@@pnut3844able He played Joel in the Last of us, who had to escort a girl Ellie to a specific place, In Infinite he played Booker Dewitt who had to escort a girl Elizabeth to a specific place, there is a lot of similarities there in BOTH games
On Elizabeth's captivity, you forget some points that make things even creepier: they have her development documented down to when her first period started, and there are pictures of her disrobing. This is the extent of how horrible her captivity was.
@@KevinHelpUs Mh, I think it's a very important point. I would have just said the bit about her period and shown the note on screen and just left the rest for people to google themselves.
@@lillywho lilly-got-a-big-belly wants to talk about Elizabeths first period, great, nobody else wants to or needs to. You must be a real hit with all the guys. I can tell by how instantly argumentative you are when yeah the videos fine it doesn't need a section about period blood and pictures of Elizabeth's undeveloped tits
Me realizing the rewrites were most likely to be part of the main game but were scrapped because Ken “cucumber” Levine decided to change the game like 100 times
After playing Burial at Sea and learning about how Colombia and Rapture are intertwined, I came up with a headcanon that Songbird was a version of Booker that failed to rescue her, but instead was turned into a prototype version of a Big Daddy that Fink made using materials he had access to back in 1912. Hence why he's so dedicated and attached to her. Maybe Fink used a prototype Handyman design to create the rest of suit for that version of Booker. And as a way to get him to obey, the suit gives him regular infusions of that one vigor that allows you to change enemys into allies and since he's also her dad from another world, the combination acts as a makeshift bond resembling the ones between big daddies and little sisters but in this case it ONLY allows songbird to bond to Elizabeth.
@@TuanNguyen-uz1ws Less a reference and more of they used a weird sound they played in Fort Frolic in BS1 and then recontextualized it in Infinite to be Songbird's scream.
Isn’t this in a fanfic where the premise was Songbird’s life in “reverse” starting from his death? It was the first time I encountered this headcanon. I love seeing similar ideas in the wild, it makes me think that there’s more reality to these ideas than we may have initially thought!
Cucumber. If I had a nickel for everytime Troy Baker voiced a middle aged morally questionable anti hero man who lost his daughter then years later was send to escort a girl named Elizabeth from one place to another who becomes a sort of adobted daughter to him I would have two nickels, which isnt much but its weird that it happened twice.
I know they released close enough to each other that it’s just a coincidence, but I could have listed off more but I didn’t want to spoil too much of The Last of Us. For instance, both games have us aligning with a separatist group who claim to be fighting for freedom but are actually just as bad as their oppressors.
This is the content that RUclips needs, fixing franchises. It's easy to review a bad product and say it's well "bad" but it take really momentum rebuild it from the ground up. Most people when you ask them how they would fix it? They'd just go the easy route and say they wouldn't have done it at all. Now that just scream laziness.
Agreed. That's not only lazy, that's counterproductive to the argument - if you're saying that it's bad, then you should come up with a way to improve it. Saying that "I wouldn't have done it at all" contributes nothing to the argument itself and basically just translates to "because I said it sucks, it sucks". Which, in that case, would beg the question as to why anyone would have a conversation with someone so unreasonable - which most people won't. But this channel... this is something great in the making. Keep up the good work mate!
I agree, saying something is bad and leaving it at that not only isn’t productive, but it comes off as just pessimistic noise. This content is great because it shows that the reviewer has taken in the media, understands it, and was able to rebuild it in an interesting way. Like an AU only instead of it being cringey, it builds on the original with respect to it. It’s great to watch.
@@JamesAxis13 I mean... this could be technically considered an AU, just a well-written one. We only consider things cringy because they rub us the wrong way.
Really, you think writing fanfiction is somehow better than generic media criticism? Because this IS still fanfiction. No one's actually going to act on this. At least 'X thing bad' doesn't imagine a world where the creators actually listen to any of this and acts honest with itself.
It's a well known fact that a LOT of the preview material that we were shown never made it into the game and it was getting significant rewrites up until a little under seven months before it shipped. It's likely the highly linear game we got was heavily cut down from something that more resembled the original bioshock. That said he's a few of the changes I've had burning in the back of my head for years. 1: Elizabeth is our replacement for plasmids. In the original trailer it's shown that Elizabeth has a LOT of powers besides opening tears. Summoning yes, but also a lot of telekinesis sort of things. I imagine you'd hit the same button you'd hit to activate a power and Elizabeth would dodge into frame from nowhere in particular and do the thing, just like she does when she tosses you salts/health.. which I think was ORINGINALLY in the game as the replacement for hypos. Anyway, there's a moment in the trailer when she asks booker whether she should go all out with her powers, which ends up causing her nose to bleed. This struck me as a replacement of the little sister choice: If we make our game easier by using Elizabeth's powers it was likely that her health would deteriorate, leading towards.... who knows? 2: Wandering through a city at war. There's a BUNCH of evidence that we'd be able to explore sections of Columbia that were either Vox or Founder controlled, and that these groups would be atleast somewhat neutral towards B & E. Trying to explore the city while avoiding hostilities would have been a FANTASTIC way to sell the unique danger of infinite's world that's only hinted at by the initial landing/beach /amusement park sections. Likewise it would make for great moment to moment tactical decisions. Do I try to force my way through? Will this escilate to violence or can I talk my way out? That loot might be useful but do I want to risk making the whole of the district hostile to me/damaging my reputation with this faction? 3: Bring racism to the surface. We are supposed to be interrogating the idea of American exceptionalism the same way we interrogated objectivism in the first game. That means racism, eugenics, the white man's burden, and brutal acts of colonial genocide to make room for white settlers. Booker being partially native and his history with wounded knee should not be locked away in audiologs, they should be direct text, as they're vital for understanding WHO Booker is and why he's capable of such violence. One of the first enmies we fight in the game is the god damn KLAN and they're studying up on indigenous phrenology so that they can oust the halfbreeds in thier midst. LET US PUNCH A RACIST IN THE FACE FOR BEING RACIST, LET US QUESTION THE CONCEPT OF MANIFEST DESTINY, LET US BE ANTI-AMERICAN. I can't help but feel like these ideas were specifically left on the cutting room floor because they were worried it'd be decisive.
Also, Songbird should have been Booker. Take that extreme " I will protect her no matter what" drive and propensity for violence and drive it up to 11, graft it into a suit, and then just keep building on it. Hell, maybe lean into the 'bio' in bioshock and give Booker some steampunk prosthesis the same way the handyman have it. Have him get more as he gets hurt (something something not having a heart and needing a machine to replace it). That'd make songbird's death by drowning poetic with the baptism. Hell, have the reason songbird is called songbird because it SINGS to young Elizabeth, the same way that we see Booker sing to current her.. and maybe with a flashback to how he'd calm Anna down when she was a baby.
To be fair, the game does let you throw a baseball at the caster. It also does make a point about how the "anti-racists" can be just as bad as the racists, themselves.
You did it. You made Booker a relatable, sympathetic character. I applaud you. My personal rewrite of Infinite (to make a very long story short) involves playing as Elizabeth, losing all faith in Booker when Slate reveals his crimes and Booker is unrepentant, and joining the Vox. Daisy becomes Elizabeth’s closest ally and Elizabeth is haunted by her two ‘imaginary friends’, the Lutece Twins, who help her throughout Columbia. Ultimately, she can’t prevent the trauma of Columbia or Rapture from occurring- but she can stop it from continuing. She and the various Elizabeths from every other reality form a pact to scour the multiverse and stamp out any threats like Comstock or Ryan to ensure what happened to them is never repeated. This leads into Burial at Sea, where one of these infinite Elizabeths is currently in Rapture attempting to hunt down Ryan and Fontaine. After Fontaine’s assassination, she assumes Ryan’s the only remaining target, and teams up with an activist leader named Atlas to find him. She eventually finds out who he really is when she walks in on him calling one of his informants on the surface who is watching and waiting for the signal to activate ‘the Ace in the Hole’. She and him fight, a wave style boss battle where Atlas’ rebels attack you and Atlas doesn’t step in until the end when Elizabeth is exhausted. She runs, and winds up being caught by Ryan’s police. Part two has Elizabeth in Persephone, begrudgingly helping Sofia Lamb in order to escape and find the quantum particle that will allow her to open a tear and leave. Without that particle, which is sort of like an anchor that allows the Elizabeth collective to open tears, she’s stuck here, and it’s too dangerous for another Elizabeth to be sent in because two of them in the same reality would be disastrous. So Elizabeth finds the particle, making her way through Siren Alley and Fontaine Futuristics to gather the tools needed to repair it. But before she can leave, she receives a tear-vision of Sofia Lamb escaping Persephone through the same path Elizabeth used. And thanks to her precognition, she knows exactly what’s going to happen next. So she books it to the Kashmir, where she is forced to make an impossible choice: stop Lamb from killing Delta and kidnapping Eleanor, someone Elizabeth sees herself in, or search the party for Ryan, her original target. If you choose to stop Lamb, Elizabeth attempts to divert Delta and Eleanor away from the restaurant and nearly gets killed. If you choose to search the party, you find Diane McClintock lamenting the fact that her lover, Ryan, is working in Hephaestus and leaving her to celebrate alone. The Kashmir is bombed, and Elizabeth nearly dies. Either way, the Elizabeth collective manages to extract our Elizabeth just before she dies, and perform surgery to keep her alive. Elizabeth mourns the fact that she failed her mission and that her actions only made things worse- but the other Elizabeths show her visions of the future of that version of Rapture. Because Elizabeth escaped Persephone, Sofia Lamb did too, which allows the events of Bioshock 2 to happen, potentially saving countless Little Sisters. And because she worked alongside Atlas, he was able to give the go-ahead to lure Jack into Rapture, allowing Bioshock 1 to happen and, again, potentially saving the Little Sisters. They show her visions of the bad timelines as well as the good ones, and the Elizabeths all agree that they can’t hold a timeline’s hand and force it to turn out how they want, but they can give them the chance to become something better. And that choice, the choice to become better or do something else, is what truly matters, because that’s what they escaped Columbia for.
