Original bioshock demo, more interesting than final product?

I forgot until after I beat the game and realized oh hey Elizabeth is useless in the game and does nothing like in that old demo...oh and the game world wasn't extremely linear and small...and enemy encounters actually looked fun and exciting in that old game too!

I really liked infinite because I had completely stopped watching anything related to the game a long time ago, I did not realize how much it had changed and boy am I disappointed now just like with the first bioshock. Hey irrational? Maybe don't show your game 3 years in advanced next time.

They delivered one of the best shooters I've played in years. Even if they dropped some of the promises they had made, I cannot say that I am disappointed in the least. I can only give Irrational the internet equivalent of a standing ovation.

Can you at least not use the default avatar when you make threads with flamebatey titles?

yes and he should also have the requisite 1 to 5 postcount

for fuck's sake...

Yes.

Yeah, I remember it being original and good when I played it last week. Much like the original Bioshock, Infinite went through a bunch of rewriting and tweaking prior to release. A video that is most certainly more proof of concept than anything else can't really be compared to the real finished product.

I've been here since 09' I'm not a troll lol.

I was profoundly happy playing the game through to the end day of release but since I finished it I've just been sitting and reflecting for days about what it used to be and now I finally look at an old video and holy shit I'm suddenly flushed with sadness that it is so drastically different. That original demo won me over so hard that I almost haven't seen anything else about the game besides interviews and such and an occasional gameplay snip since 2010. The fact that Elizabeth used to cast spell type things and that you could interact with them as in the video is the most disappointing loss because she is basically non existent in the gameplay, she does almost literally nothing but throw you money, health and ammo and let you open mostly unneeded tears, in fact she is literally useless beyond those few hooks.

Please, the video above shows more originality, if not that then simply more exciting and interesting gameplay than Bioshock Infinite has delivered by a long shot, if it's proof of concept, then why was it shown to the public? Proof of concept is what you show to investors.

If this were the old forum, he'd have a green name too...

Well, green was the best looking color regardless.

i think the game that it turned into is much better than the image those trailers painted.

@bishop113: It's a trailer from 2010 for a game, at that point, was set to be released in early 2012. It's clearly scripted to hell, if it's actually being played at all and not just an in-engine demonstration of what they were going for. It's not a valid comparison because you don't know what kind of game they were making at that point and how markedly different it is than the finished product. What if the stuff you consider more exciting or original wasn't working out?

Then they shouldn't have shown it? The visuals, the fact that elizabeth had a purpose and the interaction with the powers between you and she, the large open look to the level.

I mean I get it, it didn't work out, but seriously, this looks amazing to me and the fact that it is almost nothing like that now is immensely sad.

On a conceptual mechanical level? Sure. Because it takes no money or development time to have an idea.

In reality? Nope.

What's more interesting to you? Every pie-in-the-sky dream of what Durango could be? Or what it actually is going to be?

They outright lied about the building falling over without scripting. Dicks.

That video was probably all that was playable in that game. There's a reason games come out the way they do. Plus @bishop113, the title to this thread fucking sucks. You sound like a brat.

Remember when Bioshoch Infinite was a scripted demo ?

Oh my apologies for not having a title that suits your needs, please dude. Please.

He's right, though.

Just thought you should know before everyone comes in here to tell you the same thing in less direct ways.

Here you go, is that a more satisfyingly non-bratty title?

Yes

It is certainly less bratty.

Anyways, the gameplay scripted as it obviously is aside. The interaction with Elizabeth alone is far better than the Elizabeth we have in the game, not in terms of dialogue but gameplay mechanics.

EDIT: And I don't think that interaction is too farfetched to have in a game.

On that, I do agree. They shouldn't have shown it as early as they did. I'm trying to think of another example of something like this, apart from all of the weird vaporware like Duke Nukem Forever or Prey.

@bishop113: It is true she does not have much of a role in combat besides bringing in tears but I feel that that didn't really take away from the experience. She still helped out and was always there to at least talk which is really why I enjoyed having her around. Her greatness in the plot outweighed her lack of gameplay importance.

