It seems us plebes will get to see the full E3 demo of Bioshock Infinite, which is being released as part of a promotional program hosted by the game's lead designers. 
 
My impression so far of the game is that I love the art and character design, and the time period crossed with freakish transhumanism is certainly compelling. The skylines thing, while it looks exhilarating, also stretches my disbelief more than shooting crows at people. I imagine the dude's arm just tearing off if he falls from too high a height. And while it's easy to be cynical and say that it's either too different to hold the Bioshock name, or perhaps too similar not be a bit redundant, I have a tendency to just be impressed. Even if they didn't use the guy who voiced Garrett in the longer demo I saw, I'm still interested in learning more.
 
I find it a bit grating that your options actually pop up on screen, but I guess they wanted all the choices to be clear and immediate, making it more about deciding than figuring out what's possible. Not the way I'd prefer, but it's not like this is necessarily new, given the prior binary mechanic with Little Sisters. The choices, too, seem like they'll be a bit more nuanced, and it appears that they'll go beyond manipulating tears and picking upgrades out of a bucket, given that you can actually encounter factions doing their dirty work and decide how you'll interact with them. IF these choices compound into a bunch of interesting threads, it'll be pretty awesome, but the reasonable part of me knows that they have to keep the game's variables from going out of control, so as far as affecting the environment or storyline in adverse ways with lasting consequences, I have to wonder to what extent that will be possible in a game with this much production behind it.
 
It's good to see, or rather hear, that their sound design is still quite compelling. They spend just as much time working on the clicks and buzzes that make pushing buttons as appealing as slot machine designers imagine they do (in some idealized, alternate universe non-sadzombie casino.  Man, the real places are depressing). But the stuff that really makes my eyes widen are the crazy-ass monster sounds they put in there. There's something like the distilled fear of god in the bowels of those horrible groans.
 
I have to remind myself it's still a shooter, and in order for it to be a compelling shooter it'll likely have stuff that will make it feel a bit more like a shooting gallery and a bit less about exploration and choice, just to keep the action from getting stale. It looks like it'll be a balancing act.
 
An aside; when watching the demo for this game I imagined, in that idealized world where we don't know how a real game will play, I wondered how many people I could get away with NOT killing through the course of the game, and if that would even matter. Maybe Garrett's voice inspired me? I dunno.  By contrast, another combat-oriented game I watched just made me imagine all the cool ways I could take people down. When you emphasize choice in your game, it seems to beg for you to add more choices to the list. I'll be curious to see just how many choices in Bioshock Infinite are valid.
 
As always, I'm interested in hearing how other people's impressions of the previews mesh with their expectations, if any.

It seems us plebes will get to see the full E3 demo of Bioshock Infinite, which is being released as part of a promotional program hosted by the game's lead designers. 
 
My impression so far of the game is that I love the art and character design, and the time period crossed with freakish transhumanism is certainly compelling. The skylines thing, while it looks exhilarating, also stretches my disbelief more than shooting crows at people. I imagine the dude's arm just tearing off if he falls from too high a height. And while it's easy to be cynical and say that it's either too different to hold the Bioshock name, or perhaps too similar not be a bit redundant, I have a tendency to just be impressed. Even if they didn't use the guy who voiced Garrett in the longer demo I saw, I'm still interested in learning more.
 
I find it a bit grating that your options actually pop up on screen, but I guess they wanted all the choices to be clear and immediate, making it more about deciding than figuring out what's possible. Not the way I'd prefer, but it's not like this is necessarily new, given the prior binary mechanic with Little Sisters. The choices, too, seem like they'll be a bit more nuanced, and it appears that they'll go beyond manipulating tears and picking upgrades out of a bucket, given that you can actually encounter factions doing their dirty work and decide how you'll interact with them. IF these choices compound into a bunch of interesting threads, it'll be pretty awesome, but the reasonable part of me knows that they have to keep the game's variables from going out of control, so as far as affecting the environment or storyline in adverse ways with lasting consequences, I have to wonder to what extent that will be possible in a game with this much production behind it.
 
It's good to see, or rather hear, that their sound design is still quite compelling. They spend just as much time working on the clicks and buzzes that make pushing buttons as appealing as slot machine designers imagine they do (in some idealized, alternate universe non-sadzombie casino.  Man, the real places are depressing). But the stuff that really makes my eyes widen are the crazy-ass monster sounds they put in there. There's something like the distilled fear of god in the bowels of those horrible groans.
 
I have to remind myself it's still a shooter, and in order for it to be a compelling shooter it'll likely have stuff that will make it feel a bit more like a shooting gallery and a bit less about exploration and choice, just to keep the action from getting stale. It looks like it'll be a balancing act.
 
An aside; when watching the demo for this game I imagined, in that idealized world where we don't know how a real game will play, I wondered how many people I could get away with NOT killing through the course of the game, and if that would even matter. Maybe Garrett's voice inspired me? I dunno.  By contrast, another combat-oriented game I watched just made me imagine all the cool ways I could take people down. When you emphasize choice in your game, it seems to beg for you to add more choices to the list. I'll be curious to see just how many choices in Bioshock Infinite are valid.
 
As always, I'm interested in hearing how other people's impressions of the previews mesh with their expectations, if any.

Narrative choices are a very difficult area for games and I can't say I'm convinced that Irrational well get it completely right in Infinite but I'm glad they're having a stab at that. Regardless of how the choice system turns out though Infinite looks like an amazing game. The press seem blown away by it and from everything they've said it sounds like Irrational could have something phenomenal here.

I assume with the faction decisions, helping one over the other will simply award you invisible points which will accumulate as you go on and pay off towards the end game. Certain sequences where you save someone's life though, that might have deeper repercussions if that person is involved in scenes later on. People deride invisible score systems for narrative decisions, but it comes in handy when there's too many instances to properly branch out.
 
Besides that, I'm kind of doing my usual anti-hype thing of avoiding any press about the game. The next piece of media related to Bioshock Infinite that I'm interested in seeing will be the QL. Until then I've got games still in their cellophane and full of unlimited potential that I need to play and be disappointed about.

@Mento: heh. Do people deride invisible points? I think that sort of thing can be great, because it removes the player from having to gather obvious points manually like so many daisies and just focus on the larger experience.