Who the hell thinks this is actually a puzzle. It's the same as entering a code on a door and those aren't considered puzzles.
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So the people making fun of Bioshock infinite puzzle just did not get it? ENDING SPOILER
- Thread starter zoodoo
- Start date
I've seen it being mentioned many times here as an example of bad puzzle in games.
Yeah, it very vapid scene. "Here's this morally reprehensible act, player! Are you going to do it?" I think it's supposed to be about how the choices in games are pointless most of the time because nothing changes no matter which one you pick, but it's so cartoonishly over-the-top that no one pays attention to that.
There's a way to make this work, and that's to directly call the player out for doing it. "Oh, so you just wanted to see what happens if you make the bad choice? Must be easy when you're sitting in front of a TV and none of this is real. Don't have to worry about actual consequences when you can start over if you don't get what you want."
But then it would just be a worse Undertale.
Yeah, exactly. Who cares if several hours into the game you can piece together a potential theory for why the puzzle exists if you have an eagle's eye for details? Up until that point it just seems dumb.
They still reward you even if you make the good choice despite your character not being to go through with it and despite that the interracial couple about to get beaned has no idea what you were going to do and even if they did, you still ran a dude's head into your buzzsaw IMMEDIATELY after, so kinda weird to seek Booker out in the midst of this chaos to give him a present for not hitting you with a baseball
We puzzle-thinkers have been oppressed ENOUGH. It's time to murder the non-puzzle people's children. VOX PUZZLI UNITE
Because it has symbols instead of digits just like other games do to enter door combination. That's the simpliest answer.
Are you really going around the thread only quoting stuff that suits whatever you want to say? Plenty of people already explained their problems with that scene and you ignored basically all of them.
Was doing the same awful boss fight several times a puzzling design choice or a motif or a meta-commentary on the trials of the common man or perhaps the inescapable repetitious nature of video games that can never strive to replicate the uniqueness of the world around us? Hmmm.
Bioshock was always a conversation about player agency and Infinite takes that to a literal extreme right down to the title.
It was commentary on the devs state of mind while they were going "Oh fuck we need to actually ship this product fuck fuck fuck."
This is the only BioShock I've beaten. It was a thoroughly okay game. Was not aware of the attitude around this element, and I'm extremely confused by the person on the first page harping on about it being shitty gameplay.
It's... It's just an instruction. Hold X to open door.
It's... It's just an instruction. Hold X to open door.
I felt exactly the same. I was stunned during all the ending after all we experienced until reaching it. I'm still amazed how this game is despised on here while being praised in reviews and all my friends who also played it.
Game direction changed since reveal, Levine defending crunch, he doesn't understanding some concepts or a DLC. I think none of those are arguments against the game narrative, are they?
Also I played this before Bioshock 1, maybe that has something to do with my appreciation of it. The ending of the first game got me puzzled, as it was praised to hell and back and I thought it was just a dumb turn. Maybe it was lost in translation as I didn't played it in English, but it did nothing for me as Infinite did before...
It's not a puzzle, it's a password. Like when Dumbledore writes down the address of the Order of the Phoenix. It's not a puzzle, it's "you need to know this".
Wow there is a lot of negativity surrounding this game here on ERA. I really think people just had their expectations way too high because of what was shown in trailers. I played the game only around a year after its release and didn't follow the hype train for it at all.
Was genuinely blown away at the ending - it put all of my actions in the story in a completely different context and expanded the world surrounding the game so much. After that you can go back and take a look at all of the foreshadowing that was just 'hiding in plain sight' because you don't know (or at least I didn't) what you're supposed to look for in that playthrough. It is kinda similar to watching The Prestige for the first time.
Maybe I am a sucker for time travel stories. But you can take pretty much any time travel story and poke holes in it because there are bound to be some.
I am not going to comment on the gameplay that much since, it's not really the topic of the thread, but I have played the previous Bioshock games and there is a lot of 'streamlining' done in Infinite that is not great but still serviceable.
Was genuinely blown away at the ending - it put all of my actions in the story in a completely different context and expanded the world surrounding the game so much. After that you can go back and take a look at all of the foreshadowing that was just 'hiding in plain sight' because you don't know (or at least I didn't) what you're supposed to look for in that playthrough. It is kinda similar to watching The Prestige for the first time.
Maybe I am a sucker for time travel stories. But you can take pretty much any time travel story and poke holes in it because there are bound to be some.
I am not going to comment on the gameplay that much since, it's not really the topic of the thread, but I have played the previous Bioshock games and there is a lot of 'streamlining' done in Infinite that is not great but still serviceable.
Imagine making a secret extreme nationalist utopia that's only accessible via a skyway in a lighthouse in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but then locking that skyway behind a password that could be accidentally triggered by literally slapping across all three bells left to right.
This is merely a consequence of the juxtaposition between the hyperbolic launch praise vs the reality that is Both Sides™: The Official Licensed Game
i have to say i love the two conversations going completely past each other here. is this western AAA gaming's "actually the tidus laugh is supposed to be awkward?"
