Bioshock Infinite: All the Missing Choices

[Pebkio]

"...we played 'Hype: The Demo' but what we ended up with was 'Bioshock: Another One'" -Jonathan Pebble (me).

Over the course of this past week, after playing through Infinte three times, and getting nearly all the achievements, I've been spending my free time now talking about this game on our friendly Escapist forums. It wasn't until the 1999 mode discussion that I started looking into the touted features of 1999 that I started getting confused. Not about the story, but about what we were getting out of the "SS2" mode.

To me, 1999 mode is just the "very hard" mode. However, I found quotes explaining why 1999 mode wasn't just suppose to be "hard but harder". I even saw a bit somewhere explaining how you'd be stuck with the first two weapon upgrades and would be limited by your specialization. That confused me as I've fully upgraded three weapons and two vigors now. But then it was explained that you couldn't undo weapon upgrades... that you had to "live with the choices you made". That just caused even more confusion... there are no choices. Then I remembered that it initially seemed important to pay attention to how many upgrade slots your vigors and weapons had left, but it turns out that was just a count of how many upgrades there were. It felt... out of place... as if the original plan was to offer a bunch of upgrades to chose from but limit you to four for weapons and two for vigors. Bill Gardner, a design director for Irrational, gave interviews in which he talked about the many options for upgrades.

...incidentally, Levine actually quoted "You're choosing as you go, as you pick up upgrades to weapons or Vigors. 'Do I want to specialize in shotguns or sniper rifles?' It becomes exclusionary..." Well, two of the three weapons I've upgraded are the sniper rifle and the shotgun.

Then I watched a video of the demo showcased at E3. Now, I'm going to start by saying that I don't mind if demo's show things that never happen in the final product because it allows you to experience the full effect of what a game has to offer without being spoilery. However, there were so many gameplay changes that it now seems like you were playing a different game. That alone is confusing, but there are only two bits that are important to this post:

The first is when you open a barrel in a store and are presented with a choice between three items. You could only choose one of the three, leading to a kind of "pick your loadout" situation. This was not implemented at all. Probably wasn't going to work quite like that, anyway, because the question would be asked "why couldn't I just take all three". But. Did you notice that a couple of the times you find gear, it's in front of a broken machine? The machine was probably going to offer you a choice between three gears and then shut down.

The other is a part when you're caught out in the open with people shooting down on you. Elizabeth offers you three choices: spawn cover, spawn a barrel with weapons, or spawn a door to go through. It seemed, in the video, that you could only choose one and then you were stuck with your choice. This never showed up. Sure, we could only choose one tear at a time, but they weren't exclusionary; we could choose any new tear to open from the list.

I had no idea. I was actively limiting my exposure because I knew I was buying this game early. I would much rather have been playing a choice-heavy combat game than what we got. Why were these changes made?

It all points to a game in which the designers had all these brilliant ideas that they didn't have time, resources, or patience from the publisher to complete. You were going to be able to make some sort of choice about the gear. You were going to be able to make some sort of choice about your weapon upgrades. You were going to have to make some sort of choice about what Elizabeth could change.

With all of those plans now apparent to me, Bioshock Infinite feels... rushed. Sure, the setting and aesthetics aren't rushed, but seems that they spent too long making the game pretty that they had to kneecap the gameplay designs. Then they had to just go with the coding they had; unfortunately, a lot of that was from Bioshock. It's probably why we ended up with "salt" instead of vigor counts.

It's probably why we ended up with a game that played a lot like its prequel.

 

[shrekfan246]

Sometimes the rule of cool and fun trump new "innovation" in game design. Sometimes things are just unnecessary.

What would be the advantage of only being able to pick one tear item during a firefight? Unless they were severely more powerful than the items actually in the final game, it just wouldn't have made sense to limit the player like that. While choosing gear from a dispenser that locks up afterwards would've been neat, the only difference would be that you have a few more minutes to spend picking something to equip before forgetting about it entirely. And since the game limits you to two weapons, where would the fun be in only being able to upgrade a few things and then being stuck with that -- Especially since you can't upgrade everything anyway unless you're really grinding out that money, and even then I doubt there's enough to max out all of the weapons and vigors.

Sure, functionally there'd be more consequence for your actions in the game, and if implemented specifically for that one mode then I could agree it'd be a neat addition to distinguish it from the "normal" game. But otherwise, the game was just too damn fun for me to care about these menial things.

 

[Tomaius]

Whilst I agree with you, I think this is more a case of sacrificing art for a better consumer product as opposed to rushing. Maybe all the things left out of the game and all these major choices were actually to the game's detriment rather than benefit.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I think it plays like it does by design to be honest (i.e keep it like Bioshock overall) I mean we cant choose gear we are just given a random piece sure you can reset if you like but its still random. While the tears I can see being a massive headache either from making them interesting i.e if you are given 3 choices everytime it could get boring and annoying it could also make combat unbalanced if you could just do what the hell you want where you want or maybe they could have had different choices but then thats basically what it is now and it sort of ties into the story as well.

Also the thing about making choices in combat permanent is that you could make the wrong choice and thus just be doomed until you pick the right choice and make things much easier on yourself conversely being able to change your choice like there is in the finished product makes the game more dynamic imo you are making choices all the time adapting to the flow of battle.

As Tomaius already mentioned there is also the possibility they changed their original ideas slightly because they found it wasnt that good in practice sacrificing a little of their original vision for a better and more playable product.