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[David_Dovey]

But even I'm pretty spasmodically psyched about this trailer for Bioshock: Infinity

Dat sum pretty shit, yo.

[Buttfranklin]

The people look like cartoons.  Kind of out of place considering the realistic expectations set by the cool architecture.

[David_Dovey]

I like it! I think it's good when videogame designers give up on trying to create realistic human figures because it almost always ends up in creepy Uncanny Valley territory, like in Mass Effect.

[JD]

I love it in Mafia II.

[Inlander]

So it's Bioshock with added combat flight sim elements?

Sweet.

[LTK]

What makes you think of combat flight sim elements? It'll just be a first-person game, although not much is known where they're taking it. But we'll soon find out, because Irrational is revealing bits about Infinite one day at a time:

http://irrationalgames.com/insider/

[Inlander]

From the description on the video:

DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds

Though admittedly making a prediction based on a YouTube video description is probably setting myself up for disappointment.

[Buttfranklin]

I like it! I think it's good when videogame designers give up on trying to create realistic human figures because it almost always ends up in creepy Uncanny Valley territory, like in Mass Effect.

Well, Mass Effect has a cinematic-based interactive dialogue system.  That exposes more flaws than BioShock's system of having just one face-to-face conversation that was also very one sided.  (Haven't played BioShock2 so can't comment there but I doubt there was much face-to-face conversation and was mostly just people begging you to do something over the radio like it was in BS1.)

Since the only time yr going to be seeing people is when yr shooting at them except for a handful of scenes it doesn't fall into the uncanny valley that much.

[Ptommydski]

So basically, this is going to be the actual sequel rather than that knocked off piece of shit they offloaded a while ago.

Looks really good.

[Ozymandias]

So uh

This hasn't been posted here yet.

Uh

Holy shit.

Badass.

[Blue Kitty]

I can't watch the video, it seems to keep starting at the end and asks me what I want to watch next

[Ozymandias]

Weird. It's doing that to me too now.

Click "watch it in SD".

[Storm Rider]

If you're still having trouble, this should work. There's also a massive interview with Ken Levine about the game here.

Despite the inevitable internet backlash, I still think Bioshock is completely incredible, one of the best games of this generation, and probably the closest games have come to a serious artistic statement to date. I was a little skeptical of this game when it was first announced, and the fact that Irrational is taking forever to make it also concerned me a bit, but after this trailer and interview, I am officially a convert. Ken Levine and crew clearly know what the hell they're doing. It's a good thing 2K Marin is busy working on X-Com because I couldn't imagine them trying to make a Bioshock 3 that could in any way compare to this.

[Buttfranklin]

Now that was some solid gameplay.

[KvP]

I still think the rehash of elements is pretty odious, but the gameplay vid indicates that Infinite will deliver the sheer visual spectacle Bioshock proper sort of fell short on. The bird-thing was very Lynch-via-Dune.

[Buttfranklin]

Yeah, the rehash of the core gameplay is pretty obvious, but I don't think it's so bad.  For one thing, it looks like yr character will actually talk and have real relationships with other characters, making more of a story than BioShock 1 had, and involve working with them against enemies.

Also, the environment looks way cool.  I'm not concerned with the rehash of gameplay because they're transposing it to a new environment: from a claustrophobic place where darkness and water was lurking everywhere to suffocate you, if the splicers didn't kill you first.  Open areas were rare; snaking corridors and passageways were the norm.  In this, it looks to be the opposite: large open areas, more routes to take through it, and more opportunities for larger, more spectacular set pieces.

And you thought BioShock 1 fell short of visual spectacle?  Maybe yr just not as into Oscar Bach-like stuff as I am, but BioShock 1 had some of the coolest art direction of any vidya game I've ever seen.  Sure, it may not be as "in yr face" as other vidya games, but the level design was way cool.  It was all Machine Age-meets-Art Deco and in its varying forms.  From the gambling halls, to the restaurants, to the factory district, it was all unique and with a really good attention to detail.

[Ozymandias]

'ou' It's seriously just two easy letters.

