Well, what did folks think of Burial at Sea?

[Zhukov]

Spoilers abound, untagged and proud. Consider yourself duly warned.

...

Well, that was... definitely something.

On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, that's not going to stop me pointing out the bits I wasn't so keen on.

- The assorted quantum transdimensional wackiness continues apace, getting wackier if anything. Infinite as a whole has me hooked enough that I wasn't all that bothered, but there were a couple of bits that outright lost me. I'm personally not one to worry overmuch about the inconsistencies and contradictions that the series has created for itself, preferring to just enjoy the settings, characters and general fucked-up-edness of it all, but if I were inclined to nitpick then there would be abundant nits ripe for the picking. I imagine folks who were unimpressed by Infinite's antics would be driven nuts by Burial at Sea

- The whole "rescue Sally" angle was distinctly lacking as a motivation. I think Mr Levine has yet to realise that people don't care all that much about the Little Sisters. Sure, no doubt most of us can agree that rescuing exploited children from terrible fates is a generally fine thing, and it makes sense that Elizabeth would be feeling guilty as hell, but without any characterization or investment we don't really care, y'know?

- The intertwining with the events of Bioshock and Infinite ranged from well done to iffy. The guardian imprinting business and Suchong's death impressed me. Not so much the revelations regarding Daisy Fitzgerald though. It makes her a great deal more sympathetic, sure, but it potentially undermines her role in the first game a wee bit. No doubt more inconsistencies were created in the process as well.

- Not sure I liked having the end result just be to bring about the events of the first game. I mean, Elizabeth ends up going through all that to ensure the occurrence of events that we know already happened. I suppose it's a bit inevitable for prequel material and maybe it's just me, but I found that kinda... unfulfilling.

- Lastly, the ending. Now this is super subjective, but, well... damn if I didn't want to see Elizabeth get a happy-ish kind of ending. After all the shit she'd clawed her way through, she deserved that vacation in Paris, damn it! Knowingly meeting her death by bludgeoning at Fontaine's hand... yeesh. That left me feeling a bit empty in the gut. Congrats to them for getting me to give a shit, but that was harsh.

Anyway, that's my "wot I reckon". What were everyone else's thoughts and impressions?

 

[Zeke17]

I agree with what you said, for the most part. Really wanted it to have a happier ending than that. Especially since the implication that Elizabeth set the events of the first Bioshock in motion means that she didn't necessarily accomplish the goal of saving Sally, because Jack can either save the little sisters or exploit them. So 50/50 chance this plan actually works, or 100% that it both works and doesn't if that quantum mechanic plot point is still in play. In either case she really sort of dies for nothing.

That being said, the dlc did hold my attention till the end with no breaks. The storytelling was certainly a step up compared to the last dlc, or even the main game. The stealth focus was a welcome change, even if it could have been better implemented. I prefer leaning past walls to track enemies, rather that a see through wall ability. Liked it overall, there were some clever world building elements, like that "Rapture Sex Ed" video, and the lab notes about the development of Songbird. It's definitely good that the Elizabeth story arc ended though, was fun but ended up getting too convoluted for it's own good.

 

[lazyslothboy]

I enjoyed it overall. The stealth was solid enough and made for a lovely change of pace versus the fast past nature of the combat in the main game and other dlcs.

But ultimately the one thing that kind of bugged me was that Elizabeth found Sally so important. I guess I just never really saw a motivation other than "hey its an exploited kid and thats bad". It wasn't so bad for me as to detract too heavily from the experience, but if someone has a better motivation I'd love to hear it. I certainly was bummed the ending ended on the note it did and I just don't get why it was worth going to those lengths.

 

[Radeonx]

I honestly thought the combination of the two Burial at Seas redeemed what I considered a very lackluster plot in Infinite. I think tying Infinite to the first game even more was a fantastic move, and while the ending was incredibly depressing, I still felt satisfied.


