Bioshock infinite spoiler thread. Free discussion about the plot and ending.

[SlitheryDee]

1st game i've finished in a long time

did anyone find a hailfire weapon? I kept seeing upgrades for it but never saw one myself.

I picked one up from somewhere. I didn't use it long, but it seemed to function more or less like the Founder's Volley Gun, which I also hardly ever used. Nearly every founder gun has a rebel analogue: shotgun and heater, carbine and burst gun, machine gun and repeater, volley gun and hailfire, etc.

Now that I think about it, that could be another nod toward the idea of analogous universes. The guns are the same but different, just like the various universes. Meh, I doubt it...It's so easy to try to connect every little detail to the plot though. I love games that make me think like this.

 

[blackwhiskers]

completed this game yesterday, and it certainly did leave some impact emotionally and required some thinking afterwards.

so here is what I think of it after a day of thinking about it. spoilers, of course, galore.

the 'core' story is, well, not good. there, I said it. ultimately, it's just another time travel piece with every bit of unsolved paradoxes and unclear solutions as are so damn typical of every other time travel story. there is no clear rules presented how the alternate worlds truly work in the game, it's relying mostly on the modern mythology of quantum physics, and, since it's all so unclear, they can ass-pull anything they want. and they did exactly that at the end, but you all know what happened there.

the characters, on the other hand, were really fukken amazing. luteces with their funky interventions and mystery, all 'em voxaphones with developing stories on their own (the one about hunting down vox messengers and crippling a child in the process, that had a serious impact on the hunter, was really great). finally, elizabeth. out of the two twists at the end, the one that reveals booker as her father (despite the crazy surrounding logic) was an emotional nuclear bomb, and really tied these characters together and gave a whole new meaning to the struggle that they both went through together. beautiful, no other words.

the setting was, likewise, equally awesome. art and mood was absolutely great, the topics touched on by the surrounding story were relatively mature, and, well, columbia did feel like a real place from time to time. good, good stuff.

and a special nod to music. infinite did certainly go out of its way to incorporate music into the game, and it worked wonders. I loved every piece of music they had going there (even the dark ambient pieces were pretty good), and it was such a wonderful collection it's hard not to love the game for this alone.

I didn't have any problems with gameplay, too. I found it relatively fun to explore and scavenge stuff from every corner of the game. completed the game on normal, 0 deaths, and I hardly used any vigors. carabine and headshot master ftw :j

btw, did anyone else find the gameplay to be pretty similar to borderlands? you get some funky guns, 'em ammo and upgrade dispensers, and chaotic battles with a variety of enemies.

 

[Grooveriding]

Any word on when the first DLC will arrive ?

 

[Maximilian]

Personally I found myself very sad at the Songbird's death. I had been expecting it as the end boss, to see it go out like that was a bit heartbreaking.

I kind of thought it would be a boss as well but to be fair seeing that things strength, speed and agility it would've been a pretty one sided boss fight

 

[pontifex]

I thought the rail mechanic was underutilized and really just a gimmick due to that.

 

[mmntech]

Just finishing it. Certainly wasn't expecting that ending, but it makes sense when you put the pieces together. Trippy. Probably one of gaming's greatest twists since KoTOR.

 

[gorcorps]

I thought the rail mechanic was underutilized and really just a gimmick due to that.

Yup. There were only a few spots that utilized the rail well. It definitely wasn't nearly as awesome as early game play videos showed. None of the game from the videos last year seems to have made it to the final game and it's definitely soured my opinion of what I ended up playing.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Yea I thought originally the rails were supposed to be used as ways to get around the city, however in practice they were simply in small areas in battles. The larger areas in them were certainly fun, but I didn't think they utilized them enough either.

 

[MetalMat]

I liked the game but there are certainly some flaws. I only played on medium but I have no desire to replay it on hard.