The Cancelled Versions (From the E3 Demos) of BioShock Infinite would have been something else rather than the final version. This Game also has a Boat Load of Cut Content and Scrapped Story Elements That could have changed the game.
I suppose you could say Bioshock Infinite is just as much of a Shrödinger's cat as the story itself... In our world, we got a game altered and cut to pieces, but in another world, we got the game that wasn't cut and altered... Shame we don't have the same abilites as Elizabeth...
It's crazy cuz we see that exact version of Elizabeth at the end standing with everyone else. And we see propaganda of that politician in the beginning.
@@wayneigoe6722 ironic given the whole concept of Bioshock’s uniqueness of third person shooting, was you having these super powers. Having the ability to use Elizabeth’s tears in action would have been a much more fluid experience, but understandably make Elizabeth, as a character, meaningless.
I honestly wish they recover all of what was cut, and leave it out on the table for fans to puzzle together, to write the story how the devs initially intended it to be
Cucumber: I liked how Bioshock was a representation of the two types of utopias, and how they’re actually dystopias. Rapture is about a world with 100% freedom. Columbia is about a society so structured around law/religion and it has 0% freedom. Both are extremely different and yet the end result is the same…oppression of the people and society collapsing. Rapture is in the ocean and Columbia is in the sky, representing extremes. I love this because I shows how “coming back to earth” is both literal and figurative.
Cucumber! They did do a great job showing the dangers of ideology and how it can turn two seeming-utopias into nightmares. Even if some things could have been better, the BioShock games are unflinching in that message.
Cucumber So there are multiple plot-holes in this game, but I'm only going to focus on 1. So in Columbia 3 the reason why Booker joined the Vox was because Comstock had Elizabeth moved from Monument Island to Comstock House and Booker needed an army to go rescue her. He joins up with Fitzroy and Slate and Booker and Slate Burn down the Hall of Heroes, but shortly die in battle afterwards, Booker having failed to storm Comstock House in order to rescue Elizabeth. However, when the Booker and Elziabeth we follow enter Columbia 3 from Columbia 2, the game completely forgets that there are 2 Elizabeths being present in this universe after Fitzroy dies and just pretents that we're back in Columbia 1as evidenced by how Comstock behaves during the cutescene where he revives Lady Comstock. If the game remembered that we were still in Columbia 3 than Comstock would have said something along the lines off "Well well well, if it isn't... Hey wait a sec! How are you, Booker, still alive after my forces killed you and how are you, Eizabeth with him and with me at the same time? Unless you 2 aren't native to THIS universe, which both a blessing and a curse" during the resurection cutscene. And you know what would have been cool; having Songbird be the penultimate boss and having a fully brainwashed and fully juiced up Elizabeth be the final boss. Alternitively, we could just have Our heroes NOT hop universes and instead have the Vox supply them with weapons by pulling them from diffrent universes. Our heroes then join the Vox in their revolution, but desert the moment Fitzroy starts excuting people who don't join up.
I think that for me, what really failed in Infinites story was that Booker = Comstock wasn't really laid out very well. And it makes sense since that wasn't the plan originally and they were rewriting the game until a few months before release. Probably why Booker and Comstock don't look very alike, why Comstock looks ~20 years older, and why they sound nothing alike. At the same time, the way they handled them being the same man also forces the ending to be... well... nothing but a rotten cucumber. Fixing it doesn't seem like it would be too complicated either. My main idea stems from the main song of Columbia, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken". Instead of having the Booker-Comstock split be them making different choices at the baptism, instead, Booker gets cold feet and fails to even show up to it. Then has a kid, sells her to pay his debts, realizes his mistake, spends the next 17 years drowning his regret in a bottle, goes to Columbia to trade a girl for his debt... and fails. But he isn't killed, but rather sent back in time through a tear somehow to the baptism. From there he has a religious experience and realizes the he is destined to fail and that the lamb will always rain fire down on the mountains of man. Keeping in line with the song, this makes a circle. Booker always goes looking for his daughter, Booker is always defeated by Comstock, and Comstock always takes Bookers daughter. This not only makes Booker becoming Comstock a little more believable, but also ties the song in with the game just a little bit more. Will the circle be unbroken, or will Booker become Comstock? We can play around with this a little bit with choices we can make or through other scripted events. Its what I thought was going to happen when the Luteces had the heads-or-tails board. Every time they ask Booker heads-or-tails, regardless of what he says, it always lands on heads. Prompting a few lines out of the twins before Robert says, "There's always next time." However, this time, for our Booker, it lands on tails. The first tail out of a hundred heads on that board, followed by a few lines and a "Maybe there wont be a next time." said instead. Otherwise the rest of the story can remain relatively intact. As you say in your video, add a little more of Fitzroy and Fink to give Comstocks other antagonists more life to them. Have a little more of Booker spread throughout as well. Definitely have Songbird show up at least one more time, maybe just before/after Finkton? Perhaps even have Comstock be more of a father to Elizabeth so that she still has some deep down reservations about actually leaving Columbia with some strange man to some far off city she realistically know little about. Finally, the elephant in the room, the thing that most people have at least a mild distaste for. The ending. In the original, Booker gets drowned at the baptism in order to prevent Comstock from ever being born. However as many people have pointed out since the game launched, if there's a million million worlds then how would this actually stop Comstock? Ken Levine seems to agree since in BaS he has you play as Comstock in part one. Which means Booker died for nothing. Thanks, Ken. Here however, Booker could go out in a more interesting way. Maybe in order to get Elizabeth out safely, he can fly the flagship into the tower himself. There's a big explosion, the flagship, booker, Songbird, the bulk of the Vox and founder forces, as well as some of Columbia all get obliterated. Orrrr..... Booker can just take Elizabeth to Paris. They've successfully stopped Comstock from ever being born, there's no real need for Booker to sacrifice himself.
Minor correction : at 13:26 you claim that the movie advertised is "Return of the Jedi", but that movie is called "Le Retour du Jedi" in French. The actual name advertised is "La Revanche du Jedi" / Revenge of the Jedi, which was the original name George Lucas intended for "Return" but changed it before release. I have seen this pointed out as one of the signs that Elizabeth opens portals to other timelines.
@@KevinHelpUs You could have at least made a quick joke that Elizabeth opened a tear to a world where Disney probably didn't acquire the rights to Star Wars and therefore didn't ruin it
@@martsvend I was a huge Star Wars nerd when this game released and noticed the translation right away, I always thought this was a great deep cut from this game. Flaws etc withstanding this Easter egg is really really good.
I think Daisy going after Fink’s son in the end pissed people off because they wanted her to be an out and out good guy. She’s a revolutionary for a revolution that very clearly needs to happen. But I don’t think people understand that that’s not the story that’s being told; FFS, the hero and villain are literally the same dude.
Regardless of what you think of the game story, you gotta admit Songbird is probably one of the worst 'guardians' enemies ever, mf almost killed Elizabeth than saved her lmao
Great stuff. Other fixes *Explain who the Angel of Colombia is. She is the most important and powerful character. She starts the story, and creates Comstock. But we have no clue what she wants, who she is… or what she is. Fix: She is Elizabeth, but from thousands of iterations and multiverses away. *So the endgame is Colombia destroys New York with its superior tech. And then gets destroyed by the US Air Force? Small in scale and confusing. Fix: they burn New York and everything else in a FLOOD of fire (drown in flame). Only Colombia survives as an Ark. *Elizabeth was trapped in a tower with no human contact. She should be unable to talk, much less read. Fix: she was semi-secretly raised by her dozens of maids who were loving and then imprisoned when she turned 13. 34:59 Booker and Elizabeth now have a ship and can leave. They don’t need to have enough fuel to get to New York. They can just land and then take a train. Fix: Most ship are only designed to work at high altitudes. At low altitudes the ‘balloon’ implodes. Only special ships can reach the bottom world. Colombia just having tons of cannons is another good idea.
