Bioshock: Infinite

Sofa King cool.

My desk just fell over.

While awesome , it showed too much imho.

I still prefer the 80's documentary video trailers.

Aye. That's the last trailer I'll watch for it.

My inner Grumpy Old Man thinks pre-release DLC is just a tad unseemly.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/214933/

Ken Levine has a frank discussion about Bioshock: Infinite, the game industry and religion

Irrational Games talks about the creation of Elizabeth in BioShock: Infinite.

Does it go "first draw some big eyes like a doll and then add some cleavage"?

In this video Levine mentions that the big eyes are so that you can quickly assess Liz's emotional state from further away than normal.

The cleavage, well...

But will I want to protect her and keep her safe?

Actually, it looks like they picked an actress and motion captured her face. I know I know, heaven forbid they find an actress who is cute.

And cleavage? They motion captured the body of a "stunt double" with fairly average breast size.

So yeah, definitely sounds like they're catering to the tastes of prurient teenagers.

They found a woman cosplaying as their existing character and decided to use her for non-game art and maybe adapted the character's face to better match her (latter part is unclear) less than three months ago. The character's big eyes already existed.

They motion-captured the motion of the "stunt double". They didn't have match all of her body sizes (at most they had to match her skeleton's bone lengths, but I'm pretty sure modern animations sytems don't really even require that). They certainly didn't have to match her décolletage.

So yeah, definitely sounds like they're catering to the tastes of prurient teenagers. (Of course I thought we had beaten this subject to death previously, but maybe it was on another forum. Levine responded that she wears various different clothes throughout the game.)

You can pre-load it on Steam now.

Eh. The character just isn't that busty.

Isn't the style of Victorian dress with corset typically shows off cleavage?

I decided to pre-load it despite that.

And exaggerate it via padding and underwire. That model has at most b-cup breasts, i.e. average, and that's somehow pandering?

This isn't Ivy from Soul Calibur we're talking about.

I finally bit on the Amazon deal and got the pre-load setup on Steam. That said, I'm a bit confused about the other stuff I'm supposed to get. I got an email about the ebook credit, but see nothing about the free XCom or the credit towards other Take2 games. Anyone else gone that route? Do I just need to wait for emails to eventually show up with those other freebies?

They should send you a couple emails for the other bonuses.

Not necessarily - a lot of Victorian dresses with corsets went all the way up to the neck.

Yeah, they showed up this morning finally.

I've been limiting my exposure to Bioshock Infinite stuff, though I do know what the general idea is. But I decided to read the ebook thing last night (which is pretty short) and came away feeling like there are a lot of similarities between Columbia and Rapture. I hope that is good and not bad.

A MAN CHOOSES A PATRIOT OBEYS

And the reviews are in. Just need Tom to give this 1 star and then we can declare it game of the century.

Eurogamer 10/10
Joystiq 5/5
PCWorld 5/5
Polygon 10/10 (for now)
QT3 1/5 (reserved for future link)

Damn it. I have an standing personal rule against pre-ordering, but after seeing the reviews I couldn't resist. The free XCOM and everything else baiting the hook didn't help, either.

Good lord Polygon, don't you check for these kind of things?

I don't see that when I visit Polygon.

Everything, from the little I've seen and heard, makes it look like Bioshock in the sky. Right down to it being a utopia where bad shit has gone down. The only original elements appears to be Elizabeth, but I'm quite interested in seeing how that plays out which is why I'm on-board.

Comments suggest it is a Firefox issue due to the use of non-standard tags.

Using Firefox, still not seeing it. Weirdness.

I think I watched my first Infinite trailer last night, because it was on TV. I have also tried to strictly limit my exposure to the game's pre-release material, not withstanding SOME GODDAMN FUCKING SPAMMER SPEWING ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN THREADS WITH THE ENDING. Grrr.

And I also wasn't looking to preorder, because yeah, but after the reviews and knowing I would probably get it anyway. Sigh. So joining the queue of "WHAT'LL YA GIVE ME FOR XCOM LOL" folks and wondering what T2 has coming out that I'll want to burn my credit on.

Yeah, I derive basically no benefit from preordering, but I know if I don't I'm just gonna buy it two days later at full price anyway. I may as well get a game I can give away eventually when I find someone who doesn't have it yet.

Steam's preorder stuff was really shit. I wish I'd read this thread first and gotten it from Amazon, not that I have anything immediate I'd want to redeem that extra coupon for.

EDIT: DAMMIT. I just realized I forgot to start the preload.

I initially worried the XCOM bonus was a bad sign for B:I. Now I just suspect they are trying to get more people to try XCOM in advance of a sequel.

If you want to be surprised by the game, stay off of youtube. The xbox version must have leaked early because as of last night, user walkthroughs are already being uploaded and are popping up in my recommended listings. These are real walkthroughs, not the previously released promo materials.

Looks good. It was strange to see Polygon downplaying the relevance to broader culture and history of Bioshock 1's story and setting as compared to Infinite; it seems to me the original game was anything but a passive experience as a player and one that was filled by a clever adaptation of philosophy to retro sci-fi and a powerful use of the medium generally. I get the contrast he's trying to draw about the type of imagery and the like on display being inherently more hard-hitting, but I don't get why that's not described as a difference rather than a failure on B1's part.

I kind of wish I had preordered rather than gone with Gamefly, but Gamefly already shipped it so I guess that's done. There's always the risk that my appetite for first person experiences just isn't there anymore, I guess.

The thing I found unbelievable from the Polygon review was this:

Does anyone really believe that Arthur Gies could shut up for 20 minutes, let alone an entire night?

Yeah, the bit about Bioshock being hands off about it's message struck me as a very odd take away from Bioshock. Bioshock pretty much clubbed you with it's message from the start. From the rest of his thought he really seems to be talking about the idea that they're not pulling any punches about the time period not being a golden age at all, but a very fucked up place.

Could get the PC Download version as well - won't it be beneficial to have two copies for you and your wife to both be able to play through? If it's really the case that a substantial X-Com add-on is in the works you probably will have something later this year to spend the bonus credit on.

Bioshock has always been a moral experience. I don't see any reason to criticize a Bioshock at this point for putting you in the hands of an AI, when a HUGE part of Bioshock 2's experience was your fatherly connection to the Little Sister.

(this post made only as a response to some comments on the internet and not necessarily anything anyone said in here)

Are we supposed to count that lameass Digital Extremes game now?