Diecast Special: BioShock Infinite

By Shamus Posted Saturday Apr 6, 2013

Filed under: Diecast 126 comments

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I sat down with Josh, Chris, and Jarenth and we discussed BioShock Infinite at length. It should go without saying, but just in case you’re intuition-impaired: This podcast will feature complete and total spoilers for all aspects of the game.


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No timestamps for this one. The discussion is mostly freeform.

As promised, here is the screenshot I mentioned in the discussion:

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126 thoughts on “Diecast Special: BioShock Infinite

  1. Jokerman says:

    Bookmarking this for later, but for now i must avoid like the plague until i have bought this game… I like that you did this separate though.

  2. Humanoid says:

    I, on the other hand, have not purchased a “pure” FPS game since No One Lives Forever 2 and have no intention of changing that fact, so I’ll be spoilering myself to saturation with glee.

  3. Nyctef says:

    It’s finally here! .. Dammit, I was just about to go to sleep as well

  4. False Prophet says:

    Awesome, in time for my long drive tomorrow.

    1. BeardedDork says:

      I had this very same thought.

      1. Nyctef says:

        Spoilers: you two turn out to be alternate-reality versions of each other :D

  5. SneekySneeky says:

    Eh, I found myself really liking the combat in this game, way more than the stuff in Bioshock. The two gun stuff annoyed me at first, for the same reasons you guys didn’t like it, but later on I started to like having to scramble around with barely any health, looking for a gun with a few more bullets in it. Poofing in resources with Elizabeth and riding the skylines added enough variety to keep it fresh for me. The vigors had the same fire, lightning, bees thing as Bioshock, but the new ones were fun, too. I loved levitating people and knocking them off the edge with the shotgun. And it’s not saying much, but there was more enemy variety than Bioshock, too.

    1. Klay F. says:

      I’m in the same boat. Apparently we are like the only two people who actually like the combat. Its funny, because every review I’ve read has gone off on a tangent about one Vigor or another is overpowered, and always its a different vigor than the previous review. Its obvious then that pretty much ALL the Vigors have been made more powerful in response to the complaints in Bioshock about most plasmids being utterly useless.

      1. James says:

        EDIT; Ok after posting i noticed this is really long, so be warned this is LONG, like really long

        For a in-depth look at combat mechanics, and the OPINIONS of them by a and the game at length TotalBiscuit has a 1hour 17 minuet mostly spoiler free video on the game (which is why i cant listen to this podcast) you can find it here and draw your own conclusions from it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwuYhCgQWOc
        another look with opinions on the combat is AngryJoe’s found here
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g15hfTHNdTg

        my opinion based on not playing but observing ATM, so my opinion is based on conjecture atm, and might change.

        From playing Bioshock 1 and 2 and seeing Bioshock infinite, i can see that the Vigors, which are basically plasmids in all but name, are basically the same. its good that you can have several again so you don’t just carry the most usefull with you at all times

        2 weapon system i’m in two minds on, yes its more emmersive to restrict me to a realistic weapon limit, but it just leads to people carring only the best weapons, due to ammo being dirt cheap, money being abundant and all enemies being lootable for ammo/weapons/money. this combined with what seams a lame weapon variety, Pistol/Magnum Sniper/Carbine Assault/SMG and Grenade/Rocket launchers in every fps, with nothing exotic. no flamethrower, no crossbow. and no special ammo, makes me think the combat is less varied and well fun then Bioshock 1 and 2

        no inventory so no HP Kits or Salts to just use when low and relying on what seams scripted Elizabeth assistance, makes me think they want you to do more shooty shooty cover crap rather then leaping around freezing people and hitting them about the head with melee.

        the shield seam to be a way to make the no hp kits in inventory less of an issue by giving a re-gening buffer zone.

        the replacing tonics with gear seams like a “nice” move but it seams gear drops are random and might take a but-load of time and effort to get the “perfect” set up for whatever playstyle you might want.

        so overall from what ive seen, and will play eventually (i plan on getting it next monday) Infinite’s combat seams to be its weak point, just like Bioshock 1 and 2, but unlike 1 and 2 its dropped most of the RPG-lite elements, which is both good and bad, some of the elements didn’t work BUT they did add variety and make the bad combat slightly more excusable.

        Infinate seams to have the Bioshock conundrum, its probably a Good game maby a great game, 10/10 no, 9/10 no not really but i hate scoring systems, its probably overall the best in the series, but it is not perfect and it is not the greatest game ever made, that’s still Witcher 2 IMHO

        also seeing Columbia, i prefer rapture it was more tense and claustrophobic, which added a really nice aesthetic. Columbia wonderful beautiful and incredibly well realized as well, i just prefer rapture. i which Irrational and Ken Levine all the fortune and sales in the world, ‘cus if this is the trend, maby Bioshock 4 will be a prefect mesh of story rpg and fps we all want.

        If i made a mess of my thoughts then i apologies, ask questions and ill try to clarify, also these are my thoughts as of only seen in-depth reviews and come let’s plays, i have not “felt” the game yet, and i might change my tune, but i wanted to add them now, rather then 7 days later when this thread is going to be quiet

  6. On the idea of Rapture vs Columbia I pinned down why i like rapture better. A city founded on Objectvism such as Rapture is founded on ideals that most people can at least see the appeal of even if they don’t believe in them. As such you can see why Andrew Ryan tried to build rapture and why it could have been great. Because of this you feel the tragedy of Raptures fall. Columbia in contrast is a city founded on racism. You feel little to no connection with the founding ideals of the city and as such don’t feel the tragedy when it burns.

    1. rrgg says:

      Yeah, the original put a pretty fair amount of effort into actually make Ryan seem somewhat reasonable and sympathetic. It also seemed to know enough about its material to actually ask some fairly pressing questions about objectivism. What do you do if someone is actively trying to destroy the system from within? Where do you draw the line between acting as a wealthy and powerful individual and acting as a dictator/government?

      Infinite sort of fails to really flesh out Columbia and Comstock all that well. It shows you this nice happy sunshine society before basically going “oh yeah, and they’re all racists so here’s a spiny-hook-blade-thingy. It’s gameplay time!”
      How did the baptism give Comstock the ability to build a floating city? Where were all his prophecies coming from and why did he need to kidnap his own? What exactly made him so evil that he needed to be completely erased from the entire fabric of reality? It doesn’t really get explained.

      1. Another problem is the use of audio logs. The game put’s a lot of the details about why and how everything works in audio logs. The problem is you are bound to miss a few of them and as such will look at many things as illogical. For example I didn’t that Comstock had premature aging along with infertility due to the rifts until I looked it up online. I understand why they didn’t try to cram it all into the main story but I still feel like i missed quite a bit.

        1. rrgg says:

          No doubt, the game even hides a number of (relatively important) logs behind some of those lame “side quests” (basically you find a key and then walk all the way back to the very beginning of the level in search of whatever it opens).