[Buttfranklin]

It's the principle that matters.

[Spluff]

This game,

[Alex C]

A principle that you should divest yourself of at the first opportunity.

As far as visuals go, the complaints are usually a combination of an aging modified Unreal Engine and the ol' familiarity breeds contempt problem. The attention to detail was top notch and I think they followed through on a distinctive design concept about as well as the technology they were afforded would allow. But the problem is that having a environment like Rapture can really paint you into a corner. Beyond a certain point, detail and craft can be lost upon the viewer if you can't really switch up the lighting and palette. I mean, I hate to say this, but after a while Bioshock really felt like I was shooting the same 6 screaming people in the same hotel lobby for 11 hours.

Now, with all the sheer detail packed into any one given room of Bioshock, that admittedly seems like an unfair criticism, but the problem is that the longer a gaming session goes the more people tend to filter out a lot of the li'l details and respond more to the big ol' blatantly obvious stuff like color and lighting. Technical concerns aren't the only reason companies like Blizzard design their time sink games around bold colors and shapes as opposed to li'l details. Such things are simply less tiring to look at over time, and that becomes a particularly important issue when you consider that gamers are constantly trying to scan the environments for objects they can act upon.

[Storm Rider]

I still think the rehash of elements is pretty odious, but the gameplay vid indicates that Infinite will deliver the sheer visual spectacle Bioshock proper sort of fell short on. The bird-thing was very Lynch-via-Dune.

What elements are you referring to, specifically? Is it the 'there are plasmids and a dude that is basically a Big Daddy' thing? Or is it the 'social commentary explored via city inspired by but removed from historical America' framework? Because with regards to the latter, I would agree in principle, but it sounds like they're taking it significantly further. Tycho talked about it in the most recent PA newspost and I thought he made an excellent point.

On more than one occasion I thought, do these people know what they're doing? They have to know, because they're Irrational Games; but locking horns with concepts like racism and nativism and the deification of our founders simply isn't done on this tier of the industry. San Andreas shocked the nation because it allowed two consenting polygons to "have sex," or some facsimile thereof, but I strongly suspect that when a game dares to engage with our actual nation, it'll be crickets from hell to breakfast.

Objectivism is certainly more relevant to modern society than it merits, but even so I think the issues at heart in Infinite are much more direct and widely held. It's pretty easy to criticize Ayn Rand, but criticizing the founding fathers (or more accurately their elevation), much less the cultural identity of America, is considerably more controversial. I think Irrational didn't realize how essential the ideological elements of Bioshock would be to the final product when they started, even though I think the message of the game still soared over the majority of consumers' heads. Infinite, on the other hand, seems to be putting those themes pretty front and center. In other words, I think this is taking the elements of Bioshock that (I felt) were most effective to the next level, rather than simple rote repitition.

[Buttfranklin]

Now, with all the sheer detail packed into any one given room of Bioshock, that admittedly seems like an unfair criticism, but the problem is that the longer a gaming session goes the more people tend to filter out a lot of the li'l details and respond more to the big ol' blatantly obvious stuff like color and lighting. Technical concerns aren't the only reason companies like Blizzard design their time sink games around bold colors and shapes as opposed to li'l details. Such things are simply less tiring to look at over time, and that becomes a particularly important issue when you consider that gamers are constantly trying to scan the environments for objects they can act upon.

That's an excellent point.  I see where yr coming from.

I'm totally the type of gamer who looks at every nook and cranny, has to read every poster, and tries to find every shot of the game that could make a good photograph since that's just me.  Also, the more detailed an environment is in a game the more immersed I get.  I hadn't thought to consider it the other way.

But now that you mention it, I would think that Valve is a better example of developers who have good art direction & attention to detail without having the problem of gamers blurring everything over and only going after objects to deal with.  Like, the way they'd direct the player through a level with clever usage of lighting, and the way they'd set up elements to "point" toward a specific location without literally having an arrow, or a sign, or anything to directly tell the player to go there.  All while making it cool looking.  Half Life 2 & its eps, and also L4D1&2 and Portal are all great examples of this.