I adore how you present your videos. You take such care and depth in showcasing the stories we are presented, editing and explaining perfectly for old fans and newcomers alike, before launching into what you would change. It gives viewers a well-paced foundation of knowledge before revealing your fixes. Very entertaining and interesting.
Thank you so much for saying so! This one especially was a labor of love. There’s so much greatness in this game that I think it’s a worthy conversation-starter. Really appreciate the comment.
I appreciate all the thought and work you put into trying to fix BI's story. Bravo! Have a like and a cucumber for it! That being said, I feel that the restrictions you put on yourself with regards to "not changing important plot points", while understandable, are severely limiting you to what can - and arguably needs to - be changed: The ending. Because the ending of the game proves that the writers (Ken Levine and whoever assisted him) didn't understand their own story, as it completely contradicts the entire premise of the game: The multiverse. If every choice leads to two different universes, then drowning Booker at the end achieves absolutely nothing. Because for every Booker that reaches that point (which, in a multverse, would be an infinite amount of them, as seen in the lighthouse scene) and chooses to be drowned, there is a Booker who refuses the drowning. In the end that just splits the timeline in three instead of two: An infinite set of universes with Bookers who refused the drowning, an infinite set of universes with Comstocks who were not drowned and an infinite set of universes where they both were strangled by Elizabeth. The goal of stopping Comstock before he existed would not be achieved (or at least just partially). That being said, it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that the ending was so poorly thought-through, given that it wasn't actually the original ending of the game. It was just cobbled together on short notice from all the assets they still had available. I don't know for sure what the story of the original ending entailed, but whatever was included in there, it offended one of Irrational Games' employees who was deeply religious. They threatened to quit the company over this and Ken Levine decided to change the ending in order to keep them. This happened merely three months before launch. Also, it was pretty much pointless in the end, as all but 15 members of Irrational Games were fired less than a year later and the company (and its successor Ghost Story Games) never released anything ever again. I hope it was worth butchering Infinite for, Ken. But we can make some educated guesses about what the original ending was, given that Burial at Sea was presumably already in pre-production by the time the rewrite happened, and its story would therefore be based on the original ending. That would explain why Elizabeth has no powers in the DLC and why she keeps seeing Booker appearing and talking to her in Part 2, similar to how the Luteces appeared in the main game. I strongly assume that the original ending didn't have Elizabeth become omnipotent, and what was eventually handwaved away as her "hallucinations" were genuine appearences by some version of Booker. It also explains how Elizabeth is able to return to the "Fitzroy event" in a timeline that, according to the rewritten ending, shouldn't exist anymore.
I’ll take the cucumber! And thanks for watching the whole thing! Agree that not changing major plot points holds me back a bit (it’s going to be a challenge when we do The Last of Us 2), but it does keep me grounded and helps me show that there was a better story to tell within the framework that the original game established, even if that story’s resolution is a bit flawed, like the ending you mentioned.
Something I think they really missed on with the ending of the story that could have fixed peoples issues with it being a plothole, is the motivations of the Lutece Twins and the resolution of how do you change a variable to a constant. How do you change a multiverse where there are countless Booker's that become Comstock, to one where Comstock can never be born. In programming logic this is easy although redundant, just set another constant afterwards to correct for the variable to always be the solution you want: So make the plans of the Lutece Twins to be the creation this constant, a cage where there is no choice, that will destroy Comstock the moment he is born. A coin that will always land on heads no matter how many times it is flipped. They are testing Booker, to find the one who can overcome all the obstacles, all the variables and constants, and then guide him to the proper place, at the proper time, where he will decide to flip the coin, and then no matter how he chooses, it will always land on heads. Booker even laments to Elizabeth that he would rather have a cage over freedom, no choice to absolve himself from his regrets and sins. So his ultimate sacrifice will absolve himself of his sins as Comstock and leave only the Booker who chooses to not be baptized behind, who will never have his daughter traded away because Comstock is gone. He will be the bird who chooses the cage. To use the same quote Hellsing Ultimate uses: "The Bird of Hermes is my name. Eating my wings to make me tame" Booker will eat his own wings, and shall finally become tame.
I really like the idea of Booker remembering his daughter and thinking that she is at home and needs the money to help her. Cucumber A problem I really do remember is that when you deal with alternate worlds it makes the stakes disappear. So I think there really should have been something that ties them to the original worlds, at least intending to return. Booker would want to return to the world he thinks his daughter is in, and maybe they can say some risks of being in the wrong world. So my idea would maybe be something like an object acting as a key back to the previous world, so Elizabeth thinks she can get back there once they borrow another object or person. Maybe something like the necklace you chose for her, so it becomes an important object. The reveal we get of Elzabeth's powers is that she is a living key. And maybe the deal with the Lutece twins is the explosion made them a key to everywhere and nowhere at once, so they differe more explicitly from Elizabeth as paradoxes with limits. An extra bit, maybe they could have something about Robert Lutece had the side effect of thinking he was Rosalind's twin brother from staying in another universe. Her not moving to his universe had her not affected by the altered memory, and thus could foreshadow Booker's own false memories from going to another universe. I also remember there being a difference in the Lutece twins being Robert wanted it to end, while Rosalind was more fine with the status quo. Which could be added that after being being displaced he learned that Rosalind let him believe he was her twin. He might even think she put him in a cage, and might have slight differences of opinion on a sweet cage vs. a bitter freedom. Their involvement is testing the hypothesis of what would be chosen.
@@KevinHelpUs The focus on a key also works on the idea that Fontaine built up Jack to be a key to what was locked behind Andrew Ryan's DNA, in the first Bioshock. Elizabeth as a key to the multiverse becomes a paradox following the death of her father, similar to the Lutece Twins following their explosion. Maybe thinking too hard, but you could say something like the bird, the cage and the key, and something about a key could be locking a bird in a cage, or letting it out.
I never noticed before but it’s actually bizarre that in Columbia 3 that one guy who fangirled over Booker failed to mention or notice that he’s supposed to be dead.
Cucumber I couldn't tell you all of the changes that I'd make, because to list them all would reveal that I would basically have written and made a completely different game, but I will list some of the major things I'd have changed: 1.) Booker doesn't arrive on Secession Day, he arrives the evening before (this fixes a plothole with the timetables at the start of the game). He would also have to do actual detective work, talking to people and investigating things in order to get information, no more arrow pointing where to go or faux puzzles like lock picks or "wait a minute, that card." 2.) Elizabeth gradually gains a FUBAR quantum aura around her the more that she uses tears outside of mandatory interactions, resulting in her potentially causing a reconciliation sickness effect to any NPC that gets near her if Booker abuses her abilities. This actually has a passive effect on Booker narratively, causing him to falsely remember Anna and believing that she's back in New York, with his landlady. 3.) Other partners besides Elizabeth: Slate, Fitzroy or one of her people, a Handyman, etc. This would be because certain levels would have different objectives based on what you did the prior level (so for instance, you could convince Slate that there was another way besides death or letting him get caught, lighting the fire back inside of him and leading to a different version of the First Lady scene where they decide to go meet Fitzroy. Then you'd get an alternate objective for Finkton and Slate would be your partner for a while.) 4.) Comstock is a conman who tries to bargain with Booker like in your rewrite, but he becomes increasingly more desperate and erratic up until the confrontation at the end. Not because he wants to keep Elizabeth from Booker, but because he knows that if Booker touches him or gets too close to him, it will basically be the quantum equivalent of detonating a nuclear bomb. 5.) There's a third, hidden faction in Columbia-- Marlowe and his Vigor Junkies, which restores an element of Columbia that was meant to be but scrapped and downplayed in the final game. Basically Marlowe invented the Vigors with Fink, and when it was discovered that overconsumption caused physical and psychological mutations, Fink tried to have him killed to both cover it up and take control of the whole operation. Now the disgraced chemist seeks to find a cure for the monsters that he made from the back alleys and slums of Columbia and that's where Booker comes in. This would add a sort of little sister/big daddy element back into the game, as vigor junkies can be killed to get the salts their body produces, or they could be cured with certain items, which would please Marlowe and cause him to extend his services to safely power up Booker.
seeing footage of this game again after so many years makes me wish more FPS games had character design that were this expressive and a bit more cartoony
WOW!! Bioshock infinite is already one of my alltime favorite games, but your pitch for the story makes it even better. Booker, Comstock, Daisy, Fink… everyone’s motivations make so much more sense and are so much more compelling. And I love the early inclusion of Anna. I feel like that twist reveal behind her identify would’ve hit SO much harder if we knew about her the entire time. Again, I love the game as is, but it would’ve been AMAZING to get to play your version.
Really like the way you wrote the gunsmith stuff out of the game. The back and forth in this part of the game is miserable, making it about daisy makes more sense and keeps it relevant.