She was great as a character and I'm still satisfied with the story, but my tastes are more towards fun gameplay and not so much towards really good narrative. The gameplay in bioshock infinite is certainly fine and solid, but about mid way through I was wondering if Elizabeth was ever going to do anything besides cower behind stuff as enemies run past her. I just wish those cooperative spells were still in the game, that is the one thing from that demo that I know could have been done and done well in the final thing.

Because it wasn't actually gameplay. Early demos are nothing more than elaborate cutscenes.

So from now on I should look at all demo's as nothing more than extremely cool concept art and expect that the game will only end up being a much more typical shooter than the demo led on?

Naive or not I believed they were going to pull it off.

Yeah, this video served to show people what Infinite was going to be like and what they were hoping the atmosphere and game mechanics might look like. But it's a WIP. Clearly the specifics of this combat didn't work so they were scrapped. It's hard for me to feel sad or happy or anything else about this video because it was clearly an unfinished product that was more 'idea' then anything else.

Sadly you do kinda need to do that. At least for announcement stuff, trailers close to release date not so much.

Okay guys, here is a later demo, this is very clearly gameplay being played with Ken and Nate Wells talking about what's going on and much of the same stuff is in here, the "one two punch" as Ken puts it where you can play off of Elizabeth's abilities, albeit not as in that original video but still. Also this entire section is non existent in the game.

Furthermore, Jeff has acknowledged this as well, the choices in the game and the choices that Ken had talked about in earlier demos are meaningless and play almost no role whatsoever. Jeff gave the Dentist example in last week's podcast where Ken said you might happen across a dentist and if you help him or not you may find out later he maybe was a horrible racist or something. There's only maybe 2 instances of that in the game and only one of them was really effective, at least to me.

Also the AI thing Ken mentions where they'll dynamically create cool things to happen as you move along, I don't think this exists in the game either, or it does and it's done so well that I don't notice.

This is NOT proof of concept, this is straight up them stripping things out, I'm fine going with the "it didn't work" excuse. But it still really sucks because all of this would have made the game much more interesting gameplay-wise.

EDIT Also there is a zeppelin fight they say is dynamically inserted because of a security system. Where is that in the game?

EDIT2: Look at the size of this level, far bigger in scope than anything else in the game at present.

Dude, it's irrelevant. You were privy to a WIP. Somewhere along the line it didn't work. Not to beat a dead horse here but what does it matter anyway? It has no bearing on anything. You're bumming yourself out over smoke and mirrors. This was probably the entirety of what was playable and it wouldn't hold up over the course of the entire game otherwise they wouldn't have changed the game. It was a WIP that didn't work. It's as simple as that.

Things change, priorities shift, and ideas are reexamined. What may have seemed a good idea early on may change and become irrelevant or unfeasible further down the line. It's not unusual for games to go through drastic transformations over the course development, sometimes it's for the better and sometimes it isn't. Even though the game didn't have certain things that seemed promising, it is still a hell of a game. There's really no reason focusing on what the game could've been. I understand being disappointed though.

This is not unlike Aliens: Colonial Marines. Both games made plenty of promises that never made it into the final product and were sold on those promises. Developers that fail to deliver on those promises should be held accountable. Of course there is one key difference in that Irrational Games delivered a quality product instead of a turd like Gearbox released.

Still there is something more insidious about showing these gameplay demos in which none of what his shown makes in in the final game or is heavily simplified. When it's pre-rendered or CG footage it's easy to dismiss it as just that but when it's actual gameplay it's harder to ignore when that stuff ends up not happening. Actual gameplay is the consumer's best bet to make a judgment on a game before its release after all so i think developers should be more responsible about showing stuff that actually does work. For a game that is extremely story driven it may be hard for a lot of people to check out reviews and quick looks before actually playing the game themselves.

Stories gets rewritten, gameplay gets tweaked, some sections are cut, others are expanded. All of this is normal and to be expected. As long as the final product is of comparable quality to what was shown before release there is no problems. That wasn't the case with A:CM. I'll leave it to people who have played Bioshock Infinite to judge if the same can be said about it since i haven't played it myself.

Just my 2 cents.

