BioShock Infinite

[Trevelyan]

Re: BioShock Infinite

Neat idea, can't wait to play it.

[Crowned]

Re: BioShock Infinite

damn I beat one, still have to play #2 before I get this

[funkybunk]

Re: BioShock Infinite

I like the premise of it, but I don't think anything can beat Bioshock 1. Bioshock 2 was a bit of a disapointment and I don't think this one can beat out the awesome atmosphere and immersion that the first installment had.

I'll still play it though.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock Infinite

Ken Levine discusses new gameplay elements, history, politics and everything in between.

IGN AU: And of course, it makes for a great gameplay environment too, these skyways and multi-tiered regions. So are you going to be playing around a lot more with scale and distance this time? How about platforming and movement?

Ken Levine: Yep. Obviously in the demo we tried to show what was different from previous games. There will be a mix of environments from the very traditional Bioshock-style 'crawling around inside buildings' and intimate things. But you saw in the demo the kinds of things we can do with our new engine—the distances, the speed, the vertigo, the skylines.

We're going to have another demo in the future of the skylines. In the city, it was the freight transport system; like in any situation– if you think of the blitz in London, they have to adapt the subways for other purposes. People use the skyways now to get around.

Then there's the combat. There's going to be combat on the skylines. Think of a rollercoaster stacked on top of another rollercoaster, stacked on top of another rollercoaster—with guns!

Game Informer October Cover Revealed

Irrational Games recently revealed BioShock Infinite, but what you already know about the game is just the beginning. Our exclusive cover story is packed with new info about Columbia, protagonist Booker DeWitt, his companion Elizabeth, and the monstrous titan that rules the sky above the city.

Our BioShock Infinite covers, which were just unveiled onstage at PAX, are a significant departure from our normal look. Instead of using our traditional layout, we worked with artists at Irraional Games to produce covers that showcase what a video game magazine might have looked like on Columbia in the early 1900s. With illustrations inspired by period publications like The Saturday Evening Post, all three covers also feature unique advertisement for products a citizen of Columbia might need.

...

New Screens

[frostbyte06]

Re: BioShock Infinite

They can do no wrong in my book, lol....All I need is a release date and I hand over my money.

[Beantown]

Re: BioShock Infinite

Yup. Consider me even more pumped for this release.

[Blickey]

Re: BioShock Infinite

I am looking forward to this one as well. I am glad they are moving it to another locale. I loved Rapture but it did lose its awe with BS2. I also wasn't a big fan of running as a Big Daddy. It didn't kill the fun factor for me but it was always in the back of my mind.

I also am probably one of the few that actually enjoys the multiplayer. Sure, it has many flaws but I love the maps and the gameplay is fun with the plasmids. It is a nice change of pace from most of the shooters.

[Pete1210]

Re: BioShock Infinite

10 minute gameplay video is now on xbox 360

[CC]

Re: BioShock Infinite

That was tight...

This game looks incredible. Cannot Wait.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock Infinite

Youtube version:

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...

Some details from Game Informer:

• You play as a man named Booker DeWitt (complete with actual backstory and personality - a first for series protagonists), given an offer by a mysterious man to rescue a woman trapped in Columbia: Elizabeth, the lady from the trailer.
• Elizabeth is a psi-on with very great potential, learning to control her powers as you progress through the game and bond with her. Freeing her from confinement is only the start: the rest is escaping Columbia alive, and working with her to combine abilities will be key in combat and exploration.
• There will be NO Big Daddies. The creature at the end of the trailer is currently only referred to as "Him", and he serves as the sole flying watchdog of Columbia, keeping Elizabeth captive under orders for 15 years. As a result, they're the only friends that each other has had since then, and your actions threaten the life he's had with her in his eyes. Reconciling the relationships between Him, Booker, and Elizabeth will be the core of the story.
• The first creature seen in the trailer is called an Alpha. What was seen was only half of its body. Think of a human that had everything but its head and vital organs replaced with robot parts, and you've got an Alpha. They're huge and hit hard, and have the power to revive other Alphas.
• To the world at large, Columbia represents an ever-looming threat of U.S. nationalism and technological progress for the sake of world power, underneath the cover of a peace symbol. Said pursuit of power led to an unknown event, leading to Columbia breaking ties with the U.S. and vanishing in 1912.
• Columbia is undergoing a civil war between two factions: the ruling party working to maintain the demented status quo of corrupt nationalism, and the Vox Populi working to rid Columbia of its inherent xenophobia and nationalism by ANY means possible. Elizabeth and her abilities will serve as the key point on which the outcome hinges.
• A brand-new engine is being utilized for this game. Any buildings or objects you see in the distance exist in real-time, and any floating building is subject to physics regardless of distance.
• The radial menus are gone now, meaning that you're no longer limited in your weapon selection, requiring you to be more adaptable to the environment and enemies.
• Combat has also been modified to give more of an urgent pace, especially with the addition of skyline combat, moving along automated zipline tracks from building to building, and track to track, while fighting passing enemies both melee- and ranged-style.
• In addition to abilities granted through upgrades, certain powers are now granted temporarily by drinking bottles called vigors. Each one has a set number of uses, with weaker ones having more uses and stronger ones having less. One new power, called Murder of Crows, allows crow-summoning attacks at a distance.
• Since Columbia will have people that mostly won't shoot first, you can walk into certain hot spots and listen to conversation, gaining hints and little tidbits about Colombian life... until either you or somebody else decides to open fire.
• The upgrade system has been revamped, making any upgrades you choose permanent, and thus affecting the types of vigors you can obtain as well. Each choice you make will also have a moral and political impact that is being kept secret at this time.
• Multiplayer is currently unconfirmed. Apparently, Ken Levine and the team haven't yet come up with anything fitting enough to take place in the world of Infinite, but they're not ruling out the possibility.
• The revival mechanism will currently be returning to the BioShock 1 approach: no option to shut it off, but no penalty for dying either. This may not stay that way, however, as the team behind Infinite is working to see if they can make it better.
• The title is significant. This isn't being considered a BioShock 3, but the significance of it being called Infinite will be revealed in due time...

