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Giggs posted:I think part of the problem is that the writers left some things ambiguous in order to facilitate engagement, but they left too many significant things either optional or unexplained. If you found every Voxophone, paid attention to all the dialogue, noticed all the nose-bleeding/fuzzy-eyed moments and what caused them etc, the story should make sense. This is not the case. They set up this universe, explained a number of the rules that govern it, but then kinda just worked around them in places. I think it's because Elizabeth's tear-hopping there isn't actually traveling between alternate timelines so much as grabbing an alternate timeline and superimposing it on the existing one. That's why you get all the memory fuckery.
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Jul 24, 2014 05:31
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Tarezax posted:I think it's because Elizabeth's tear-hopping there isn't actually traveling between alternate timelines so much as grabbing an alternate timeline and superimposing it on the existing one. That's why you get all the memory fuckery. Elizabeth is basically merging these alternate timelines/universes together every time they jump into a tear or bring something through one.
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Jul 24, 2014 06:42
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Tarezax posted:I think it's because Elizabeth's tear-hopping there isn't actually traveling between alternate timelines so much as grabbing an alternate timeline and superimposing it on the existing one. That's why you get all the memory fuckery. That...could have been better conveyed, to be honest. I understood that she was plucking poo poo from one dimension and putting it in another, but somehow it did feel like you are jumping from reality (and can thus somehow travel...back...?) Honestly, the reality hopping poo poo comes kind of suddenly and feels like a needlessly complicated solution to a relatively simple problem.
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Jul 24, 2014 07:22
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BottledBodhisvata posted:That...could have been better conveyed, to be honest. I understood that she was plucking poo poo from one dimension and putting it in another, but somehow it did feel like you are jumping from reality (and can thus somehow travel...back...?) Honestly, the reality hopping poo poo comes kind of suddenly and feels like a needlessly complicated solution to a relatively simple problem. Well that's basically because Elizabeth's tears are treated as a kind of primitive wave function collapse; when Elizabeth opens a tear what she is actually doing is collapsing the Worlds at each end of the tear into each other which is why you get wierd fuckery like Booker bleeding from the nose and the people who died in other realities. When Elizabeth opens a tear she doesn't just let things through, she entangles the two timelines together in the Quantum Entanglement sense. I think probably the biggest issue with BSI is that in order to understand the story you need to have at least a basic working knowledge of the foundations of Quantum Mechanics, and QM is basically analogous to magic for most people because it is so freaking insane and complicated. If you do have that working foundation then the BSI story comes across as staggering in scope and relatively well though out, though somewhat limited by the game engine and hardware as to what exactly it can show you directly, but if you don't have that knowledge it's just an incomprehensible mess. Many Worlds, Wave\Particle Duality and Quantum Entanglement are all super important to the story and if you don't already have a working knowledge of these things you're going to miss a ton of important poo poo. Unfortunately, you can't really teach someone Quantum Mechanics in a single sitting. Barring there being like six prequel games that slowly introduce the audience to the underlying concepts of Many Worlds, Entanglement and Wavefunction Collapse and what those things actually mean I can't see any way of doing it. It's very easy to know that, say, photons can exist as both particles and waves at the same time, or be one or the other depending on how it feels (because photons are one of the top ten assholes in physics). But it is much harder to understand what those properties actually mean in relation to you and the world around you; what measurable effects the nature of photons will have upon the universe you can sense. I don't really see any way to handle stories that want to use QM themes and terminology in a vaguely correct setting as opposed to the more common usage of 'Quantum' to mean 'Magic' because only a small percentage of the well educated parts of the population can even tell the difference in the first place (because real Quantum Mechanics actually sounds less plausible than poo poo people just make up). I can't imagine any way to frame the overall story in such a manner that the people who can't tell the difference between fake QM and real QM would be able to properly understand what is going on. e: The fact that they're using an extremely simplified (ie wrong) interpretation of Many Worlds and Quantum Mechanics in BSI suggests to me that the writers already did everything they could to pare the story down and get rid of the most incomprehensible stuff; the fact that more than like five people in the entire thread have an idea as to what just happened proves that they were at least partially sucessful in that endevour too. This helps some people to get a grasp of what is happening, but it harms others who know enough to know how wrong everything is. Neruz fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 07:42
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Now I want a game that goes hard on the Sci in Sci-Fi with Quantum shenanigans. Also, does this make BioShock Infinite a Sci-Fi game in the traditional sense? I mean they might be fudging it to make it easier for the broad audience they were aiming for in a marketing sense, but like you said a basic understanding of QM is almost necessary to fully appreciate how the end works and ties in with everything else kind of works in favor of the Science aspect. Weird science!
