Great article and I find myself agreeing with everything you wrote.

Another fantastic piece Alex

I just love everything about the game, except the two weapons thing. Just give me like four and have it work like the vigors. Some elements of the story here and there maybe are not as elaborated on as they could be, but they are well established enough to make sense, be meaningful for the story they are trying to tell, which was an always interesting and powerful one. Though it didn't make me emotional or anything like Mother 3 or The Walking Dead, but it leaves a strong impression.

@jonnyboy: Since when on high difficulties in action games have there been room to mosey around and experiment? What the game needed was a weapons repository, though. Getting things like the burstgun like 2/3rds thru the game and having it hard to find wasn't fun, especially how useful it got. I never found money that scarce, especially when you can use possession on every vending machine and got money out of it. The whole deal with weapons just seemed strange when you had all the gear at your disposal and the vigors worked so organically with each other. Though I have only played a handful of hours on 1999 mode, scarcity usually leads to forcing you to be careful and play the game more skillfully.

@jasoncourt: The original BioShock does a very similar thing of stringing you along, and stripping away meaning from all of your work throughout the game - equating you to a slave at the whim of another character or force. Perhaps the original game does a more obvious job of the rebellion against it, but I think in Infinite does a better job of what you do to make things right. Where as I thought the final parts of BioShock, such a collecting the pieces to the Big Daddy armor, that awkward escort mission-esque thing where the Little Sister has to extract Adam from the splicers along this little path, and then the Big Blue Man fight - just kind of plotting and uninteresting. Where as I found the Songbird showdown to be really fun, fast, and dynamic. I never failed it so I didn't change strategies, but it is cool to see how you can use the Songbird in different ways, as well as manually take down the Zeppelins. Infinite's resolution was really satisfying for me, it made perfect sense for what Booker and Liz ultimately wanted - to wipe away the wrongs, or at least create a reality where they are corrected and at peace.

Tremendous success? This game is terrible, and it's never gonna break even, not with how much it cost to develop and market. I'm sorry, but this game is WAY WAY worse than the first two.

I think the question is just as valid in both forms. While Infinite might not be the best example, a properly set question of "why should I care?" within any given literary work can be quite interesting if the body of the text backs it up sufficiently.

Great piece, Alex, but I'm sick of talking about Bioshock Infinite. So much of it seems to be vultures trying to pick every last piece of meat off the bones. I get the feeling that some reviewers are picking it apart simply because it's getting so much love right now, and I have 0 tolerance for that kind of thing. I love the game and many of the so-called intelligent critiques are in danger of hurting that. Pieces like Leigh's come across to me like "Hey Bioshock Inifinte, stop hogging the spotlight; I got important stuffs to say", instead of a meaningful discussion that adds to the game.

Fantastic article, Alex. It's when I read stuff like that I realize that I just cannot grasp a story, or theme, of any type of media as much as someone like you. I thoroughly enjoyed BioShock: Infinite, and cannot say that I could find a fault. It's the same trap I find myself in when I read books or watch a movie. I hear, what feels like everyone around me, criticizing points or choices that I either didn't notice, or just don't understand the reason to pick at.

However, you have a great way of establishing balance between critique and entertainment.

After I finished the game and thought about it a bit, I definitely felt like the voxophones were a bit of a problem. And more generally the loot and upgrade system. When I finished the game Steam reported my play time as 20 hours, which from what I hear is ~2x what it takes to finish the game more directly. All that time was spent exploring every nook and cranny to find voxophones (because I didn't want to miss any of the story) and loot (because the upgrade system left me always wanting more cash). The thing is, I wouldn't have minded spending all that time exploring the world, but I wasn't really exploring or soaking in the atmosphere. I was going from room to room focused in on trying to spot any blinking objects to loot. And while in retrospect I probably could have done without trying to find every last bit of loot, the voxophones were, as mentioned in the article, pretty important to the story.

I always look forward to this column. Alex and I seem to have had very similar experiences with the game. I thought quite a bit for a few days after finishing it how much it felt like Inception all over again. It's been interesting to see almost the same reaction that people had to that movie applied to the game, the "backlash." That people are talking about a game, a big budget shooter no less, in such a way is a huge compliment and a credit to Irrational.

I rarely agree with Sterling, but this time I do. Booker is a man DEFINED by violence. He wants to be a good and honorable man, but violence seems to be the only thing he's good at. Even beyond Wounded Knee, he joined up with the Pinkertons and continued to do violent acts for them, despite how he felt about the war. Yes, he's now seeking redemption, but he really only has the tools to do it in one way: Killing the shit out of everything that stands between him and his goal.

Great write up, first one where I read all the way trough. I think this is the last thing I will read about Infinite for a while. It needs some time and we'll see how it holds up at the end of the year.