Honestly? I don't know how I'd fix BioShock Infinite. There are so many problems I personally have with it. I suppose the closest I have to based on your own rules is I would give us back the weapon system we had in BioShock 1 and 2
I learned to like the two-weapon system in Infinite, it did force me out of my comfort zone when my favorite guns weren't available, but the fact that they brought the old weapon wheel back in Burial At Sea means enough people didn't appreciate the change.
@@KevinHelpUsI appreciate the idea of the two weapon system, but in practice I found it pretty insufficient at making me as a player use different weapons when my preferred ones weren't readily available. Furthermore, the two weapon system killed the visually unique weapon upgrades that 1 and 2 had, since you weren't using the same weapons during the whole game. Yes, weapon upgrades are still present, but they're primarily just stat changes and none of them affect the look of the guns, which is really a shame. I think a better solution would be to keep the weapon wheel and upgrades, and instead simply heavily limit the ammunition for each gun. You're still scavenging around the battlefield, but instead of for more copies of guns, it's for ammo to use the guns you've been upgrading throughout your journey.
Cucumber! Thanks so much, I’ve wanted to cover this game for a long time, and really wanted to do it justice. Appreciate you watching until the end, so glad you enjoyed it.
1:33:30 The best line, with the changes you've outlined to the "Because I'm going to do it for you." would be to change it to "because I'll be YOUR weapon." It's Booker trying to keep Elizabeth's hands clean, in an early 1900's way, and narratively puts Elizabeth into the first position of control she's ever had. You can tie this in with you're baptism scene, don't make the choice Save Anna/Stop Comstock, make it Save Anna/Trust Elizabeth. There's then a short conversation, Booker's last words are "I guess weapons are always meant to be used. Make it count." And an Elizabeth that's not the center one, with whichever broach you chose responds, knowing that she'll be undone afterwards, "Don't worry, where you go, I follow." In the the pull back of the camera, instead of fading out, the Elizabeths appear to de-age (probably just shrinking, and slip into the water, one by one.
Cucumbers are the worst, that being said... Bioshock infinite is something far worse than cucumber, it's ALMOST great and that's far worse than just being bad. Here's hope for Judas, now that Ken is going at his own pace.
I dont like the ending of the base game tbh. They are right that they have to kill Booker at the baptism to prevent all of the Comstock realities from being made but the booker they kill is one that already went through the baptism, and lets just say that they went back in time to when Booker had the baptism, they would just be killing a random Booker. If the Elizabeths wanted to fix everything, they'd have to travel back in time to that moment (no hopping reality stuff either) and kill him there, the way they did it in the game makes no sense
the issue of that is: No, that doesn't work. reminder, the game works on the fix point theorem. The onyl thing what the ending achieves is that we now have 1 reality where Booker is just dead. It doesn't erase the fix point. PLus, Booker dieng before he could father Elisabeth also creates a time paradox.
Folks forget that the “worlds” Elizabeth guides Booker through are just events that have already happened, and essentially making Booker relive them as if they’re the very first time. “You don’t leave this room until you give him what he wants”. Booker is reliving this event in his history, except this time he just doesn’t remember, but it must happen, because that’s what *does* happen. It’s just a way for us as the player to experience the events but through Booker’s perspective as he “remembers” his past. The final baptism scene *is* that singularity in time as the event occurs, only difference is Booker is aware of everything Elizabeth has shown him. It’s confusing because we are viewing time here as a single line, but through Elizabeth, we are actually experiencing those events as if they’re happening for the first time. I admit it doesn’t make much sense, but hey, time travel and quantum realities is just as confusing lol
I must say that this version of the story both neatens things up and makes the narrative flow better. While we all bemoan the things that were left on the cutting floor (the demos and development material everyone wanted to see in Infinite), as you said, with the major beats as they are and the story as it is, you made it work.
Nah, game ended fine. Main writer wanted to go back to Rapture and the studio said "no make infinite". With the Dlcs we saw thee greatest arsonist and arson we have ever seen done to a piece of media. He quite literally said indirectly to other writers. " Good fucking luck". Burial at sea, unironically sarcophagus Bioshock as a whole. They were dumb for trying to loop it. It was my first ever experience with Meta verse theroy way back after Bioshock 2 and they shit the bed after the First timeline swap with Elizabeth. I would shake the main guys hand who set fire to the pos that is infinite. Game killed the franchise and we CANNOT change that.
god damn this video really does try to change the story but keeps the integrity of the game intact. good stuff man. your variation is better as it removes loose ends instead of wrapping them up or tying them off.
The problems of this game, in my opinion, begin and end with Fitzroy. It’s her weapon fetching quest that turns the narrative focus of the game to the tears, and it doesn’t even make much sense since Elizabeth specifically says that they can’t come back to Columbia 1, so what makes Booker think Daisy 2 needs weapons after seeing how different everything is? Why would Daisy 2 have their airship? How do they know either NY or Paris exist here? The answer is, they don’t. You can’t build on a shaky foundation and expect the house to stay intact under strain. The way that I would fix Infinite is by leaning into the timeline psychosis that’s shown in Columbia 2 and then just forgotten except when Booker has a baby nosebleed. I would’ve made Fitzroy in Columbia 1 a variant of herself that bonded with a variant of Elizabeth (because she was part of Comstock’s household), failed the Vox Populi, and was sent to Columbia 1 as a do-over. Columbia 1’s Fitzroy is dead. To roughly keeping the story intact, that Fitzroy would be the one to publicly kill Fink’s son, blood-smearing and all, showing her declining grip on reality and inciting the Vox Populi to violence. This all happens before Booker meets Vox Populi, so when he does meet them on that airship, in a moment of clarity Fitzroy unexpectedly begs Elizabeth to help send her back. Our Elizabeth never knew Fitzroy, but Fitzroy knows things about her no one else does. And then she loses her grip on who she is/was again. At this point Elizabeth doesn’t understand what she’s doing, so she goes to Columbia 2 to both look for herself and to see if there’s a Fitzroy, and there is. Elizabeth is mistakenly taken for Elizabeth 2 and taken away. Booker and Fitzroy 2 have to go find her. We see this Fitzroy get destroyed by having her weapons dealer and comrades killed when they’ve been going out of their to spare the people of Columbia who have nothing to do with the conflict, and she snaps. She kills the son, and Elizabeth kills her. Infinite tries to play with the idea that a person at their core stays the same, but does nothing to make us believe it. Even if the player thinks Fitzroy 2 is justified, she still killed the son when she didn’t have to, just like variant Fitzroy. At this point, Booker would be deep into his timeline psychosis and this is my “ticking clock”. Elizabeth is a tear baby and immune, and Robert Lutece is built different. This is when Booker would start remembering Anna, or Comstock 2’s memories of Anna being sold, mixing with his own memories of being the one to sell her. He would find a Voxophone of Robert Lutece’s experience with timeline psychosis, and it would show that Booker is going to get worse, not better. Comstock 2 would actually be a good adopted father to Elizabeth 2, and maybe there could even be a scene where he has Booker over for dinner when he breaks in to mistakenly rescue her and they talk, which would go a long way for characterization, and he sees Elizabeth 2 genuinely happy. But somehow Columbia 2 is still extremist and racist, because Comstock at his core hasn’t changed. Whether Elizabeth is right or wrong, this would make a stronger case for the ending, because she’d convince herself that Booker can’t change based on what she’s seen, and even she herself can’t. Elizabeth 2 would go on to be the doomsday sheep, and Elizabeth 1 would destroy multiple timelines and herself for the “greater good”. This wouldn’t kill *all* Elizabeth’s, but she wouldn’t be the first or last one to make the choice to erase everything to prevent everything. During his extreme timeline psychosis, Booker would’ve realized the endgame reveals, but with the time to explore who he is and who Comstock is as he “resists” the impulses of his other self like Fitzroy failed to do. Comstock 2 isn’t affected because it’s his timeline, and the player could ever get to sit with Booker’s regrets before Elizabeth saves him by returning to Columbia 1, making it so he can’t just jump anywhere and everywhere while keeping the multiple timelines in the background. It wouldn’t just be a nosebleed, it would be death. I haven’t played Burial at Sea, but my version of it would be a variant of Elizabeth that doesn’t lose hope in change and is guided by the Lutece’s (who eventually get tired of rowing that boat) into going back to give Booker a choice to sell Anna anyway for something offered that would be worth it to the player (proving her other selves right), or keeping Anna and getting nothing in return (proving them wrong), which would mean Elizabeth 3 never got her powers, and she’s both erased and saved at the same time.
The reason vigors don't fit Columbia could because of the change in the plot. The vigors were always supposed to be created by Fink, but many things suggest that his role in the plot was reduced, early on he was supposed to be the equivalent of Andrew Ryan and Columbia had a connection with Liechtenstein (manufacturing country)and was more art nouveau and darker like og BioShock, there is even a completed model of an elderly Fink in Handyman armor who was supposed to be a boos.