          1. Zukhramm says:

            This is such a bizarre thing and a bad idea that I don’t even know where to start. Why would there be that type of sidequest in a linear shooter where you often cannot return to old areas? In an open world game it’s alright because you’re allowed to set the pace yourself, in Infinite instead we have “do it now or lose it forever”.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Which is why I liked columbia.Killing all these horrible people is so satisfying.

    3. Zukhramm says:

      having not played the game, my biggest problem is it’s a lot less clear what it is, which goes not only for the cities but for the games themselves. I knew the rough details of what Bioshock was about before playing it, Infinite though? I don’t know if I want to play it, because I don’t really know what it is.

    4. I found Rapture to show one of the sci-fi problems with objectivism: Limited resources and the need for there to be those who do undesirable tasks. I can’t find it at the moment, but there was an essay on why allowing a system on a spacecraft or other closed environment where someone could monopolize one or more needed commodities (air, water, etc.) would eventually result in the collapse of the system.

      I don’t know if that was intentional, but it also seems to play into the “Rapture is claustrophobic and therefore seems bigger” vs. “Colombia is in the sky and therefore seems more confining” thing.

  7. The Rocketeer says:

    Just as I follow along:

    I always had to wonder, where did all the blacks and Irish and hated minorities come from in Columbia? I know things are bad all over in that time for them, but apparently this is is a city that is founded on this kind of endemic white supremacy and isn’t particularly easy to get to. Did they have ‘minorities only’ rocketships to take them to Columbia? And if they all hated Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery, why is there no slavery in Columbia?

    Sephiroth didn’t actually have that motivation, by the way. He believed the whole ‘abused Cetra’ line for all of five minutes, then learns the truth afterward and decides to become a god because he’s a dick and he’s in a unique position to do so. You were thinking of Seymour.

    Did other people have trouble with keeping ammo for your favorite guns? I never did, on normal difficulty at least. On the rare occasion I got low, Elizabeth is really reliable in finding more.

    I think the best ‘limited weapon slots’ system I’ve ever played was in Far Cry 2. It was flexible enough, but you had to think about it.

    Campster is pretty spot-on about how combat works, and how the style has changed. I played about the way that Jarenth did, keeping a good long range weapon and taking potshots in between shield charges, and the only time I ever used the trap options was with the crow vigor, it incapacitates and weakens a large radius of enemies, and then spawns more of itself. Bonkers.

    I also used Possession about like Shamus did; a homing, long-range insta-kill that poses a distraction and fights other enemies in the meantime? Yes, please.

    I hate Handymen. Hate, hate, hate them. I never found a way to fight them that was effective without feeling like complete cheese. But the worst thing about them is that they’re goofy as hell. They’re sort of the Big Daddy equivalent of this game, but Big Daddies had this formidable, creepy aura, and usually just wandered around, leaving you to decide when to pull the trigger and watch them completely lose their mind all over you. Handymen are just jarringly silly non-sequiturs that jump in and beat the crap out of you until you shoot them a million, billion times. Booooo.

    Thumbs up to Shamus’ view of resource management. BioShock’s resource management was so anemic and vestigial that they either need to do do it properly or do away with it, but right now they have a game system that couldn’t really cope with either one. It’s a problem, but an old problem.

    Honestly, I agree with all that’s said about Elizabeth, but that Watson teleportation creeped me the hell out and I never really got over it. I will still always treasure her for the sheer amount of cash she brought in. Way to pull your weight!

    The thing I never got about Elizabeth in combat is why the Vox wouldn’t specifically target her in battle. I can totally understand why the police wouldn’t want to harm her, but they never bring that up either. The Vox Populi, though? They’re rounding up everyone and slaughtering them, French Revolution style, even if they don’t know who she is. If they did, she should be their number one priority. Otherwise, she’s you best and only associate, and everyone hates you unconditionally. They thankfully make her invincible, but never make it not feel contrived.

    BOO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT HAIRCUT show some creativity, Irrational games.

    Chris and Josh are right on about the ending. The themes the game should be focusing on receive no attention and don’t matter to anything, and the gimmicky timewarp magic takes center stage. It does very much feel like they just needed to contrive a way to end the game. The important themes get no payoff and the handwaving finale gets no proper setup.

    Really, it feels like they are trying to leverage the plot and gameplay elements of BioShock as if it were a formula. Even if it were, I’m not sure they really got how to follow it.

    Shamus is dead-on about Comstock’s baptism. He didn’t address his problems, he just used it to rebrand his actions as infallible. But Josh is also right about it never really mattering.

    No, Elizabeth doesn’t stop being the most interesting character. She’s just abandoned as a character.

    I ignored the baptismal at the lighthouse, too. Now I kinda wished I’d seen that little extra if you tried to use it. What was up with the Columbian baptist, though?! It seems like he really is trying to drown you, and then when everyone sees you pass out, they dump you off by yourself and just leave you? WTF?

    Still, though, fantastic beginning.

    1. rrgg says:

      I started having some trouble with ammo until I realize that it was really cheap to just use the vending machines.

      Handymen were alright I guess (on normal), you had to stand directly in front of them in order to actually hit the heart which made fighting them sort of like a game of chicken.

      Once you wake up from nearly drowning someone makes a comment that “The preacher fills our lungs with water so that they may better love the air.” Of course, that’s discounting the theory that everything in the beginning of the game didn’t actually happen.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Handymen were easy for me on hard,because I found the piece of gear that gives 10 seconds invulnerability when you pick a health giving item.So I would just find the crate that has a bunch of health,wait for him to jump and punch me,then pick up health and start shooting at him.After 10 seconds,I would pick up another health kit,and continue shooting.

      As for where the blacks come from,early on there is a voxphone about how they are being smuggled into columbia.

    3. MrGuy says:

      Re: why are the minorities there, I believe they hinted in several places that the founders of Columbia were smarter than the founders of Rapture, in that they recognized the logical equivalent of “someone’s got to clean the toilets.”

    4. MrGuy says:

      Re: the Columbian baptist, you’re assuming he’s real.

      There are multiple reasons to believe he might not be. Remember the opening quote – the mind will create memories where none exist. The entire lighthouse sequence is quite possibly part-real, part-halucination. Remember – there is no one actually chasing Booker to get Elizabeth to “wipe away the debt.” All the imagry at the lighthouse – the basin, the note, the writing on the walls, is all probably DeWitt’s creation.

      So why shouldn’t the experience right after arriving in the city be different. A temple flooded with running waters of baptism? Symbolize much? The preacher saying “the only way to the city is to accept the baptism.” Major, major foreshadow. Then DeWitt accepts baptism (a baptism THIS DeWitt never accepted before), blacks out, goes to the trans-dimensional office, and wakes up in Columbia.

      I don’t doubt there’s SOME level of reality in DeWitt’s travel to Columbia, but it’s outright stated at one point that DeWitt “filled in” a lot of details on his own. The Columbia preacher in the baptism temple feels like exactly the kind of thing DeWitt might have created.

      Edit: De-spoilerfied. Seems like this whole post is “spilers, ho!”

      1. The Rocketeer says:

        At the end, when Elizabeth is showing you various realities, you relive the time when the Luteces bring you through a tear in your wall to the rainy shore, or wherever that is, and you get into the boat with them. So I assume at least some of that happened.

