I kinda like the idea of a sidekick with more personality than the PC. The NPC's can be very immersive if they have a distinct and well-done character, whereas with the PC you sometimes completely disagree with their choices. Since you play the PC character it can be a good choice to let them be characterized by you in situations where its the environment and other characters that immerse you.
Elizabeth is not the PC
- Thread starter Epic Fail 1977
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Look at stuff like Remember Me that got rejected by publishers because of the female lead. Blank slate stubble brick protagonists, preferably with a gun and explosions on the cover, are (apparently!) a must to grab that 15 year old heterosexual American male demographic that by extension is necessary to sell enough units to make back the investment.
It's already kind of amazing BioShock gets away with the degree of unconventional stuff that it does. Not that much relative to some routes it could've gone, but still more than a lot of others do.
The bigger the company behind your product, the more people making compromises until you end up with something so bland and generic that everyone can sort-of agree with.
It's already kind of amazing BioShock gets away with the degree of unconventional stuff that it does. Not that much relative to some routes it could've gone, but still more than a lot of others do.
The bigger the company behind your product, the more people making compromises until you end up with something so bland and generic that everyone can sort-of agree with.
BioShock's pretty linear in nature, so most choices are made for you already. And even if your character *has* a character, a past, relationships, etc, you can still make a game with a lot of little and bigger choices in them, like DXHR.Ledan said:
Aww, I was really looking forward to it.Archer666 said:
OT: The blandness of the PC was probably done to let us project onto Booker... and to appease to the dudebros. As long as the other characters are good I don't really mind that the PC is bland. HL2 did it and everyone still praises that game.
I would like to play as Liz though. Would be cool to directly control her "tear" powers.
When I was reading the earlier interviews about this game and Ken Levine kept raving about the usefulness of Elizabeth in terms of finding things I couldn't help but think...
Didn't Peter Molyneux rave about that fucking dog in Fable 2 doing the exact same things?
Then when I was looking at the very anime-esque frame of Elizabeth in the photos and thought, 'Gee, for a young girl she is very.... statuesque'
Then Ken Levine almost blows a gasket out for people 'objectifying her', I was shocked by this.
She isn't a playable character, she fetches ammo, and she helps progress the story... Then I realized he was referring to the way she looked and my first thought was, "That's how you fucking created her!"
Didn't Peter Molyneux rave about that fucking dog in Fable 2 doing the exact same things?
Then when I was looking at the very anime-esque frame of Elizabeth in the photos and thought, 'Gee, for a young girl she is very.... statuesque'
Then Ken Levine almost blows a gasket out for people 'objectifying her', I was shocked by this.
She isn't a playable character, she fetches ammo, and she helps progress the story... Then I realized he was referring to the way she looked and my first thought was, "That's how you fucking created her!"
Booker is basically Tom Cruise from that one movie where all the samurai realised that only the white man can be a true samurai.
THAT'S GREAT THAT'S HYPE THAT SITS JUST FINE WITH ME
THAT'S GREAT THAT'S HYPE THAT SITS JUST FINE WITH ME
Unless they added a head turning function like in the ARMA series, it would be really hard to look at her tits while playing as her.
the hidden eagle said:
I got to wonder what is wrong with this?
May I ask why the hell this is wrong in any way, shape or form?
I mean, after all, when people actually TRY to have a female/black character (or just about any other kind of character really) and screw up, they get brutally killed by the horde of haters every single time...
I do understand why the companies dont really want to take any chances... it sucks, but it is understable.
Aren't most 'blank slate' player characters intentionally that way so you can feel as you are them? For example, Half Life 2's Gordon is blank as fuck, but he is the main character. And the supporting characters like Alyx and others are very fleshed out.Epic Fail 1977 said:
See my point?
Epic, do you actually remember the original game Bioshock?
You knew basically NOTHING about the guy, just that he was some generic dude, surviving an accident and finding Rapture.
Now can you seriously tell me that you don't think there's any way that Bioshock Infinite's story will be amazing, because it has a generic dude as main character. Because Bioshock had a generic dude as character and all the interresting characters were other ones and the story was still amazing.
You knew basically NOTHING about the guy, just that he was some generic dude, surviving an accident and finding Rapture.
Now can you seriously tell me that you don't think there's any way that Bioshock Infinite's story will be amazing, because it has a generic dude as main character. Because Bioshock had a generic dude as character and all the interresting characters were other ones and the story was still amazing.
This does kind of clarify the whole issue here, if our choice is "Play Elizabeth, put up with Brooker's company." or "Play Brooker, enjoy Elizabeth's company." then sure slap your magical FPS eye on Brooker's forehead and ignore him.Fasckira said:
Because Elizabeth acting like the player would break the character, you cant have an innocent naive girl who then proceeds to kill EVERYBODY... unless your into that kind of thing. Whilst Booker's character doesn't set me on fire at the moment am I pleased to hear him have a voice (Dishonored's stumbling block) and three words; Troy FUCKING Baker. I'm psyched the fuck out.
Shocking that a first person-shooter with a focus on limiting cutscenes and maintaining player control of the player character throughout the story would have a character who is a little bit of a blank slate.
Because the only way we can turn around and say "HEY! Look at interesting quirks of this guy's personaltiy!" is to yank the control away from the player, as it stands...
Well, idle animations could potentially say a lot, I guess.
Because the only way we can turn around and say "HEY! Look at interesting quirks of this guy's personaltiy!" is to yank the control away from the player, as it stands...
Well, idle animations could potentially say a lot, I guess.
It's Valve. If the ToU required you to have a sex change at Gabe's discretion, people would suddenly be pro-SRS.Epic Fail 1977 said:
I think this kind of hits the nail on the head, and kind of makes me recall a lot of what people have said about the most recent tomb raider (haven't played it just running on reviews / podcasts) that it was jarring when the story and gameplay didn't quite matchMrHide-Patten said:
The most recent PC Gamer UK Podcast (at the time of writing this at least) kind of said it well when they said "one moment its this deep character moment next its SHOTGUNS!", in essence you have the story team wanting to tell the story of a poor, weak character coming to terms with everything and the gameplay team wanting the shotguns to feel powerful and the gameplay to be fun and with the single protagonist the two don't seen to blend
Bringing it back to Bioshock from what I've seen in previews and interviews having Booker as the PC means they can have this story of Elizabeth (granted Booker isn't a blank slate and has his own story but he is more neutral in terms of who he is and his investment comes from her story) without sacrificing who she is for gameplay reasons, hoping it turns out this way, haven't seen anything aside from a few trailers and aforementioned previews and interviews, avoided gameplay and the spoilers out there due to the leak
Wow I kinda rambled there, sorry folks
I love how so many people are going on about how bland and generic Booker is going to be, despite the fact that:
A: They haven't played the game yet.
B: He seems like an interesting character, with a fleshed out backstory, dry wit, mysterious motivations and an excellent voice-actor.
Seriously, why the negativity? From what I've seen, he seems fine.
A: They haven't played the game yet.
B: He seems like an interesting character, with a fleshed out backstory, dry wit, mysterious motivations and an excellent voice-actor.
Seriously, why the negativity? From what I've seen, he seems fine.