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Jul 24, 2014 08:40
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Bioshock Infinite qualifies for 'Soft' Sci-fi; the story deals with genuine scientific principles but the principles are explored by using magic. Of course there's probably some sci-fi fans out there who would crucify me for suggesting that 'Soft' Sci-fi exists and isn't just a name for 'fantasy that sounds sciencey' but lets not go there. Doing a hard sci-fi story involving Quantum Mechanics would be extremely difficult due to just how freaking complicated Quantum Mechanics makes everything. I cannot stress enough that QM is such an absolute utter bastard of a theory that even in the face of literally every single experiment confirming that yes QM is a thing there are still physicists today who feel that QM cannot possibly be correct because it's just that loving crazy. A hard sci-fi story revolving around Quantum Mechanics would look largely incomprehensible to 99% of the population and totally insane to most of the remaining 1%, it would also be a highly illogical story because unfortunately a couple of the major pillars of QM fly in the face of logic and reason (loving quarks) so the end result would probably be an incomprehensible mess to almost everyone and either hilariously stupid and incorrect or a work of absolute genius to a tiny percentile, depending on whether the writers get it right or not. Neruz fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 09:06
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What so you mean we can't just have a game about a handsome particle that heads to a city hidden in dark matter to shoot up a bunch of other particles and say things like "hmm well based on how this rogue brainwashed particle reacts to my quantum bullets, it's both a racist bastard and a conservative prude"? Sounds pretty hard Sci-fi to me.
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Jul 24, 2014 10:47
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Oh my god you do not want to get into dark matter and you sure as gently caress don't want to get into dark energy so let me just head you off before you even think about going there. Dark energy and dark matter are numbers 1 and 2 respectively on the top ten assholes in physics and they earned those positions the hard way. (Note that both are closely related to Gravity and many Physicists feel that Gravity is technically the number one rear end in a top hat because Gravity and by extension the Higgs Boson is a pain in the rear end rebel that plays by its own rules. It is probably not a coincidence that dark matter can only be percieved by its gravitational field and that it is such a huge pain in the rear end.)
Neruz fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 10:55
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So to talk about something a little different to the ending. I was consistently stunned by how invested I was in Elizabeth's wellbeing through the game. In almost every game I will play a pacifist if at all possible. I avoid killing and like talking my way around problems if I can. In B:I this got me stabbed in the hand. I basically find it very hard to justify killing people in cold blood. When I got back from Comstock House bad future and saw Elizabeth being tortured, I flipped completely. The scientists performing the experiment surrender to you and for the first time in years, I just instantly murdered them and felt no remorse. It felt really good. B:I really generates a lot of credit for me, just because of that. I got out and I was just stunned that I'd gone and done that.