They crammed in the whole "time travel & dimensional opening" plot in the final part of the game. It was a bunch of information in such little time. I wish the game would have focused a little more on other aspects of the universe rather than the science fiction angle, it seemed to get pretty slow plotwise in the middle of the game then "BAM" plot in you face.

There are too many guns and vigors. I really only used 3 vigors (crows, devils kiss, shock jockey) the rest of them I pretty much used once then never again. I thought that the most of the Vox guns stunk (except the repeater). I liked using the carbine the most but ammo was limited at times.

I did like the ending but they do leave quite a big opening with the whole science fiction angle. My interpretation of the ending is that because they killed the Booker that did accept the baptism this kills off the Comstock timeline thus the whole game never existed. So what really happens is Booker denies the baptism, has a daughter (Anna), and just drinks and gambles and goes on with life.

Overall is it a great game but I don't like how the end theme took a science fiction angle rather than focusing on the city of Columbia, it's interaction with the rest of the world and internal issues of the city. I am probably in the minority but I still liked Bioshock 2 the most out of the three games.

 

[Anonemous]

So did anybody explain why he got the nosebleeds? Was it because he was remembering something from the past universes?

 

[thejunglegod]

I had a tough time understanding the deaths. Once you kill an npc and Elizabeth opens up a tear and when you traverse that same area, you see hologram type images of the npc you just killed. If a tear is a portal to a parallel universe, shouldn't that npc be alive?

 

[SlitheryDee]

I had a tough time understanding the deaths. Once you kill an npc and Elizabeth opens up a tear and when you traverse that same area, you see hologram type images of the npc you just killed. If a tear is a portal to a parallel universe, shouldn't that npc be alive?

It seems there is some "cross talk" between the memories of alternate versions of the same person. If one dies, the other ones actually remember dying in the form of a debilitating mental break that leaves them incapacitated. All they can seem to do is worry over the fact that they are alive but think they should be dead. The weird way they move doesn't really mean much story wise. I guess it ultimately means that without a rogue booker Dewitt roaming around offing people in one universe, having just one version of a person die without the rest dying at the same time in their universe is a rare thing.

 

[StrangerGuy]

completed this game yesterday, and it certainly did leave some impact emotionally and required some thinking afterwards.

so here is what I think of it after a day of thinking about it. spoilers, of course, galore.

the 'core' story is, well, not good. there, I said it. ultimately, it's just another time travel piece with every bit of unsolved paradoxes and unclear solutions as are so damn typical of every other time travel story. there is no clear rules presented how the alternate worlds truly work in the game, it's relying mostly on the modern mythology of quantum physics, and, since it's all so unclear, they can ass-pull anything they want. and they did exactly that at the end, but you all know what happened there.

the characters, on the other hand, were really fukken amazing. luteces with their funky interventions and mystery, all 'em voxaphones with developing stories on their own (the one about hunting down vox messengers and crippling a child in the process, that had a serious impact on the hunter, was really great). finally, elizabeth. out of the two twists at the end, the one that reveals booker as her father (despite the crazy surrounding logic) was an emotional nuclear bomb, and really tied these characters together and gave a whole new meaning to the struggle that they both went through together. beautiful, no other words.

the setting was, likewise, equally awesome. art and mood was absolutely great, the topics touched on by the surrounding story were relatively mature, and, well, columbia did feel like a real place from time to time. good, good stuff.

and a special nod to music. infinite did certainly go out of its way to incorporate music into the game, and it worked wonders. I loved every piece of music they had going there (even the dark ambient pieces were pretty good), and it was such a wonderful collection it's hard not to love the game for this alone.

I didn't have any problems with gameplay, too. I found it relatively fun to explore and scavenge stuff from every corner of the game. completed the game on normal, 0 deaths, and I hardly used any vigors. carabine and headshot master ftw :j

btw, did anyone else find the gameplay to be pretty similar to borderlands? you get some funky guns, 'em ammo and upgrade dispensers, and chaotic battles with a variety of enemies.

