You were too kind on Burial at Sea part I, Elisabeth is a freaking psycho, that Comstock was redeemable, he was sorry, and they murdered him after humilliating him.
Even worse : If Elizabeth REALLY wanted to salvage the whole situation, she could have just decided to use the VITA-CHAMBER even before part 1 to revive the baby Anna. Elizabeth still was a demi-goddess at that time, and she still could see all the doors and what's behind all of them. So, why didn't she just decide to revive the baby Anna ? This way, she won't even NEED to make her revenge play against Bookerstock in the first place. Hell : she KNOWS that Jack will come to rescue the little sisters and that he will DIE numerous times, and be BROUGHT BACK by a resurrection device that is CAPABLE of RESURRECTING THE DEAD, to continue his mission. I SHOULD KNOW: I HAVE DIED MULTIPLE TIMES DURING MY PLAYTHROUGHT OF BIOSHOCK 1. OBVIOUSLY, SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT TOO. So, why didn't she? She didn't, because otherwise, there would have been no conflict in the first place. Exactly why Elizabeth decided NOT to cut off her finger and leave it in Colombia when she went to get her hair for suchong.If she had cut off her finger, left it there, and come back to Rapture, she could have had ALL the powers she had back then, and she could have saved Sally VERY easily. The entirety of BAS, especially the ending of it, feels to me like one of those RPG games play through, where you're doing EVERYTHING YOU CAN to have the absolute shittiest conclusion on purpose. They took Elizabeth, a character that thinks OUTSIDE the box, and they made her think INSIDE the box throughout the ENTIRETY of this DLC. None of this had to happen. It wasn't just everybody else in Rapture that was made dumber to make Elizabeth smarter, it was Elizabeth herself as well.
I don't believe that Elizabeth was _testing/judging_ Comstock with the Part 1 plot, she was forcing his true memories to come through by recreating a similar circumstance. She wanted him to be punished with the full knowledge of _why_ he was being punished. I'm also OK with a handwaving explanation that this Comstock survived his reality collapsing simply by not being in his reality when it collapsed. It's not a great explanation but its a good enough 'Timey Wimey Ball' explanation for how he alone survived the great Columbia Timeline Crash. Those two points said however I agree with this video in that nothing else makes any sense. The two biggest plot holes being 1) Liz should not be able to go back to Columbia because it no longer exists to go back to. 2) This one Comstock would become another infinite Comstocks with every decision he made since arriving in Rapture.
@@SardonicSays i haven't been playing games for a long time. but i'm still 'experiencing' games on TH-cam no-commentary walkthroughs. kinda like watching tv-shows/anime series when i run of things to watch. :) Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favourite game stories. Anyway, thanks for this vid! I, too, hated Burial at Sea. LOL.
You're partly right about the imprinting, but it shouldn't have happened a lot sooner, rather a lot later. In fact there shouldn't have even been a Bouncer Big Daddy in Fontaine's Department Store in Ep1 to begin with. Not only were they not created until after the war had started and been going for awhile, but they were a product Suchong made for Ryan Industries, not Fontaine. Not to mention if anything it would have been an Alpha series Big Daddy rather than a Bouncer if anything.
Also wasn't the entire point of Atlas' character that he is the "man of the people" and completely different to Fontaine? Yet im this DLC he isnjust Fontaine qith an Irish accent. You cant convince me that the atlas persona would lobotomize a girl and a child and beat someone to death with a wrench.
Not sure how you get that read? The issue with Daisy's writing was the extremely clunky retcon attempted in Burial at Sea II. Setting aside the question of morals, in the context of Columbia her actions in Infinite made sense, not requiring a retcon, and also fairly cleanly foreshadowed Infinite's ending. Adding these new weird layers to her story in Burial at Sea II undermines a lot of the main game and also rendered her less of a character by removing her agency. It just sucks.