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Jul 24, 2014 13:25
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I would just like to point one thing out about the criticisms people are leveling against the ending. Remember, with the basic tenants of the many-worlds which BSI is operating under, you can kind of visualize timelines as trees. So every time a decision could be made, I.E. the coin flip, a branch splits into two other branches. So from the very beginning of this story, the first event where there's a split is the baptism. From there, Booker splits off into his timeline/dimension, goes broke, pawns off Anna, and is picked up by the luteces. In the other branch of that same split, booker becomes comstock, luteces, anna/elizabeth, etc. etc. Here's the thing, though. All of that still springs forth from one, unchanging branch The initial split is the baptism. Since many-worlds assumes infinity, as soon as that first split occurs, it happens an infinite amount of times. And the worlds that spring forth are also infinite. So you have an infinite number of realities with Booker and Elizabeth fighting Comstock, each springing from that one branch. At the end, Elizabeth is tired of this poo poo. Remember, by opening her consciousness and seeing all of these worlds, she's also seeing infinite other Elizabeths All springing from that initial branch. So she takes Booker, brings him back to that branch, and murders him. This destroys that branch, and eliminates all the dimensions and timelines that will result from it. However, this has one big problem, and one big question. The fun thing is, by solving the problem you answer the question! The problem is: The initial branch caused all the timelines to spring forth, and by snipping that branch Elizabeth eliminates infinite timelines. However, many-worlds means that there are infinite versions of that initial branch. She only snips one, but it exists in a billion, trillion, quintillion different forms, each will branch off into it's own version of the same events, spawning innumerable other infinities. The question, is how can Booker then continue after he kills himself? And the answer is very, very simple. Elizabeth cuts her own branch. Just as there are infinite branches, so are there infinite Elizabeths. She only has to make one snip, cut the branch that will lead to her own timeline. Because the other Elizabeths that spawn from the infinite other baptisms will cut their own branches. This is why the game shows us the other Elizabeths. We must assume they are from the same branch, since they disappear when Booker dies, but the game is lampshading the fact that there are infinite Elizabeths. And therefore, she only has to worry about her own branch, because each Elizabeth will sever her own timeline. And from this, we see the true beauty of this explanation. The Booker/Comstock branch is self-defeating. Just as the entire game has been thudding into our heads, it's self-destructive! Only it's not talking about a person, it's talking about an entire possible reality! In every single timeline/reality/dimension where there is the baptism, where Booker and Comstock emerge, it ultimately leads to an Elizabeth who returns to that moment to destroy it. So why do we see Booker at the end? Because we're seeing a reality where booker never made the choice at all. We're seeing a reality where there never was a Comstock, because for whatever reason the baptism never occurred. Every possible reality with the baptism has at least one timeline wherein a comstock creates an elizabeth, a booker saves her, and she returns to the baptism to kill him. Therefore, the only realities which are left are ones in which the baptism never happened. THAT's why the game reinforces self-destruction. THAT's why the Lutece coin flips are always heads. THAT's why there are several Elizabeths who appear. (If one of your dimensional doubles was about to unwrite your history, and you were ok with that, you probably would want to show up and watch!) and THAT is why at the end of the day Booker lives. Technically, Elizabeth lies to Booker. She's not killing him, she's killing Comstock. In the infinite universes where Comstock never has the opportunity to exist, Booker lives a normal life. Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 04:21
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God there are going to be so many angry people when Sundowner does Burial at Sea.
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Jul 25, 2014 05:50
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Neruz posted:God there are going to be so many angry people when Sundowner does Burial at Sea. In astronomy, there is a certain type of nova that has a regular luminosity that we can use to accurately judge how far out a very distant galaxy is. These are known as "Standard Candles." There exists a corresponding reaction upon the typical goon's completion of BaS.
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Jul 25, 2014 06:01
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Imagine four opinions on the edge of a cliff...
