BioShock Infinite: Infinite Spoilers!

For all the "spoiler talks" there has been about this game it sure has mostly just been people saying what happens in the game. They get somewhat more into an actual discussion about things towards the end here, but I get a sense that a lot of the gaming press has shyed away from talking about what they think is happening etc in fear of sounding like crazy people on the internet.

It just makes me wonder who this content is made for. They say you shouldn't watch if you haven't played the game, but if you have already played the game why would you want to listen to people just saying what happens in the game ?

I guess there's some appreciation to be had in just reliving the moment, but these "spoiler talks" that has been brought out for this game really seem to lack any sort of purpose other than the usual "and then that happened, wasn't that cool" stuff.

I didn't think I was alone, but it's becoming more and more apparent that nobody else loves BioShock combat as much as I do. Everyone else's comments show that they tolerate it at best, but I think it's a ton of fun.

I'm halfway through 1999 Mode and I'm finding it even more fun than my initial Hard run, precisely because of the combat; I'll be doing a third playthrough as soon as I'm done. The guns feel so powerful, the enemies react terrifically, and the vigors add depth not often found in shooters.

EDIT:

You didn't hear this from me, but if you have the "Ghost Gun" (Spectral Sidekick) gear, you can reload the checkpoint, jump back up the ledge from where you came, and run around to the balconies that overlook her room. Then, continuously swap weapons with the gun that's up there (a sniper rifle on one side of the room, a machine gun on the other). The Ghost Gun will shoot her without starting the fight proper.

If you want to do it for real, whittle her minions' health down with whatever you want, but be sure to kill them with Shock Jockey. That keeps them from respawning. Eventually you'll just have her with her AOE attack. Then you just have to keep back and keep shooting.

I was expecting a podcast and was initially bummed that it was a video, but format turned out really well.

so which is it

a) They kill Booker before the baptism, no timeline splitting, postcredits scene makes 0 sense then.

b) During the baptism, Booker does not get baptised and lives, Booker2 tries to get baptised but before coming back up as Comstock, gets drowned, postcredits scene makes sense.

And in the end do they just travel back in time to the baptism scene, why isnt there the real Booker who's trying to get baptised not the one we've been playing the whole time..

Honestly nothing will top this for me personally, and many others I suspect. But I just know he's going to fight against it.

Watch Dogs vs. Bioshock Infinite is a very intriguing battle.

I'm with ya, loved the variety you can produce in every fight in the game. Once I learnt to use Crows and Bucking Bronco together late in the game it was so awesome seeing the floating enemys get pecked to death by crowes. I feel alot of people love the combat as well, it wouldn't of got so many 10\10's if the combat wasn't fun.

I LOVED the combat. It's kind of annoying seeing people downplay it and call it mediocre and things of that sort. Like you said they "tolerate" it until the next story moment. Yes opinions and all that, but the way some people have been ragging on the combat you'd think it was awful when it's really a ton of fun.

Kind of dont want to know the answers, part of the fun.

The after credits stuff seemed to me like it was bookers out of body experience, either before or after death.

Great spoiler cast. Possibly the best one I've seen on a gaming website. I hope you do more in the same manner. Where someone powers through to the climax of the game, while others are talking about it.

Also, despite all the speculating of what the ending means, people are forgetting the point of it all. The game is about choice; one side of the coin or the other side of the coin. With Dewitt, we see how his choice to get baptized after Wounded Knee, or his choice not to get baptized, completely changed the course of history.

The point of the game is that, CHOICE is infinite, and the choice you make can result in infinite possibilities. Think about that when you make an important choice in life.

That's my one cent.

I just want to sit Brad down and explain Comstock's character to him. Maybe use pictures with pretty colours too.

I'd love to see more features like this. It was really interesting watching Vinny playthrough the end while the rest of the guys talked about it.

That Jeff would play though the game using a single vigor I can get, but Vinny? WTF did he do with all the money all the exploration must have brought? I had pretty much all Vigor upgrades and 70% of the weapon upgrades at the end point of the game. It's not like you have to chose when playing on medium, you never had to buy ammo or health/salts, and you weren't dying much till the end.

It's not like you can "double down" on one Vigor and upgrade it "to ten", it's just a few upgrades per vigor.

I would love to hear what Vinny spent all the money on, and why -- at the end of the game at what was clearly one of the last upgrade machines -- he left with 1900 coins in pocket.

While I don't think the combat is bad, it's my least favorite part of the game. It just gets really repetitive to me, but i've also been tired of shooting mechanics for years. That being said, I don't know what else you would do.

I would love to see more of these spolier casts. Even if the story isn't as shrouded as something like Infinite's ending, I think it would be fun hear Giant Bomb talk more openly on game endings and stories outside of just the Game Of The Year deliberations. Games like The Last of Us, Remember Me, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Watch Dogs while probably not going to have a total mindfuck ending like Infinite would still be interesting to see discussed if those games turn out as good as they seem to be coming along.