[2k10Fonzarelli]

Re: BioShock Infinite

That was tight...

This game looks incredible. Cannot Wait.

short and sweet, my sentiments exactly.

2012 is a ways off though, we'll all be playing the next iteration of our favorite sports franchises by then.

This demo video is so good it deserves it's own thread!

[metallicatz]

Re: BioShock Infinite

Skeptical about this game. I'm encouraged that the original developer is on the project, but I found the new footage on Live pretty underwhelming. I realize it's early but the city doesn't appear to have a thriving populace like games such as Red Dead or Assassin's Creed. The idea of a floating city held up by balloons is pretty ridiculous. At least Rapture was so cool that you didn't bother to think much about the logistics of an underwater city. And Bioshock seemed to have a much more engaging premise with Andrew Ryan's extreme idealism. The "Alpha" characters seem like a cheap replacement for Big Daddies. We'll see. Irrational said "there are no sacred cows".....but yet they seem to be lifting things from Bioshock and giving them cheap plastic surgery. Instead of a city underwater we get a city in the sky. Instead of Big Daddies we get Alphas and "him". Instead of Andrew Ryan's idealism we get an ultra-patriotic brand of idealism.

I'll wait for the reviews and feedback to hit before picking this up......especially after Bioshock 2 (which I thought was a big let down).

[WDOgF0reL1fe]

Re: BioShock Infinite

hooooo leeeee
balllllssss
this game looks amazing

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock Infinite

This is sounding really great and not just BioShock in the sky. Can't wait to see the E3 demo.

1UP Preview

Irrational Games co-founder and BioShock Infinite creative director Ken Levine notes, "In BioShock, you showed up after the party -- after everything had fallen apart." He follows with a significant tweak about BioShock Infinite, about how it's about, "being in the city that's in the process of tearing itself apart -- where you are the catalyst."

Things get a bit interesting when, while snooping around, Booker and Elizabeth encounter a dying horse.

It's here where a morality choice of sorts appears: Booker can opt to euthanize said horse. But while the player holds down the button to commit to this decision, Elizabeth asks for a chance to try something. And so she attempts to use her ability to manipulate "Tears" (as in "tears in the fabric of time/space") in order to heal the horse. It seems that the horse is actually on said Tear, and maybe opening or closing this Tear will help -- unfortunately, this completely backfires. And for a few seconds, the two get teleported from the bright 1912 Columbian day to a dark alternate-1983 night (with , I guess, a two-years-early version of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" playing in the background). It takes a near collision with a 1980s truck for Elizabeth to use her power to bring the pair back into Columbia.

Throughout the combat demo, between jumping, shooting, and yelling, Booker can spot shimmering objects -- things that are caught within a Tear. By looking at any one of these, and pressing a button, Booker can order Elizabeth to manipulate that Tear. Levine divides Tears into two basic actions: opening a Tear to bring something in, or closing a Tear to make something disappear. For this demo, Elizabeth opens a Tear to bring in a large wagon -- effectively conjuring some instant cover. Later, Booker sights a shimmering outline on a sky-line (those special railways that connect different parts of Columbia together), and when she opens that Tear, a giant moving wagon pushes its way through the Tear and smashes through a cluster of Vox Populi followers -- killing them instantly.

Levine points out that the actual weapons that Booker carries, the Vigors (the drink-based superpowers that serve as analogue to Plasmids), whatever passive abilities he's using, and the Tears all serve as the component to BioShock Infinite's "combat sandbox." Levine says that Tears can bring in Founders (or vice versa if fighting the Founders) to add another set of distractions and guns to a battle. Or maybe if you spot reinforcements coming in via sky-line, you can close a Tear to make said skyline (and its reinforcements) simply disappear. At one point, Booker tells Elizabeth to open a Tear to summon a rocket turret, but she answers that, "it's too soon." So there is a limiting factor to these Tears; Levine points out that a combat space can have three Tears while Elizabeth can only use one, or have five Tears while she can only use two. As much as weapon and Plasmid makeup determined combat tactics, now Tears become a big part of that.