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Jul 25, 2014 08:15
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So I finally watched the whole thing and I never played it, I like what the combat was like although I kept yawning and getting bored of all 'CARE ABOUT BOOKER/ELIZABETH' while you stand on a corpse mountain. Then you get to the very last Voxaphone and I did say outloud "Hahaha holy poo poo you're Comstock, what a bullshit ending" lo and behold I was right. So in final; looks like a fun shootmans with great environments but the story is a giant wank fest. EDIT: Having a giant robot bird bring down Zeppelins was metal as gently caress though so there's another point in its favour. Spudd fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 14:17
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Strictly speaking you're not and will never be Comstock with our Booker 
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Jul 25, 2014 16:23
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As much as the plot and character motivations break down at the end, one thing that I really like about the game is the metacommentary on game design. Just as all the millions of Bookers end up being forced into the path of heading to Columbia, meeting Elizabeth, and in the end killing Comstock, so too there are millions of players who do the same thing. The question is raised of how different really is the experience of players who all perform actions in slightly different ways, and even make alternate 'choices', but in the end are all forced into one eventual path by the constraints of game design. It would almsot be worth it to add an online component to the game, where when you see the Lighthouses Between the Worlds you would actually see other players experiencing the same scene. I'm also wondering, based on the hint that Comstock had native ancestry and might have had sympathy with them when no one else did, and later goes on to write incendiary racist speeches, if this isn't somehow meant to be a reversal of what Asa Earl Carter did.
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Jul 25, 2014 16:42
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Sundowner posted:Strictly speaking you're not and will never be Comstock with our Booker ... Right, I keep getting confused with all the timey-wimey multiple universe stuff. Well, I wasn't too far off!  Just that last Voxaphone really made me sigh and it just kind of, I don't know, didn't leave me with a satisfying end to the story. Don't know what else they could have done to be honest, anyway I am looking forward to the DLC if you do plan on covering it I only skimmed the last 5 pages briefly so I apologise if you did say you weren't going to do it.
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Jul 25, 2014 16:54
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Heehee Hartlocks posted:So if I'm getting this right, Elizabeth's goal is to end all the infinite branches of Comstock-existence by going to the very beginning of the branch and cutting it off, aka drowning the Bookers who accepted being baptized and turned loopy. One of the things the game starts doing early on is tell you that there are "constants and variables," as Lutece says, and remembering it is required to make the ending work in any possible sense. There are some things that will always happen: Booker doesn't row the boat to the lighthouse ("He doesn't ROW?" "He DOESN'T row."), Booker's coin flip always comes out heads, Booker always chooses 77 at the raffle, etc. The "variables" are everything else: Booker choosing to help the Vox (or not), the gender of Lutece, the design of the cameo Booker chooses for Elizabeth, etc. By showing these "constants" as the result of choice (rowing), random chance (coin flip), and someone attempting to influence the event (the telegram telling Booker not to pick 77 and it gets picked anyway), BSI allows there to exist such events that will always happen regardless of other factors. By that reasoning, there is no possibility of Comstock chickening out of drowning, since you can call it a "constant" and be done with it. The whole thing is somewhat hand-wavey but required for situations like the one you've described to be resolved in the context of the plot.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:12
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You know, what would have really improved that ending is a "press X to stop resisting" prompt. Because really, it seems like Elizabeth just kind of suckered you there so she could commit suicide by murder.