@@SardonicSays Oh, no, I'm in complete agreement with you about Burial at Sea being hot garbage. But during your discussion of the main game, you referred to Booker's equivocation of Comstock and Fitzroy as "the most disgustingly cringe white centrist line in the history of gaming." The plot beat is that the Vox Populi, having taken control from Comstock, start slaughtering the former ruling class. This is why we see them escaping on hoverboats towards the end of the game and the city becomes deserted. I don't see how that's not villainous behavior. You also compare Daisy favorably to Bernie in a way that is probably on some level of irony I can't parse.
Mainly I was making fun of the oft heard refrain of equating the far left and far right. It is baked into much of our media discourse to automatically assume the truth is in the middle, and that both sides are equal in all debates (also known as bothsidesism). Or those who put forward the newer version of the trope, the horseshoe theory meme, alleging that the extremes eventually overlap To me, that line evoked much of present day centrist discourse. Nobody would say that there isn't bad shit being done by the vox in the course of the game, and yeah maybe I did tongue in cheek play them up a bit much for comedic effect- But for the game to say both sides are for all intents and purposes the same is an exceptionally intellectually lazy and cowardly take by the writers, and utterly erases the nuances of both sides of the conflict. Particularly the class characteristics of it. Both sides have dire issues, but both sides are not the same, basically.
@@SardonicSays What horseshoe theory is supposed to mean is that if two different entities are using equally horrific means, then any difference in their end goals is irrelevant. It's a comparison between Hitler and Stalin, not Hitler and Bernie.
@@jodgee2374 Ok fair enough, but I still think it's trotted out a bit too quickly when talking about our contemporary political discourse and the various beliefs of people on either side. In the context of Infinite, I wouldn't say it fits either as the character of the violence of both sides are quite different. The grind and subjugation imposed by the founders versus the bloody uprising of the vox. No matter how one slices it, the phrase, as uttered, erases important nuance. It is that erasing of nuance that gets me. It is the denial of what could have been a much more interesting political angle examining both sides. But they took the easy route, they did a no growth, etc. It didn't need to be Disco Elysium, but it could have been something a little more weighted.
As far as I care about infinites politics is it’s a recreation of the French Revolution created by an enamored Elizabeth that then turns the vox into a sort of sans culotte
Finally, I found someone who doesn’t openly praise this DLC even though excluding the rapture setting, is quite terrible. I’ve noticed a lot of people not liking it in recent years cause they realized how bad it was
Agreed, and BS:I ending gets worse more you think about it. Bioshock Infinite never sat right with me Also if ANY Booker will become Comstock, then that's some kinda quantum determinism. Might as well not change as Booker or Comstock at that point, making a self fulling causality. Would made more sense to eliminate the Bookers that would be become Comstock ONLY, leaving the rest (and thier Elizabeth's), but nope quantum genocide of the individual.
I just played Bioshock: Infinite and I have played the earlier entries too long time ago. In Infinite I liked the floating city, atmosphere, steampunk theme and all the little details in the city. but man I think all the timetravel things was too much or not necessary. I didn't like the ending but I guess you have to end the game somehow. I would rather had normal 'ok Booker beats the ultimate bad boss' ending but now it feels a bit like they wanted forcefully implement theories in the ending which just don't work in that kind of story/setting. I liked the stealth gameplay approach of Burial at sea but man the story was just more confusing stuff :D I found it intresting though that Colombia and Raptor had some kind of connection but maybe the execute of this ideas was not so good. And Bioshock: Infinite sure have some cool visuals if you consider it was released in 2013. EDIT: i don't know maybe the timetravel stuff was just excuse so they can just reuse same levels? I heard they had some budget problems might be that also.