        I don’t like the practice of picking and choosing what events are ‘real,’ though; it makes a game that’s already difficult to discuss even more so, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I just don’t think the warp magic in this game really deserves that much attention.

    5. newdarkcloud says:

      “I always had to wonder, where did all the blacks and Irish and hated minorities come from in Columbia? I know things are bad all over in that time for them, but apparently this is is a city that is founded on this kind of endemic white supremacy and isn't particularly easy to get to. Did they have “˜minorities only' rocketships to take them to Columbia? And if they all hated Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery, why is there no slavery in Columbia?”

      In an audiolog very early in the game, Fink says that he knows someone who will send them convicts and other people that nobody cares about for a small fee as a way to meet the demands for cheap labor.

      It makes sense. The slave trade never truly ended. Even today you’ll find people who have fallen victim to it.

  8. Kira says:

    The game was decent in my opinion, except I disagree with you guys about Elizabeth. yes it was nice how she looked around and explored, but she was a WEAK character. Like Other M Samus weak. She does nothing unless Booker tells her to do it. When she is on her own all she can do is open pointless tears that do nothing, and then immediately gets kidnapped and has to be saved. I mean, its nice that she has a personality of a damp towel, as opposed to the personality of a brick, but still. Shes an awful awful character, and everyone praising her is NOT helping.

    1. somniorum says:

      I can kind of understand where you’re coming from, but, concerning having to be saved, it didn’t seem that black and white to me.

      Almost every point where it seemed that they were going to turn her into a damsel-in-distress to me, they countered it with her popping in with some sense of agency and asserting herself. Like when she realises she’s not going to Paris, and starts sobbing… except that she’s either just faking it or merely takes advantage of the real tears to take you out and escape. She gets in trouble a few other times, but generally gets herself out of it, except for the bit near the end when you genuinely need to rescue her from that… electric indoctrination chair thing. Which I found acceptable, considering that *she* saved Booker’s life a number of times over the course of the game (particularly from the monster that acted as her jailer. In fact, the only reason you had to save *her* late in the game was because she saved *you* from the creature).

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      She does nothing if booker doesnt tell her,except hit him when she finally finds out he was lying and taking her to another cage.Save a child by murdering a woman.Goes to the future and prepare everything in order to arrange her escape again.Find a way to use the bird.Find a nexus of worlds.Find a way to erase bookers mistake.Drown booker.

      But other than that,yup,she does nothing but get captured a lot.

  9. Somniorum says:

    Unless I missed it, I don’t think they addressed this in the podcast… and I don’t remember them addressing this in the game.

    Why does Booker have those letters carved into his hand? What do they stand for, why are they there?

    1. Zombie says:

      Its a kind of a penance thing. His daughters name is Anna DeWitt, so he burn/carves/magics AD onto his hand after he uses her to pay off his debt, and that’s what the Lauche (How is it spelled?) twins guess.

      My question is what did DeWitt do that he thought giving over his daughter would make everything better?

      1. veantus says:

        he was involved in the massacre at wounded knee, in fact the game says he was particularly nasty. comstock promised that DeWit’s sins would be forgiven if he handed over his daughter.

        1. Chris says:

          Comstock promised his “debts” would be erased, not his sins. Plus Comstock was sort of in a different dimension – I’m not sure Booker would put much faith in the word of an alternate dimension prophet, especially since he used the Luteces as an intermediary. He wasn’t erasing his sins with Anna; he was adding to them.

          Comstock being rather fanatically religious may have meant his own past sins, but Booker certainly took it as gambling debts.

          1. veantus says:

            I thought the gambling debts were just false memories that DeWitt manufactured when he crossed dimensions. and while I can’t remember it off the top of my head I when DeWitt handed over the baby I got the impression of a religious forgiveness, not a financial one.

            1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-VJ3j2bPJk&feature=player_detailpage#t=605s

              The male Lutece takes the baby and says you are washed of all your sins. I get the feeling this is a message Comstock had him pass on to Booker rather then the payment for Elizabeth. I can see where the confusion appears though because it isn’t super clear.

            2. Kavonde says:

              The gambling debts were most likely real. (Or at least were twenty years prior to the game.) It can be assumed that our Booker, after refusing the baptism, spent a few years screwing around before he got married and had Anna. The debts he racked up during this period were probably the ones he thought were being payed off, and–this is all extrapolation, mind–it’s likely that Comstock (or the male Lutece) did pay off his financial debts as well, seeing as Booker was still alive and able to walk at the start of the game. I mean, if the debts were serious enough that he was literally willing to sell his daughter to pay them, the money probably wasn’t owed to particularly nice people.

              1. StashAugustine says:

                Booker’s desk has a bunch of gambling recipts on it.

                1. MrGuy says:

                  This. It’s also stated somewhere (I think on a voice log) that Booker spiraled into self-destruction, including gambling, after refusing the baptism.

          2. newdarkcloud says:

            It could also be said that maybe he realized that he was incapable of raising Anna on his own and thought to give her to Comstock for adoption.

            Comstock needed an heir and Booker needed someone to care for Anna, so everyone “wins”.

    2. Chris says:

      I’m assuming we have a live-rounds policy with regard to BioInf spoilers in this post, so:

      Booker carved his daughter’s initials into his hand (Anna DeWitt) after he sold/lost her to Comstock as penance for his crime. The Luteces refer to it as his Hairshirt, and refer to Booker himself as theirs.

    3. somniorum says:

      Ah, much thanks peoples : )

      … how on earth did I miss that? -_-;

  10. rrgg says:

    I had the exact opposite impression on the games’ environments. Columbia never really gave me a sense of being too small or a series of nonsensical corridors while in Rapture it was sort of painfully obvious anywhere the designers got lazy and just stuck in a tunnel leading from point A to point B.

    On the mechanics: I already gave some of my thoughts on the forum thread Shamus probably doesn’t want mentioned, but I can see how a lot of the changes they made improve the combat or I can at least see where they are coming from. For example I actually kind of prefer carrying limited weapons. The complaints you guys brought up such as the upgrade system or the sense of little variety were already present in the first game- you upgraded one of your weapons and then you just used that weapon since it was your best one. There was never really any pressure to switch unless you were out of ammo or just feeling sort of shotty one day. Even if a situation did arise where you wanted another weapon it was just way too much hassle to deal with all of that management in the middle of combat (remembering which hot-key goes to what, whether your weapons are loaded or not and with what type of ammo). By limiting the number of guns you carry the game is able to have a wider overall selection available, the loadout choices become much more important, and since I only had to keep track of two at a time I was able to use two weapons to their full potential instead of just one.
    As for the shields it is pretty clear why they were deemed necessary for this game. I originally started the game on hard but during that first section before being given the shield I had to turn it down to normal since there is literally no way to avoid taking damage when you run into gun enemies and turrets.

    But while I think the infinite did have a stronger set of mechanics to work with being the newer game and what-not. What really struck me is how the combat completely failed to fit any themes like it did in the first game. Chainsawing the face of a policeman who was running at you with a baton is worlds away from being ambushed by bloody, screaming splicer.

