Farther than stars said:
Sure... so she became the space god of time and reality...which means she must know that suddenly this one choice matters! Which goes against the theme you ascribe to the game about there being no choice... thank you for contradicting yourself. I no longer need to do anything really. Thanks to the game's own internally inconsistent reasoning and twisting you pointed out why your comparison to Spec Ops fails... but I am still going to outline it.
The player's agency is kind of subjective when there is a 50$ entry fee. You see I don't go to a restaurant order a meal then stand up as it is delivered and walk away. I am going to eat that meal. If it wanted actual player agency it should have released for free, then there is no money to get in the way of my agency. You see the game literally made me do it. I literally had no other choice it is hard wired into the game to have only one option, it is no Deus Ex in short where if you tried hard enough you MIGHT have done it.
Me as the gamer had several other options I COULD have taken but which are all programmed to end in failure or not be an option. Why could we not be allowed to rappel down and attempt a stealth run? You see the rappel points are just there but no matter what I do the character refuses to rappel down. The game is now officially forcing my hand by not even allowing me to risk certain death, dying, trying again, dying, trying again and then eventually succumbing to the gas. That is a failure of the very medium it is made in, the fact that the player eventually decides so much of what the game is or can be. It is not the reason why you are wrong though.
You see first off Spec Ops HAS actual multiple endings. It actually gives the player the agency. It has in it's narrative hints and twists to tip off the player. Seriously go watch the extra credits about this game over on penny arcade. What it also does is incorporate it's themes. In spec ops you are ALWAYS going down, never up. I think you never even take a single staircase to a higher floor, maybe once in a mall somewhere, but my memory is hazy. It is about the descent of one soldier into madness AND at the same time challenging the player on their actions and the reasons why they play the game.
At the end the player and the character is confronted with the realization that they are both mad. The player for wanting to experience the horrors of war in their living room and the soldier from fighting an enemy to give himself a cause. You are then given a choice, the agency is actually laid in your hands. So Spec Ops being about insignificance of choice? It's quite the opposite. It actually tells you constantly that this is YOUR choice. That you are here willingly. You made a CHOICE when you bought the game and now you continue making the CHOICE to play it. Spec Ops about player choice insignificance? Which version did you play, mine kept shaming me constantly for deciding to continue to play when I could end it all just by choosing to stop.
Bioshock Infinite does nothing of the sort. It is a popcorn shooter that has a half way decent story that ignores half of the themes it brings up. If you call that depth you will have your mind BLOWN by any of the games I listed before. I also have no idea which philosophy you are talking about? That the Journey is more important than the destination?
That's not really a philosophy. That's me arguing against the idea that no choice matters because we all end up at the same spot in the end and yes I picked New York because the game is about getting to New York. Hope you liked the reference.
I would define depth not as the number of themes in a story, but the number of stories told at the same time, in other words the number of themes that get explored. Anyone can cram a dozen themes into one story, but that does nothing for depth, you are basically saying that complexity equals depth which is just not true. Metal Gear Solid is complex as shit has dozens of different themes but I would not call it deep.
At the same time I would call Grim Fandango deep because it explores several themes at the same time whilst I call Bioshock Infinite shallow because it ignores half the ones it brings up.
Though I don't see any of my questions answered. I asked to outline how for example the Vox Populi betrayal changed Booker. I asked to explain to me why the vigours exist and if they do why they seem out of place in their own world. I asked why suddenly choice matters in this game whilst you apparently seem to hammer on the idea that "it's all meaningless man". I asked what the world it is set in adds to the story. I asked why the ONLY way to save the multiverse is to kill Booker when really there are maybe a half dozen different ways to stop him from being Comstock or reducing Comstock to nothing but a jabbering fool on the street corner, not mentioning the horrendous time paradoxes not having Comstock around creates.
You responded with lackluster answers, handwaving or just flat out ignoring whole sections of my comments in favour of metaphysical jammering about the last 20 minutes. You see I don't really care what those last 20 minutes had to say, most of it was bullshit poking holes in it's own story because guess what Ken Levine not a physicist is. What I care about is the time between that is spent in Columbia ignoring every possible piece of intrigue, several themes that could be explored and even the city itself gets shunned in favour of boring shooter action.
That is the real problem of Bioshock Infinite and quite frankly I am bored with this conversation. It feels like I am listening to someone more interested in spouting of how good his favourite game of the week was (forgetting about Grim Fandango how dare you sir!) rather than actually looking at how it fails in almost every single other area besides maybe on or two themes that it ACTUALLY explores, then has to ruin those themes by trying to be clever, I suspect Ken Levine and Shyamalan are BFF.
Heck let's take a theme right now!
The Songbird. Who is basically an overbearing abusive father figure in place of Booker and Comstock, both fathers of the same girl, we could have had a Triforce of fatherhood, Comstock wanting to use, the Songbird wanting to protect and Booker wanting to free. However he is wasted, FUCKING WASTED! I have never seen a character like that which has such a implied deep and long link with what is basically our co-star be relegated to a Deus Ex Machina. Need the plot to advance? Songbird to the kidnapping!
I almost suspect the thing existed solely because they constantly ran into dead ends where there was no logical reason for Booker and Elizabeth to separate so they made him. The most jarring portions in the game is where he attacks then suddenly disappears for no reason. Even after Battleship Bay it's not like he went to get repairs done, the eye lens is still cracked the same way later in the game. He just disappeared into magical plot contrivance smoke! POOF!
