BioShock Infinite

[dereksworl]

http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/vali...amp=1307734782

Irrational Games Leaves The Sea For The Sky With BioShock Infinite

Genre: Action / Adventure, First-Person Shooter Players: Single-Player Rating: Pending
Extras: PlayStation Move support, free copy of BioShock on one disc.

Released on Blu-ray Disc: Q2 2012

Welcome to Columbia. With the United States emerging as a world power, the floating City of Columbia is a mighty symbol of American ideals, launched with great fanfare to the cheers of a captivated public. But what begins as an endeavor of hope soon turns to disaster, as the city disappears into the clouds, its whereabouts unknown. The greatest accomplishment in American history has vanished without a trace.

STORY

The player assumes the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned there since childhood. He will develop a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt will learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.

KEY FEATURES:

• Superhuman Abilities - DeWitt will possess extraordinary abilities though the use of Vigors and Nostrums, giving him potent powers against the citizens of Columbia.
• Dynamic Environments - Infinite features a range of environments that will force the player to adapt different weapons and strategies for each situation.
• The Sky-Line - Take advantage of the Sky-Line, an on-rails freight transportation system designed to give players a greater degree of freedom and combat than ever before.
• Meet Elizabeth - With Elizabeth, her and Booker can combine powers for unique and powerful attacks.

Credit to GLaDOS for assistance

[Kynch]

The trailer blew me away.

More info on GameInformer here and here.

[Captain K]

I want this right now! Bioshock 2 may have been a disapointment but my god does this look good.

[Protectron]

*adds BioShock Infinite to wishlist*

[Dave_6]

This is from Ken Levine who created the first Bioshock, so it should be awesome.

[MerrickG]

Bioshock 2 was a HUGE disappointment for me even when I had relatively low expectations. Rapture in Bioshock 2 was boring and dull with every level looking the same. Only towards the end could the game be at least put in the same galaxy as the first one and those weren't even close to the best parts of the first one.

[Mr. J]

I guess I'm one of the few who loved Bioshock 2.

[Captain K]

Originally Posted by Mr. J

I guess I'm one of the few who loved Bioshock 2.

Combat was good, everything else = meh.

[Mr. J]

Originally Posted by Captain K

Combat was good, everything else = meh.

Well I never finished Bioshock 1. I played it and thought it was ok, then when Bioshock 2 came out, I figured I'd give it another go. To my surprise, I loved it

[Monkey]

I watched the trailer, seemed interesting enough. Have they shown any gameplay? That's what I'm really curious about.

[Captain K]

Originally Posted by Mr. J

Well I never finished Bioshock 1. I played it and thought it was ok, then when Bioshock 2 came out, I figured I'd give it another go. To my surprise, I loved it

Besides combat, 2 has nothing on 1.

Originally Posted by Monkey

I watched the trailer, seemed interesting enough. Have they shown any gameplay? That's what I'm really curious about.

They showed some at the event last night, I'm too lazy to find you a link to a news post but it's easy to find.

[Monkey]

searched youtube initially without luck..

What was the gameplay? Same old Bioschock gameplay?

[Blu-Curry]

2012 is a long way away haha. I never liked the Bioshock series, but this one actually interests me.

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by Blu-Curry

2012 is a long way away haha. I never liked the Bioshock series, but this one actually interests me.

Well plenty of time to hopefully make it look different, better.. Bioschock 2 (While haven't done more than just look at videos) looked very dated upon release.

[Captain K]

Originally Posted by Monkey

searched youtube initially without luck..

What was the gameplay? Same old Bioschock gameplay?

No footage and this is via Kotaku

We were shown a live gameplay demo to get a sense of how Infinite will play. The demo was paced for action and was as heart-racing as a good sequence in the campaign of a Call of Duty. If you've played the BioShocks, as I have, you'd spot the potential for dynamic gameplay. Guns go in your character's right hand. Powers are on the left. The gameplay sequence began with DeWitt walking up one cobblestoned street of Columbia. A floating bell tower teetered and then collapsed in front of him. Up the street, he passed a woman sweeping in her doorway while the building behind her blazed. A dead horse was in the road, being pecked by birds. Columbia's a weird place.

