This announcement seem like a good occasion to start a Bioshock Infinite thread. It's about a "1999 mode" for Bioshock Infinite that makes the game harder, but not just by making enemies resist more bullets: This sounds good, I really enjoyed the fact that Bioshock in hard mode required you to carefully plan your resources, and Bioshock 2 possibly even more because of the increased enemy variety. My only worry is that some weapons or powers might become so ineffective that you'll end up not being able to frequently change your tactics, which is also something I liked about the first games.
No one actually wants this. It's only the craziest of crazies who even say they want things like this, and most of them are lying. It's idiotic to pander to an insignificant minority who will never be satisified with anything that's also on consoles.
What? My biggest issue with both Bioshocks was having no consequences for your choice of gene tonics or plasmids. If you didn't like them you could just go back to a Gene Bank and switch them out. I would have preferred to just have all of them available at once. If this 1999 mode requires you to specialize and make real decisions then I'm all for it, and I don't think I'm one of "the craziest of crazies." I also played through both games with Vita-Chambers turned off. The only thing I'm concerned about with this announcement is if this mode will require you to worry about ammunition and item usage to the point where it just becomes annoying.
Depending on how it's implemented I most definitely want this. I loved Bioshock, was fairly ambivalent towards 2, and I'm really looking forward to Infinite. If there's one more (difficult) way to play it, I'm not exactly mad.
It'd be interesting if they had instrumentation the way Bioware does on Mass Effect - i'd love to know how many people actually play that way (and on the first time through the game)
I assure you that I greatly respect your opinion and you make some valid points, but in my view watermelon zeppelin candy.
I like that it's a separate mode (similar to "hardcore mode" in the previous games) so that those of us who prefer to role play our characters locked down to certain styles can do so without suffering consequences that lead to starting over after a dozen hours of gameplay.
Needs to be a 1978 mode. Just hordes of patriotic sky zombies shuffling left to right while marching towards you, getting faster and faster.
So, about this 1999 mode... The bolded passages read to me as "every shot will miss unless you spend skill points", "you need to score headshots to do any damage at all", and "you need to hit quicksave every five seconds". In other words, a thoroughly terrible experience that designers generally moved away from for very good reasons. Does anyone actually want this?
The thing is, permanent choices and resource limitations do sound attractive but they apparently come bundled with this other stuff that sounds terrible.
No, nobody wants that, but that is just your wild speculation based on a general description. There's a potentially positive, appealing flipside to your nightmare scenario.
The resource limitation part I really want, cause that's one of the things I already really liked about Bioshock, and they could take it up a notch. For the other parts, it will depend. If the combat is rewarding and good enough I don't mind doing the same encounter multiple times. This was the case for STALKER and I really didn't mind dying 10 times and trying again.
There's an interview I did with Ken up at the usual place if anyone's interested. I'm happy to link it, but I'm trying not to spam BF with links to my own shit. I just know that I'm not in a lot of yalls' regular rotations ;)
That's the thing, though -- STALKER is hardcore FPS brutality that just doesn't sell much any more. There's the niche that likes it, but the majority of folks don't want that kind of unforgiving difficulty breathing down their necks. That being said, if B:I is as "tough" as System Shock 2 (with limited resources, weapon degradation, and like) it's fine with me.
Good interview, thanks. Spamming links (that are interesting within reason) should be okay here, I don't think Lum has an anti-self-promotion policy in place like Tom did.
Didn't they manage to make three games off their model with a fourth in the works before the studio managed to collapse itself through corruption or some such? Clearly not that niche.
Yeah, I'm assuming Lum will let me know if I cross any lines. Just trying to be proactive :) Not that Tom was ever unreasonable either, at least in my case. And thanks! (Thanks to Ned as well; I was deep into Civ V and haven't been back to BF since I made that last post)
RPS interviews Ken Levine about the "1999 Mode." It clarifies a couple details about the mode and Ken says some things about Bioshock lacking consequences that indicate he understands that complaint. Unfortunately he also says this: The combat in Bioshock wasn't the reason anyone was there and I haven't seen anything in B:I that indicates it'll be a big step up from that. I'm not looking forward to having to deal with mediocre combat and not having enough ammo.
I've been playing BioShock 2 lately and the combat is mediocre at best, just like in the first one. BioShock should be an RPG or something because it does have an interesting story and good writing and voice-acting. But man, as an action game, it's borderline bad.
Yet combat was a big part of Bioshock. I think it was rubbish, which is why once the story peaked I stopped playing, but combat was only made an even bigger focus in the sequel (where it was less rubbish but ruined by rubbishly designed defence missions)
Oh wow, I got an entirely different take on it. I love the combat in both Bioshock games, because there are a bunch of different tools and combinations you can use against a variety of enemies, who themselves have different tactics. I actually didn't care much for the plot, although the setting was great. It's not good in the same way combat in Stalker is, which is about being careful and taking cover and using the environment well, it's more of a sandbox type of combat because you have so many different things to try in an encounter, with all the plasmids and all the guns times the number of different ammo types. I do agree that Bioshock 2 had one too many little sister harvesting missions, but on the other hand it had even tighter shooting mechanics and cooler weapons than the first game. I also like how the economy ties into the combat. For instance, you have to be careful about gathering the right ammo types throughout the game if you want to be able to beat the Big Daddys and Big Sisters.
Bioshock had terrible balance and terrain had almost no effect on battles so every battle played the same. For me that was hack something, turn invisible, wait for battle to end. Bioshock 2 had better combat but still pretty tedious level design in relation to fighting. Everything was close and fast so really you just held a bead on them. The Little Sister harvesting sucked because it used the stupidest spawn mechanics ever, which made a logical defence impossible because you weren't sure if those entry points (the only entry points) were before or after the spawn zone.
I'm almost sure they'll instrument this mode to see how many people play it, and for how long. It's the only way to determine if the investment was worthwhile or not. And if they do, I really hope Ken writes up the results on Gamasutra or similar after the data comes in.
Yes, I agree that terrain wasn't much of a factor. The levels looked great, but you couldn't approach encounters the same way you can in games like Stalker or Far Cry 2. Although those are some of my favorite FPSs, I also enjoy the ones that only rely on giving you cool guns, powers and enemies to play with, this is the reason I liked games like Fear and Bulletstorm too. Bulletstorm also had average level design (you can't even jump over knee-high ledges), but the shooting mechanics were good enough to make the game very enjoyable.
So has Levine name-checked Dark Souls yet? Because timing wise I feel like that has to be the root cause of this new addition to the game. That tagline just kind of seals it for me.
I love Dark Souls more than most, and think it should be an influence in every game made in the future. Forever. But I'm inclined to think that Levine both has enough of a track record on this kind of thing for it to be original and enough of a game nerd to address his influences directly when they are key factors. But it's just reading tea leaves at this point.
Release date announced: October 16th! Or the 19th if you live in one of those other less insane countries.