It makes a lot of sense why BioShock's dead, given how almost every game takes possibly-interesting premises and turns them into wet farts. BaS2 is just an extra-bad iteration of this where it *starts* shitty and just zooms off into the ass horizon
you clearly haven’t played many games then. this was nowhere near the worse story in gaming. The story still had more thought involved than most. you sound so silly with titles like this
Go ahead and list mainstream commercially released games with worse stories if you've such a refined bad game story palate. And more thought than most? Gene locked turrets, dude. It was a mess. And a mess that undid what little quality story there was in Infinite proper with sloppy retcons. It's no wonder the studio closed not long after the DLC's release.
@@SardonicSaysLiterally just the fact they just suddenly threw skyhooks into Rapture just because it was in the main game is enough to argue against that lol
@@SardonicSays If you seriously mean any mainstream game and not story focused games. well, you could consider horrible better than none, so most sports games. Multiplayer games like fortnite, world of warcraft, fighting games, etc have very silly stories. Any multiplayer game that adds a story can easily choose to heavily retcon the story which in itself generally make no sense and have comical levels of ludo narrative dissonance. Games like LoL can have some good character stories, but make no sense when pulled together and have no connection to the game. For the series they ret coned every character connected to the game (not that it was a bad choice). Of the story based games I can't think of any that does this level of disservice, but I haven't played any assassins creed after black flag or any farcry after the 4th. I wouldn't be surprised if later installments were worse than burial at sea. The worst story in a game that was expected to have a good story. I could see that.
Mainstream commercially released games with bad stories? Never. Why just off the top of my head I recall hearing that the new saints row game has a really deep and emotional story rarely seen in the medium. A real milestone in interactive storytelling that will surely go down as one of the timeless classics.
You were too kind on Burial at Sea part I, Elisabeth is a freaking psycho, that Comstock was redeemable, he was sorry, and they murdered him after humilliating him.
Even worse : If Elizabeth REALLY wanted to salvage the whole situation, she could have just decided to use the VITA-CHAMBER even before part 1 to revive the baby Anna.
Elizabeth still was a demi-goddess at that time, and she still could see all the doors and what's behind all of them.
So, why didn't she just decide to revive the baby Anna ? This way, she won't even NEED to make her revenge play against Bookerstock in the first place.
Hell : she KNOWS that Jack will come to rescue the little sisters and that he will DIE numerous times, and be BROUGHT BACK by a resurrection device that is CAPABLE of RESURRECTING THE DEAD, to continue his mission.
I SHOULD KNOW: I HAVE DIED MULTIPLE TIMES DURING MY PLAYTHROUGHT OF BIOSHOCK 1. OBVIOUSLY, SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT TOO.
So, why didn't she?
She didn't, because otherwise, there would have been no conflict in the first place. Exactly why Elizabeth decided NOT to cut off her finger and leave it in Colombia when she went to get her hair for suchong.If she had cut off her finger, left it there, and come back to Rapture, she could have had ALL the powers she had back then, and she could have saved Sally VERY easily.
The entirety of BAS, especially the ending of it, feels to me like one of those RPG games play through, where you're doing EVERYTHING YOU CAN to have the absolute shittiest conclusion on purpose.
They took Elizabeth, a character that thinks OUTSIDE the box, and they made her think INSIDE the box throughout the ENTIRETY of this DLC.
None of this had to happen. It wasn't just everybody else in Rapture that was made dumber to make Elizabeth smarter, it was Elizabeth herself as well.
I don't believe that Elizabeth was _testing/judging_ Comstock with the Part 1 plot, she was forcing his true memories to come through by recreating a similar circumstance. She wanted him to be punished with the full knowledge of _why_ he was being punished. I'm also OK with a handwaving explanation that this Comstock survived his reality collapsing simply by not being in his reality when it collapsed. It's not a great explanation but its a good enough 'Timey Wimey Ball' explanation for how he alone survived the great Columbia Timeline Crash.
Those two points said however I agree with this video in that nothing else makes any sense. The two biggest plot holes being 1) Liz should not be able to go back to Columbia because it no longer exists to go back to. 2) This one Comstock would become another infinite Comstocks with every decision he made since arriving in Rapture.