[Alex C]

I came very close to using Valve as an example since they were very open about all of the design decisions that were behind the wonderful thematic overhaul Team Fortress went through. Ultimately, I went with Blizzard just because the Burning Crusade expansion was quite literally color coded:



If anything, that map undersells the point. If each region was as vibrant on the game map as they are in play then it would look more like someone took a box of magic markers to it rather than just a couple of crayolas.

But anyway, I understand why Bioshock was the way it was graphically. They put all their eggs in the one iconic location basket, and I honestly don't begrudge them that choice. After all, it's not like they truly dropped the ball as far as visual cues and stuff are concerned and what they lose in variety they make up for in atmosphere. But I do think that Bioshock was calibrated for having one incomparable playthrough and after that the location starts to work against it. A lot of the visual and atmospheric tricks they do are great the first time but don't really suit themselves to the kind of achievement whoring that has apparently become a part of gaming culture for a lot of people. The first time someone gets bushwacked by a splicer in the dark, it's cool as hell. But when Dudefalla from Live is poking around in the dark to finish up the audio book or tonic collection achievement they missed the first time around, well, now you're probably getting at part of the reason why things got a bit ugly there once the honeymoon was over.

[Ozymandias]

I still haven't finished my Brass Balls Bioshock run, even though brass balls mode is 100% more fun than vanilla BS.

[Trynant]

and probably the closest games have come to a serious artistic statement to date

Killer7 and Braid would like to have a word with you.

Thing about Bioshock was that at the end of the day the gameplay didn't compliment the mood set by the aesthetics and the story. It would be like Ford in Bladerunner having karate fights in bullet time sequences.

EDIT:

Just to clarify, I think Bioshock is way ahead of pretty much any mainstream title to date, but there's still a long way to go before 'valid artistic statement' is commercially feasible.

Infinite looks promising, but I'm not sure if it's going to be more than another shooter under a mask of sophistication.

[Alex C]

You lost me at Killer7.

[Wasteroo]

yeah Killer7 was one of the most pretentious games I've ever played, and as a bonus one of the least fun ones too

[Trynant]

yeah Killer7 was one of the most pretentious games I've ever played, and as a bonus one of the least fun ones too

Ignoring that the words 'fun' and 'pretentious' being two of the most overused, imprecise descriptors in gaming, I would argue that something trying to be art needs a lot more than fun as a motivation. Killer7 was an attempt at an artistic statement meant to compete with other mediums as opposed to other games. Call it a failure if you want but the game tried to do a lot more for pushing the medium forward (e.g. eschewing accepted conventions for control schemes and experimenting with new designs for emotional effect) than Bioshock did (i.e. the most Bioshock did was overlay a story that had more maturity than other mainstream titles ontop of a conventional shooter).

If you think that using gameplay to create an emotional effect or, god forbid, add meaning to the game is pretentious, then I have to ask why you think games could possibly do anything artistically that other mediums (music, books, movies) can't do better. After all, they don't have gameplay getting in the way of their artistic statement.

Worse yet, treating fun as the end-all criterion of gaming, especially if one wants to treat games as an artistic medium, is a joke. Or, as Brendan Lee put it:

This has always been the deciding factor; if a game is fun, it's a good game. If it's not fun, it's bad. This, though, is an almost farcically bad way to judge art. Art is as expressive as language itself -- more, even. It can disgust people, or inspire awe, or make children think about cats. To limit game design to what people find entertaining is to admit defeat before you code your first INCLUDE statement.

Personally, I think gaming could do with a little more pretension and a little less fun.

All that being said, I'm looking forward to Bioshock: Infinite.

[Ozymandias]

"Personally, I think movies could do with a little more pretension and a little less visuals."

"Personally, I think books could do with a little more pretension and a little less words."

[Trynant]

"Personally, I think movies could do with a little more pretension and a little less visuals."

"Personally, I think books could do with a little more pretension and a little less words."