I'm a fool, but I'd love to see more multiple universes played out and explained. I want to see more Elizabeth's, get confused when we see two identical ones and realize one is more cheerful because they believe in Combstock while the other is resentful for not. One coming with us because they just want to see the world they'll inherit through fire while the other is just normal Elizabeth. A Dewitt that actually allies with Slate (and others), so we loose Elizabeth and instead get someone we can learn and empathize with before realizing "Did we act to hastily, or will Slate always turn crazy in realities where the Vox aren't running the show?" What about Fitzroy, let's get a little bit of a Frostpunk narrative and show her being peaceful, but with each tear, see how her message for a better tomorrow gets twisted into just being on top. Things like these are pretty much the heavy fisted usage of the parallel universe mechanic, but it's important to note that nothing matters, except what we want at this moment, in a game where the only thing matters is Elizabeth and Dewitt, but how and why they got to where they are, across Columbia, shouldn't be discounted as mere movement or level traversal.
This is probably your best video so far. As a request, it would be cool to see how you would fix Metroid Other M's story, considering how much context was lost in translation.
Oh man, I’ve never played Other M, but it would be a fun one. I’d like to play some of the modern Metroid games (I think I stopped after Super), but I’d need to track down a Wii…
I think the biggest weakness people have with the game is that they think that there should be an overlapping narrative with complexity. This is why the Fitzroy stuff make people upset. They wanted the cause to be justified. And her killing was too far. That's not her going too far, that's her removing the mask. When she learns of him being alive in the other world it's not for her to care if it's true. It's better for her that he remain dead. Fitzroy, Booker, and Comstock lie to themselves.They mask their deeds but their self-serving and self-destructive. This is a theme that continues in BaS with Elizabeth. She NEEDED him to pay. Even if it killed her. Fitzroy wanted retribution, not revolution. Comstock used faith to forgive himself. Booker with his guilt. And for all four of them realizing that their paths would lead to their deaths. Elizabeth was the only one truly free of the cycle and even then she would not let go.
I love the story fixing and tweaks, but at 1:25:47 it says Daisy shot Fink, but earlier I thought she threw him out of the airship, I'm not sure If I missed a section or if the one thrown out the ship was an imposter or something. Anyway great video!
30:40 I hate to be “that guy” but Schrödinger’s Cat is not an explanation of the Many Worlds theory. It was Schrödinger’s thought experiment made to criticize quantum theory as ridiculous and incompatible with macroscopic systems. Because considering the idea of a cat being simultaneously alive and dead unless observed is nonsense. A cat can’t be both.
Cucumbers feed the algorithm. Overall, love all of the ideas you came up with, the only change I can immediately think of is the very end, about the 'fever dream' illusion of choice: "Booker says he was a fool just like Daisy for chasing a world that didn't exist but Elizabeth tells him that Daisy had Faith she could build a better world and was willing to do anything even kill or die to make that reality. Booker doesn't understand because after everything that's been done to him and everything he's done to others he's never believed in a better world. to stop Comstock Booker needs the one thing he's never had, Faith. the price for sparing the world of Comstock is never getting to reunite with the baby he thinks he left at home and Booker pays the price because maybe just maybe there is a door behind a door behind a door with a better world." I think this would feel like Booker got to do 'one less thing wrong' among all his other screwups, and that is a reward in a way, but doesn't feel tied into Infinite's story. The player, usually, realizes that Anna is Elizabeth way earlier than Booker, but that moment should still happen, and it should be at the moment I quoted from the Transcript (Thanks youtube) - not as a reveal, but as an inspiration for that moment of Faith. He doesn't fall into the fever dream of what is or isn't real and has a fake choice, instead Booker realizes he was a terrible father for giving up on himself and in turn, for giving her up, he apologizes as he realizes just how many of his choices led to this moment, not *just* the choice of Baptism. So Booker agrees to the drowning, not to see Anna again, not even to stop Comstock and save the world, but in hope that somewhere out there, 'beyond a door behind a door', is an Anna he didn't make suffer, the better world as you put it, not because there isn't a Comstock around, but simply because Anna is with him, and so he gladly sacrifices himself to eliminate as many Comstocks *and* "himselfs" as he can - the Bookers who chose to give Anna away. The man was willing to let New York burn and destroyed 90% of Columbia for his little girl, his sacrifice should be less about sparing the world and more about explicitly hoping for the best for his daughter, even if its not *him* who gives her the best, Booker never believes in a better world, but he hopes for a better world for *Anna*, even if its just one, a single world with a daughter who never has to suffer either version of a 'bad father', Comstock or Debt Booker, in her life, hoping to only leave behind 'Better Bookers and Happy Annas' to live on. Then rather than the ending feeling like the game's version of just 'somehow' Booker ends up with Anna, or your version where it feels like Booker was doing the right thing by Anna 'the whole time' (As he never realizes he gave her up due to going from 'fever dream' to being with Anna, thus realistically cementing him thinking she was there all along and he never gave her up), it feels like his faith was rewarded in that somewhere out there, there is at least one 'Good Booker and Happy Anna' as he hoped. But that's just my view, maybe its terrible from an outside perspective, maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement and we're actually on the same relative idea, I just didn't get that you meant, I don't know lol The BIG thing to me is that Booker *should* know that Anna is Elizabeth, simply to apologize for everything he did, and to hope a 'better Booker' is out there raising an Anna who never had to suffer neither a 'bad Booker' nor a 'Comstock' ever - make the ending about both hope and repentance, something that any father who screwed up with his daughter should want, and to make it another layer of difference between Booker and Comstock, who never cared about how much he hurt Elizabeth and all of his hopes were about his wants and desires, not hers. Still, all that said, want to let you know there is another person out there who loves this type of content even if I'm 3 months late to the party lol 'Fix the Plot' videos are vastly more interesting than 'Here's a list of what is wrong' vids and I support you in the hopes that you continue doing this even though its a crapload of work! You can thank the Dead Space 3 and Kendra vids for pulling me in lol
Stumbled across your channel, and I am very glad that I did. I don't see a lot of video game RUclipsrs talk about story fixers like you did. Good job. If you take requests, one game that I thought had good potential but the story held it back from being really great was Assassin's Creed 3.
Glad you mentioned how the game was missing a Frank Fontaine because as much we all like Andrew Ryan it’s more interesting to see how their ideology can bring the worst of people to the table.
@@tylerlong5112 Not only that, but it showed how someone who believes in a rancid ideology can’t always control everyone who views the rancid nature of said ideology as a path to power. Fontaine didn’t believe in Ryan’s vision, but he knew how to play the game that Ryan had created better than Ryan could. Ryan was defeated by his own love of free markets in a way that it doesn’t really feel like Comstock was defeated by his racism.
Infinite is a great game. But not a great *Bioshock* game. I honestly wish they wouldve done a bioshock game set during the Rapture Civil War instead of Columbia. I like Columbia, but it doesnt hit the same as Rapture. But Infinite has so many good quotes “God forgives, but im only a prophet, so I dont have to…” “Sometimes if you dont draw first, you dont draw at all.” “Are you a tin man or a real soldier?”
I really loved your version of BioShock Infinite, I played it alongside BioShock 1 and 2 in high school. Even with all the issues I still have with Infinite, I still love it. Thinking about BioShock still gets me emotional. BTW, I loved your analogy of having Comstock be Jesus, but having Fink be Judas, but that also led me to make another connection. If Comstock is Andrew Ryan, then Fink is Frank Fontaine!
One thing that I've always liked about infinite was Colombia not only was it a good decent mirror from rapture it's practically the reason why no government especially the United States cared about rapture they had their own City to deal with.
Took me a few days to watch it but i really enjoyed your alternative narrative (loaded with cucumbers). For me I've never been a huge fan of the multiverse thing so I never really thought about the story much after playing it but it was nice to revisit it a decade later with a more critical analysis. Great stuff man.
I think the game loses me with the constant tearing into other versions of the same reality. You lose the connections you had with the original world you were in, and are now fighting against an individual who only knew the previous version of your character. Also, Elizabeth is essentially just a cheat code to give you an advantage against a fearsome foe, instead of you doing the work to tear it down. It just makes the finale seem *unearned.* The ending twist is nice at least, if it didn’t have all that filler from Elizabeth beforehand…
1. best intro ever "Everyones dying for MY sins" 2. I am Ken Levine's confirmed biggest fan so im sooooo interested to see this vid and get other takes
Thank you! I am REALLY proud of that intro, it's not just a good tagline, it's thematically accurate. Hope Ken Levine's biggest fan enjoyed the rest of it!
This game didn’t need to be confusing. It could have been a story about Boker redeeming himself, fighting evil, rescuing Elisabeth, and getting a happy ending. What do game makers have against happy endings? Bad endings and games like last of us 2 stress people out. And with all the alternate timelines gives people headaches.