I was also impressed wit the length of the DLCs - it isn't often that you get DLCs as long as Burial at Sea (Especially part 2), and the bang for the buck factor was great.

 

[mitchell271]

Maybe throw in a spoiler tag!
[spoi*ler=""][/spoi*ler] Without the asterisks

I personally had a lot of fun with it. The endings were great, the overall story, while somewhat predictable, was interesting and engaging. I'd definitely play it again, although I'd kill people in Burial At Sea episode 2. I did like playing stealthily, but I get impatient with it after 3 hours.

As someone that got the Season Pass on sale for $7.50, I would've gladly paid full price for it.

 

[Autumnflame]

I enjoyed it personally.

i would have loved many many more with this one as the finale. but as things are and wont be this is the end.

 

[Vault101]

When's the second one coming out?

I enjoyed it ot was cool to see rapture and just visit obe if my favorite games

My only complaint was it was fairly short

 

[Gamer87]

I have mixed feelings about it. I wasn't a fan of Episode One, so my expectations were pretty low and I was pleasantly surprised. On an emotional level I loved it. On an intellectual - some parts seemed unnecessary, some plotholes were created and some things were just strange.

Why did they retcon Daisy's role in it all? It was an interesting development but I really don't understand the Luteces role in all of this anymore.

The timeline around Suchong experimenting with bonding and Alexander successfully bonding Delta to Eleanor after his death but before New Year's eve was always a bit sketchy. Now even more so.

However I really did like that Sally was such a big motivation because frankly I was outraged at how Elizabeth treated her in the first part. I mean burning her alive just to get Comstock to remember?

I know some people go "Well she's a Little Sister, she wasn't hurt" but that just makes it so more atrocious. Little Sisters may regenerate, but they CAN STILL FEEL PAIN. So Sally may have been burned so badly she would have died many times over if not for her regeneration. Putting someone through that pain is unacceptable and I hated Elizabeth after Episode 1, so I was glad she actually felt the guilt and self-loathing that she does.

I'm a little sad we never got to learn the whole truth about Songbird. Is he a machine or a cyborg? I had a theory that he might actually be an alternative Booker or even Elizabeth.

And the ending... So sad about her dying, although done in a good (thouhg still depressing) way.

Bottom line: I really really enjoyed playing it. It's just when I think about some of the sketchy details I don't like it.

 

[Mr.Drybones]

I liked it overall, I am kind happy that the Good ending from the original game is considered the canon one.

Personally though, I think tying it to Bioshock 2 would have been smarter. Hear me out!

I say this because if you followed the ARG, even if you didn't in the Bioshock 2 all the little sisters were girls taken from their beds by the Big Sister. I think that would have been more compelling to have Elizabeth return not for a girl who would have been saved anyway by Jack, but rather a descendant or relation to Dewitts in general, a girl who was taken from her home and with Elizabeth coming to him offering to help him find his daughter to give her closure. Booker may not have been able to reunite with his daughter but she could help another member of the Dewitts save his.

Just an idea of course...

 

[Zhukov]

When's the second one coming out?

I enjoyed it ot was cool to see rapture and just visit obe if my favorite games

My only complaint was it was fairly short

Second one came out yesterday.

It's significantly longer than the first one. At least it felt like it to me, although I didn't keep track of time and I'm decidedly stop-and-smell-the-flowers kind of player.

Now you'd best be going before the spoilers find you.

 

[Vault101]

When's the second one coming out?

I enjoyed it ot was cool to see rapture and just visit obe if my favorite games

My only complaint was it was fairly short

Second one came out yesterday.

It's significantly longer than the first one. At least it felt like it to me, although I didn't keep track of time and I'm decidedly stop-and-smell-the-flowers kind of player.

Now you'd best be going before the spoilers find you.

Oh shit! How did I not know? Thanks!

 

[Azahul]

Just finished it and... oof, that ending is heavy.