Now what i really want to know is...

Yeah, I can see what you mean. It's very tonally different and songbird definitely had a bigger role in the whole thing. But, games go through changes over time, I don't think it's that criminal in this case considering all of the delays. Also, the game was amazing so that's all that matters in the end really. But I do understand what you mean, since the non skyline game play seems to be the weakest part of the game, and it wouldn't have hurt to have it a bit more fleshed out like how it was in that demo.

Now, when a game becomes drastically different and pretty much does a 180, that's when you should be up in arms about it. This applies to Aliens: CM as well as Metal Gear Rising to a lesser extent for me.

(skip to 1:39) I mean, look at this demo, everything looked nicer, the destructible cover had weight to it and the zandatsu doesn't look as janky as it does in the full version. Of course it went through a change of developer but, I would've really enjoyed a fox engine MGR instead of platinum game's version.

it's a whole HELL of a lot of unrealistic expectations. i think in the end Irrational always leans towards having a cohesive world and story, everything as seamless as possible (twitching havoc physics bodies notwithstanding). sure with the development times and resources they have they probably could've made Columbia into some massive open-world playground, and maybe some would have preferred that. but with open world comes jank, HEAPS of it, no matter how much playtesting you run it through, and i think that would've killed the mood and the immersion to a significant degree. you wouldn't have been quite sold on the central relationship of the game if elizabeth kept getting hung up on geometry and idly walking away 500 feet in the heat of battle. i think the concessions they made, in the end, were necessary ones.

now shun me for answering this thread seriously.

You know elizabeth just teleports when she gets too far away right? It's very far from perfect as is and you're making it seem like the only thing I mentioned was the open level design and it's not. There is a lot missing from the game that they had ready to go in only 1-2 year old demos that are gone in every shape and form, there's entire assets, major gameplay mechanics and even enemies not in the final game that have been shown quite recently.

I find it extremely hard to believe that it "just wasn't working," if that is the case I wish I knew why because as it is it doesn't quite work for me either so in what way did it not work before the shift because if it's the same way it's not working for me now when she basically just follows a curved path ahead of me running the exact same speed like we're on a tread mill, or the way she magically appears in an elevator with you. Or the fact that enemies simply ignore her during combat and nobody ever acknowledges her existence outside of story sequences.

Aside from that, there are choices in the game I'm guessing are left over from when the game was more open and interesting, like the bird vs cage necklace choice, it changes nothing but her appearance so why the hell have it? And the pull the gun or demand a ticket choice which only results in either your hand getting stabbed or not getting stabbed. It all is extremely fishy that there are A.) Very few choices and B.) Said choices have almost no significant impact. So either they made choices just for the hell of it or it's left over from a more interesting version of the game where, as I said in a previous post, things like the dentist example existed.

My problem with all of this is simply that the game is being praised up and down the street for it's detail and narrative, which bravo they did a phenomenal job that is unrivaled by any other and I honestly think in that regards it may very well be a major step in the maturing of this medium moving into the future. But all of this hype and buzz has left the gameplay aspects that ARE lacking almost completely ignored, I was glad to hear Patrick and Jeff kind of riff on the game a bit. I don't really think the combat was bad as Patrick stated but it was certainly lacking, even compared to Bioshock 1 which had more plasmids and at least THAT let you mix things up, it also had more interesting gun upgrading where your gun's visual appearance actually changed as well as stats. The original bioshock also has different types of ammo, Incendiary and such. Elizabeth is not a great AI as Adam Sessler said either, she's controlled entirely by smoke and mirrors and behaves almost nothing like Ken Levine led us to believe in interviews and again earlier gameplay demos, she is not dynamic in the slightest. In fact during my very slow and focused playthrough of the game, she only rarely actually stopped to look at something or talk about something, all of the cool stuff she did was all 100% scripted.

I was also extremely, very sad to see that the horse scene was absent from the game, not because of the return of the jedi thing which made it into the game in another way, but because of the immense emotion that both characters shared in that scene and they very much pushed this idea when they showed that demo, was it at Pax I think? But, there wasn't really anything like that scene in the game with that kind of heat between the two characters.