    On the Plot, Themes, etc: I think Josh can be completely forgiven for expecting the game to be about something that it really wasn’t because that’s basically what it does. If you don’t know ahead of time what’s really going on the game is absolutely chock-full of red herrings and leads that don’t actually go anywhere. The two I really got hung up on were the vigors (every time you get a new one you get treated to a really intense cut-scene of the side-effects such as Brooker screaming while all the flesh is burned off his fingers, and every so often you’ll notice him suddenly hold up his left hand like he’s having cramps or something as the currently equipped vigor starts acting up out of your control) and the tears (once I started running into places that let you spawn in mechanical patriots or infinite waves of gun balloons it began giving off some serious vibes of “absurdly overpowered and easy to use mechanic that’s really just tempting you into slowly weakening the power of the universe or something, oh no!”) So I wound up trying to use both of those mechanics as little as possible and only when I absolutely needed to. . . but, yeah, it never really comes up so you might as well just spam F on everything.

  11. Kavonde says:

    I’m kind of surprised you guys didn’t discuss what I consider one of the game’s big elephants in the room, though I guess half the hosts wouldn’t have been able to really admit to even noticing it.

    I tried to think of a non-creepy way to put this, but screw it: Elizabeth is very attractive. And she spends half the game running around in a corset. It’s fan service, of course, and I’ve certainly seen far more blatant and upsetting. And I don’t think there’s anything weird about a normal guy, sitting in front of his screen and keyboard, thinking, “My, this fictional character certainly is an exceptional representation of idealized female beauty.” Y’know, or just “BOOBS!”

    However, the weirdness comes in with the ending and the revelation that she’s Booker’s daughter. That’s when a big ball of squick settled into my stomach.

    Why? Because… well, look, there’s no way to say this without revealing that I have been single for far too long, but basically, because I played Booker DeWitt as a skeevy pervert who was constantly finding excuses to stare at Elizabeth’s cleavage.

    Ew.

    Was it intentional, do you think? Did the guys at Irrational design Elizabeth and her corset knowing from the beginning what her relationship to Booker was? Do you think they feel kinda squicky about it, too? Because I hope so. This was easily Luke and Leia frenching levels of retroactively uncomfortable.

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      I would say it’s more likely that whoever designed Elizabeth’s outfit was just operating under the general principal of ‘attractive female+sexy outfit=fan-service=good’, without considering any of the arising implications.
      But it would actually be pretty interesting if they intentionally built her up to be lusted after by the player and then pulled the rug out from under them with a later twist. If anything it would be a rather hilarious gut-punch to certain erm…’deviant’ members of the fanbase.

      1. Minnow says:

        I’ve seen a few let’s plays in which the player ends up laughing / shocked that they’d been “sweet talking” [as one such player called it] Elizabeth after that reveal.

        It’s interesting – most forum posts I’ve read have stated there was clearly [and deliberately] no romance / tension between the characters; but I get the feeling people felt that way because they’d played through the ending and seen the subsequent character growth Elizabeth goes through. A friend who was playing through the game, however, complained early on it was ‘obvious’ they were going for a romance option.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          From a bit of a different perspective, I’m gay and when playing I’ve noticed absolutely nothing sexual between Booker and Elizabeth. The one time I thought they would go for the romance angle was way before the game was released when first I saw that promo where Booker aims his gun and Elizabeth is standing next to him, I managed to mostly forget about it by the time I started playing the game.

          Thinking about it now I’d say I was more expecting a “father-daughter” relationship, even if not necessarily a literal one, especially since for me Elizabeth always felt like a childlike character (if not in age than in psyche). The fact that Bioshock games never really went for the romance but worked the parenthood angle a lot might have also factored into it.

    2. Klay F. says:

      I think it says more to say about you, that you can’t see any reason for Elizabeth’s change of dress, than it does about the developers. Think about what happens rights before she changes clothes. She MURDERS Daisy Fitzroy with a pair of scissors. This is a huge loss of innocence for her. Her entire demeanor changes for the rest of the game. Her outfit changes to reflect this.

      Anyone who just handwaves it as “Oh Fan Service” doesn’t know what they are talking about.

      1. Kavonde says:

        Well, obviously there was an in-story justification for the costume change. But nothing stopped the developers from giving Elizabeth a shirt, had they so desired.

        I think this is an example of Chris’ favorite phrase, ludonarrative dissonance. The game design is saying something different than the plot is. If Irrational didn’t want the player to think of Elizabeth as a potential subject of romance, they shouldn’t have designed her as such an obvious source of fan service. Unless, of course, they were deliberately trying to squick some of their players out with the end reveal.

        1. Klay F. says:

          Seriously? This is basically the digital equivalent of slut-shaming.

          1. ThirteenthLetter says:

            Sorry, you appear to be lost? Tunblr is over thataway.

      2. Zukhramm says:

        I’m not even lying that pretty much constantly through the game after that point, the only thing I could think about was the origin of that dress. Really, where did she get that? It seems silly it would have been on the ship. And don’t tell me it’s from a different world, that’s cheating!

        1. Kavonde says:

          The dress belonged to Lady Comstock; it shows up in the various portraits of her. Her husband probably kept it on his ship as a memorial/tribute. However, in those pictures, she also had a blouse. I don’t really know where that went.

  12. Bryan says:

    So this one was Bioshock Countably Infinite, and the next one will be Bioshock Uncountably Infinite? With a diagonal argument between some guy named Cantor and some guy with no name, and everything?

    Or, I guess Russell’s Paradox would work too. (Well, sort of. That’s not *quite* what Josh said…)

    1. MrGuy says:

      Bioshock Measure Zero.

  13. Xanyr says:

    So I assume that since you’re doing this podcast we’re never getting a Spoiler Warning season of Bioshock Infinite?

    1. Chris says:

      Never say never! But we’re still trying to figure out how to juggle weekly podcasts with the rest of Dishonored – we haven’t even started talking about next season in earnest yet.

      1. Jace911 says:

        Honestly I would be fine if Diecast was a bi-monthly thing instead of having to compete with Spoiler Warning for space every week.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          I just hope they manage to balance it somehow, both SW and Diecast are interesting, if in different ways and it would be a shame if one of them had to suffer. Than again, this is a lot of time a bunch of people invest to provide me with free entertainment so…

      2. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Even putting aside the emergent humour of an SW season I don’t think you exhausted the possibility of analysing Infinite at all. I think a let’s play format offers you all a great chance to point out specific moments in the game that you find interesting or that you believe reinforce your interpretation of it, it would also let you cover what you think about various details that you didn’t have time or didn’t think to mention in the cast.

        I think there’s still plenty to say about the game and I don’t think this cast has spoiled a potential season at all.

  14. Gilfareth says:

    Shamus, I feel I should inform you that the black, soulless voids where your eyes should be frighten me. I’m not sure if that is simply Rutskarn’s art style or if he accurately captured your post-lichification features, but that is a very scary thing to behold.