Columbia looks American, particularly a style we might call, kindly, American Obnoxious, though Levine describes it more technically as an age of American Exceptionalism. It was built, in the fiction, at a time of swelling U.S. pride, when the inventions of electricity and radios and the progress of the American people could, theoretically, spawn a floating city that waves the flag and, more distressingly, exhibits imperial racism.

DeWitt walked past flags with 48 stars that flapped near posters pumping the slogans "For Faith, For Race, For Fatherland." Columbia's patriotism is off-the-rails jingoism, its citizens taking gun rights to the extreme. A man preaching politics from a gazebo stood near signs that warn "they'll take your gun" and barrels full of rifles from which, you can indeed take your gun.

When the Irrational developer controlling the Infinite demo had Dewitt take his rifle, the pontificating man in the gazebo scowled. His eyes and mouth started glowing and a fight began. For a moment, the fight pitted DeWitt's scoped rifle vs. this combative man and a swarm of crows — well, a murder of crows, to use both the proper term. Murder of Crows is also the brand name of the bottle from which DeWitt later drank in order to obtain the ability to send out his own angry birds.

We were shown other powers. Deeper into the demo, during a combat sequence in a bar, DeWitt appeared to use telekinesis to pull a shotgun out of a man's hands. The gun floated in front of the man, pointing at him, shot him, then zipped into the grip of our hero. That same power was used to stop a football-sized shell in mid-air, rotate it and fire it back at the turret from which it came.

Aside from the splendor of a floating city populated with angry patriots, the newness to the BioShock series presented by Infinite are the roles played by Elizabeth and the Skyline, the railways connecting Columbia's floating districts.

Let's take the lady first. Elizabeth is a skinny-waisted, dark-haired, cleavage-showing damsel who is sometimes in distress and sometimes the key combat support. She is not controllable by another player. She is a computer-controlled ally and she is not, Levine told me, ever supposed to feel like a nuisance, a video game "escort mission"-style hindrance. She is instead, he said, a character, one who will enable the type of in-the-midst-of-gameplay dialogue-driven storytelling seen among the characters of Valve's Left 4 Dead. She is also a power amplifier, if the player chooses to accept her assistance. And she has her limits.

In one moment of the demo, Elizabeth was placing a storm cloud over the heads of a crowd of gun-toting men; DeWitt blasting forth with electricity to ignite a storm of lightning on the crowd. In the next she was struggling to her feet, falling behind, nose bloody. "When she helps you, it takes a toll," Levine said in a canned print interview supplied by Irrational. "You're not a super hero and she's not a super hero, and you're both up against a very difficult challenge that pushes you to the extremes."

Later, there was a robot or a man in a robotic suit on a bridge menacing DeWitt and Elizabeth. The lady was able to zap an orb high on its suspension tower. DeWitt was able to bring it down on the robot-nemesis' head. The middle of the bridge collapsed. As Levine later told me of Elizabeth's gameplay significance, "She is there to enable things that are of a scale that you just couldn't do in BioShock 1." With the bridge out, a robotic bird swept in, ending the gameplay demo.

[GLaDOS]

Here are some pictures for BioShock Infinite.

[Show spoiler]

Visuals look pretty impressive so far.

[Monkey]

Thank you Captain K. It sounds pretty interesting and look forward to seeing gameplay.

[Mr. J]

Visuals do look pretty good. And you're actually outside this time

[Protectron]

Originally Posted by Monkey

Well plenty of time to hopefully make it look different, better.. Bioschock 2 (While haven't done more than just look at videos) looked very dated upon release.

The first post above says that a new graphics engine for created just for this game. Looks pretty good imo.

[GLaDOS]

Originally Posted by Protectron

The first post above says that a new graphics engine for created just for this game. Looks pretty good imo.

Which I think the series really needs. Both the first two BioShock games run on a heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5. Glad BioShock Infinite is running on an entirely new engine, but by the looks of it, it still looks a bit like the game runs on the Unreal Engine.