Escapist Podcast: Bonus: The BioShock Infinite Podcat!

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Mmmmmm.. special podcats. My favorite. I think you guys work best when you have a topic you're trying to stick to (keyword on trying, I suppose). I miss game of thronescast..

edit: About the "Where did the racism come from..."
The main group who do the whole Baptism as adults thing are the, surprise surprise, Baptists. And, Southern Baptists were racist as shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention#Divisions_over_slavery

I'm guessing that's where they pulled that inspiration from, with Baptism and its moral implications (Some sins can't be forgiven.. , followed by Comstock's madness) being such a main focus.

Also, it's not exactly uncommon, both in fiction and in actual history, for people who have committed atrocities, helped to commit atrocities, or simply stood by and done nothing while atrocities happened, to try and deal with what happened by justifying it to themselves.

While, symbolically, Booker may have been "reborn" as Comstock after the baptism, that doesn't mean the guilt over the things he did went away. Quite the opposite in fact. The guilt is repressed, and the longer it stays repressed the more it festers, until the only way his mind can deal with it is to twist his own perceptions of what happened in a way that paints him as a hero, rather than a monster. There are many different ways PTSD can manifest, and self-denial is certainly one of them.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Wait, Podcat?

Am I missing something here? Has it always been "Podcat" or is it just an adorable typo?

It's been a running joke with the main escapist Podca(s)t for a loooong time now. And it is adorable.


On Infinite: To me the story all seems to fit together perfectly, Comstock isn't as racist as he seems in my opinion. The audiolog about getting minority labourers and demonizing them to make the upper classes of Columbia feel justified suggests that is was, partly at least, an act.

Also, the log where the (I totally can't remember his name) guy who Comstock hires to hunt Daisy talks about killing an interracial couple and Comstock was unable to respond. As if he was feeling bad about what he was doing.

And I didn't find the ghost fights hard at all, I used Bucking bronco as crowd control and blasted the boss down ASAP, with the storm gear for when I needed to thin out the crowds a bit.

 

[AJey]

5 of 5?! Really? Sorry, I cant take such reviewer seriously.

 

[CCountZero]

So the stealth section isn't spelled out with big letters and short words (but that's being nice; it actually is spelled out, in big letters and short words. And a picture). But if you don't get the idea after the first encounter then that's not the game's fault.

But it's not even necessary - it's a trivially easy section without stealth. The enemies are all slow and melee-only. There's plenty enough health/ammo/salts in the area to clear them all out.

Don't even have to clear them. You can just run straight through to the next area, triggering every alarm along the way. In the end, all the enemies despawn.

Worked on Hard, still waiting to see if it works on 1989.

 

[Kristian Fischer]

5 of 5?! Really? Sorry, I cant take such reviewer seriously.

Go take a look at their review ratings article. "5 out of 5" can mean anything from 81% to 100%.

 

[Xelien]

To this day I still think Songbird was another version of Booker. The Songbird is, after all, the avatar version of Rapture's "big daddies". And it makes sense on how Booker, Comstock, and Songbird want to take Elizabeth away.

Songbird being half machine is fueled on just pure fatherly instinct on wanting to protect Elizabeth. And his relationship with her is similar to a daughter and actual father. She admired him and loved his company when she was young. But now that she's older and wants more freedom, Songbird becomes overly protective does everything in its power to keep her in the tower.

The fact that Songbird's downfall was also being "drowned" is a big giveaway. All versions of Booker are killed by water.

EDIT: also just not to double post... My thought process of asylum section, in my first go around, was running into the silent boy and thinking "Wah ok this thing alerts the others" I was already low on ammo/salt and unprepared, so I die. Next I tried to stealth kill the silent boy but instead it screams in my face again. It was then I figured out he was invulnerable, and proceeded to stealth past all the other silent boys.

 

[Varya]

Regarding the racism, I'm sure a lot of people have said similar things by now, but I'm to lazy to read it all, so I'm just gonna eay in my two cents.
I felt it was really clear, but as an outsider looking at America, I have this view on a lot of American culture, so I jumped to this conclusion easily( NOTE: not specific Americans, a lot of you are ery nice)
When Booker accept the baptism, he's supposed to be washed clean of his sins, that's not how human psyche works, so he does not forgive himself his sins, he justifies them. So to accept that he killed all those people, he adopts the pro-american propaganda doctrine, making his actions just. So while he says he's washed clean of his sins, what he actually does is denies they ever were sins.

 

[AJey]

To this day I still think Songbird was another version of Booker. The Songbird is, after all, the avatar version of Rapture's "big daddies". And it makes sense on how Booker, Comstock, and Songbird want to take Elizabeth away.

Songbird being half machine is fueled on just pure fatherly instinct on wanting to protect Elizabeth. And his relationship with her is similar to a daughter and actual father. She admired him and loved his company when she was young. But now that she's older and wants more freedom, Songbird becomes overly protective does everything in its power to keep her in the tower.

The fact that Songbird's downfall was also being "drowned" is a big giveaway. All versions of Booker are killed by water.

EDIT: also just not to double post... My thought process of asylum section, in my first go around, was running into the silent boy and thinking "Wah ok this thing alerts the others" I was already low on ammo/salt and unprepared, so I die. Next I tried to stealth kill the silent boy but instead it screams in my face again. It was then I figured out he was invulnerable, and proceeded to stealth past all the other silent boys.

And that's why I hate numerical representation in reviews. When something as basic and mathematically fundamental as 5 out of 5 becomes ambiguous, there is no need to use a broken system like that.