Lastly I don't think you can say one way or the other if the concessions they made were necessary as we don't know why they were changed, everyone can repeat what Ken Levine has said in the past that it "didn't work" all they want but I doubt it's that simple.

@pr1mus: I think it was something along the lines of "Do you remember when Bioshock Infinite was original and interesting?"

False advertising.

Ken Levine is a FILTHY LIAR!

Ahem, anyway. Oh internet where art thou with your lynch mob when you need one? People lost their shit over Aliens:CM on the grounds that the demo showed what was not in the final game and was better all around. Now the situation is similar yet there are no cries to crucify Ken Levine unlike Randy Pitchford. This is exactly what I talked about at the time A:CM came out. It happens all the time, as long as the final product is good enough (and not a piece of shit) people will simply gloss over all the bullshit that has been fed through them by marketing lies. This has been happening a long time before and will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. A:CM's biggest sin was that it also happened to be bad thus allowing for the dog pile.

Games like Bioshock Infinite will always be excused from this, always have been. Just like Peter M. is given a cute pat on the head. Just like Oblivion and Skyrim marketing Todd Howard fed straight hot bullshit to the public before release a lot of which was nowhere in the games. As long as the product is alright the false advertising will be forgotten or somehow otherwise excused (demo, working product etc). And to be fair those excuses are all correct, things change during development, it's a fact. I just hate it when double standards are being applied to something like A:CM just because it's a mostly hard to defend garbage.

Fable 3 is actually a good middle ground for this example. Molly has always been largely excused for his over promises. Yet with Fable 3 which was lets say less then stellar we saw quite a dramatic shift in a lot of people's moods on the issue. It didn't go all the way sour like with Pitchford, but it definitely soured quite a bit. What was there was no longer enough to excuse the things promised yet undelivered, for a lot of people.

In the end while I hate that such double standards are applied to the marketing bullshit, I agree with the fact that games themselves have to be judged on their own merits as what's there in the final version regardless of the marketing baggage.

2c.

Infinite's story was pretty nice.

Infinite's gameplay on the other hand....it isn't only more streamlined and dumbed down from the previous two, it lacks any kind of depth whatsoever and is too repetitive.

Dishonored's gameplay was much more interesting.

People should stop being fanboys and separate story from gameplay.

They cut the fat. Hopefully the next-gen consoles will be more suitable for developers to exceed their ambitions.

If a good story is what replaced the open world, im ok with that.

I've yet to play BI but this kind of stuff happens all the time but if people get a good game at the end of the day, people can gloss over what they've seen before and if it introduces new things they hadn't seen before and are good, then that's even better. With the case of something like A:CM, the demo they showed off only last year, is what you get, but packaged differently. The final game looks worse, the atmosphere isn't the same and the game is just boring and generic. From what I've seen of BI, it still looks faithful to what they showed off even if you aren't playing those same scenes though. As for MGS:R, that gameplay only existed in that form. There was nothing else to it so if Platinum didn't pick up the games development, there wouldn't have been a game at all. Kojima did say he would've gone with Grey Wolf over Raiden but then he didn't want to be as involved with the story of that game as he is working on MGS5.

I had thought that this game was going to crash and burn because if you think about what they showed in the demo from a programming perspective, there are just way too many variables at play. I never believed they could create that game. But yes, if they had, it would have been a better game. I don't know why people are up in arms about that claim, because the gameplay shown there was much more dynamic than what we got, which had a very conventional structure. (It also looked incredibly hard). This is to say nothing about the story, of course, but it wasn't a story trailer.

If this thread was a cake i'd sit on it

Where was the dead horse and the emotional outbreak from Elizabeth shown in the trailers and dev diary?

This is just as disappointing as the fact that there was no Zerg Jukebox in HotS.

Maybe they'll make it DLC?

The first BioShock was also shown in more interesting stages than what the final product was.

Id fart on it.

And that demo looked cool and all, but its clearly a demo. It would be quite hard to build up an entire game with that level of interactivenes and still keep it interesting all the way thru.

Elizabeth sure looks better on the final game, lol.