Poll: Elizabeth or Alyx Vance?

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Elizabeth, no question.

Alex is ok, but I've never really seen the appeal. She's kind of irritating with that perky ass attitude and she never does anything very useful beyond opening doors.

As far as gameplay is concerned, I feel Elizabeth is the best NPC of all time. No, really. For one, I don't have to worry about her AT ALL. I can run through a crowd of shotgun toting enemies, jump off a ledge, ride from building to building over a multi-thousand foot chasm and dual with giant fuckoff robot and she stays right with me without taking damage. Alex is tough, but if I run away in a tough fight, she'll die. Furthermore, while Alex helped a tiny bit from time to time, Elizabeth gave everything from health to money to goddamn miniguns.

On top of all that, I feel like she's a character with an actual arc. I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but (other than the, shall we say, daddy issue) the Alex at the beginning of HL2 is identical to the Alex at the end of Episode 2. Elizabeth begins as a frightened little girl and hardens throughout the game before finally performing the final dark act.

Funny thing is, I greatly prefer Half-Life over Bioshock if we're talking about the games as a whole.

snip

inb4 Glorious Mod Wrath.

 

[[Esoteric Reference]]

You, I like you.

This sums both the main issue we seem to be having with understanding Bioshock's ending and Elizabeth's value to the plot and gameplay. Also the whole indie games being so preoccupied with their own brilliance they come off as condescending and uninspired thing.

I don't think anyone has mentioned that there is great symbolism in Booker not coming up from his baptism by Elizabeth, specifically how if he never goes into the water he is a sinner doomed to sell his daughter and die in bloody revolution, and if he emerges, he is a saint whose righteous fury destroys New York and an untold number of other places through the corruption of his only daughter.

By never emerging from baptism, he is both sinner and saint, and neither at the same time. Successfully avoiding both terrible outcomes and saving Elizabeth (from eventual brainwashing by Comstock)

Anyway Booker/Comstock doesn't necessarily die, he just walks away rather than meet either destiny.

 

[porous_shield]

Alyx. Preferred her in those tight jeans than Elizabeth and her balloons.

Is a poll really necessary for this? Girl from a game every second person on this site goes out of their way to bash compared to the girl in the game every second person is cumming rainbows about.

 

[Cody Holden]

Yeah, figured I'd get that warning. Oh well.

Snippity

Other than the bit I threw in a spoiler because I knew it wasn't pertinent to anything and I knew it was a complete ranting strawman, I'm not sure where the strawman is.

Paragraphs 1 and 2 were me explaining the lack of Grandfather Paradox.

Paragraph 3 was me arguing that she didn't need to be a social retard, given her situation. And you're right, it would probably make more realistic sense for her to have no social sense or grace. But I'm willing to assume that one way or another Comstock and co found a way to negate that-- among those tools being the tears, Songbird, and superficial exposure to the outside world. In order to groom her as a charismatic leader who would set the hearts of the people alight with her vision, they would have had to. That, and I'm willing to allow a bit of a break from the reality of psychology in order to make a more interesting narrative.

Paragraph 3 was me arguing against your problems with Elizabeth's mechanics-- namely, that she never gave you the ammo you needed and therefore was of no use to you. And as it turns out, waiting around for ammo drops just isn't your style. I can respect that. But it's not really a problem with Elizabeth's design, I don't think.

I don't really think media has the power to really threaten anyone's beliefs, whether or not they live in fear of being offensive or not. It has the power to critique them, sure, but it's been my experience that anyone who has a deeply-held belief that is critiqued by a game will just get mad at or ignore parts of the game that go against what they believe in. Fence-sitters can be swayed one way or the other, but there's no real threat. Bioshock isn't really there to convince anyone of anything, as far as I can tell-- the games are more about taking a philosophy and taking it to an extreme in order to highlight its weaknesses. In Rapture that's supposed to be Objectivism, in Columbia the devs have said it's Jingoism.

Also, I don't know what culture you've been living in, but from where I'm sitting video games have been terrified of really offending someone since the mid-90's, and those that haven't been have mostly just played that fact for shocks more than anything. And yeah, Bioshock beat me over the head with its themes. But there aren't a pack of indie gamers roving from forum to forum calling it the deepest most introspective game ever made either. Of course I don't think Bioshock is the limit or pinnacle of thoughtful game design, but I don't think I ever implied that it was the greatest game ever made either.

But then, I'd been actively not following Infinite and it ended up being something of an impulse buy, so maybe it was hyped more than it ought to have been. That was most of the reason I wasn't following the game: I could see the industry revving up to assign a bunch of labels and expectations to it that no game could ever live up to, like they do with every AAA title. The industry seemed ripe to Molyneux the hell out of the game.

 

[Mikejames]

Voted for Liz, but the more I think of it the reason is more to do with Dewitte and Freeman rather than Alyx and Liz, and that is because of the interaction between the pairs rather tan the characters. The interactions between Alyx and Gordon were all one way pretty much, you could and did not respond to what she said or did and she could only respond to your actions (which if you had as much dexterity as i did when I played was often not what I wanted to do), and while it was great for they day pales in comparison to the interactions both in combat, cut scene and just wandering about in BSI.

Yeah.. I think is Alyx humorous, likable, and human in showing her motivation and vulnerabilities, but the fact that she has to play off a non-entity like Gordon for a majority of the game sadly hinders some of her potential.

 

[scorptatious]

Definitely Elizabeth.

Alyx is cool and all, but I found myself connecting to and caring about Elizabeth a heck of a lot more.

Spoiler

I nearly cried when Elizabeth told Songbird to take her back to her tower in order to save me. And I got pretty angry when I heard Elizabeth being tortured at the Comstock House.

 

[A Weakgeek]

Haven't played Bioshock Infinite yet, but Elizabeth wins on the account of corset cleavage.

I need a railing, cause I'm afraid of falling over into that valley of fun.

 

[Toxic Sniper]

Half Life 2 is one of those games I have a contradictory relationship with. On one hand, I love the atmosphere and level design in areas like Ravenholm. On the other hand, the story is terrible and the characters are pretty bland. Even Alyx loses out on a lot of character, mostly because Gordon can't say anything to her (They really should have used another protagonist for Half Life 2, it's awful how half the game's dialogue is people fawning over him).

Bioshock Infinite is more straightforward. I love the atmosphere, and I love the character of Elizabeth and her whole origin story. My real problem is with the wretched gameplay.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Elizabeth.
Granted, I didn't get that far into Half-Life, didn't click with me, so I'm not without my bias.
Although, even with my bias, and I'm sure someone has already said this, I have to say:
Half-Life is a relatively old game and Elizabeth has a good number of years of more-or-less current technology in her so I think this might be an unfair comparison.

 

[faspxina]

Hah. Took almost a decade for someone to find a way to make a female sidekick actually have character and a use in combat.

I'm preferring Elizabeth, because she didn't abandon you like Alyx does in Half-Life, she helped outside of combat beside talking a bit and advancing the plot, she didn't take away from combat, and she couldn't die.

Elika from Prince of Persia(2008) was similar to Elizabeth in both gameplay and narrative perspectives.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

I personally found Elizabeth the more interesting character. Alyx was just a normal woman in fairly unusual circumstances - although I feel that I should add her very normality added something to her uniqueness and the players ability to relate to her. But it doesn't stop her from being, at her essence, "normal".

Elizabeth was an intriguing character, yet still grounded in reality and plausibility (in the way she reacts and interacts with the world, the way she talks, etc. Obviously not in "kept in a tower in a magical flying quantum land with one hell of a daddy complex" sense!). I echo others sentiment that the way she interacts with Booker helps enormously.