@minipato: 100 feet? Looked more like 10-15 to me.

@alkusanagi: Made me think of this

@alex said:

"Is Anna in the crib?" made for a pretty solid little "Will the top stop spinning?" type ending note, I thought.

Ehhh, it doesn't really matter, though. Really, nothing matters. That's the whole point. Even if he somehow unfucked that timeline (and whatever other permutations branching from it), so many others are still fucked.

(also, the top wobbled, which it never did in dreams, and I never understood why people thought that was ambiguous at all)

Out of the whole game, speaking of heel turns, Booker somehow going crazy nutzo and becoming Comstock was the most unbelievable thing to me. That was the part of the ending that seemed like it needed a real "WOULD YOU KINDLY" moment thrown in.

Anyway, great article, Alex, I really enjoy these.

As much as I liked Infinite I have to say that the gameplay was not very fun. The gameplay loop for most of the game is an average corridor shooter with a little bit of magic thrown on top. Everything around the gameplay was great, the story, the world, the dialogue, the exploration, but actually playing the game dragged the experience down. How much better would the game have been if it had the interesting gameplay of something like Far Cry 3? Why did Irrational sacrifice gameplay on the alter of story? Why can't games have great gameplay and great stories? It's a real shame because I have no desire to replay Infinite. Digging deeper into the world should be fun, but I don't want to slog through the boring combat again. Irrational needs to step up on the gameplay front for their next game because it held Infinite back.

Great read, I haven't really dug through many of the articles on Infinite because I plan to play through it again with a guide so I can get every Voxphone. What stood out to me about Infinite wasn't the kind of story it told, but how much painstaking detail went into the world and how it worked. Sure, there's no way to absorb it all on your first playthrough, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Great article as usual.

I didn't play the game. It looks well made. I might play it someday. But yeah, it looks like a very pretty linear hallway crawler. I'm just not into gaming for that type of game anymore. The criticism of the game essentially being some nice scenery and an excellent setting glued together by "shooting dudes in the head" is valid.

I think publishers and developers are too scared to try anything new. They run the risk of not appealing to a large enough group of people willing to spend $60+. It's too bad. It seems like the only games with great voice acting, great design, great artwork - they're always going to have rather bland gameplay.

I have noticed there is a strong reaction to the "Idea of Choice" in the game where I'm not sure where it is coming from. Did people want or expect when the game prompted them for a choice (bird/cage, hit the couple/announcer, spare or not Slate, etc) they wanted feed back? The ending itself seems "closed" and completely explained as well as Booker (or the player for that matter) need to know.

I have also noticed a reaction to "the turn" the story takes where instead of focusing on Founders vs Vox Populli it is strictly about Booker and Elizabeth and everything else falls away becoming secondary to their journey. Although I do see that something might be worth exploring the serious topics in BI let alone the conflict between Founders vs VP but ultimately I found the story surrounding Booker and Elizabeth to be more interesting. I would have, and Booker to some extent, would be very happy to wash their hands of both sides and just get an air ship out of the Columbia so I'm a little at a loss why people felt it was necessary "to fix" Columbia.

I've contributed a bit to the Spoiler^3 thread so I don't need to rehash what I think of the ending. Needless to say I find this game to be more moving than Mass Effect 3 and more interesting than than every other campaign FPS game out there. That doesn't mean it is perfect:I do think the combat needs work and it feels like parts of Finktown are redundant and Songbird was woefully under utilized for being supposedly a massive threat.

Loving these features. Thanks Alex!

I think the biggest reason Bioshock Infinite is getting so much press, is because it's one of the first and only major games to come out so far this year. The game came out at the right time. If the game came out when other major titles were released, all the elements people are talking about from the story to the game play, wouldn't have gotten as much press.

It's a game, actually playing it should not be the worst part. If I bought a book that had a gold-engraved cover and a beautiful illustration on every page, but actually reading it made your eyes bleed, it'd be a shit book. Not to say Infinite is bad, I simply don't understand how the mediocre gameplay is given a free pass.

What if Elizabeth wasn't stunningly beautiful? Would the game have worked as well? It's really a criticism of most media, not just games. And it isn't limited to female characters by any means. Characters (male and female) we need to care about are almost always beautiful. It's something that really stuck out to me for whatever reason in this game though. It goes without saying that making the game's lead characters attractive will sell more copies, but it would be nice to see sympathetic characters in a game designed to be less than ideal in physical appearance. (and no her finger doesn't really cover what I'm talking about here)

Developers make a big deal about how people will care about their characters because of the writing and acting, but they never have the guts to not make them gorgeous. THAT would be impressive.

