from the AR2 (which is a fine enough weapon), or from the useless dinky pistol that outlives its usefulness post-Ravenholm. At least Half-Life 1's pistol shared its ammo pool with the SMG, and both games had all weapons available for use. Excess ammo in games where you're meant to scrounge around is a personal pet peeve of mine. Games like Call of Duty, where scrounging isn't as much of a focus, get a pass from me (and the general scale of ammo one can carry also offsets this).

Speaking of traps, I did also end up using a lot of Vigor traps...if only to deplete my Salts so that I can make use of the stuff I found in containers, or prompt Elizabeth to give me Salts in place of redundant ammo.

Edited by RainingMetal on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:05:27 PM

Infinite's premise is actually more of a "racists are bad, but you know, the oppressed slave rebels that try to overthrow the system are also bad"

Elizabeth is definitely the best part of Infinite. Crazy how they relented to hiding her on the cover because showing women on the cover were seen as less appealing at the time instead of fighting it like TLOU did.

Sure you can set up traps but it's easier and more practical to just bulldoze them whereas setting traps are more encouraged and optimal for the little sister protection segments of 2.

Edited by Shad0wSmoke on Feb 7th 2024 at 11:07:00 AM

That's being unnecessarily reductive. After all, it's not like we're supposed to think that Fontaine's thugs are on the side of righteousness. You're taking the racial aspects out of context and using them to complain about a point that the game is not trying to make.

What Bioshock Infinite is saying is that violence begets violence, and while violence may occasionally be necessary, it is never inherently good. Violence in retribution can create its own monsters.

I would also like to remind you that Irish people are part of Columbia's underclass, not just blacks. It feels like the argument being made here is that we shouldn't ever portray black people as being unsympathetic when they revolt against oppression, which is, again, mindlessly reductive.

Edit:

I can't think of a time in any game that I've ever played when I wished I had less ammunition. Maybe it's a personal preference thing, as you say.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:24:01 PM

Fontaine was shown as participating in the late-stage capitalism of Rapture, he just wanted to be even more powerful than Ryan. The Vox's cause was portrayed as a positive and justified slave rebellion before they decided actually they would be ax-crazy genocidists once they're the ones in control

And while they might have been able to be given the benefit of the doubt that it was just awkwardly executed and they didn't intend to send that message at all, with all the stuff around Levine recently, that might not actually be the case.

Either way, it's not some intentionally disingenuous reach meant to slander the game. It's a very visible unfortunate implication that many progressives have noticed.

I haven't played Infinite in a while, but for my part:

Mechanically speaking, my issue I think was that it lacked the sort of tactical and open-ended nature of Bioshock 1 and 2.

In Bioshock 1, what I liked to do was sneak around, hack things, set traps, etc. This helped make for pretty dynamic and emergent combat, which I don't think I got with Infinite as much.

One thing with Infinite also is that it usually lacks the Survival Horror-esque component of the Rapture games. Columbia, while an unpleasant place, doesn't often invoke the same kind of "haunted house" vibe that Rapture does.

Rapture was a spooky place and Bioshock 1 had lots of moments whose primary goal was to scare or unnerve the player. Indeed, much of the game was like this.

Columbia seldom creates the same level of spookiness, though I will say that there are a few moments that stand out. Two in particular: When you first encounter the Zealots, and that whole scene with the boys of silence. More of the game should have been like that.

I don't really think the violence against Elizabeth in Part 2 was much worse than anything Booker went through (Part 1 ended with him getting impaled with a drill). My issue is more that they had to bullshit away her powers to make her playable without being a Story-Breaker Power. Also they made Atlas/Frank Fontaine so deranged that it is difficult to buy him being a Villain with Good Publicity. I also just realized that the ending only works because Elizabeth is stupid. She had literally just created the bond between Little Sisters and Big Daddies, who are both like 10 feet away, and she was trying to save Sally. She could've easily lured said Big Daddy to Atlas and watched him and his goons be reduced to a pile of mangled flesh and bones. This is especially egregious because she knows Atlas will betray her and she is only going along with it because it's the only way to save her. There are lots of plotholes in the DLC.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:34:54 PM

That is not really true. It's true that we see the slavery/indentured servitude side first, with the individual people involved being presented as victims, and obviously Elizabeth sympathizes with them in-universe. But we don't see the start of the revolution at all. Rather, we pass through the second tear and it's already in progress, with Daisy having gotten her guns and started ripping Columbia apart.