No, I'm with you - the people who call the combat either bad or serviceable feel like a different species to me. In Infinite, while there were a few annoying or tedious encounters, most of them gave you so much space, tactical options and variety that I felt like I was constantly doing these amazing things that in most other games would have been relegated to a QTE or cutscene. Most shooter campaigns are pretty boring by comparison because you're stuck in one hallway and lucky if you even get to choose which gun to use, let alone have any freedom of how to approach it.

Yeah, i think 'yeah that was pretty good' is much closer to reality. I think this is one of the problems with the video game medium right now, anything remotely good story wise is held up as some immense work of art. There is still a long ways to go.

There was just such a massive disconnect between the story of this game and shooting guys in the face for 10 hours that it never really clicked much for me. I loved Bioshock 1 but found myself fairly let down with this game frankly. And while the story is pretty interesting, way too much of it is piled on at the very end of the game.

Way too many people played it on Hard first. It's like, I played Dead Space 3 and God of War: Ascension on Hard first because I've played so many of those games in those franchises that I needed to else I'd be bored. Dead Space isn't scary if enemies aren't a threat, and God of War isn't fun if enemies die in two hits before I can toss them in the air and go crazy on them.

But BioShock? Fuuuck, man. Why would I play that on Hard first? I thought it was still too hard on Normal. By the end, I'd stopped experimenting with Vigors because I needed to just buckle down, and my shield was just constantly disappearing. I just wanted more space to skyhook and experiment with Vigors without having to worry about dying. My next playthrough is going to be on Easy.

Reminds me of when Destructoid reviewed the first inFAMOUS. All three reviewers played it on Hard first, which is fucking stupid because then all three of them complained that it was too hard and didn't make them feel like a superhero. Well, I have zero sympathy for you when you're playing on Hard first and the game has on-the-fly difficulty options.

Here's one thing that screwed with my mind and I haven't heard anybody address:

The bandage on your hand changes colour at one point and it goes from being blue to being white (you can see it during the video). I completely missed any actual instance when that just ordinarily happens onscreen and I continue to be really confused about whether it's meaningful or not.

@boondibis: I mean, I don't know the Beach Boys well enough, so I watched that song play out and had no idea what they were singing. I picked up on some of the others, but that doesn't mean I'm disrespected Ken's work by not getting it. The game is so jam-packed with stuff. You're not going to get everything in one playthrough. That's what's so great about it.

And I totally did the same thing as him with the Boys of Silence. I didn't think it was a stealth section because fuck, why would there be a stealth section in a BioShock game? I assumed it was leading up to a boss fight with that thing, so I would walk into a room and immediately line up a headshot on those guys. And you know, even now, I kinda don't regret it. That'd be boring as hell sneaking through.

With combat, the game definitely gets too hard at the end, and even though I loved experimenting with Vigors in the earlier and middle parts, by the end, you need to just buckle down and be efficient. I'd say that's the game's fault, not Vinny's.

Basically, just like you're telling Vinny to chill, you should chill too, man. Video games are interactive; not everybody will have the same experience. And it fits into Infinite's story nicely.

I picked up Booker DeWitt was probably Comstock at the first time Comstock contronts you with the Zepplin TV thing, as you can hear Troy Bakers voice (personally, I heard it very clearly) in the echo when Comstock talks to you over a loudspeaker. Then I spent the rest of the game thinking I was meant to and it would pull a bait and switch.

With all the discussion around this game maybe WE are the thought experiment...DUN, DUN, DUN.....for this Reality...DUN, DUN, DUN....scratch that, watching Vinny play was the real thought experiment.

Brad picked The Cage.

'Nuff said.

The explanation for what happens at the end is pretty clear. The baptism that Comstock has everyone go through when joining Columbia is the same one he had when he was baptised (i.e. fully drowned and resuscitated). The end of the game is essentially all of the potential Elizabeth holding him under just that little bit longer to kill all of the Comstock Bookers permanently during the baptism, this leaves all the Bookers that walked away to go away make a baby and then go on living uninterrupted.

The reason Comstock was such an asshole was because he was working under the impression that all of his actions were ordained as a Prophet. Cult leaders do all kinds of monsterous shit all the time in the name of god with the belief that it's god's will and he's no different.

Especially when you unlock ultra hard mode after finishing it, just have fun the 1st time then take on the challenge of 1999 mode on your 2nd playthough.

Ever see the movie Adaptation? Here's a quote from Donald Kaufman describing his screen play, to his brother the writer. "Okay, well here's the twist. We find out that, that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder, right? See, he's actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him. Isn't that fucked up?"

Really loved the game, really loved the ending. A superb game all-round, with a few niggling problems.

This was such a great way of doing a spoilercast, I love the way Vinny plays games. I'm sorry Jeff but time has shown that Pinkerton is the best Weezer album

Oh, man, I loved the last fight scenario part where the GB crew basically just becomes the Live Shows chat themselves and berate Vinny for playing the game wrong.

So thematically appropriate to see themselves as alternate-reality fanboys for a live-show-within-live-show situation :)

Hahaha, Brad hates this game.

Spoiler alert!

The random stuff Vinny does throughout his playthrough like throwing grenades on portraits is funny. Also once I got the Charge vigor I never looked back so it's nice to see other people playing differently.

