I’m not going to give plot spoilers for BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea: Episode 2, but I will say this: this DLC is a full-on stealth game. After a certain point you can stop hiding and start being Batman, but don’t try to straight-up fight your way through. It is still very satisfying to play on a technical level, but you never quite feel safe.
As to the story… it made me sad. Sometimes the cruelest thing that you can do to your characters is to start the game. I can only take comfort in knowing that none of this was my bloody idea…
Moe Lane
PS: There was also a little bit of past-behavior revisionism that I didn’t approve of. You’ll figure it out when you see it… but at least they tried to treat it more seriously than Oh, we’re just going to retcon the whole thing.
I suppose given the implications of B:I’s infinite universes, the only thing Levine felt he could do was to collapse it down. But, as I said before, what a wasted opportunity. 5 years and millions of dollars spent to make the Columbia setting, and Levine immediately ran back to Rapture.
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Pardon my irritability. A mix of disappointment from a longtime Levine fan and sadness from watching several of my friends lose jobs when Irrational winked out of existence.
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Yeah, what Levine did there with Irrational wasn’t cool.
It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but this is what we know. Infinite was in development for about 5 years. 3.5 of those years the team was following Ken’s original story (Columbia flys because they’ve figured out how to control the weather. No quantum entanglement tropes). Levels were pretty far along, not done but well on their way. Then suddenly, with no warning, Ken announced a major revision to the story which required that nearly all of the levels to be scrapped. The game we got was put together in about a year with the remaining time spent polishing. The reason the game is so combat heavy was because that given that time frame, that was the only style of play they had time to execute properly. The exploration elements were nearly all tossed. Still, the team pulled together and got it out the door. (For a year and a half dev cycle, it’s a pretty good game) The team expected to roll on to whatever was coming next, but a new project didn’t materialize so they were rolled on to making the DLC’s after external contractors didn’t live up to expectations. (So no (or very short) post release vacations. Right back into the grind). A lot of high talent people began leaving Irrational (not all of the talent, but a lot)
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At this point, it became clear that Infinites sales, while good, were less than Bioshock 2’s (which in turn, were less than Bioshock 1’s) and would not justify the costs of a 5 year dev cycle.
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Ken then announced Irrational’s closure. In his statement he says it was his call. That may be part of his agreement with Take2 to fund his new project. That is, “We have no work for your old studio and will have to close it as it is too expensive to keep around waiting for a project. We’ll take the risk of your new venture, but as punishment for the relative failure of Infinite, you have to take the blame”. Just a theory, but it sure as heck is plausible.
The ironic bit is that I enjoy shooters more than I do stealth games.
I generally don’t like shooter games (1st or 3rd person). I did like the Jedi Knight series, but then again jumping around with a lightsaber is always fun.
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As far as stealth goes, I’m like you in that regard. I really hate sneaking around.
The ending bugs me in the way that ME3’s did not: I knew ahead of time what was going to happen to Shepard when I sent her into the endgame. There was a point to it all, and I accepted it because, hey, the fate of the galaxy was at stake and sometimes the krogan don’t get to bake you a cake.
Maybe I’d be more satisfied with the ending to BaS if I had played the first two Bioshocks all the way through.
No, that wouldn’t have helped. Bioshock 1 is a superior experience in nearly every way save for graphics. BaS’s tight linking of Infinite to the original doesn’t make the end better. The same thing could have been achieved by having similar events take place in Columbia, which also would have allowed for backstory and plot hole filling in Infinite’s story (which damn well needed it). Instead, we got answers to questions about Rapture that no one was asking and a finale that seemed undeserved and forced.