Let's talk about Bioshock Infinite *long and spoilery baby* (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 06, 2013, 16:16 (3915 days ago) @ Jillybean

Well, I laud it not really for the gameplay (I never really like BioShock 1 or 2 either) but that they wrote a time travel / dimension hopping story that more or less made sense. It takes a while to follow the different timelines and story threads but in the end it almost all added up.

The only part that doesn't add up is that a Voxaphone in the Vox raging out of control universe tells of how that Booker died. Fitzory even comments that see saw her Booker die. Further listenings of Voxaphones reveal that the Booker that died had joined with the Vox in order to raid Comstock house and steal away Elizabeth. You jump into that timeline with your Elizabeth in tow, but there should have still been a second Elizabeth locked away in Comstock house. Maybe by going through a tear using Elizabeth's power resolved that by… erasing the second locked away Elizabeth with yours. Maybe there can be only one Elizabeth at any given time. But it's not really supported when every other thing was. Kinda sad after I spend days pouring over other's charts, building my own charts, and finally being satisfied that the story worked.

There was very little protectiveness in Booker, little paternal care. Maybe that’s supposed to be part of it, but it makes the big reveal feel disjointed. When Booker laces up Elizabeth’s corset after her little torture porn scene I was squirming. Even when she was revealed to be Anna in a very long walking sequence at the end, I still didn’t feel the game connecting Anna and Elizabeth. They are only the same person in a academic sense.

I don't think there was supposed to be. Booker, our Booker, went to Colombia thinking he had to kidnap a random girl to erase his debt. He was wrong on both counts since Elizabeth was his daughter and there was no longer any debt to erase, but he didn't know that and acted accordingly. Later as he understands the situation Elizabeth is in he tries to help and protect her, but only as a random young woman in a bad situation. Not as a daughter since he doesn't learn that until the lighthouses ending.

Corvo, in contrast, was Emily's father and knew it even if we the player only suspected in until the end with Pendleton revealing out loud that Corvo and the Queen were involved.

In the end I mostly agree with others who say that Bioshock Infinite's gameplay is nothing to write home about. But the acting, animation, world, and story were all top notch. I haven't played The Last of Us so I can't really comment, but I would put Bioshock Infinite a bit above Dishonored. Dishonored easily had better gameplay, but I enjoyed Bioshock's story, quantum mechanics and all, a good deal more.