 

[Kristian Fischer]

I was slightly surprised at how much frustration Susan brought to the podcat. Of course, and without putting words in her mouth, the frustrations seemed to be more with how close the game came to doing certain good things without actually doing them, rather than because it was bad.

 

[Mullahgrrl]

I thought the racism was his way of dealing withhis guilt by being proud of what he did.

Or maby Booker actually is a racist, is he ever verified as not being one?

 

[Kristian Fischer]

It's never said straight up, but there are racists and then there are racists. He may not like the idea of an interracial marriage, whilst still not being a fan of lynchings.

 

[forlornhope22]

I would be interested in an analysis of the race relations and the vox populi from someone with a background in such things. Every bit of the discussion I've seen on this aspect of Bioshock is being had by White people. That's not particularly a BAD thing, just limiting in something so complex as race relations and it's history in America.

 

[Pepsik]

So it was a stealth level. And here I thought I'm just doing something wrong, that I can't kill those guys. :-D Thanks, next time around I will know, what to do. Who would have thought, that trying to kill something would be a bad approach in this kind of game, hell I thought it was mercy killing, they didn't look very happy.

 

[reciprocal]

My personal take on Comstock's racism is because of Fink. One of the Voxaphones mentions that Comstock is reliant on Fink for his success and its implied that Fink only achieved his success based on the exploitation of other races. My opinion is that Comstock just didn't care as long as he got results.

Despite what was mentioned I still don't see why as Comstock he decides to secede, authorize massacres and eventually fulfill the prophecy, unless it's supposed to be some commentary on fatalism.

P.S. I personally loved the Comstock House level because that brought back the creepy feeling from the original Bioshock. Have to admit, though, that the Boys of Silence were not a problem because of Murder of Crows and the equipment that regains you Salts.

 

[JPArbiter]

This game caused me to invent a new term. Quantum Fuckery: the result of people messing around with the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Whiney stuff in such a way that you are acutely aware of the fact that you are in way over your head.

as far as Comstock's racist attitudes, Booker himself showed a certain acceptance of the racial status quo, explaining to Elizabeth "that is just the way things are." Comstock however would have rejected "the way things are" as part of his psychological shift post baptisim, and insited that it was the way things needed to be.

 

[Pepsik]

About the racism, Comstock as a prophet and a bit older man probably saw at least one wave of KKK (be it in the future or in the past), so it's not like racism wasn't a big deal in that period of time. Secondly extremely extreme patriotism would actualy probably be against interracial couples and imigrants, since you know, they steal jobs from patriots and destroy the good american gene pool. (please don't think I'm trying to be racist, just making a point) Thirdly Comstock saw himself as a hero (that's why hall of heroes), so after his baptism he must have accepted his monstrosities at Wounded Knee, which were somewhat racilly motivated. So personaly I think, that his racism is somewhat plausible.

 

[PiercedMonk]

Regarding the sudden ramping up in violence on the part of the Vox Populi after stepping through that tear, could it be a result of the fact that Booker was a leader and a martyr to them in that specific iteration?

As mentioned in the podcast, Booker is not a nice dude, and it seems as though he's never a met a problem he couldn't solve by murdering it. That the Vox would take cues from him once he demonstrated how effective brutality is, isn't all that surprising. Did anyone in the game talk about scalping other than Booker/Comstock? Yet during the Vox rebellion, there's a board with the scalps of the Founders pinned up for all to see. Which isn't to say that Fitzroy doesn't have her own violent streak. There's a few voxophones where she compares herself to a fire, ravaging through Columbia.

"When you forced deep underground, well-- you see things from the bottom up. And down at the bottom of the city, I saw a fire burning. A fire's got heat aplenty, but it ain't got no mouth. Daisy...now, she got herself a mouth big enough for all the fires in Columbia.

"You ever see a forest at the beginning of a fire? Before the first flame, you see them possums and squirrels, running through the trees. They know what?s coming. But the fat bears with their bellies full a? honey, well -- you can?t hardly wake them up from their comfortable hibernation. We?re going to Emporia. And then, we gon? see what it takes to rouse them from their slumber."

It's interesting that Fitzroy is Infinite's parallel to Atlas/Fontaine. Both begin the revolution that leads to the downfall of their respective cities. Both are originally presented as allies, promising escape in exchange for assistance. Both betray the protagonist and are further corrupted by their success. Fitzroy ends up stabbed to death by Elizabeth, while Atlas is swarmed by little sisters repeatedly stabbing him with their syringes.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

On the racism thing, I understood it like this. Firstly, Comstock believes in God and believes God has granted him special prophetic powers. He beleives God has granted him this, because DeWitt was baptised following a massive bout of guilt due to his incredibly racist actions at Wounded Knee. Therefore, the act that brought DeWitt to God and the path of righteousness must also be righteous. Sort of an ends justifying the means situation. The fact he is a prophet clearly makes him righteous in his own mind, there for the act that saw him become a prophet must also therefore be righteous.

 

[serious biscuit]

With Susan's complaint on Comstock becoming a tyrant after taking the holy path:
1) One of the main underlying themes of the game is that absolute power corrupts, demonstrated by Fitzroy when the revolution becomes fully blown and the people are more willing to follow her.
2) I found that the baptism taken by Dewitt shows him how easily the slate can be wiped clean (yes also delivering a very anti Christian message) so Comstock may see his necessary evil of oppression and destroying New York as nothing because everything can be forgiven so easily.

Also the podcast didn't at all touch the fact that Comstock wanted to harness Elizabeth's powers and infuse them into him, which then in-turn other than giving him immense power would also make him no longer a Profit but God in the eyes of his people.