I suppose I could stipulate that the game cheats on showing us the actual transition from slave rebellion to bloodthirsty mob. That's a fair criticism. But we have to remember that it's not the point. There are infinite Columbias. In some of those, the Founders remain in power, in some the Vox take over, and I suppose there are some where they all decide to get along and have tea parties. If the game wanted to make a point about justified rebellions, Elizabeth could have chosen to preserve a timeline in which the Vox win and aren't assholes.

As I think about it, there's one plot hole, or at least plot inconsistency. In the third timeline, the Vox revolution is in full swing and seems likely to win, but that's also a timeline in which Elizabeth is recaptured and converted to Comstock's will. So... her capture somehow causes the revolution to fail? There's no explanation for how that happens, especially since, once we get back from the Bad Future, the Vox continue their attack and appear to be victorious.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Elizabeth's capture allows Comstock to stop sending troops after Booker and gives him room to quell the rebellion, but it sure doesn't look like that in the game itself.

So there, that's my problem. There's no explanation of how the bombing of New York comes to pass if the Vox win the rebellion.

And we need to bow to progressive concepts of justice because...? I'm a progressive and this doesn't bother me at all. So again we're at a reductive argument that is completely unhelpful and comes across as gatekeeping.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:43:06 PM

Indeed, without context, it sounds like I'm a babbling lunatic for even considering this thought. It's more of the idea of supplies being wasted because I'm capped out so easily that's the bigger issue. For example, in the first two Bioshock games, the ammo distribution and ammo cap was further apart, enough to make it so that you could collect a lot of ammo by scrounging around and it would hardly ever go to waste (Neptune's Bounty notwithstanding). Gathering as much ammo as possible (and backtracking) made it so that Fort Frolic wasn't so bad, because you had the option to prepare in advance, or head back to Neptune's Bounty to refill your coffers. Bioshock 2 hardly had an issue with this too, as you're generally spending as much ammo as the game provides, especially if you opt to gather ADAM from corpses and work your Little Sisters to the bone.

In Bioshock: Infinite, you inspect one container, and you're suddenly capped out on Pistol and Machine Gun ammo. This all comes to a head during the Finkton chapter, when you're immediately given a crapload of Repeater ammo before you even have the chance of finding the weapon. The kleptomaniac in me is absolutely upset about leaving that ammo behind and unused, especially given that I cannot go back a lot of the time.

In games where ammo pickups are static, such as Left 4 Dead or Deep Rock Galactic, it's not so bad, because you're only expected to find ammo to cap out on from those, and the enemies don't drop ammo. In Bioshock: Infinite, I'm inclined to search everywhere because I need those silver eagles to upgrade my arsenal. I'll loot every machine, container, and steal from everyone for that unreachable goal. At no point did I ever need to use the Dollar Bill machines because supplies were already plentiful, and I'm not wasting my money on the supplies I can find anywhere.

The reason people complain about the Vox's portrayal is because it is a massive false equivalence. The alternate dimensions excuse also falls flat since the devs still decided to portray a violent slave rebellion as being just as bad as the people enslaving them.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:47:13 PM

Well, you're the one trying to dismiss my view as reductive when it's a very widespread and valid interpretation. I'd say that's a lot closer to gatekeeping.

Like I've said many times, I'm far more interested in internal consistency than in applicability. I'm aware that many people don't share this view, but if the zeitgeist wishes to declare Bioshock Infinite a bad game because of it, then I will simply disagree and point out that it is, like most other criticism, an opinion and not the Gospel Truth.

Heck, there's a very straightforward way of interpreting the story in which Booker is the actual villain, and not just because he becomes Comstock in certain timelines. After all, he went on a kill-crazy rampage during Wounded Knee and literally burned Native American families inside their tents. Everything that happens afterwards is the result of him suffering crippling shame over that act.