    1. ACman says:

      Shamus would not become a lich, he’d become some sort of computerized automaton that runs on tea.

      1. MrGuy says:

        Technically, Shamus runs on the absence of No Tea.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          “In essence, Shamus runs on the absence of No Tea.”

          Fixed it for you.

  15. ACman says:

    I love how everybody likes a different Vigor.

    My combo was Crows and Electricity.

    Crows is devastating once it’s leveled up, it bascially stun-locks and damages anything not completely robotic for a massive distance in front of you, and fully upgraded it turns people who die while experiencing it into Crow traps. Got to the point where I was chaining mooks into it while finishing them off with Carbine or hand cannon fire.

    Not so good in open spaces I’ve found.

    1. I actually combined Josh’s and Shamus favorites. Start of with a mind control and then Charge in with a shotgun. Plus the temp invincibility and shield recharge that came with charge was my only saving grace on Handymans. damn things killed me every time unless I spammed it to keep my self alive.

      1. StashAugustine says:

        Always Be Charging!

        1. rrgg says:

          Don’t Eat Fists!

          1. Syal says:

            Get Him Irrationally!

      2. TouToTheHouYo says:

        I keep hearing this or that about the Handymen being hard to handle but I never had a problem with’em. Now, yes, to each their own, but other than being a general drain on resources they were little more than annoying. Granted, I was playing on normal, but the buggers never once killed me, nor anything else in the game for that matter, and they grew even easier to dispatch with time. I almost lament not running into more of’em. They drop presents when you kill’em! Like psychotic Santas!

        Combat overall was far to easy. I never knew about the whole death sequence until after I completed the game and read up on it. I’d occasionally screw up and die in BioShock 1&2, then quick load and try again, but not a once did anything kill me in Infinite. I was dreading the lack of manual saving being the potential death of me but it never factored into anything. Closest I came to biting the dust was during the final gauntlet towards the end. If those Patriots hadn’t been so thoroughly focused on that generator the fight’ve been nearly impossible.

        Fighting isn’t the games strongest point but I’m actually looking forward to a second play through. I never strayed from my formula once I established it but next time I’m playing around with everything.

    2. rrgg says:

      Once I learned you could use it to open secrets I kept shock jocky active the entire time. I then forgot to actually keep an eye out for secrets the rest of the game

    3. Zombie says:

      Murder of Crows was by far and away the best vigor *cough*plasmid*cough*. That and Return to Sender made fighting any human enemies really easy. Murder of Crows -> Shoot people while there stunned -> When thy get back to shooting you just use Return to Sender to stop any damage -> repeat as needed.

      However the only vigor I used against Handymen was electrobolt (I refuse to call it Shock Jockey) just because it stunned them for a second or to and let me smack them with the shotgun for a few seconds.

  16. somniorum says:

    Ok, so, I’m kind of surprised that nobody is mentioning what was, to me, the main annoyance I had with the game – ie, the Vox and Fitzroy.

    Part of it was, I admit, ideological/historical issues, but I certainly wont get into that due to the understandable politics taboo. But, they just… they weren’t written very well.

    It’s true that Fitzroy treats you like a dick the moment you first meet her, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to justify how virtually immediately Booker decides she, and the Vox by extension, are no good. You could even give some plausible explanations as to WHY she might’ve been semi-justified in treating you like a jerk. I had always assumed that, once I did a mission or so for her, she might calm down a bit and become more trusting (she does, after all, have a hell of a large responsibility on her shoulders). Obviously that doesn’t happen, though, as you spend about a quarter of the game trying to complete that quest.

    Then you go to the Revolutionary Success Dimension, find out you’re a hero to the Vox, fight alongside them a bit… yet all the while Booker and Elizabeth keep making comments about how disillusioned they are about the Vox, BEFORE THE VOX DOES ANYTHING PARTICULARLY AWFUL. They get upset about some executions of cops, except that, for one thing, anybody who knows anything about revolutions knows that the degree of violence in the revolution generally reflects the degree of violence used against the people who are revolting, and the degree to which the underclasses were exploited and oppressed in Comstock’s ideal society was pretty dreadful. A few executions are hardly unsurprising. Secondly… you, yourself, are not particularly kinder. As upset as I was with the people trying to make me bean that mixed-race couple, I rather did NOT want to tear a man’s face off with my hookamajig. The way you solve most of your problems is with extreme violence. Their reactions are even less sensible if you choose to be more openly violent in some of the quieter bits. And I, myself, choose to execute whats-his-name, the boss who leads the suicidal soldiers. But apparently it’s okay when I do it?

    The only point when the Vox really does anything that counts as overtly hateful (and pointlessly stupid) is when Fitzroy decides you’re a liability, and sicks the Vox on you. And, despite that you were one second ago a revered hero, they immediately switch over like killbots and go after you.

    Frankly, the way they handled both sides in the game was, *more* often than not, just ridiculous. It falls into the tedious South Park tendency of, with ANY given issue, going “no no no, BOTH side are EQUALLY wrong!” and failing to give any nuanced criticism, just loads of caricature. What you’re left with is a feeling of hopelessness, pointlessness. Most people who play this game will hate the racist, classist world you’re in, and to see the opponents of this society become cartoonishly evil once they succeed (not immediately, of course – only rather AFTER everyone judges that they’re omg just as bad as Comstock) gives this very hopeless message, essentially saying that it’s worthless to bother trying to change things, as all attempts to better the world are worthless. What’s even creepier is that it *almost* seems to imply that Comstock’s classism and racism are *right*, because once the poor Irish and black people raise up, virtually the whole society gets destroyed, and there is nary a dissenting Vox voice to be found. I’m sure that wasn’t the INTENTION, but considering the highly racial nature of the oppression in the society, and therefore composition of the Vox, you get this really creepy thing happening where, for most of the rest of the game, you’re fighting against a bunch of chaotic blood-thirsty… racial minorities. : (

    In fact, the game – and also the original Bioshock, frankly – has a strong misanthropic tendency in general. Everybody is bad, even people who seem good at first (ie, the oppressed). The only good people are Booker and Elizabeth… er, and, actually, really, only Elizabeth once you find out more about Booker’s past.

    Leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And not just because of the poor moral lesson. I’d be happy with them showing a failed revolution turning into tyranny, but, come on, write it *better*, with more sensitivity. And don’t have the characters make up their mind about the faults of people before these people actually SHOW their faults.

    And as a last little gameplay-related note: I’m surprised people had so much difficulties with the Handymen. I found that they went down rather easily if you just periodically used shock jockey, then shoot them in the heart (preferably with the carbine, for me anyway, if you don’t have heavy weapons on hand) a few times, and repeat the process till dead. Sure, you might get a bloody nose anyway, but I never found it that hard. I played almost the whole game using shotgun/carbine and possession/shock jockey, and had few problems, only died twice (once way before Elizabeth came along, once somewhere close to the end of the game. Oh, and technically I failed the final battle once, but that wasn’t due to my dying).