the card being an instruction or a motif (fwiw i find the "it means it's the 122nd time!" thing dubious, iirc there are much better bits of foreshadowing in the game even in the lighthouse scene) doesn't change the fact that it is a scene where your main character, a grown adult man, is given a card with very simple instructions on it that he repeats out loud to nobody. it's inherently very funny and it doesn't really matter what the intent is. the people who find it funny aren't going to be well-actually'd into thinking it's clever; it's funny because it's trying to be clever and instead comes off as absurd
i did REALLY like bioshock infinite at the time, and there are a lot of bits i still remember fondly, but the further away we've gotten from it the more apparent its flaws are. i don't even want to say it aged poorly, because there were people at the time who recognized its worst parts for what they were. it's an okay shooter with some good ideas and a lot of really bad ones
the card being an instruction or a motif (fwiw i find the "it means it's the 122nd time!" thing dubious, iirc there are much better bits of foreshadowing in the game even in the lighthouse scene) doesn't change the fact that it is a scene where your main character, a grown adult man, is given a card with very simple instructions on it that he repeats out loud to nobody. it's inherently very funny and it doesn't really matter what the intent is. the people who find it funny aren't going to be well-actually'd into thinking it's clever; it's funny because it's trying to be clever and instead comes off as absurd
i did REALLY like bioshock infinite at the time, and there are a lot of bits i still remember fondly, but the further away we've gotten from it the more apparent its flaws are. i don't even want to say it aged poorly, because there were people at the time who recognized its worst parts for what they were. it's an okay shooter with some good ideas and a lot of really bad ones
Wait, you mean you wanted to be able to aim and throw the ball?
The raffle scene has problems, but this isn't one of them. What would happen if the players throws it into nothing? Would the NPC ask them to try again? What if they miss on purpose again and again? Would the game move on, rewarding them for missing? And what about the huge problem of purposely hitting a black person? In Wolfenstein The New Colossus, you also have a scene where you can hit or miss, but missing your target there actually makes sense.
The card scene has no urgency. It's not really a choice because it's the only way to move forward, but you're still doing it. The raffle scene offering more freedom would open it for logic breaks. Would that really be worth the effort?
During the first attempt all anyone had to do was ring one bell once and the door would open. Sloppy work Luteces
Even if the card is a wink towards how many permutations Booker has gone through at this moment it doesn't make any sense. Why would the passcode reflect this # of attempts? And does someone rejigger the mechanics every time in each different timeline or is it just a coincidence that the passcode coincides?
I mean, the problem of potentially hitting an interracial couple with a baseball is still present in the original, that choice is there regardless. Either way, your interactions with every other person in the game is shooting or buzzsawing people in the face (including the Vox Populi), so I think a baseball wouldn't quite register as high on the bad-o-meter. And in this hypothetical game jam, I would imagine that the scene would transition into shootin'-time after your throw regardless who you hit or miss. You shouldn't be rewarded regardless.
Oh man, the poor Booker stuck in timeline #1,265,333.
There are many realities where the code is 122 and you happen to play Booker in one of those during your playtrough. There are also infinite other realities with other codes. The #122 indicates that "your" run is the successful one in this reality constellation and also that there had to be 121 fails before that. It's basically a broad hint to the core concept of the game and I'm surprised how many people seem to not have noticed that even tho this concept gets repeated a lot in the game.
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"Inherently very funny"? Characters talking to themselves for the benefit of the player happens in pretty much every game in which the player character has a voice.
In what sense is it "trying to be clever"?
Like I said, the scene has its problems. Except that, as it stands, you can never hit the couple. Missing and not hitting anyone would never have the same effect as potentially hitting the announcer. And when I say "reward," it's moving forward. Missing would just be anticlimatic. To me, the main problem of that scene is that it tries to deal with racism, but you forget it right after as you go into combat. It feels cheap because it's forgotten five seconds after, not because you don't use the combat mechanics. In fact, that's not the only time you use that "system." Bird or cage, head or tails.
But the OP says the code is a reflection of the number of attempts Booker has gone through. With the Booker we control it's attempt #122.
So how and why does the passcode change with each attempt?
I don't see how it's a hint towards anything. There's absolutely nothing that points this out or hints that this is true. It would be cool if the passcode were random or if each new play through the number went up by 1 to actually reflect this.
That doesnt change the fact that the Luteces are having to infinitely adjust the mechanism to match all these codes to the number of failed attempts for no discernible reason
Yeah, I think there's a big example of miscommunication here.
Is it a puzzle? No, not really. As a guy who very recently made one of the threads that the OP mentions I did find it a bit 'eh' that this example appeared so much during it.
But whether or not it's a puzzle or whether or not it has a deeper meaning behind it doesn't change how it's presented and, at the time, what it represented. It came at probably the pinnacle of the whole 'AAA games are dumbing things down for the casuals,' thing and has kind of stuck since. Like how 'Press F to Pay Respects' has lingered on so much despite there being many other examples of egregious button prompts in games.
Of course there's also the fact that so much video-game terminology is ill-defined and makes little sense. What even is a "puzzle" anyway?
The code does change because each reality has its own random one while there is no connection between the different codes in each reality. It just turns out that you play in a reality where you already failed 121 times which created the possibilty of having the 122th run. I think the Luteces do often refer to your earlier attempts and how they used everything they've learned to help you in your final playtrough as Booker. It's basically ... luck that you happen to play in this specific reality where you can finish the game / your mission on your 122nd try.
There are also infinite realities where you will fail on attempt 122 because you've either already eliminated the problem or might never do so at all.
I guess people need to take the game title more literal.
That video starts off funny but ends with a really gross slur. It shouldn't be posted.
yes and it's often very funny in those other games too
you're in a thread full of people, the OP included, trying to explain why it's actually very good foreshadowing and/or an important motif. cmon
If you say so.
Okay, wasn't sure if we were looping back to the stuff in the OP. I won't defend that, doesn't make a lot of sense to me (if it really is what the writers intended).
I never said it was a "good" foreshadowing. It's a foreshadowing and not a puzzle.
Yeah, that's really all it is. If you look at it as a puzzle, yeah it would be a garbage puzzle, but I really don't think it was meant to be one.