Bioshock Infinite can be read as an alternate history in which all of America's original sins are amplified to the max, including the violent slave revolution that, in our actual history, never happened.

It does often seem as if some of the people you reference are suggesting that such a revolt would have been valid and justified, whatever the consequences, and is still valid in our present time. As a person who, demographically, would likely be on the wrong end of the Torches and Pitchforks, let me decline to agree.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 3:06:16 PM

There can certainly be better ways to have a cautionary message about the extremes of violent revolt without portraying every single revolter as on the same level as the authorities perpetrating the fascist system. They even do already portray not every civilian that benefits from the system as people to blame but interestingly there is much less showings of "civilian/moderate" Vox who are against the violent extremes the leaders push.

But yeah, these are all just opinions. I personally am not under the impression it's the gospel truth and I think everyone here is entitled to their own.

I've stipulated that the two major weaknesses of the story for me are: (a) transitioning directly to the revolution in progress in the third timeline, (b) failing to explain how we go from full-scale Vox revolution to Comstock (and later Elizabeth) running everything perfectly fine in the Bad Future. Both of these are about internal consistency, not external.

The multiverse allows all of these things to exist "simultaneously", with we as players merely experiencing glimpses of them, but it creates a sense of dissociation from events. That could be intentional; after all, once Elizabeth's powers are revealed it becomes much more about her than it does about the external goings-on. (Really, it's always about her, but the story misdirects us somewhat.)

So here's where I'll throw a bone to the angry progressives: the Vox revolution is set up as a mechanism to drive Elizabeth's arc by: (a) dashing her hope about the inherent nobility of mankind, (b) driving her to commit murder with her own hands so she will be willing to kill Booker later. In other words, Daisy is a tool of someone else's character development.

I'll yank the bone back by saying that, if that's your definition, everyone in the game from Booker to Fink to Comstock is also a tool of Elizabeth's character development, and why are we only mad about it when it's a black person?

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 3:44:53 PM

I'll say that something I found odd was that almost everyone with outspoken political views seems to be either a Pseudo-Fascist or a Bomb Throwing Anarchist. Like, IRL John Brown was a hardliner, considered fringe, and was still less extreme than the Vox Populi.

In fairness, it isn't entirely implausible either, there have been very nasty revolutions even against genuinely evil regimes. I will say outright calling them equally evil by the game is probably going too far, though: If nothing else, portraying the guys fighting the Store Brand KKK as "just as bad" is a bit iffy.

In fairness the line "Well, technically they're not as evil but they are still evil" probably is not as catchy as "they're perfect for each other". Though I can see some ways to succinctly summarize that nuance. Something like Mankind Divided's line: "When you treat people like animals, eventually they'll start acting like it". In other words: Yes, the violent revolution is evil, but it's a symptom of the initial oppression.

On the flipside if you did want to make them genuinely equal, I'd argue you'd need to either:

• Make the Vox racist too. Maybe something akin to the Rand Rebellion, ala "We don't like that the slaves are taking our jobs!" - admittedly I find this too grimdark even in context.

• Make the Founders not racist, just theocratic nationalists. You could even go the opposite route and make him anti-racist, and this would make sense: his whole motivation for seeking religious conversion was shame regarding the Wounded Knee massacre. This could result in a much more nuanced character with a saner Utopia Justifies the Means outlook (like Andrew Ryan or Sophia Lamb), which would make the comparisons to the Vox much more fair.

The thing about Comstock is that, after his baptism, he decides that being absolved of sin means that all of his past acts were completely justified, including the racist ones. Obviously this is insane, but that's kind of the point. He goes from atheist to religious zealot.

So blame religion, I guess?

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 3:47:33 PM

Speaking about how everything's just a tool to build up Elizabeth, I think that's a flaw of Infinite too. Not building up Elizabeth specifically, she's one of the highlights of the game, but the fact that all the other conflicts in the game, the floating island setting and world, both the Vox Populi and the Founder, whatever the hell Songbird was, all of that is dropped in the finale of the game to solely focus on Elizabeth and Booker's relationship and then conveniently erase everything (at least in the base game) so people don't have to worry about how nothing was naturally resolved. One of Rapture's strength was its sheer worldbuilding while Columbia mainly exists as a backdrop for Elizabeth's powers and the concept of alternate dimensions.