    1. Rack says:

      I’d initially read Booker’s dismissal of the Vox as prejudice from his own strike-breaking days so I took the whole sequence better than you did. Only when the whole thing had been resolved did I start thinking it was handed in a pretty ham fisted way. It seems like the Vox should have fractured when it became obvious how vile Fitzroy was and there should have been some big payoff for this. Instead it was another theme abandoned for sci-fi gumpf.

    2. Jakey says:

      This.

      The whole ‘they’re all equally just as bad’ French Revolution cliche was kind of a massive cop-out. Revolutions are a messy business, but the typical implication is that the initial massacres are the lesser and necessary evil when compared to years of ongoing systematic abuse. It’s also all about the context. Painting a bunch of extremely disenfranchised minorities as being just as bad for violently overthrowing their skyracist overlords as the skyracist overlords were for being extremely awful to minorities in the first place is kind of unfortunate as fuck, to say the least. Hell, it almost edges into ‘Great job minorities! Why did you have to go ahead and ruin the status quo and ruin this great idyllic white supremacist paradise we had.’ commentary at times.

    3. arron says:

      I was under the impression that the reason that Fitzroy deals with you is because you “complicate the narrative”. Your death in the revolutionary reality is what helps spur the Vox into action. The posters in this reality are also much more dynamic and rabble rousing, probably due to the success they’ve been having. In the original reality they are almost non-existent as the Vox are a minority organisation that is heavily suppressed. In the reality where the gun dealer is alive but his tools are confiscated, the Vox are bolder and more numerous but not in a position to fight. Revolutions tend to have to keep the message simple (which avoid complications with taking prisoners and having trials afterwards) and they frequently run out of control as passions are high and people tend not to think as they take revenge. I didn’t think that the revolution segment of the story was handled that badly. It was certainly as bad as the Russian Revolution or in Cambodia where many people were executed out of hand for merely wearing glasses or owning books that might suggest intellectual leanings.

      The Khmer Rouge were in my opinion far worse than the Vox in how they took control of the country, and one of the audio diaries from Fitzroy takes a nod to how they dealt with anyone who might pose a threat to their ideology.

      It’s also a symptom of the age where the attitudes of the Founders were in keeping with the broadly racist southern US despite emancipation..and in a bubble-like city floating in the air, you have the poor, foreign and coloured as a poorly paid slave workforce because the rich white folk are not going to stoop to manual labour. Columbia has little impetus for reform as it is a artificial society to promote an ideal, and one where the rich people in charge make their position more secure through religious faith.

      One of the advantages of having many governments that are relatively free is that reform is more likely as ideas and mistakes from trying to govern more effectively pass from country to country.

      In Columbia, that will never happen and as we see from the future Comstock house, Columbia decays into a wreck staffed by fanatical true believers and people sick from time paradoxes. It is all that is left once optimism and hope are dead, even as they turn on the world below them in an attempt to cleanse their sins..

  17. Mailbox says:

    I give the game 4 score and seven years ago.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      That is amazingly appropriate.Im surprised no one from the crew thought of that.It seems that having no Rutskarn around has its flaws.

      1. MrGuy says:

        Lincoln is actually pretty absent (except to the extent he’s villified as a foil to the Great Hero John Wilkes Booth).

        1. somniorum says:

          Oooh, the Vox use him all the time, you get to kill a good handful of LincolnBots.

          … they should’ve had a scene where a Jeffersonbot fights a Lincolnbot.

  18. Small Ivory Knight says:

    I was disappointed that you guys didn’t really talk much about the Lutesces. They were definitely my favorite character(s). They were, in my mind, everything that The Outsider should have been.

    1. Kavonde says:

      I absolutely agree with this. They were interesting, bizarre, charming, and every single scene with them suddenly makes sense once you know what’s going on. I looked forward to seeing them every time, and even moreso the second time around.

      That coin flipping scene at the beginning is brilliant.

      1. Zombie says:

        They were really awesome Characters who managed to provide comic relief without being idiots, added to the overall plot, were fleshed out to be actual characters, and still managed to be some of the most mysterious people in the whole game. In short, everything a good god like character should be, plus or minus the comic relief.

      2. MrGuy says:

        The coin flipping scene would be awesomer if it wasn’t lifted from Rosencrantz and Guildestern are Dead, but yeah, it fit really nicely.

      3. newdarkcloud says:

        I agree. And besides, Jennifer Hale automatically makes Rosaline Lutece awesome.

  19. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So what Chris is saying is that this game is about cycles.

    1. StashAugustine says:

      No, Booker was indoctrinated the whole time!

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Look, it doesn’t really matter as long as the developer managed to keep their artistic integrity.

        1. Heaven Smile says:

          Insert image of EDI cameltoe here with the words “Artistic Integrity” in each labia :D

    2. Heaven Smile says:

      It’s more about Schrodinger worst nightmares.

      Maaaaaaaaybe its a rail shooter or maaaaaaaaaybe not.
      Maaaaaaaaybe there is just one ending or maaaaaaaybe not.
      Maaaaaaaaybe your choices matter or maaaaaaaaaaybe not.

  20. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So what Chris is saying is that this game is about cycles.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      This is a duplicate that should be deleted.I just had a bit of a weird loading issues with the blogs comments.Just to let you know if it turns out to be a thing again.

      1. Josh says:

        At the same time, it does seem rather appropriate…

  21. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Josh does point to an interesting thing about recent shooters:Melee is way overpowered.

  22. Jarenth says:

    I can’t believe I missed a chance to talk about one of my personal favourite complaints with Infoshock and use the phrase ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ in context, but I did. So as an addition to all that yapping:

    Why do almost none of the people in Columbia use Vigors?

    Vigors, which you may remember as potions that give you literal superpowers, are basically everywhere. Everywhere. You can’t walk ten feet without stumbling over a crate of Bucking Broncos or whatever. In the early beginning, Booker gets handed a free sample of Possession — side note: how does a ‘free sample’ of a potion that gives you unlimited superpowers work? — and the carnival tents operators are well busy flogging the idea of Vigors to all comers.

    And almost nobody uses them.

    You’ll be in combat, and there’ll be a million dudes shooting at you with Generic Guns, and you kill someone, and you’ll notice they were standing next to a bottle of Shock Jockey. Why didn’t he drink that? I honestly cannot figure out what the rationale would be for these clearly outclassed gun-mooks to not grab the nearest container of Convenient Superpowers are soon as they notice you’re packing too. But no: they were born a gunman, they’ll die a gunman.

    Plus, imagine how cool it could be to see random mooks suddenly gain Vigor powers throughout a protracted battle. It’s something I would have loved to see, for one.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Yeah,thats a really good point.When I started the game,checking out those two guys shooting powers at each other,I was like “Man I cant wait to see enemies try that against me”.Then it turned out there were just two guys who use some powers,and they were lame.But by then story trumped gameplay,so I didnt mind it at all.

    2. Zombie says:

      I think the special guys, like the guys you fight to get Devil’s Kiss and Murder of Crows, have vigors. But even then its only Murder of Crows, Devil’s Kiss and like one other.