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Aug 2, 2014 01:32
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PRL412 posted:Yes, Comstock is sterile, and his wife hates him, and he can now afford to pay off the debts he racked up once upon a time. And yes, Anna is his true daughter, but I still don't think that's a strong enough reason for him to take the only thing worthwhile from Booker. He's revisiting the decision from the other side, and still chooses to cause himself anguish. Okay, there's a lot of complicated reasons why this is a good way to think of it objectively and a bad way to think of it if you want to understand why Comstock is doing this, but they all boil down thus: Zachary Comstock Does Not Care. He has any number of justifications for why he absolutely, without question should kidnap a baby and therefore will. The Booker that rejects the baptism and doesn't become Comstock has taken himself further down the path of sin and further from where he should rightly and truly be. Anything he has, anything he accomplishes, was done in sin and he does not truly deserve it. Therefore, it is okay, and even sanctioned by the Lord Himself, to take Anna from Booker, and it would practically be a sin to not do it. The Booker that rejects the baptism has done nothing to gain absolution for his sins but wallow in his guilt and drink to forget the pain. He's a worthless, violent sot and certainly not a fit father for a little girl, certainly not like a fine, upstanding, religious man would be. By taking Anna away from her father and sealing her away from all human contact he's actually saving her from not only the sins of her father, but the sins of the world, and what could be more holy than saving a child? The Booker that accepts the baptism discards the name "Booker DeWitt" and becomes "Zachary Comstock". Comstock sees this as a literal rebirth into a new person with no connection, relation, or attachment to the old one. He is not kidnapping the baby of an alternate version of himself and causing himself anguish. He is taking a baby from a man he does not know and does not care about; what should Comstock care for the feelings of an unbaptized sinner who will burn in the fires of hell soon enough? The Booker that accepts the baptism has a holy vision to fulfill, given him by the Lord God Himself. This is much more important than some petty emotions felt by a worthless sinner who sort of technically doesn't exist according to many interpretations of the universe. Anything is acceptable in the name of God's will. Therefore, it would again be tantamount to vilest sin itself to not kidnap a baby. The Booker that accepts the baptism, when you get right down to it, is just better than the Booker that didn't, God said so. Kidnap that baby, Zach; the other guy totally sucks, so he doesn't even really count.
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Aug 2, 2014 04:41
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I like the ending, it's totally crazy crazy crazy all the time and although it's 15 minutes of nonstop exposition it more or less wraps up every loose end you might have had with Bioshock Infinite's plot. My opinion on this matter is controversial.
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Aug 2, 2014 09:01
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JT Jag posted:I like the ending, it's totally crazy crazy crazy all the time and although it's 15 minutes of nonstop exposition it more or less wraps up every loose end you might have had with Bioshock Infinite's plot. My opinion differs mostly because I felt it was a pretty sharp turn from the rest of the story. BSI's story for the most part is about Elizabeth -- discovering her powers, discovering her humanity, and is a journey about helping her find out who she is. Booker's character is given as many details as is necessary to convince players he's the right job for the lead: capable soldier, has a motive, and is brooding enough to maintain his jaded image. Through the game we watch Elizabeth change. She starts as a wide-eyed innocent girl, has her innocence crushed, comes to terms with her family being fake, and goes from Booker's quarry to his comrade. Each change takes time to happen, and even for a shorter game, it doesn't feel rushed or forced. Then when the last 15 minutes hits, we're told it wasn't about Elizabeth at all. It was about Booker, the man he is, and the man he could have become. That just felt too jarring for my tastes, since Booker had mostly just been the vessel for the gameplay in my mind up until that point and not what drove the plot. If the plot had focused a bit more on him in general, I wouldn't have thought it so disjointed.
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Aug 3, 2014 02:25
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Wait, really? The final 15 minutes reveals everything about how Booker and Elizabeth are related, how Elizabeth came through the portal, what happened with her finger, why she's got magic dimension powers... and you still think it was all about Booker? Remember, the end of the game isn't Booker committing suicide because of what he's discovered. It's Elizabeth having to murder her father. The trip through Booker's past is just a background to explain how Elizabeth came to be, it's still her show.
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Aug 3, 2014 02:57
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Captain Bravo posted:Wait, really? The final 15 minutes reveals everything about how Booker and Elizabeth are related, how Elizabeth came through the portal, what happened with her finger, why she's got magic dimension powers... and you still think it was all about Booker? It's called, "we already went through about 80 iterations on the plot of this stupid game and we need to get it out the door before we run out of money. Now iteration IS THE PLOT. Also, dongs."