It was weird to me that the "ghost" of her mother was like a (at least partially) theoretical version of her? Made up in Elizabeth's head? It was both a story breaking idea to me and an interesting idea for something else entirely. Like a horror movie. BIG EYEROLL MOMENT at "Why?" "Because it does." lol sounded more like an admission that it's always just gonna boil down to the OG Bioshock. This game was OKAY but this story just wasn't for me.
@@haesome8613 I really had a good time the SECOND time through, but the first time I ever played it, I was hypercritical because I really wanted it to the nail the landing, despite still thinking it isn't perfect, it is still a very fun game.
If the ghost fight was just Lady Comstock teleporting to different spots, re-acting out different parts of her life or various Lady Comstocks around the graveyard and your fighting the memories of the people that watched her speeches or what have you, it would at least have landed better imo.
Cucumber (it's more like fanfiction and hard reboot, but try out the twist at the end) : Instead of Booker's divergence being the baptism where he becomes either Comstock or a drunkard, how about the divergence being just the army. After Wounded Knee Booker either leaves and becomes a P.I. drunkard or stays and (to escape the ridicule of his comrades) changes into Cornelius Slate. Comstock would be somebody they both knew in the army but in Bookers timeline there was never a Columbia and Comstock is the same age as Booker and Slate, but Slate looks slightly older and is covered in battle scars.. Booker (the slightly more moral one clouded with guilt but drowning in booze) SELLS Anna Slate (still a uniformed maniac) loses her while on campaign in Cuba or the Boxer Rebellion. Booker goes to Columbia to get Elizabeth. Slate is a Commander in the Columbia Army and loyal to Comstock. Comstock is gearing up to "cleanse the sodom" early like you said. Instead of being locked in a tower Elizabeth knows she is Comstocks daughter. Booker is sent to kidnap her more than rescue her. He collaborates with the Vox Populi to do so and Slate hunts after him. Booker also knows pretty well that he sold his own daughter but the player doesn't. Elizabeth's arc is more about her realizing what the "father" that she actually loved had planned for her to become. And Booker finding his own humanity in keeping her safe as they escape Columbia after the Vox Populi declare they want to use her against Comstock. Booker and Elizabeth discover Comstock has been using artificial wombs and aging technology to rack up a larger army and can perfectly use that to clone himself another daughter. This would show how inspite of everything he never really had a large following, nor did he follow the word of god either. Slate separates his own following out of Comstocks Army and exposes how and why he would abandon his daughter, his army starts burning down Columbia faster than the Vox Populi could. Booker also learns sooner that he came there from a different timeline and it was Comstocks inner circle that brought him. By the end Booker and Slate both learn Elizabeth is Anna and one of them was her real father. NOW HERES THE REAL TWIST. Booker's Anna is the one in the game Slate's Anna died. Comstock went to another timeline to kidnap Anna because it was the last chance he had after failing to go into different timelines NOT FOR ANNA..... but for her mother... who died in childbirth and he was obsessed with. The ending could be about wether Booker or Slate ends up taking Elizabeth out of Columbia and continuing being her father. And the duality would be how despite how Slate turned into a murderous grunt at least he never sold his daughter and Booker who found his moral compass after Wounded Knee and tried to repent fell on worse ways and sold his own child. I have a TON of friends that played this game back in 2013 and they all fell in love with Elizabeth. But nobody is replaying it anymore. And i've recommended it to another TON of people and the thing that always puts them off is "How the hell are that Rick O'Connell and Santa Clause guys supposed to be the same person? And that's is what every Bioshock Infinite discussion starts with. And after explaining that, THEN there's everything else. Elizabeth in the game is waaaaaaaaayyy too perfect. They could have her start off as a bit spoiled and posh and then grow up as she sees the world around her. Also for somebody that was effectively bought and sold you never really get the feeling that that was bad enough for her. The game rushes to tell you she was locked in a tower (and kept safe) and brainwashed to become the "lamb of god" (though not before she turns 18, i mean it doesn't look like they made her read the bible yet even) and how she can pick locks while the Pinkerton can't and open time portals to wherever and whenever but stayed locked up because.... (Ryan George voice) SO THE GAME COULD HAPPEN. Nix the whole "tear" BS. You don't need it on top of superpowers and retrofuturistic tech. Bioshock 1 and 2 didn't need it and it complicates the story much more than it adds to gameplay. I mean you got a character that can bend time and space and you get oil spills and mannequins and ammo boxes and parts of a wall and a complicated story for it. Having her throw supplies and be cute while i zap, shoot, burn and yeet mooks would've been juuuuust fine. It's not that the game is too complicated, it's that it's more complicated than it should be.
Cucumber! Oh, I like this. I wish we learned more about Slate and his history with Columbia. It always seemed so contrived to me that he was in Columbia in the first place.
I enjoyed your description more than the game we actually received. Infinite is a great game, but I didn't enjoy it as a Bioshock. I would definitely love to live in a timeline where Levine actually got to finish the narrative shown in the trailer.
I always throw the ball at the couple because I am supposed to be an early 1900's American, didn't know you would encounter the couple if you didn't throw it.
@@poopsmith6853 That doesn't really matter. Plenty of people were and still are racist, but still think it is wrong to stone people to death with baseballs. Plenty of people in the early 1900s denounced lynchings while still being personally racist.
I still remember coming off from bioshock 2 straight into infinite and being confused and frustrated (with both story and gameplay), and I quickly put down the game for a while. It wasn't until later after hearing mostly good things about it, that I tried it again. I won't lie, the pacing really threw me, and I hated some characters that I felt like I was 'supposed' to like. Idk, it felt like a mess to me until toward the end where I was finally starting to understand the story. Great story with a fun premise, but told in a messy way imo. I would have loved to see this version ngl.
Cucumber and honestly I couldn't say how I'd fix this game. I'd throw in a nod to bioshock two sure but thats it. Haven't played this game since it came out. But thank you for taking the time to make this video. You're awesome 😃
I’m 99 percent sure the whole “Old Elizabeth isn’t the one that’s been following you the whole game” is what the creators intended. But it’s very confusing and your summary is the best I’ve heard.
Ah Bioshock Infinite. It's been *checks steam* over ten years since I last played this game. Came back for Burial at Sea and never returned. I do remember my reaction to the ending of the main story. I said it was "Trying to be smarter than it had any right to be." Looking back, it felt so smug. As for BaS? Totally unsatisfying conclusion. It felt like a double-barreled fuck you to me. I don't even remember what set my back up against it. I just remember feeling insulted.
The game should've had a feature where you can manually switch between universes, let me explain: So the whole "aquire guns" plot and switching dimensions could've been spiced up with the few decisions that we made (that were ultimately useless in the actual game). Let's say you don't kill slate in your playthrough. Well, in that universe, the police are busy with him and cut corners by just killing the gunsmith. Slate alive = dead gunsmith. So you need a gunsmith, but in universe 2 slate is dead and so the police had enough time to lock down all the equipment. Gunsmith alive, but can't use equipment. The quite ambitious gameplay feature could have players navigate various dimensions to solve different puzzles. Your choice determines your original dimension and sets you down a specific quest line to achieve your goal.
Cucumber Also dang that was an amazing and pretty well thoughtout way of making Bioshock Infinite story way better, i still like the game and story but yeah there was clearly a lot of beats shuffled around and i wish they would've allowed for more time to properly fix the issues. I also think allowing for more unique options and having them affect the world would've helped, for example when Booker throws the ball and we make the choice 1 could be throwing it at the couple and everyone cheers and Booker is simply let go maybe during the rest of the festival he gets discovered and we have to deal with an alternate way of getting around, we still get the skyhook but with a unique animation sequence. Same for many other possible changes including the bird/cage, choose bird and Songbird appears more frequently luke you said as a mini boss, similar to the handymen choose the cage and more enemies appear as well as maybe different dialogues 1 about hope and freedom the other about security. Very complicated lol but still loved the video and how you were able to make a better story while using everything the game had
Yes! I get that they wanted to funnel the player back to the same path no matter what they chose, but there were ways to do that without making it so limiting. I was going to include the raffle in that montage of the 'other choices' you could have made, but the raffle throw is so similar no matter what you picked that it would have just confused the audience.
This game, for all it's flaws, has a special place in my heart. I first played it around the time I got a kitten and ten years later, she still gets super happy hearing the barbershop quartet version of God Only Knows. It's her favorite song
I don't really see the topic of oppressed becoming the oppressors as somehow a bad narrative idea. It makes the point that if you wish to change a system you better make sure you indeed replace it with something better and know what you're doing. Otherwise you'll just end up becoming that which you hated. Recognizing issues and understanding a change is needed is only one step, figuring out how to actually fix things is the most important one as otherwise you might end up learning how things came to be in the first place. It leads to the uncomfortable topic of how all bad actions are made by humans and how the said humans might have been normal reasonable people who were molded into these horrible people through circumstances they had no choice in. Demonizing and villianizing people makes these topics easier to approach but they can dilute the complexity and nuance of the topics, remove a level of understanding from them that can help us figure out how to avoid repeating the same mistakes. If one wishes to do a revolution, they better make sure they know how to continue handling things afterwards because otherwise all they've done is change the management.
