Warning: Major spoilers for Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite.
@hatking: The complaint that Bioshock Infinite suffers from a disconnect between the story and gameplay is probably one of the most ill-founded criticisms leveled at the game. If I remember correctly, Booker is guilt-ridden mostly because he essentially sold his daughter to settle a debt accrued through gambling, not necessarily because of the atrocious things he’s seen or committed at Wounded Knee.
However, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that he not only feels guilty about the massacre at Wounded Knee, but also managed to connect the dots, so to speak, and now realizes exactly what led him to drinking, gambling, and eventually, to selling his daughter. Let’s also assume that his goal in life now is redemption (what you claim basically) – he wants to absolve himself of guilt over the bad things he’s done at Wounded Knee, which is demonstrably untrue.
Do you think that merely a desire for redemption is enough for Booker to actually change? I personally don’t think so. Let’s not forget that he continued to commit violent acts even after Wounded Knee, as a Pinkerton agent. Also, Booker, as Comstock (since they’re essentially the same person), resorted to brute force and propaganda to keep the disenfranchised people of Columbia in line, and naturally resorted to violence to deal with the Luteces and the Vox Populi. Booker, at heart, is a violent person, in a violent city, and the only way he knows of solving problems is through violence.
The series is filled with hypocrites and people who preach one thing and do the exact opposite (e.g. Andrew Ryan, Atlas, Comstock), so it’s not unusual for Booker to be a conflicted character. When you think about it, combat seems like a natural fit for the game – in fact, it works very much in tandem with the story and informs the narrative in more than one way, and vice versa. It shows you that any supposed claims of regret he has are just empty and meaningless.
It might be true that the combat seems more stripped-down compared to the previous games. Nevertheless, I personally found it to be a lot more dynamic and immediately fun. I disagree with you regarding the combat encounters being the same. The game quickly starts introducing tougher enemies (e.g. armored infantry, Crows, Firemen, Motorized Patriots), each requiring a different strategy and a different combination of vigors to beat – maybe you can still shoot them to death, but it’s definitely not the ideal way to deal with them. Saying that Vigors are identical to Plasmids is simply false. Vigors have alternate modes, upgrading them gives them unique properties and the way you could combine them added more variety to the combat. Throw the Skylines and Tears into the mix and you have reasonably varied environments that encourage the use of certain weapons and Vigors. This is to say nothing of the Gears, which generally grant you more tangible abilities than the Gene Tonics did.
I agree with you about the absence of hacking (not that I particularly enjoyed it), but I liked the interplay between you (the player), Splicers, security devices and the Big Daddies in the first two games.
Log in to comment