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Aug 3, 2014 03:32
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J.theYellow posted:It's called, "we already went through about 80 iterations on the plot of this stupid game and we need to get it out the door before we run out of money. Now iteration IS THE PLOT. Also, dongs." Haha, you're loving dumb. I don't even feel like restating what other have elaborated on in this very thread, because this weak-rear end troll isn't worth it.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:13
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J.theYellow posted:It's called, "we already went through about 80 iterations on the plot of this stupid game and we need to get it out the door before we run out of money. Now iteration IS THE PLOT. Also, dongs." Yeah there is nothing 'dumb' or rushed about BS:I's story. Overly complicated yes, unscientific use of scientific concepts yes, probably a little too much shooting people in the face yes. But dumb? No, not dumb. In fact if anything BS:I's story is far too smart and has gotten its head stuck up its own rear end while marvelling at how smart it is, but it's definitely not a dumb storyline. Poorly communicated sure, but not stupid.
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Aug 3, 2014 09:44
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Just thought I should let y'all know that there's a 2K sale on Steam and there's a BioShock bundled for all three games at £6.79 http://store.steampowered.com/sub/36223/
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Aug 21, 2014 15:22
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Hey you know how Bioshock's big twist was taking the gameplay conceit of objectives and making it into the plot of the game? Bioshock Infinite's big twist is taking the gameplay conceit of continues and making it into the plot of the game. You're welcome.
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Aug 27, 2014 18:06
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Sundowner posted:
Comstocks are drowned during the baptismal vision, but Bookers just pass out because the preacher is a blind rear end in a top hat and always seems to almost drown Bookers. Neruz posted:Yeah there is nothing 'dumb' or rushed about BS:I's story. Overly complicated yes, unscientific use of scientific concepts yes, probably a little too much shooting people in the face yes. But dumb? No, not dumb. In fact if anything BS:I's story is far too smart and has gotten its head stuck up its own rear end while marvelling at how smart it is, but it's definitely not a dumb storyline. Poorly communicated sure, but not stupid. I agree with this. It's not as smart as it thinks it is, basically.
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Aug 27, 2014 19:36
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Hey folks, just wanted to say that the chances of me LPing the DLC is extremely low. With college starting and my waining interest in making LPs I just don't have the energy to do it. I'm sure someone better than I will get around to it. Sorry about that. It was a little scary picking such a high profile game to LP when there are literally hundreds of better LPers out there who probably wanted to take a stab at it and didn't now because of that awkward "ah ____ is doing that so obviously I can't" thing that floats around here. I'm sorry if I dissuaded you but you should totally go for it if you still want to! I'm okay with being able to acknowledge when I did something good, rather than being self deprecating and hating my own ~art~ so for sure I'm happy with the LP. I'll probably email Baldurk and get this thing archived soon once I tidy up the posts. Anyway thanks for all the posts and contributions, you were great. See ya around!
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Oct 6, 2014 02:08
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Don't even worry about the "x is LPing y" thing, you did a great job and other people can always do it whenever they want. Us weirdos will always be excited to argue about quantum-mechanic-based-murder-suicides. Good luck with school and thanks for the entertaining LP!
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Oct 6, 2014 02:17
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Congratulations on the great LP of the game.  For the time being do keep the thread unlocked; if someone else LPs the DLC it would be cool if they were able to post a link to it here.
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Oct 6, 2014 02:31
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Thanks for the LP! It was informative and I didn't have to buy the game so I appreciate that. I think we can all agree on one thing: Comstock did nothing wrong.
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Oct 6, 2014 03:29
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your evil twin posted:Congratulations on the great LP of the game. Oh I won't lock it for a while. I'm happy for anyone to pimp their relevant LPs if they feel like it, so long as it is directly relevant.
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Oct 6, 2014 04:25
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Congratulations on the excellent LP! I've very much enjoyed you showing off the game--thanks so much for doing it.
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Oct 6, 2014 10:49
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Hey, sundowner: you brung us to the end of a high profile game- and in fine style, I might add- so apologies are unnecessary. You've done well, by any measure. Thank you for some fine entertainment, and good luck at school and at all your future endeavors. I shall be eagerly anticipating your next project, if there is one.
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Oct 6, 2014 14:37
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