@@Tk-mj1cl I'm more of just talking in general as bringing up the topic reminded me of how people have talked about it in the past. So my comment isn't necessarily directed at the video itself, more of at a topic it brought up.
The idea by itself is good but there's an aspect of the game that makes it almost impossible to work: the Columbia's citizens are literal cartoons of racists. The game put almost all the efforts possible to make them as unlikable and dull as they could and the only time the Vox Populi does something slightly worse in comparison to the actions of the player is whe Fitzroy menaces a boy by the request of the twins.
The problem with bioshock infinite, or your rewrite, is the fact we're dealing a multiverse. The is an infinity of Columbia, Booker, Comstock and Elizabeth. Any world we're in is meaningless because we can always leave it for an other one. Any time we fail, we can be replaced by an other Booker. And everytime Elizabeth drown Booker, there is an Elizabeth that don't do it. Heck there is even an infinite of world where none of theses character, location and event exist. There is even an infinity of Columbia where Fitzroy, Comstock and Fink managed to get along and create a litteral utopia. We can save New York, kill Comstock, destroy Columbia, there will always be a reality where they exist and do evil. The only thing that can really matter for us is our Booker and our Elisabeth. I love Bioshock Infinite, but it's clear it struggle because of that infinity aspect. I think if we want to fix Infinite, we need to actually get rid of the Infinite. And to achieve that, we need three main rules: 1)Only the Luteces can travel freely across the multiverse. 2)Elizabeth/Anna can only open tear between her original world (which is also Booker's world) and Comstock world. 3)No time travel for Elizabeth/Anna either. The Luteces worked with one of the Comstock, in one of the Columbia, in one of the infinite reality that exist. They get in contact with other, help Comstock buy the child of Booker, then have their accident/assassination attempt and basically ascend to godhood. It happens and didn't happens in an infinity of universe and timeline. In some of thoses realities, Anna/Elizabeth loose her finger, being in two universes, two realities at the same time, allowing her to travel between theses two specifics realities. That way, we do not have an infinity of universe to save, but at best just two and we also have a genuine connection between Booker and Elizabeth. Only one Book can be her father, only one can save her. This is where the Luteces try to perform a little experiment, sending Booker to save his daughter and watch how it unfold. Act 1 pretty much happens the same way it did or the way your rewrite it. I think however, that, from act 2, to play on the multivers thing by alternating between New York and Columbia, between the seedy streets of New York and the paradisiac appearance of Columbia. We can even use the Vox Populi and some fancy New York scenery to invert the contrast. Two important thing, however: Elizabeth cannot stay in her original reality because of the Syphon and Booker is amnesiac, because of his initial interdimensional travel. So both of them fail to realise the New York they are visiting is their reality and basically dismiss it as a mere dream, a mere moment of respite where they don't have to be in Columbia. They are led to believe Comstock world is their world and that they need to stop him. Act 2 will also establish strong bond between the Vox Populi and Booker and Elizabeth. By act 3, everything is crashing down, with Comstock trying to invade his own New York and the Vox Populi going full revolution mode. From your final confrontation with Comstock and the element gathered in the previous acts, Booker and Elizabeth are slowly driven to the truth. Even as you kill Comstock and destroy the Syphon, the attack on New York continue. You are then presented with a choice. =>Booker leaves that reality and go back to his with Elizabeth, but also their friend in the Vox Populi, which mean dooming them and the rest of that reality to Columbia tyrany. =>Stay and fight alongside the Vox Populi, but Elizabeth die and Booker is left stranded in Comstock reality. I think that version gives more meaning to the realities you go through and dive a bit into Plato's cave myth. What is reality? What value should you give to the cave? Would you sacrifice what is most precious to you for the cave?
In the first months after finishing Infinite, I was flaming for a long time about the whole plot structure (especially because of the way they described how quantum mechanics works) and the easiest idea for some kind of twist for me was the change in Elizabeth's motivation at the end. Write it so that she got tired of Booker and drowned him, yes, to prevent a catastrophe with Comstock, but also because of personal pain when she found out that Booker sold her. She looked so dead inside and uninterested for the second half of the journey through the lighthouses, when the secret of her relationship with Booker began to reveal itself. Thus, the companion would become an antagonist and there would be some complex theme of perception of the damage that our loved ones inflict on us and the issue of forgiving them for the harm caused. It seemed to me that it would be very Bioshock style, because she is our companion and those characters are usually our support from a mechanical point of view, but here she, on the contrary, will become our end. Thus, like in the first Bioshock there is a plot twist based on game mechanics. So they would've paid tribute to traditions, and in the end there would be fewer inconsistencies with quantum physics, because the decision was made not by logic, but by feelings. So cucumber!
Oooh, Elizabeth being an antagonist is interesting (and surely, there would be at least one reality where this happens), also definitely echoes Atlas turning on you in the original game.
One thing that always bothered me about Infinite's ending is that they just created another split in the timeline. Now there's a timeline where Booker drowns at the baptism and another where he doesn't. The only constant being Booker is at the baptism. Therefore, there decision tow drown him ultimately meant nothing.
I'm so torn on how much to recap in these. I thought it was important given how bonkers the existing plot is, but I also don't want to do a recap and then say "okay, bye".
This is a great piece! ...While I loved Burial at Sea, I thought the main game went off the rails the moment it started going into alternate realities. All dramatic tension and stakes they'd built so meticulously were gone, never to return. So you're just in a random and arbitrary world after that, still trying to feel like the endgame matters. And while the end itself is cool, the third act of the gameplay story on is this deflated thing you can't really put any stock in. A drastically different world that you don't know how to feel about. Like why would I go to a different universe where Lin is alive to get guns to secure my airship... when I can't get back, and I don't know anything about the Vox or the airship (etc.) in the other universe? The game is trying to carry the same motivation where it doesn't work. Why should Shantytown affect me when I don't know what it was like in Columbia 1? Did Columbia 1 for sure even have a Shantytown? The entire thing needed a more early and upfront discussion of what Elizabeth could see via tears and alternative worlds. They needed to establish constants. There’s always a Comstock and Fink. Always a Daisy. Etc. Booker telling Daisy 3 he did what Daisy 1 wanted makes no sense. The constants can't resonate within these variables. And it's weird to me that Levine and the devs didn't think that would be the case. It's weird that they never saw it as problematic that they were saying those who seek to overthrow fascists and racists are just as bad. Such a bad decision on their part. It's weird they thought they'd tell the history of the Comstocks and Daisy in a different reality than we started in, with no way to tell if that answer would have been the same in Columbia 1. It's weird that Booker can suddenly be put back in Columbia 3 after Elizabeth says she can't do that. And it’s weird that Elizabeth delivers the twist rather than Comstock, supplemented perhaps by the Luteces. Elizabeth should have been reeling together with Booker. Comstock was the only living player who actually knows what’s going on. To prevent him being the one to blow their minds is a bad choice, as in the game, Comstock is aloof for no reason. One of the top 5 best intro sequences ever, though. Up there with the original game.
Youre not gonna unscrew infinite without changing the majority of the ending, they start acting on weird certain feelings that seem to come out of nowhere, like Comstock must die, first Elizabeth then Booker It should be more of a sacrifice rather than an unknowing damning of himself, and it feels out if character for Elizabeth to just do it
infinite's story is either the surface of neptune or a polished dog turd, and since i live in this reality i'll say i played this game but remember nothing of it and (now) im glad i don't :v
I love this game overall, and I remember my excitement about pre-ordering it and downloading it over college dorm's wifi. I know one of the major issues upon launch that people had was the cut content and especially people feeling like the choices had little weight especially since before this the developers hyped up your freedom of choice and how it mattered in the game. Based on what I have heard from other deep dives about the game, it would be difficult to achieve what the developers were originally planning for the game without a large increase of the budget and thr time needed to properly complete to their original vision. To keep things within the developers' capabilities at the time, I would have probably delayed the game a year and only made some changes to the story. The first being, I would give the player more choices that affected the gameplay and what Columbia timelines you explored/experienced. The gameplay, level design, and what you encounter overall will be the same, but there will be slight differences in what is happening in the setting and what dialogue you encounter. Like based on your choices, you see either the timeline where Daisy is more violent, one where she is semi-merciful, and one where she is completely merciful. The timeline you see could be based on what you show as your character's beliefs on mercy, forgiveness, hope, and et cetera throughout the game. And maybe you either are shown the timeline that matches those beliefs or maybe the total opposite of them and what those outcomes are. I would also more heavily play up, you the player character as the "unrepentant sinner" vs the repentant relgious leader and how much are they really different despite their different life choices. I think this can also help expand on the themes of choice, human free will, and fate that the game already slightly touches on. I would also probably for the ending allow the player to choose to either get baptized, walk away again, or go down the original ending with the Elizabeth's dunking you into the water to prune either timeline of having baby Anna or founding Columbia. And then show the final ending where what ending you will see will be based on what your final choice was and what choices you made throughout the game.