You seem to be implying that fun is the defining characteristic of games, as if movies and books are not fun. Fun is not the building block of games. That would be interactivity.

What if movies were graded solely on how good the special effects were?

What if books were valued on how easy they are to understand?

What if comic books/graphic novels were valued solely on how well-drawn the superheroes are OH WAIT.

[Alex C]

I would argue that something trying to be art needs a lot more than fun as a motivation.

And you'd be wrong.

[Alex C]

I mean, not to get all post-author on anyone here, but what someone intends to communicate and what people hear are often vastly different things. Some of the most enjoyable moments I've had as a reader or moviegoer have been those times where I say to myself "Haha, his ideology is showing" when watching something that is otherwise intended to be a throwaway piece of entertainment. The assumptions we make about what our audience will think when presented with a given piece of information can actually reveal a lot about ourselves.

[Trynant]

I mean, not to get all post-author on anyone here, but what someone intends to communicate and what people hear are often vastly different things. Some of the most enjoyable moments I've had as a reader or moviegoer have been those times where I say to myself "Haha, his ideology is showing" when watching something that is otherwise intended to be a throwaway piece of entertainment. The assumptions we make about what our audience will think when presented with a given piece of information can actually reveal a lot about ourselves.

Finding the occasional subtext in entertainment is not the same as analyzing the layers of meaning behind the masterpieces of literature/film/music (e.g. The Da Vinci Code != Gravity's Rainbow). We have the a lot former in gaming, but none of the latter. That kinda sucks.

[Alex C]

Perhaps, but Killer7 has waaaaaay more in common with Dan Brown than Pynchon. Ambition doesn't equal quality by a long shot, and frankly, I find it a li'l insulting that some people think that a work needs to intentionally be layered to be a good one. There's artists out there who spend an awful, awful lot of time trying to strip things back to its core, after all.

[Tom]

The Jungle is pretty good example of people walking away with the wrong message. Many read the novel as a damning indictment of the meat packing industry but the message Sinclair was trying to impart to his audience was that capitalism is  a horrible moster of a system that unfairly feeds on the working class and that socialism was our best bet for societal betterment.

[Trynant]

Perhaps, but Killer7 has waaaaaay more in common with Dan Brown than Pynchon. Ambition doesn't equal quality by a long shot, and frankly, I find it a li'l insulting that some people think that a work needs to intentionally be layered to be a good one. There's artists out there who spend an awful, awful lot of time trying to strip things back to its core, after all.

I have to disagree as to what Killer7 is more like. Its gameplay is experimental and an attempt at new techniques to convey emotions and themes through play. I probably should of related Killer7 to be more akin to something Joyce would produce if he was a game designer. If you try to grade the game based on its 'fun factor' you are missing the point. Joyce is not fun by conventional standards.

Agreed that ambition does not equal quality, but what quality are we talking about? If someone has the ambition to make a marketable book of fiction this is probably not going to result in quality art (although it might result in quality product).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about artists stripping things to their core. Do they not try to add some meaning to their statements, even if they only use single entendre? If so, they are doing more than most game designers. What mainstream games add meaning to their gameplay?

[Alex C]

I mean that Pollock numbered his stuff because he was sick of people trying to figure out what forms he was supposedly trying to convey with dripping paint. That there's painters and especially sculptors who do very little more than try to convey the tactile experience of creating an artwork. Fun is, after all, an experience.

[est]

This game is automatically in better stead with me, because it doesn't look like a bunch of shiny, alternately chrome/not & bumpy shit.  Bioshock could have been the best game in the world.  I'll never know because I couldn't stand playing it due to its visuals.

[KvP]

Really? I mean it's an upgrade from UE2 to UE3 (I actually didn't know that Bioshock was UE2, but it makes sense given the development time of the project) but the aesthetics of the engines are very, very similar.

[est]

Yeah I know, but in this one there's a lot less surfaces that are shiny that are not supposed to be shiny, for example.  I think that the more cartoony design works in its favour, because I really fucking hate things that tout "photorealism", because as Dovey mentions above, it seems to correlate with me disliking it due to uncanny valley issues or the simpler "shiny plastic face" issues.

