ZAPBoston

Thank you so much Patrick. I've loved all your work over the past couple of years.

I love Giant Bomb. I might not be as active in the community but I'm a huge passive member. I've been a premium member since the beginning. I get so much value out of my premium membership. It's embarrassing but I probably watch more Giantbomb premium video content than actual broadcast TV. Best money I've ever spent!

I know many of the videos are available on YouTube so any YouTube app (on AppleTV, Roku, Chromcast, FireTV, etc.) can stream them. However, it looks like the premium content is only available via the a web browser or the Roku app.

Has anyone heard anything about now that Giantbomb is part of CBS interactive if we might see other options for video streaming?

I just finished the DLC tonight too. Infinite's original ending took the lore to a place that doesn't easily lend itself to further extensions without telling side stories in these worlds.

It met my expectations. The DLC story did pull at the heart strings and there was great atmosphere (when do these games not have awesome atmosphere). The gameplay mechanics around stealth did add a new flavor and seemed appropriate for the change from Booker to Elizabeth but I got tired of stealth towards the last 3rd. I was intentionally trying to play non-lethally just in case there was a story impact (there wasn't that I could see)

I guess the meaning of the ending was that A) the Good ending to Bioshock (1) was the canonical ending and B) Elizabeth saw that and saw that it was her role to start the process toward that ending. Like other comments here, I'm not sold that this was the only thing she could have done to save the innocent little sisters at Rapture given the vast powers she had at the end of Infinite.

I will just say that unlike Booker (the player controlled character in Infinite), Elizabeth, Jack (the PC in Bioshock), and Subject Delta (the PC in Bioshock 2, which I know was handled by a different 2K studio) are protagonists that were put into terrible situations by other's decisions to use them against their wills as weapons and had to define their humanity and agency through their subsequent decisions.

Hi everybody,

I've been a Giant Bomb premium member since I think the beginning. It's the best money I spend all year from an entertainment standpoint. Between supporting the weekly Bombcasts, Quicklooks, and other videos, the membership is definitely worth it.

I usually use my Roku box to stream video to my TV while doing other stuff around the house. I was wondering: has anyone found any other set-ups to get Premium Videos to their TV. I know that some videos are on Youtube so any Youtube app for any box (Xbox, Playstation, Apple TV, WD Live, Roku, etc.) could probably watch them but I don't think that works for Premium videos. I know I could plug a computer to my TV but was wondering if anyone had found something elegant that I just totally missed. I'm surprised Roku has been the only platform that had an app and wondering if their recent purchase from CBS Interactive will change that :)

I really like Bioshock 2 (I even created a review here on Giantbomb a couple years ago). Some people thought it was a cash grab by 2K but it told a compelling story within Rapture with some really well-drawn characters. It also had a superior ending than the original Bioshock.

I think Infiniti has some thematic overlap with Bioshock 2 (at the core, both are stories of a father and a daughter; both have a girl being experimented on) but not much else. Bioshock 2 is a linear story of the further collapse of Rapture after Ryan and Fontaine are gone. Infiniti is a metaphysical story of choice and unintended consequence.

I'm not convinced that Bioshock 2 influenced anyone at Irrational during the creation of Infiniti.

I loved to Bioshock Infiniti. It was a great game. The ending made sense to me but was bittersweet. I'm partial to happy endings in my games <glares at Casey Hudson>, however unrealistic they might sometimes be.

What's ironic for me personally was how unvested I was in Columbia vs. Rapture. Playing Bioshock, I was very interested in what happened in Rapture and the stories of Ryan vs. Atlas / Fontaine. In Columbia, I thought things started to seem superficial and I really only cared about Booker and Elizabeth.

I think part of that is intentional. Bioshock Infiniti has more emphasis on the Infiniti than the Bioshock. It isn't yet another story of hubris, city-building, and social revolt surrounded my questions of choice and agency. It's primarily a story, a deeply metaphysical story, only of choice and agency surrounded by the superficial trappings of Columbia's fall. At first I started to care about the outcome of the Vox uprising but the problem was I wasn't playing through one Vox uprising but several uprisings as Elizabeth took me from one universe to another and from one point of time in one universe to a later point of time in another. All that shifting started to detach me from what was going on with the politics of Columbia. Columbia's fall really stopped mattering for me.

I think part of it is a little confusing and might have been unintentional ramifications of developer choice.