I really wish I could comprehend the gameplay complaints. I really do. I'm playing through Tomb Raider right now and am finding the combat to flip flop between being mind-numbingly tedious and occasionally downright terrible. That's how combat is in most single-player campaigns: boring. Meanwhile, I played Infinite and felt it was a breath of fresh air. There was so much tactical variety to keep me interested. I found myself saying "why can't most games play like this?"

@dtat: I agree. Only attractive people get sympathy in the media ninety percent of the time. And the impact of Elizabeth's character certainly wouldn't have been as effective is she didn't have the looks of Disney's Snow White and Bell from Beauty and the Beast--as if the two somehow had a child.

That's great. I'm going to start saying it like that.

And I simply don't understand how people are saying Infinite has mediocre combat. Half the reason I started over to play 1999 mode was because the shooting was so much fun.

To what end? What difference would it have if Elizabeth wasn't as pretty? Would it change her character? Would it change her arc? Would it make you somehow sympathize with her more? I never understand the need people have, to have your characters look not "gorgeous" for the sake of the character not looking gorgeous. At no point did Elizabeth's looks come into play in the story, aside perhaps from the fact that she was a white girl.

Now if there is a story that requires your character to be not quite as pretty, or even further then that, hideous, then that is different. If the look of the character affects how we perceive them and their plight, then it should be considered. In this case though, the way Elizabeth looks is ultimately irrelevant.

As someone who does sketches, and character designs for my livelihood I strive to create "cool" looking characters. Characters that I enjoy looking at. That can range from "ugly" characters to "gorgeous" ones. I'm sure it was the same for Ken Levine. Elizabeth looks the way she looks because Levine must have thought it appropriate. To make the character look any other way for reasons that aren't even mentioned in the game, or to appease this ugly character quota most people seem to have is stupid in my opinion.

I honestly find the complaints about the gore rather mind-boggling, mainly because I'm not a fan of excessive blood and gore myself and I often find myself fairly squeamish around it. Infinite's gore didn't bother me in the slightest. Maybe I'm just becoming more desensitized to it without even realizing, but it seemed relatively tame compared to a number of games and movies out there that turn me off completely.

I'm not knocking Infinite and none of this is about Infinite in particular, I haven't touched it and skipped the quick look, but as we keep going down this road I wonder when does a game stop being a game? When does it become more of a chore like watching a movie with a plodding pace, and the projector keeps breaking down so you have to occasionally stop and fix it and re-thread the film then you can get to more of the story. On general principle I don't think there should be anything serious about a game, which is why I preordered Blood Dragon because there is not a single serious byte in that one. A good crossword is still more fun and challenging than a lot of video games today.

BOOM

also, sweet article alex

The combat in Bioshock Infinite is fine in my opinion. While I'm sure some people genuinely didn't like the combat. I also think a lot of people saying they didn't like the combat are using the game play as a cop-out for another reason they didn't like the game. However, to state such a reason would be seen as politically incorrect. Let's just say... the earlier comments about certain parts of the game's story was interesting after a lot of the reviews around the internet, like on Gamespot for example. Then a lot of those same people later claimed they didn't like the game because of the combat.

Shutup... your wrong

The only thing I dont like more than people acting like nothing is wrong with a game, is people acting like nothing is right with the game. This game in particular was nothing but SUX OR ROX and its like jesus- get a grip people.

Even former Epic honcho Cliff Bleszinskitook umbrage with the ugly shift the game makes every time you enter combat.

The entire game is about ugly shifts.

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That said, I think that the violence is not gruesome enough. I get up close and hit Bad Guy with this sky hook thing, which doesn't look sharp at all, and somehow it splatters his entire head in an unlikely shower of cherry jam and strawberry bubble gum brains. Sure. He was a cartoon character anyways: both in visual style and in the fact that he was Evil Racist Thug Cop Minion #0512, so who cares? He's not even "just some guy", he's a blood pinata. I could not have been more disconnected from this guy I was killing right in front of me. I know: this is how Booker thinks, certainly, but I never felt like Booker either. His disconnect was part of the story, mine was apart from it.

I understand the contrast between the bright and sunny and the dark and grim, but the violence was also bright. The shock of this ersatz heaven being tainted by bloodshed was deflated by the bright pink brains flying out of the character model's head that my weapon just got done clipping through. I'm not saying that an art style similar to this cannot pull that off, I am saying that I feel this one did not. I felt like I was playing an episode of Happy Tree Friends. God of War 3 is stylized and it does violence very well; watching Helios' neck skin tear and separate as I pulled his head off was fucking disturbing. I had to mash buttons to make it keep going, the game made me take part instead of pressing a button and watching. It was intimate and despite the fantastical nature of it it had the vile feel of real-life violence and I felt like I had done something wrong that I could not take back. In BioShock Infinite I just felt like I was playing a video game.