Unrelated but I don't see why black people keeps being brought up. I don't think anyone mentioned black people in particular.

Okay, if we drop the race angle, why is it bad when Daisy is a vehicle for Elizabeth's character growth but not Booker, Comstock, and Fink?

I mean... how exactly would you propose that the game resolve those plot elements? I feel it would have been even more controversial if Elizabeth had used her powers to solve racism, American exceptionalism, and religious zealotry.

From the very beginning, the story is building towards closing its own loop. Everything else is window dressing.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 4:10:14 AM

I feel like retconning Daisy Fitzroy as a Big Good is actually worse because it says nothing about her cause other than, "genocide by vengeance crazed workers are okay because she felt bad about it."

But I felt the biggest issue with Daisy was that they were setting her up as Comstock's illegitimate black daughter and all of the clues to that (including her name) amounted to nothing.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 7th 2024 at 1:09:11 AM

Really? That's news to me. Comstock is sterile, and that's revealed partway through the game. Not sure how he was supposed to have an illegitimate mixed-race child if he couldn't sire any in the first place. Daisy is one of the "indentured servants" that Fink brought to Columbia, was hired to work in Comstock House as a maid, then got framed for Lady Comstock's murder. She went underground and founded the Vox.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 4:12:42 AM

The blame is on Comstock taking the easy way out from his guilt over his actions at Wounded Knee. If the baptism worked, clearly he was a changed man who could do no wrong. Acknowledging that it didn't would mean accepting that he is a monstrous human being. At his core, Comstock is simply a man who has a pathological inability to take responsibility for his own actions and thus deludes himself into believing that he can do no wrong. Infinite's best strength story-wise is its characters, so I think Comstock is a very interesting and compelling villain.

• Comstock's wife's suspicions about him cheating on her and having a bastard daughter
• Comstock's monstrous hypoocrisy
• The name Fitzroy being "Bastard child of a King."

Part of it is the fact that a lot of fans assumed Daisy was more important than just a mini-boss and had to be tied with the drama of Columbia somehow.

Execpt at present she just exists to throw in some brown and Irish mooks to murder.

Agreed. It's even more interesting when you realize that he thought about his status and openly wondered what happened to the version of himself that walked away from the baptism, or was "left behind". Some of that introspection must have occurred before he sponsored Rosalind Lutece's work and started looking through the tears.

Booker is the opposite side of that coin: someone who took on the full weight of his guilt and became a depressed, cynical, violent person. Both are extreme reactions to trauma, almost to the point of being dissociative.

I've played the game recently, so I should remember this, but we don't learn that Lady Comstock thought Elizabeth was a bastard until after we learn that Comstock himself was sterile. Put another way, Elizabeth learns that Lady Comstock knew she wasn't her child at the same time as we do.

Suggesting that Daisy could fill that gap is just projection borne of wishful thinking. There is zero information in the game that might lead to that conclusion.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 4:23:30 AM

Apparently, a Christian member of his programmers also said that Ken Levine flat out didn't understand how Christian forgiveness worked either.

Assuming that washing away sins didn't actually require regretting your actions.

He also hated that you needed to be baptized in the faith to go in.

Booker and Comstock were as violent beforehand as after Wounded Knee since, well, they were part of that massacre.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 7th 2024 at 1:22:41 AM

I would say that the alternate dimensions concept actually does harm the world-building and general narrative of Columbia.

Like, you're not just in one Columbia, you're hopping through timelines. What the state of Columbia is is less of a natural product of the narrative and more what the narrative says it is at the time.

In a sense, Columbia is in a state of quantum superposition, simultaneously existing in multiple states at once and altering between these states is often done without normal cause and effect.

Actually I think the problem can perhaps be summarized by Elizabeth's line near the end, that your defeat of Comstock doesn't really matter because Comstock still exists in countless timelines.

Basically: Not much of what you do matters in a multiverse story because of this sort of reasoning.