• I personally feel that there weren't enough audio diaries in Bioshock Infiniti. I know I didn't find some of them and maybe some eagle-eyed player can point to an achievement that shows that were as many available to be found in Infiniti as there were in the original Bioshock. I felt I heard a lot more from Ryan, Tenebaum, Fontaine, etc. during the original Bioshock than I heard from any character in Bioshock Infiniti (excluding Elizabeth)
• I was also surprised that some NPC's with memorable character design (The Songbird, The Handyman, the Boys of Silence) didn't get much direct attention to their backstory in the game. I really expected their to be a level where I explore a Handyman factory and I see that Comstock was using Fink to transform outsiders in Columbia (Irish, Italian, etc.) into monstrosities forced to keep the city functioning. or level where I entered Songbird's lair. Maybe Irrational Games was playing with expectations and knew players would expect game design like that based on the original Bioshock.

As someone who loves Bioshock games, I now wonder "Where does Irrational Games and Ken Levine go from here?". After you've made a critically and commercially successful sequel that basically explores any permutation of the themes from your original critically and commercially successful game, does the franchise have anywhere else to go?

P.S. To those in the thread that have communicated an appreciation for Bioshock 2, I'm definitely in your camp. I actually thought Bioshock 2 was a good game, not as good as the original Bioshock, but not some glaring attempt to wring money out of a successful franchise. 2K did a nice job telling a heartfelt story of one special Big Daddy and a Little Sister amidst the chaos of Rapture. I don't know if that format could work for an Infiniti spin-off as there really isn't a canonical Columbia. Of course, someone at 2K could be pitching such a game right now "You know guys, we need a game where you are just a lost Handyman trying to reunite with your original family"

I know many people disagree with fans voicing their disappointment in the ending on the internet and joining together to try to effect change. Some of it might be deserved: some fans have made it personal against Bioware and the developers that worked hard to complete the game. That's wrong. Yet I do believe that passionate but civil debate about the ending is warranted. For a franchise where "choice" was always a concept discussed by developers and hyped by marketers, the ending seemed to devalue the cumulative choices accrued during the trilogy and to force a play style on the gamer. My objections to the ending are not just the substance of the ending but also the style. The ending cinematic seemed rushed and disjointing - displaying plot holes - that seemed incongruent with its position as the last images you will see of the Mass Effect trilogy.

I think the last couple of weeks of internet discussion and protest have been a net positive for the industry and the gaming community. I wish people wouldn't keep throwing out terms like "entitled" gamers. Someone earlier in the thread even referred to people voicing their disappointment in the ending as "extremists". Given the support fans have given Bioware over the years, I don't think giving honest and civil feedback while hoping for changes by Bioware represents an extremist view.

I agree that the developers are intentionally leaving it ambiguous as it adds to the horror and suspense. I am really interested if the species (whether they still exist or the markers are their legacy) behind the markers are apathetic toward other species or malicious. Is the Marker just not compatible with humanity and/or being misused and tampered by humans (per Hopfire's post). Or is the Marker an attempt at immortality by some lost civilization to convert any species that comes into contact with it. Or something even weirder.  
 
I'm really excited to see where this mythos goes. 

 
<sigh> hopefully they'll release a PC version eventually. I mean - doesn't EA want to show some love to us Steam customers. 

(minor spoilers ahead) 
 
I'm a big fan of the Dead Space franchise. I know it isn't perfect and some have argued it's a pastiche of other ideas or games (John Carpenters' Thing, James Cameron's Aliens, Event Horizon, etc.) but I think it's assembled well enough and adds enough of a new angle to be refreshing and enjoyable.  It also has a lot of Lovecraftian elements to the story that I really would like to see explored more in video games: 

• Sanity and the idea that the protagonist isn't psychologically immune to the horror around him. I know some people didn't like the Nicole sections - I thought they were well done. 
• Forbidden knowledge and that forbidden knowledge can have an physical impact on the world. What's interesting about Dead Space 2 is that the original Marker is destroyed in Dead Space 1 but the knowledge of the Marker and the knowledge transmitted by the Marker into Isaac is so powerful that it can corrupt the Sprawl and it's inhabitants. I mean - unless i missed something - they didn't recover any elements of the original marker in the Ishimura or on  Aegis 7. So they reconstructed the Marker or rather the Marker via Isaac influenced the EarthGov to reconstruct it - but even a duplicate marker had the same power as the original marker just because of the markings and inscriptions added to it. 
• Hapless cults that seek forbidden knowledge for their own personal gain without fully understanding the dangers or consequences. 
• Cover-ups by the Government to suppress  the truth of the danger from the population