When you don't have a good story to tell you can always throw in some random time travel multiple universe until everyone goes "OMG cool stuff happened it's GOTY but I dunno actually WTF is going on"

I thought SWTOR was a bad investment for a $100M+ budget, but the at very least one class story was satisfying. But all this was $200M?

 

[mistercrabby]

So did anybody explain why he got the nosebleeds? Was it because he was remembering something from the past universes?

It's a symptom of going through a 'tear'. He isn't the only one who had nosebleeds. If you recall, moving through the 'tears' has a negative physiological effect, most obviously premature aging.

 

[Reliant]

It's a symptom of going through a 'tear'. He isn't the only one who had nosebleeds. If you recall, moving through the 'tears' has a negative physiological effect, most obviously premature aging.

Basically, how I took it, was that you got a nosebleed when you had a memory overwritten. IE he bled when Elizabeth said "you do know about my finger, you just don't remember." If you go in to a timeline and do the same thing as the other Booker did, you don't overwrite memories. If you go in and do something different, you overwrite memories and bleed.

 

[mmntech]

Just played through the game again and had an interesting thought. Could Andrew Ryan from the first game be an alternate reality version of Elizabeth? I came up with this after reading the fan theory about Booker operating the bathysphere despite it being genetically locked to Ryan's family. Booker himself is too old but Elizabeth is the right age based on how Ryan appears in 1960. They both have the same hair and eye colour. Ryan's disdain for religion and communism also mirrors Elizabeth's attitudes towards the Founders and Vox Populi. The phrase "a man chooses, a slave obeys" also fits in with her experience in Columbia. It would explain why Booker can run the bathysphere, since he's Ryan's father. Though it doesn't explain why Ryan can't manipulate tears.

Also anyone catch the hidden spoiler in the background music.
http://youtu.be/pK74rxBDd-I

 

[2timer]

Just finished Bioshock Infinite, and I have to disagree with the idea that DeWitt becomes Comstock. In my mind, the two are completely separate, and here's why.

The ending which shows Comstock pulling Elizabeth, aka Anna DeWitt, from out of Booker's hands shows that they are two separate people. That's how Elizabeth's pinky was cut off, when the tear closed abruptly and she was caught between the two men. I believe that scene was real and not a metaphor or dream. That's the impetus behind the entire game.

The ending is intended to tie all the loose threads in the game together, not create new ones. The dream sequences in New York flash back to an earlier time when Booker is hounded by creditors. Being an ex-soldier with PTSD in early 20th century America, it's plausible to imagine a scenario where Booker cooks up a scheme to sell his daughter to religious nuts (the Comstocks) in return for having his debts paid off. This scenario is even more likely since his wife died and I imagine he feels incapable of raising her alone.

As I understand the twisting storyline, in one world Booker DeWitt sells a baby Anna DeWitt to Father Comstock to pay off his debts. But in another world, he only has dim recollections and dreams of this event and he believes he is going to Columbia "rescue" an unknown girl for his unnamed handlers. (This is similar to the parallel worlds in Finktown where the soldiers the player kills have dim memories of dying in one world, but they are alive in another.) The ending tells me in reality it was Booker's own subconcious driving him all along to return to his daughter and absolve himself of all his guilt, once and for all. There is a passing reference in the game to the "AD" scar on his hand, being the initials of Anna DeWitt, which he might have cut himself as penance for his sin.

 

[2timer]

* In the very end, we learn the unnamed handlers in New York are actually the Luteces, the benevolent philospher scientist twins who act as a kind of mystical force in the world of Bioshock Infinite. I believe the Luteces were the ones who appeared to Booker in some form to goad him into going to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth, who he later flashes back to learn is his own lost daughter (the tear scene where Comstock grabs the baby from Booker). So really, the Luteces are the cornerstone, so to speak, that supports the entire story as it happens, and enable Booker to be reunited with his daughter. They are the good force which balances out Father Comstock's evil, and perhaps you can say Booker DeWitt is a neutral - a character who does both good and evil.