I don't get why Brad finds the

Booker-Comstock transition hard to swallow. The way I see it's simple as Comstock being drunk with power and religious vision (delusions) after his baptism. Religious fervor is enough reason for a relatively okay guy to turn into a monster IMO.

Oh crap!

Splinter Cell is part of the Bioshock universe! It's got a Man, a Lighthouse, and a City! :P

I cannot believe what Jeff said about Wounded Knee on this podcast. First of all, it was not a battle. It was a massacre of women and children. It marked the end of the Great Sioux War and the horrible destruction of the Lakota culture as it used to exist. It, and the Trail of Tears, are the American nation's Holocaust scenario.

Could anyone rip the audio and post it as an mp3? I don't have access to a computer and I want this as a podcast for work tonigh

These guys picked up on a lot more stuff in one playthrough than I did...I feel dumb :(

Regarding Brad's problem with how the Vox Populi seem insanely evil, which a lot of people complain about.

I think people forget that it's stated implicitly several times that when you open tears, it's reflective of "wish fulfillment". They aren't just going into a universe where Chen is still alive and has machines. They are going into a world where they want that to happen. As a result, Chen isn't dead. How? Because his wife is now white and connected and doesn't believe in Buddhism but actually believes in the Prophet. But now he's crazy and his tools are confiscated.

So Elizabeth opens a new tear where Chen still has his tools. The result? The Vox Populi just take the guns and kill him anyways. I think the point is that the universe that exists where the Vox Populi manage to be able to overthrow Comstock's much more powerful forces has to be a universe where they have given up at least some of their nobility and idealism and have become ruthless killers. (With the assistance of Booker, no less, which feeds into the narrative of Booker just living in his past and thinking he's a monster, etc.)

Did anyone else consider that Songbird might be Anna's mother? Like some of the crew I had also wondered if there was any significance to the fact that we know next to nothing about Anna's mother or Songbird. Not to mention that Songbird had a strong connection to Anna and was insanely protective of her, so much so that I don't see how they could just turn a random person into this creature and expect it to live up to its duties.

I could easily see Comstock snatching up Anna's mother from a different reality and using the tears to show her Booker's actions to brainwash her in order to turn her into Songbird.

@oldirtybearon: Yeah he comes off as a little dense in his indifference with the way the ending was handled.

@boondibis: Chill out dude, this isn't YouTube comments.

This is actually contextualized in a very weird way. Early on they'll take your gun away when there's no combat, then Booker gets stabbed in the hand and he says something along the lines of "I'll never be caught with my guard down again" and after that his gun is always out.

This is one of my favorite things the site has done in quite awhile. Well done duders

Several things else for me to say, I still have to watch the last 1/2 hour of this..but the hand-waving issue....This is Science Fiction. Yes it uses concepts like quantum mechanics and it's uncomfortable explanation many-worlds, that all possibilities at least on the quantum level follow all possible paths, and that this may even reflect in macro. But does one really know how the floating machines work based on quantum theory. Booker Dewitt doesn't, nor do I. They got a 'smart person' to do both theory AND design practical app. And she/He had their own issues, as it turns out.

Nor is this a new concept, I remember Stephen King in his prime using many/infinite possibilities describing the 'Axis of the World (universe I believe)' Always marked by some kind of building, or a structure, a tent even. So the lighthouses....

I got a little irritated by the dismissive approach of the one staffer there, but ppl. think these days they have at least a hint of how things work. Every generation does...And it may be true, or all we see is what we are able to perceive at this point. After all, the universe, for a start, may be infinite and bring about alternate worlds that way. Or infinite universes....but it is ultimate hand-waving also, isn't it?

@pimpsahoy: Hopefully, I too would like an audio version. I'm not able to watch video.

@branthog: Sure, I'm not defending it, necessarily, just saying that the game is strangely self-aware about it :)

Brad is kind of rude here, lost a bit of respect for him after his very unconsidered approach to discussion

You do have to remember they are different mediums though and their stories have to be told in completely different ways. Of course there is still room for improvement on videogame stories - it's not like we will never get better than Bioshock Infinite - but in a game you have to take all the artwork and music into account as it's an integral part of the storytelling.

When reading a novel the words on the page are all you have to go from, so they have to be much stronger and much more detailed to be good. A direct comparison of a good book with the script and plotline of Infinite will probably come out with a win for the book, but Infinite's story is told in every nook and cranny of the game world.

For me that is what makes it an impressive achievement in storytelling - it's the combination of the art direction mixed with the pacing and atmosphere in certain scenes, and the way the music fits the moods so well. In a videogame - much like comparing a film to a book - so much of the story is told outside the words, and that's the real difference - in many ways it comes together to be stronger than the sum of it's parts.

Oh man Brad is already setting himself up to be that guy during the GOTY discussions against this year. Love it!

He's definitely being over-dramatic, but it does sometimes get annoying the way they sometimes play the game . i.e. During heavy dramatic beats that are obviously meant to be linear, Vinny is doing everything possible to look in every nook and cranny or try and break the game, but during actual exploration and combat moments where tons of options are open to him, he takes the path of least resistance and never experiments at all.