Good points all around!
thank you really much for the warning at 38 minutes
hi, have you played Horizon Zero Dawn by any chance?
Not as of yet but it's definitely on my list!
@@SardonicSays i haven't been playing games for a long time. but i'm still 'experiencing' games on TH-cam no-commentary walkthroughs. kinda like watching tv-shows/anime series when i run of things to watch. :)
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favourite game stories.
Anyway, thanks for this vid! I, too, hated Burial at Sea. LOL.
i beg to differ
Then please, speak your piece.
@@llewelynshingler2173 dawg that comment was a year ago how tf am i supposed to remember now?
You're partly right about the imprinting, but it shouldn't have happened a lot sooner, rather a lot later. In fact there shouldn't have even been a Bouncer Big Daddy in Fontaine's Department Store in Ep1 to begin with. Not only were they not created until after the war had started and been going for awhile, but they were a product Suchong made for Ryan Industries, not Fontaine. Not to mention if anything it would have been an Alpha series Big Daddy rather than a Bouncer if anything.
Also wasn't the entire point of Atlas' character that he is the "man of the people" and completely different to Fontaine? Yet im this DLC he isnjust Fontaine qith an Irish accent. You cant convince me that the atlas persona would lobotomize a girl and a child and beat someone to death with a wrench.
I was getting into your channel, but yeah, you gave the far too common take that Fitzroy murdering people isn't bad because she's black.
Not sure how you get that read? The issue with Daisy's writing was the extremely clunky retcon attempted in Burial at Sea II. Setting aside the question of morals, in the context of Columbia her actions in Infinite made sense, not requiring a retcon, and also fairly cleanly foreshadowed Infinite's ending. Adding these new weird layers to her story in Burial at Sea II undermines a lot of the main game and also rendered her less of a character by removing her agency. It just sucks.
@@SardonicSays Oh, no, I'm in complete agreement with you about Burial at Sea being hot garbage. But during your discussion of the main game, you referred to Booker's equivocation of Comstock and Fitzroy as "the most disgustingly cringe white centrist line in the history of gaming." The plot beat is that the Vox Populi, having taken control from Comstock, start slaughtering the former ruling class. This is why we see them escaping on hoverboats towards the end of the game and the city becomes deserted. I don't see how that's not villainous behavior. You also compare Daisy favorably to Bernie in a way that is probably on some level of irony I can't parse.
Mainly I was making fun of the oft heard refrain of equating the far left and far right. It is baked into much of our media discourse to automatically assume the truth is in the middle, and that both sides are equal in all debates (also known as bothsidesism). Or those who put forward the newer version of the trope, the horseshoe theory meme, alleging that the extremes eventually overlap To me, that line evoked much of present day centrist discourse.
Nobody would say that there isn't bad shit being done by the vox in the course of the game, and yeah maybe I did tongue in cheek play them up a bit much for comedic effect-
But for the game to say both sides are for all intents and purposes the same is an exceptionally intellectually lazy and cowardly take by the writers, and utterly erases the nuances of both sides of the conflict. Particularly the class characteristics of it. Both sides have dire issues, but both sides are not the same, basically.
@@SardonicSays What horseshoe theory is supposed to mean is that if two different entities are using equally horrific means, then any difference in their end goals is irrelevant. It's a comparison between Hitler and Stalin, not Hitler and Bernie.
@@jodgee2374 Ok fair enough, but I still think it's trotted out a bit too quickly when talking about our contemporary political discourse and the various beliefs of people on either side. In the context of Infinite, I wouldn't say it fits either as the character of the violence of both sides are quite different. The grind and subjugation imposed by the founders versus the bloody uprising of the vox. No matter how one slices it, the phrase, as uttered, erases important nuance. It is that erasing of nuance that gets me. It is the denial of what could have been a much more interesting political angle examining both sides. But they took the easy route, they did a no growth, etc. It didn't need to be Disco Elysium, but it could have been something a little more weighted.