In fact, the inability to conjure a rocket turret leads to an alternate tactic: navigating to the inside of a armed zeppelin to destroy it from within. If Elizabeth was able to use the Tear on the rocket turret, then Booker could have simply aimed said turret and have it destroy the menacing zeppelin that just showed up (it seems like these zeppelins are Bioshock Infinite's answers to helicopters in modern shooters). Instead, he has to use sky-lines to position himself high enough to enter said zeppelin, fight his way to the control room, and destroy the engine -- Levine cites Star Wars Battlefront II and its "here is a large objective; either destroy it from within or use external hardware to do so" approach as one of the main influences behind this dual-method approach to taking out a zeppelin. It also reminds me of battles against Scarabs in Halo 3.

This also leads to showing off how sky-lines are more than literal rails between areas. The initial gameplay demonstration made these sky-lines look like predetermined paths from level to level -- but this demo now shows their role in active combat. You can leap from sky-line to sky-line just by aiming and hitting a button (presumably, I'm guessing Left-Bumper or its equivalent). It seems that once your reticule is lined up with a sky-line, and after you hit the button, you automatically lock on without fear of missing. Or maybe you can indeed miss, or switch sky-line targets mid-flight -- it just doesn't seem so from this demo. But attaching yourself to a sky-line can quickly get you out of a tricky situation -- Levine says that a sky-line-riding Booker can easily evade slow-moving rockets (yet still fall victim to rapid-fire machine guns). Also, while the developers won't get into detail about this, I do notice that in addition to selecting a weapon or vigor, that you can select a specific type of sky-line hook. Maybe different hooks affect speed, lock-on, or even add extra abilities?

The whole time that Booker sky-lines around, shoots guy, and has Elizabeth manipulate Tears, I gladly notice one thing: she's not annoying. Levine says that the team doesn't want her to get in the way, and that the player is never charged with actually protecting her (he admits that the team tried such a protection mechanic in BioShock, and arrived at this current system in response). Elizabeth is an important part of your combat strategy, but she won't be an additional lifebar for you to watch over or someone that gets caught in the line of fire.

It's that, plus some other attributes, that Levine hopes will have players develop a special bond or relationship with Elizabeth. "We watched a lot of movies about relationships, and looked especially at ones that we felt were earned -- like in 12 Monkeys," notes Levine. In addition to making sure she never annoys you during gameplay, nor does she annoy you as an angel on your shoulder. "I don't want her to always say, 'do the right thing Booker!' at every moment of choice; because you'd want to punch her instead." So while she does wants to heal the horse, she doesn't simply push you to stopping the execution. She recognizes that, as bad as that situation is, it's also a dangerous one for the two of you. "This is a very complicated world, where things are morally grey rather than black-and-white, and really, it's Booker and Elizabeth looking at each other and going, 'What the f--- do we do?' in these situations," Levine states.

Levine boils down BioShock Infinite as, "a story about two people going through the worst time in their life." And the relationship, however it grows, gets affected by the persistent threat of Songbird. Songbird is that hulking mechanical Maltese Falcon that's been spotted in a lot of BioShock Infinite's imagery (and is the "thing" at the end of the first gameplay demo). Songbird was Elizabeth's jailer, and her only point of contact with the rest of the world before Booker frees her. Levine succinctly describes him as, "the jealous and abusive ex-husband." At one point during this demo, after evading Songbird, Elizabeth turns to Booker and says, "promise me that you won't let him take me back, if it comes to that" -- all while wrapping his hands around her throat during that exchange.

I'm already struck by both the bond between Elizabeth and Booker, and the threat of Songbird when it finally shows up. It smashes its way into the building the two of you are in, and it basically swats Booker aside with little effort. Yet, even after she makes him promise to kill her before letting Songbird take her back, she jumps in-between the two of you and calms it down. It's glaring red eye flickers to become a more soothing green one, as she profusely apologizes for running away and promises never to leave again. Perhaps this is the effect of Levine noting, "people who sacrifice for each other, that's rocket fuel for the relationship," because something happens after Elizabeth finishes apologizing and lets Songbird grab hold of her: It's a small moment, but right before it (and she) flies away, she looks back at Booker (well, you) with a tear rolling down her cheek; which honestly makes me feel bad for letting this happen.

[DickDalewood]

Re: BioShock Infinite

My post from the other thread I created:

Well, I know we had a thread for this at one point, but I couldn't find it anywhere...

At any rate, I didn't really care for this first two all that much (or at all really), but this one is looking freakin' AWESOME. Check out the latest article and gameplay from IGN:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/116/1169896p1.html