      As to why everyone dosn’t use them, at the fair, one guy is like “I like to wait until they fix the kinks”, meaning they aren’t really up to snuff at the time of the game. There might be really bad side effects to using them, like maybe your hand stays burned off after taking it the first time, or your hand doesn’t revert back to a regular hand after it turns into a bird claw. I also remember hearing somewhere that Fink is stealing the ability to make vigors from Rapture’s plasmids, but dilutes it so it doesn’t rewrite your genetic code, so its only temporary. So maybe its just not feasible to give vigors out to the whole police force. I mean, one of the police guys even says their only handing out the skyline riders to certain parts of the police force. They might only be handing out vigors to certain people in the police force.

      1. Jarenth says:

        While these are all fair and likely completely correct objections, I’d still have liked to see some dudes drink Vigor bottles while fighting a man clearly hopped op on the same stuff. It breaks my heart every time I melee a guy to death, and right next to him is a bottle of Shock Jockey. I don’t care how much ‘kinks’ it has, that bottle could have saved your life.

        1. MrGuy says:

          This.

          One throwaway line of dialogue overheard from a random NPC isn’t really enough to offset the “hmm…maybe the ability to shoot fire out of my hands WOULD be convenient right about now…” factor.

          Though honestly, if we’re trying to make the guards rational, I think this theory applies: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/02/20

    3. arron says:

      Perhaps they don’t trust them yet? The Founders might not think they’re safe, and the Vox might consider them tainted with the evil of the Founders. This is a society based on faith and purity so these vigours might not have taken off yet in society. Drugs are seen as impurities, even ones that have some kind of key benefit today.

      Look at the attitude to cannabis in the early part of the 20th Century. A drug that promoted violence and rape. The fact that neither are more likely didn’t get in the way of the official view of them..and even alcohol was banned in the prohibition for its ability to confuse people into poor moral choices.

      How long does it take a recreational drug to take hold? And if you consider that a very small minority use them even if “safe” then you might find that only 3% of people use them even after they’ve been out several years.

      In the fair at the beginning of the game, they’re trying to push them on the public with demonstrations, so it also seems to suggest that they have not been out long..otherwise why would you put so much effort into advertising them?

    4. X2-Eliah says:

      Maybe vigours are a time-delayed poison that kills people across something like two weeks? Everyone at Columbia has learned of that – probably through big mistakes and tragedies – but you never know that because lol9hours.

  23. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I must admit Im surprised so few people used return to sender.Its an amazing ability that lets you one shot almost any enemy,regenerate your shields completely at any time,make you invulnerable while firing your gun,collect ammo for your guns,and is cheap to upgrade.

    1. Pete says:

      The problem with it is that it shows up so late in the game that by then everybody probably has the two or three plasm-vigors they actually use ingrained.

      Myself, I only ever used return to sender after obtaining it, but thats mainly because I love shield powers in general and return to sender in particular.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        But they were talking about undertow and charge,which show up about the same time,and are more expensive to upgrade,and cost more salts to use.

        1. Jarenth says:

          I loved Return To Sender, both graphically and in effect, but everything it does can also be done by way of cover use and a Volley Gun.

    2. Zukhramm says:

      I couldn’t figure out how it worked.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Single click just gives you a short forcefield that protects you from all damage.

        Long click makes a long forcefield that absorbs all damage,and once released throws a bomb that is as strong as the amount of damage it absorbed.So if you park yourself in front of a patriot and hold the button while he riddles you with bullets,releasing the button with send a bomb in his face that will deal all that damage to him,and every enemy beside him.Its amazing.

  24. StashAugustine says:

    I do have to say, I found Ryan et al. much more compelling and nuanced than the villains in Infinite, but I freely admit that this may be because I agreed more with Columbia’s philosophy than Rapture’s. I still think that Ryan is a more interesting character- he starts up this place with no intention of becoming a tyrant, and only begins to clamp down when somebody begins exploiting the system, whereas Comstock is just all crazy, all the time.

  25. burningdragoon says:

    Undertow was awesome, I don’t want you guys were talking about. Not just knocking enemies off stuff (which is awesome), but yanking multiple guys from across the stage so you can blast them with a shotgun. With an upgraded shotgun could kill 3 dudes in one shot even on 1999 mode. Also, tearing in a Tesla coil and yanking dudes within range.

    The only thing bugged me about the story was after the second trip through a tear, they didn’t seem to consider how their quest would/had change/d. Trudging through assuming they could just get the airship didn’t make a lot of sense.

    As far as Booker not freaking out when he entered the world where he had been dead, I figured after Booker’s initial time trip with the Luteces (revealed at during the end) his mind was more able to handle new memories.

    Re: overused tutorials. It seemed like every time you had shutdown the game, the tutorials would reset. I guess in case your forgot, or played a sorta-narrative-focused game between over a long period of time for some reason.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      RE: Airship

      To be honest the second time around I was expecting them to reach Fitzroy about the airship and her be all “who the heck are you?!”

      RE: Booker being less affected by overlapping with dead Booker:

      Two extra things involved could be that it was actually the living Booker entering the world where he was dead and also the fact he was sort of mentally prepared, he was told that he’d be entering another reality where things would be different… so his brain had less “what is happening to me!?” to cope with.

  26. StashAugustine says:

    Also, with gameplay: I think a three-weapon system would have been better. I get they were trying to prevent the situation in Bioshock where you just use the electric shotgun of absolutely everything, but I did wish for another slot just in case. Almost never ran out of ammo, though, between vending machines and Elizabeth.

  27. Asimech says:

    I spied a Weelb and Bob reference. I approve.

    Infinite was kind of going to be a “I’ll look into it once I can have it for 10 € or less”, so I’ve been spoiling myself on it quite a bit. This has resulted in me enjoying it more than Bioshock 1.

    I do not miss the Skill trees from System Shock 2. Hated the damn things. Filled with newbie traps and just pointless upgrade mechanics that sound like the one in Infinite: forced improvement elements that exist for their own sake that don’t really bring anything meaningful to the gameplay.

    I really preferred the Sshock 1 approach of actually finding specific equipment or software.

  28. kenup says:

    That linearity you talked about at the beginning is what made me stop playing the game, pretty much after the first combat zone. That and the whole cinematic taking control away from the player every 5 seconds, plus repetitive combat.

    The last one I had a problem with in the original Bioshocks as well, so I wasn’t surprised by this, it was pretty much what I expected. Compare that to SS2, in which the combat was, and felt, much more open(and the whole gameplay for that matter).

  29. Lightningstrike14 says:

    I came to a different conclusion than you guys. Upon finishing game I thought that the point was that it was never about Elizabeth and it was never about Booker/Comstock, it was about the Leutece twins. The events of the game are are a reaction to their interference and subsequent attempts to fix their mistake. At some point they realized that they created an infinite amount of god-like Elizabeths and sought about eliminating not only her, but any chance of her existing.

    I think the game is more interesting if you think about as a the story of two scientists attempting what is the ultimate experiment, the creation of existence.