I really did enjoy it. The gameplay, between the weakening of melee attacks, the non-lethal options, the addition of stealth, and the inability to perform insta-kills from sky-lines really did contribute to make playing as Elizabeth feel different from Booker. The story was interesting, and I didn't mind the focus on rescuing Sally. I've always rather liked the space-time-dimension shenanigans in Infinite and the kind of absurdly meta story it leads to, and as a result I actually kind of the enjoyed the whole "I don't know exactly why I'm doing all this, but I got myself to do it and I must have known what I would be in for before I set all this in motion" element.

That all said, large chunks of it did rather feel like a series of direct responses from the development team over some of the most common criticisms levelled at Infinite. Didn't like that Daisy showed the Vox going too far and making revolutions seem as bad as the original regime? Well, we'll make Daisy out to be a better person. Complaining about "better", drinkable plasmids several decades before plasmids were invented? We'll show you exactly how and why that came about. Seriously, a lot of the time it was like the development team had just lost patience at the apparent inability of people to read between the lines in the original game, and were flat out saying what had only been heavily implied previously.

 

[Exterminas]

Oh, I liked the gameplay and some parts were very intense in a good way. (Hello Mr. Lobotomy!)

But to me this wasn't a story that needed to be told. I didn't really finish Bioshock with the question "Jeez, how DID Atlas know that trigger-phrase!" burning in my mind.

I like Bioshock, but I am increasingly sure that the folks behind Bioshock don't understand that it wasn't really the story of the first game that made it a success. The true start of Bioshock was the City as a setting, not that stuff about lighthouses, little girls and Big Daddies that Infinite tries to sell as the essence of Bioshock.

 

[Zhukov]

That all said, large chunks of it did rather feel like a series of direct responses from the development team over some of the most common criticisms levelled at Infinite. Didn't like that Daisy showed the Vox going too far and making revolutions seem as bad as the original regime? Well, we'll make Daisy out to be a better person. Complaining about "better", drinkable plasmids several decades before plasmids were invented? We'll show you exactly how and why that came about. Seriously, a lot of the time it was like the development team had just lost patience at the apparent inability of people to read between the lines in the original game, and were flat out saying what had only been heavily implied previously.

Were those common complaints though?

I don't recall hearing them. Although of course that doesn't mean they were never voiced, but still.

The most common complaints I heard were relating to the transdimensional whackiness and the DLC addressed that the way a sledgehammer might address a headache.

The only clear case of complaint-response I saw was the ditching of the two weapon limit. (Which, incidentally, threw me for a loop in the first chapter. I kept running around wondering why I couldn't swap for weapons lying on the ground. Had to fight the big daddy with 10 pistol rounds and an empty microwave gun. Didn't realise until chapter 2 that I was carrying them all and I'd been running around with three other fully loaded weapons the whole time.)

 

[Azahul]

Were those common complaints though?

I don't recall hearing them. Although of course that doesn't mean they were never voiced, but still.

The most common complaints I heard were relating to the transdimensional whackiness and the DLC addressed that the way a sledgehammer might address a headache.

The only clear case of complaint-response I saw was the ditching of the two weapon limit. (Which, incidentally, threw me for a loop in the first chapter. I kept running around wondering why I couldn't swap for weapons lying on the ground. Had to fight the big daddy with 10 pistol rounds and an empty microwave gun. Didn't realise until chapter 2 that I was carrying them all and I'd been running around with three other fully loaded weapons the whole time.)

I certainly do remember a lot of people trying to apply the modern many worlds theory to Infinite and complaining that Infinite didn't match up. Still, I only have anecdotal evidence, but I do recall quite a lot of topics about the flaws of Infinite discussing things like it seeming inappropriate for the Vox to be as bad as Comstock, about how plasmids came to Columbia, or puzzled over why plasmids/vigors weren't more widely used.

 

[JacksonDemolition]

(Hello Mr. Lobotomy!)

Fucking hell. That scene was intense.