Finally! Someone else who understands!
As far as I care about infinites politics is it’s a recreation of the French Revolution created by an enamored Elizabeth that then turns the vox into a sort of sans culotte
Holy shit thank you dude for bringing up call of juarez gunslinger. A fucking gem i stumbled upon
Hard agree, truly underrated!
i've heard the events of BaS described before but it took this video for me to wrap my head around it's contents
Finally, I found someone who doesn’t openly praise this DLC even though excluding the rapture setting, is quite terrible. I’ve noticed a lot of people not liking it in recent years cause they realized how bad it was
Agreed, and BS:I ending gets worse more you think about it. Bioshock Infinite never sat right with me Also if ANY Booker will become Comstock, then that's some kinda quantum determinism. Might as well not change as Booker or Comstock at that point, making a self fulling causality. Would made more sense to eliminate the Bookers that would be become Comstock ONLY, leaving the rest (and thier Elizabeth's), but nope quantum genocide of the individual.
I just played Bioshock: Infinite and I have played the earlier entries too long time ago. In Infinite I liked the floating city, atmosphere, steampunk theme and all the little details in the city. but man I think all the timetravel things was too much or not necessary. I didn't like the ending but I guess you have to end the game somehow. I would rather had normal 'ok Booker beats the ultimate bad boss' ending but now it feels a bit like they wanted forcefully implement theories in the ending which just don't work in that kind of story/setting. I liked the stealth gameplay approach of Burial at sea but man the story was just more confusing stuff :D I found it intresting though that Colombia and Raptor had some kind of connection but maybe the execute of this ideas was not so good. And Bioshock: Infinite sure have some cool visuals if you consider it was released in 2013.
EDIT: i don't know maybe the timetravel stuff was just excuse so they can just reuse same levels? I heard they had some budget problems might be that also.
Well you make a great case and gave me a few chuckles along the way. I think I’ll be keeping my money now, thanks.
It makes a lot of sense why BioShock's dead, given how almost every game takes possibly-interesting premises and turns them into wet farts. BaS2 is just an extra-bad iteration of this where it *starts* shitty and just zooms off into the ass horizon
Good essay. Also what's that music playing during the intro?
It's one of the 'Human' tracks from the game 'Imperium Galactica 2'!
you clearly haven’t played many games then. this was nowhere near the worse story in gaming. The story still had more thought involved than most. you sound so silly with titles like this
Go ahead and list mainstream commercially released games with worse stories if you've such a refined bad game story palate.
And more thought than most? Gene locked turrets, dude. It was a mess. And a mess that undid what little quality story there was in Infinite proper with sloppy retcons. It's no wonder the studio closed not long after the DLC's release.
@@SardonicSaysLiterally just the fact they just suddenly threw skyhooks into Rapture just because it was in the main game is enough to argue against that lol
@@SardonicSays If you seriously mean any mainstream game and not story focused games. well, you could consider horrible better than none, so most sports games. Multiplayer games like fortnite, world of warcraft, fighting games, etc have very silly stories. Any multiplayer game that adds a story can easily choose to heavily retcon the story which in itself generally make no sense and have comical levels of ludo narrative dissonance. Games like LoL can have some good character stories, but make no sense when pulled together and have no connection to the game. For the series they ret coned every character connected to the game (not that it was a bad choice).
Of the story based games I can't think of any that does this level of disservice, but I haven't played any assassins creed after black flag or any farcry after the 4th. I wouldn't be surprised if later installments were worse than burial at sea.
The worst story in a game that was expected to have a good story. I could see that.
Mainstream commercially released games with bad stories? Never. Why just off the top of my head I recall hearing that the new saints row game has a really deep and emotional story rarely seen in the medium. A real milestone in interactive storytelling that will surely go down as one of the timeless classics.
This? This was the start of DEI in gaming before DEI.
tbf Suchong was played by an actor born and raised in Japan at least
Suchong was Korean, not Japanese.