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Unrelated:

Alright Navarrow I'm starting to like you.

Well, glad I wasn't the only one that noticed a sudden tone change in discussion about Infinite. Not that is bad mind you but that its definitely turned the corner from complete adulation to critique. Its been a complete mind fuck for me to try to actually place the game. I'm already struggling because both DmC and Ni No Kuni made strong strong early impressions on me and I'm not sure if I think this is better than those or not.

The whole thing with the multiple realities is that Elizabeth has the power to access them.

The reason the Booker being drowned at the end is special is that it's all Bookers - or more accurately, all Comstocks - preventing the event which gave Elizabeth her powers from occurring. So at that point only one reality is perceived by Booker, and so that's why it matters.

This goes to the nature of playing games, and illusion of choice. If a game gives you three different ways to approach a scenario, you pick one. Someone else picked a different approach. But you both ended up at the same place. But you didn't experience those other approaches. When the game presents the crib at the end, it is implicitly stating this Booker is our Booker, the Booker that exists because of our actions.

At least I think?

From the very beginning of the game, I started looking at the dates stated for voxaphone logs in the menu because I wanted to figure out WTF was going on in this game as I was playing it. I feel like paying attention to those dates greatly helped me understand the rest of what was going on in the game, especially in the latter half. But it takes a special kind of OCD person to actually want to look at and compare those dates in that relatively obscure menu.

great article!

I found reading through the articles that I just knew things that other people thought had never been explained and that bugged me for a while until I realized why. I got every single voxophone on my first playthrough. I'm extremely obsessive and so found pretty much every nook and cranny that there was to find. Though I did miss 5 telescopes/kinetoscopes and some infusions which still bugs me. Overall though, finding all of the voxophones fleshed out the story so substantially for me that everything just seemed to work way better than it did for many others. There are certainly plenty of plot holes, but this was pretty much the first thing I've consumed in media since Inception that made me sit back and just experience an intense flood of emotion and thought when I was done. This game grabbed me and there is no world where I can see myself calling it anything other than a masterpiece.

Why do people keep spelling Slate's name wrong? I've seen it in Leigh Alexander's article on Kotaku and now here.

Regarding the gore, the skyhook executions did seem over the top. However, I'm not sure if most people notice this, but they had Elizabeth make some kind of gasp or shocked remark every time you performed one. As a result, I pretty much never used them, because I felt bad every time due to Elizabeth's reaction. So her admonishment did have an affect on me, by only regards to the over-the-top executions (which were never really necessary or beneficial unless you had a certain item equipped) and not fighting in general (which was necessary of course).

How was that a heel turn moment?

If he accepted the baptism, he absolved himself of all the guilt of what he did at Wounded Knee, and continued on down a path of xenophobia, feeling totally righteous in the process.

If he rejected it, he had to deal with the reality of his actions on his own, and it slowly tore him apart, leading to his gambling and drinking, and eventually giving up Anna to pay it all off.

We may have them on our side yet! Even if it is for the wrong reasons...

@demoskinos: Personally it has to be Ni No Kuni > Bioshock Infinite > DmC: Devil May Cry

I also have to wonder, is this game going to make a profit on its 6-7 year development? Or is it too early to tell?

This was a great read Alex. I pretty much had the same reaction as you when I finished it. Then I just wanted my friend to finish it so I could talk to him about it

I feel like what were the little failures of Infinite's storytelling were already fixed in Spec Ops The Line.

Melee executions are far more brutal and ugly in The Line and there's a development to them from the start of the game. At first, they're clean kills but later on they're more drawn out and make you question the main character. It makes you feel weird that just because you wanted a little more ammo, you have to witness this brutal execution.

The narrative dissonance of Elizabeth going to pick a lock with such misplaced enthusiasm right after an emotional moment was fixed in The Line where there's a development in dialogue. At the start, the main character says "Tango confirmed" or "Kill confirmed" but later on he'll say "Kill fucking confirmed" and the dialogue never goes back to the more calm and calculated tone. The characters in-game stick with story progression, and never stay in the same canned tone throughout. You can see the character development in-game rather than through cutscenes.

This GDC lecture is a good watch in how the writer of The Line contextualizes the violence:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/188964/Video_Spec_Ops_The_Line_contextualizes_violence_through_story.php

I forget the name but if combat in Bioshock was like the game i'm thinking of. First person, criminals you beat up with objects you find in the environment and its a very dark game... dammit I can't remember the name, it had gore, I think you are a cop, and towards the end of the first game supernatural stuff starts happening, if anyone knows what I am talking about help me out. Anyway if the fighting was more like that game, I think it would fix almost all of my problems with bioshock gameplay, more methodical, and suspense like with fewer enemies, that atmosphere allows for much more pungent dialogue delivery.