 

[Silly Hats]

That all said, large chunks of it did rather feel like a series of direct responses from the development team over some of the most common criticisms levelled at Infinite. Didn't like that Daisy showed the Vox going too far and making revolutions seem as bad as the original regime? Well, we'll make Daisy out to be a better person. Complaining about "better", drinkable plasmids several decades before plasmids were invented? We'll show you exactly how and why that came about. Seriously, a lot of the time it was like the development team had just lost patience at the apparent inability of people to read between the lines in the original game, and were flat out saying what had only been heavily implied previously.

Agreed.


I loved it, tied everything up nicely.

You can nitpick, but that's the point of an 'infinite dimension' themed narrative. I'll refuse to slam a game that that level of continuity - everything from the Novels, Bioshock 1/2/Infinite was referenced and handled it as well as it did. It had the potential to go in so many other ways but resolved everything for the better.

It's a significant conclusion in just one of the many potential threads.

 

[Mikejames]

I think it felt like a good return to the atmosphere of the original Bioshock formula. The stealth plasmids weren't always balanced, but I'd take it over the hours of running and gunning that Infinite had.

I wasn't really against trying to save Sally, as I was worried that they wouldn't acknowledge the dick move of using her as bait, but I do question the concept of trying to help anyone from an alternate reality. I suppose it was because Elizabeth hurt her specifically, but there are still an apparent infinite number of cities where this kind of thing is going on right? You can't be a martyr for all of them. Either way, I enjoyed it overall.

- The assorted quantum transdimensional wackiness continues apace, getting wackier if anything. Infinite as a whole has me hooked enough that I wasn't all that bothered, but there were a couple of bits that outright lost me.

I'm still lost on how Elizabeth was able to travel in parallel to her story in Columbia. Didn't Booker's death stop all those events from happening in the first place? I guess it's paradox territory.

The guardian imprinting business and Suchong's death impressed me. Not so much the revelations regarding Daisy Fitzgerald though. It makes her a great deal more sympathetic, sure, but it potentially undermines her role in the first game a wee bit.

Questioned the imprinting of the rest of the Big Daddies, but I thought Suchong's death was a great callback as well. And while I was iffy about Daisy's betrayal in Infinite, I think it's odd they backpedaled on it here. I thought her death was to showcase that fighting a tyrant doesn't always make you better than them, but apparently it was just the Luteces wanting to screw with Elizabeth.

- Lastly, the ending. Now this is super subjective, but, well... damn if I didn't want to see Elizabeth get a happy-ish kind of ending. After all the shit she'd clawed her way through, she deserved that vacation in Paris, damn it! Knowingly meeting her death by bludgeoning at Fontaine's hand... yeesh. That left me feeling a bit empty in the gut. Congrats to them for getting me to give a shit, but that was harsh.

I'm mixed. On one hand, it's almost fitting to bring everything full circle, with Elizabeth ending a cycle of tyranny through a puppet like Jack, rising above his programming. But I also feel like the closure of it all should have stayed with Elizabeth, rather than passing the torch off to a non-entity. I guess I wanted a happier ending for her too..

 

[SKBPinkie]

So, umm.. do people in this day and age still consider a happy ending to be cliche?

Cause it's seems to be the opposite for me. Almost to the point where I don't want to care about any character or get emotionally invested in them.

 

[Juan Regular]

I'm still lost on how Elizabeth was able to travel in parallel to her story in Columbia. Didn't Booker's death stop all those events from happening in the first place? I guess it's paradox territory.

Yeah, that one just doesn't make sense. Liz shouldn't even exist anymore and neither should any version of Comstock.
One question about Daisy though: I never understood why she thought that killing a kid was necessary. It showed that she was just as screwed up as Comstock, yeah, but it never made complete sense to me, character wise. So to me the twist in Burial at Sea was a welcome one.

If anyone wants a thorough analysis of BaS, you may want to watch this video. The guy is great at what he does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKt9g_uf7lw