[Storm Rider]

But... you hardly see anyone's face in Bioshock. The vast majority of splicers wear masks.

[est]

Are you being dense on purpose or did you really not notice the amount of fucked-up shiny surfaces in the original Bioshock?

[Spluff]

Every single game using a relatively unaltered version of UE3 is covered in fucked-up shiny surfaces. If anything it was the most forgivable product of the engine considering most of the surfaces were supposed to be wet.

[Cartilage Head]

 Infinite looks like a MAAAJOR improvement, is all I can say. They actually seem willing to have characters move their lips more than a few times throughout the game (seriously, nobody moves their dang lips on the few occasions you see them talking in the first Bioshock).

[Buttfranklin]

It honestly seems like they're willing to go with "characters that can talk being around you" style of story telling, instead of the "once in a great while come across a character who can talk, but mostly radio communication and you don't do much with them."

Kind of like the change from Half Life 2 to HL2 Episode 1.

[Boro_Bandito]

From what I understand is that its a pre-rendered section with mostly in game graphics, meaning yeah, its a movie but its still shot on what the engine looks like as opposed to the teaser trailer they released a month and a half ago which was all just CGI. I mean, keep in mind the opening of the first game when the plane crashes and you make your way to the lighthouse. Didn't realize it was gameplay until I started moving my character around in the water.

[KvP]

I had much the same thoughts, but the hourlong Ken Levine interview seemed to suggest that the stuff shown will actually be in the game and will be interactive - he specifically talks about knocking out the bridge to get rid of the golem thing is optional. The implications are interesting - provided fighting the dude is actually hard (and remember that the Big Daddies seemed way more intimidating than they ultimately turned out to be) the choice between taking him out easily and keeping that pathway open is a potentially worthwhile choice to make.

[Buttfranklin]

Yeah but that wasn't anywhere near as intricate as the stuff they show in that video.

Technology advances, and the skill of the developers increases.  I'm pretty sure that's all actual gameplay.

[I Am Not Amused]

Felt like getting back into that video game as art conversation because I like thinking about that topic and think I have something constructive to add:

I feel like one of the biggest obstacles to video games as art is the system of critique that we have for video games. As mentioned previously, it is essentially "If this is fun, thumbs up. If this is not fun, thumbs down." That is fine for a personal opinion, but it ignores one thing we have about our system of critique for all other art forms: With every other art form other than video games, we give points out for trying something new that ultimately fails. People don't like the moves that Radiohead made in their career, and may consider them bad ideas, but in the art of music we acknowledge attempts to push forward, even if we don't necessarily agree with where that push went. With games, however, we don't allow this same leeway. If an experimental mechanic is introduced and there are problems with it, we tend to decry the mechanic entirely, as opposed to acknowledging "Okay, this didn't work, but they tried something that could be built upon to great effect later."

There's also not exactly a great underground community for gaming. There is very little released on your major consoles that tries something new for the exact same reason you don't see much experimental story telling structures on major network television: There's no money for it. If a game does experiment, and that experiment does fail, the punishment to the small developer that made it can be, well, bankruptcy. I may think that our view of video games is flawed, insofar as judging a game as art is concerned, but I understand that no one wants to buy a game with a flawed mechanic just as a show of supporting experimentalism.

So there's another problem: New games are sixty freaking dollars. And that's, essentially, that. There are a few exceptions, but whatever. What would be great is if there were a market for mid-priced or even budget-priced new games. Games that maybe didn't have the greatest graphics, thus saving money, but had instead interesting design elements, wild gameplay ideas, new stuff for gamers to wrap their heads around. It's kind of there in the downloadable game marketplaces, but for a general populace that isn't going to search around for reviews of games they don't see on shelves, there needs to be a physical product equivalent.

What's my point? Well I guess it's that we need to change the gaming industry, the gamer industry, and the game review industry.

Yeah I don't ask for much.

Rant over.

[Zingoleb]

So tempted to plug Spiderweb Software here.


Oops!