  30. ydant says:

    I’m going to have to hold off on watching this one until I finish the game. It was the Spoiler Warning episodes on Bioshock that got me hooked on the games, and I don’t want to repeat the experience of spoiling it for myself again.

    I’ve set up a program to convert the Diecast RSS feed into something my podcast manager will handle for my own personal use – I have no idea what other podcast software needs, but mine just wanted the “enclosure” tag to be added (e.g.).

    Others can feel free to use – it’ll be updated semi-regularly, but isn’t meant to be an official thing. Hopefully Shamus can update the RSS feed to add the enclosure element – that’s all my podcast software seems to want to be happy.

    Podcast feed URL: http://mbafford-static.s3.amazonaws.com/diecast.xml

    ( source: https://gist.github.com/mbafford/5333101 )

  31. MrGuy says:

    Also, just a random hate on Infinite was them bringing back the same voice actor with a similar catch phrase to the “Fill your craving at the Circus of Value!” vending machine voice from the original Bioshock.

    I get the want for an audio clue there’s a vending machine nearby, but I passed the “For The Love Of God Stop Saying That Every 20 Seconds I Will Murder You In Your Sleep!” point about 2 levels into Bioshock, and I was literally sick of it before I heard it the first time here. Argh! No! Make it STOP!

  32. Given Shamus’s general dislike for “you need to get a trap, to trap a rat, to lure the cat, to give to the old lady, to get a key, to open a wooden door” type of game play I’m surprised he didn’t have a problem sith it with this game. I can’t be the only one who got really annoyed when I went through an entire level and killed 100 men to get shock jockey only to find about 10 bottles of the stuff Immediately after.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      It seems, from the podcast, that Shamus’ enjoyment was linked to his plummeting expectations.

  33. Donovan Briggs says:

    Just wanted to throw out some interesting reading for those who are interested in discussing this game’s thematic elements:

    http://peripsuche.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/bioshock-infinite-thematic-analysis.html

    Despite the game’s gameplay-related flaws (which Josh did a good job of enumerating), I swear I didn’t even notice them because I was so caught up in the setting, the plot, the characters, the attention to detail, the presentation… and I’m an oddball, anyway. I feel like the game plays best on 1999 mode (the hardest difficultly), but that’s just me. ;)

  34. Heaven Smile says:

    Perhaps this article on Bioshock Infinite “The game that succeeds and fails at the same time” will be helpful to you:
    http://awtr.ca/long:schroedinger-s-game

    This was done by the same guy that brought you this article “This Is Not A Pipe” on the Mass Effect 3 ending, and how it is thematically revolting:
    http://awtr.ca/long:this-is-not-a-pipe

  35. Heaven Smile says:

    Soooo its the AI of Elizabeth a new thing in gaming? as in, looking around independently of your presence in the scripted even-I MEAN- in the story?

    Or its a new thing FOR a FPS? because i am pretty sure that the autonomous AI companion; with different stuff to say about anything in the world, was done before.

    I even think there was a game that was really hyped up has having the chance of even TEACHING the dammed thing to react in lots of different ways to each individual thing in the game.

  36. Heaven Smile says:

    Speaking of Bioshock 1… spoilers:

    If you are truly mind controlled, then why the game doesn’t enter in a cutscene everytime you hear “Would You Kindly”? Actually, it DOES but only when Ryan tells you the words and not Fountaine, who was SUPPOSED to be the one that ORDERED the invention of the mind control word for his OWN use, and yet Ryan can use it without problems and even more effectively than Fountaine

    1. arron says:

      I think that Atlas was trying not to overuse the command phrase to prod your unconscious mind into compliance. All the times it was used, it was subtly dropped into conversation and you followed the order (usually by level design). If you go through the game, it is used only at key parts of the game.

      If you had noticed a pattern to the uses of the phrase, then it would have caused Jack to question and resist what he was told and for the player they’d have realized they were being manipulated. Ryan on the other hand was trying to demonstrate to you that you were controlled, which then resulted in you killing him outside of your control.

      1. Heaven Smile says:

        But even if Jack (the player avatar) knows about the mind control…so what? the lvl design doesn’t allow you to go back to the surface or even escape the linear path, and its clear that its impossible to resist a direct order anyway. He could have say something like: “Would you kindly never disobey my orders?” or “Bash your head into a comma, would you kindly? So you don’t live to stop me and you won’t die completely and trigger the Vita Chambers and regenerate your damaged brain”

        It makes do difference if Jack knows about it or not, because there is no way in the narrative that outright says that you CAN resist the command given to you. You can resist the “stop your hearth” command for a bit but not the other one.

  37. I actually tried reading the spoilers to this game. I didn’t understand a word of it. Baffling walls of text about different dimensions and Booker being two people at once and coin tosses and time travel and then the Harlem Globetrotters show up?

    I didn’t think a game with robot George Washington could get any more ridiculous.

  38. Adalore says:

    I ran around with the Handcannon and carbine all game…when I could, I was getting a might pissed off when I couldn’t find them while fighting the vox.

    Also those snipers are silly.

    I hit the two weapon system and heard the crunch of a system that really did not work. The pistol felt okay early, the machine gun had that piss poor accuracy that makes me hate it and then I found the previously mentioned carbine, until I got the handcannon upgraded it was my “go to” weapon.

    I was hoping that the repeater and the burst rifle were going to be useful but they felt so weak in comparison to the handcannon/Carbine just in terms of per shot and simple accuracy.

    And it must have been my play style, but the ghost boss was…just…why…

    I agree with so much of this I feel like some sort of complacent fanboy. :P

    And on the vigor I used, I used mostly the shock jocky, because, ZAP. And because I had the gear that made it AoE(on kill), and my weapons could one shot on headshots, groups of mooks were dead simple.

  39. Zukhramm says:

    The ending had me a little confused. The Booker we see drown is the Booker that didn’t get baptized. How does that get rid of the Comstock from all other worlds?

    And does it also mean Andrew Ryan never builds Rapture, if that’s just another variation?

  40. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Taking the tongue-in-cheek idea as semi-serious, it sounds like a valid format for short little games that Campster suggested. The advantage is that when when the conversations are semi-scripted and checkpointed with the playthrough, you can come OUT of the speeded-up playback to actually show some of the stuff that you’re talking about. Shamus especially seems to enjoy pointing out “This is the first view of Station X, which we’ve been hearing about for probably two hours of play-time to this point, and just LOOK AT THAT THING. It looks like that picture of the bunny the a pancake on its head!” and being able to introduce that with actual footage AT the right place would be really, really slick.

  41. tengokujin says:

    Despite the hate for the combat mechanics, I think it speaks well of its balance if people found themselves using a variety of powers and still claiming “OP”.

    I, for one, enjoyed taking out mooks with a combination of maxed out Bucking Bronco and a maxed out shotgun, while using Murder of Crows to harass bigger bosses. At some point, I realized that using Shock Jockey was actually better for bosses, so I started using that, especially with the chain lightning upgrade. However, I would also use Possession on various NPCs to shoot each other. As for the guns, I found myself lazing off and using the machine gun for mid-long and the China Broom for short-mid and finding myself totally fine with it.

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