Tbh I think the original event with Daisy aged perfectly. Power corrupts. And when you can justify your evils for a greater good, any more evil is just a means towards the supposed end that will never come. The dlc ruined something I thought was a perfect mirror. To those who hate what they see when looking into the mirror, you are the reason the mirror needed to be made in the first place. I think it's even better you were rooting for the vox just to be disappointed. It's a great story when you become invested and even more so when the author can use that against you later. The thing I loved about Infinites tale is that there were no heroes. It's a tale of endless revenge. Even the ending says that you can't stop the pointless cycle unless you stop in before it begins. Though slight flaws, I think Infinite before the dlc was beautiful. Don't know if it needed to be a bioshock game exactly but really good. A spiritual successor not tied to bioshock in the same vain as dishonored and Deathloop. God now I wanna go back and play it again.
Power corrupts? How about the fact that a revolution is not a dinner party and that excesses are always expected in them? Or do you think the retaliation of the oppressed is the same as the violence of the oppressors?
@Magnesium-BasedLifeform-i9e I'm not sure what you're trying to say but if you don't think that oppressed can easily become oppressors then you do not know or understand history or even what's happening in today's societies across the globe. "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
@@Magnesium-BasedLifeform-i9e If you don't believe the oppressed can easily become the oppressors and justify evils they do to others that had nothing to do with their injustice then you are ignorant of or purposely blind to not only history, but what evils that plague the world today. Justice is good, vengeance is often a justification for the jealous to take the power they crave without guilt at the lose of their morals in the process. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
What do cucumbers have to do with BioShock Infinite?
Constants and vegetables.
@@KevinHelpUs 🙄
@GhostPlanetFilms I’m funny! Laugh!!
@@KevinHelpUs so funny I forgot to. [LOL!]
It was pretty funny can’t wait for the next vid 😂
"In an effort to keep a low profile you kill 27 police officers" is really funny
Terminator style.
Noone can say they saw you if noone is alive to say it
Troy Baker really played the same character twice within the same year and that's actually quite funny to know.
@@otaxCarbon what do you mean?
@@pnut3844able He played Joel in the Last of us, who had to escort a girl Ellie to a specific place, In Infinite he played Booker Dewitt who had to escort a girl Elizabeth to a specific place, there is a lot of similarities there in BOTH games
I’ve played a shit ton of games with Troy Baker voicing lines in them and I am kicking myself for not realising sooner that Booker was Baker
On Elizabeth's captivity, you forget some points that make things even creepier: they have her development documented down to when her first period started, and there are pictures of her disrobing.
This is the extent of how horrible her captivity was.
Yeah, I went with the teddy bear instead. Didn’t want to have to stop to explain what a menarche was on RUclips.
@@KevinHelpUs Mh, I think it's a very important point. I would have just said the bit about her period and shown the note on screen and just left the rest for people to google themselves.
@@lillywho bro some things are better left unsaid
Like your useless remark, saying bro to a lady, etc?@@baplotnik
@@lillywho lilly-got-a-big-belly wants to talk about Elizabeths first period, great, nobody else wants to or needs to. You must be a real hit with all the guys. I can tell by how instantly argumentative you are when yeah the videos fine it doesn't need a section about period blood and pictures of Elizabeth's undeveloped tits
Me realizing the rewrites were most likely to be part of the main game but were scrapped because Ken “cucumber” Levine decided to change the game like 100 times
It’s wild how different everything from the cut content would have made the game!
After playing Burial at Sea and learning about how Colombia and Rapture are intertwined, I came up with a headcanon that Songbird was a version of Booker that failed to rescue her, but instead was turned into a prototype version of a Big Daddy that Fink made using materials he had access to back in 1912. Hence why he's so dedicated and attached to her. Maybe Fink used a prototype Handyman design to create the rest of suit for that version of Booker.
And as a way to get him to obey, the suit gives him regular infusions of that one vigor that allows you to change enemys into allies and since he's also her dad from another world, the combination acts as a makeshift bond resembling the ones between big daddies and little sisters but in this case it ONLY allows songbird to bond to Elizabeth.
@@wayneigoe6722 There's a reference of Songbird in Bioshock 1, do you know that?
@@TuanNguyen-uz1ws I did not. Neat!
Don’t even have to change how they die. Every Booker drowns.
@@TuanNguyen-uz1ws Less a reference and more of they used a weird sound they played in Fort Frolic in BS1 and then recontextualized it in Infinite to be Songbird's scream.
Isn’t this in a fanfic where the premise was Songbird’s life in “reverse” starting from his death? It was the first time I encountered this headcanon. I love seeing similar ideas in the wild, it makes me think that there’s more reality to these ideas than we may have initially thought!
Cucumber.
If I had a nickel for everytime Troy Baker voiced a middle aged morally questionable anti hero man who lost his daughter then years later was send to escort a girl named Elizabeth from one place to another who becomes a sort of adobted daughter to him I would have two nickels, which isnt much but its weird that it happened twice.
I know they released close enough to each other that it’s just a coincidence, but I could have listed off more but I didn’t want to spoil too much of The Last of Us.
For instance, both games have us aligning with a separatist group who claim to be fighting for freedom but are actually just as bad as their oppressors.
@@KevinHelpUs The parallels truly are uncanny.
Wait Ellie in TLOU is called Elizabeth??
@@sayansengupta5791time jump is even within a year of each other 😱
@@tommyscott8511 Eli is often the short for Elizabeth
This is the content that RUclips needs, fixing franchises. It's easy to review a bad product and say it's well "bad" but it take really momentum rebuild it from the ground up. Most people when you ask them how they would fix it? They'd just go the easy route and say they wouldn't have done it at all. Now that just scream laziness.
Exactly! Anyone can complain that something is bad, but if it was your job to fix it, how would you? Glad you enjoyed it!
Agreed. That's not only lazy, that's counterproductive to the argument - if you're saying that it's bad, then you should come up with a way to improve it. Saying that "I wouldn't have done it at all" contributes nothing to the argument itself and basically just translates to "because I said it sucks, it sucks". Which, in that case, would beg the question as to why anyone would have a conversation with someone so unreasonable - which most people won't. But this channel... this is something great in the making. Keep up the good work mate!
I agree, saying something is bad and leaving it at that not only isn’t productive, but it comes off as just pessimistic noise. This content is great because it shows that the reviewer has taken in the media, understands it, and was able to rebuild it in an interesting way. Like an AU only instead of it being cringey, it builds on the original with respect to it. It’s great to watch.
@@JamesAxis13 I mean... this could be technically considered an AU, just a well-written one. We only consider things cringy because they rub us the wrong way.
Really, you think writing fanfiction is somehow better than generic media criticism? Because this IS still fanfiction. No one's actually going to act on this. At least 'X thing bad' doesn't imagine a world where the creators actually listen to any of this and acts honest with itself.
It's a well known fact that a LOT of the preview material that we were shown never made it into the game and it was getting significant rewrites up until a little under seven months before it shipped. It's likely the highly linear game we got was heavily cut down from something that more resembled the original bioshock.
That said he's a few of the changes I've had burning in the back of my head for years.
1: Elizabeth is our replacement for plasmids. In the original trailer it's shown that Elizabeth has a LOT of powers besides opening tears. Summoning yes, but also a lot of telekinesis sort of things. I imagine you'd hit the same button you'd hit to activate a power and Elizabeth would dodge into frame from nowhere in particular and do the thing, just like she does when she tosses you salts/health.. which I think was ORINGINALLY in the game as the replacement for hypos. Anyway, there's a moment in the trailer when she asks booker whether she should go all out with her powers, which ends up causing her nose to bleed. This struck me as a replacement of the little sister choice: If we make our game easier by using Elizabeth's powers it was likely that her health would deteriorate, leading towards.... who knows?
2: Wandering through a city at war. There's a BUNCH of evidence that we'd be able to explore sections of Columbia that were either Vox or Founder controlled, and that these groups would be atleast somewhat neutral towards B & E. Trying to explore the city while avoiding hostilities would have been a FANTASTIC way to sell the unique danger of infinite's world that's only hinted at by the initial landing/beach /amusement park sections. Likewise it would make for great moment to moment tactical decisions. Do I try to force my way through? Will this escilate to violence or can I talk my way out? That loot might be useful but do I want to risk making the whole of the district hostile to me/damaging my reputation with this faction?
3: Bring racism to the surface. We are supposed to be interrogating the idea of American exceptionalism the same way we interrogated objectivism in the first game. That means racism, eugenics, the white man's burden, and brutal acts of colonial genocide to make room for white settlers. Booker being partially native and his history with wounded knee should not be locked away in audiologs, they should be direct text, as they're vital for understanding WHO Booker is and why he's capable of such violence. One of the first enmies we fight in the game is the god damn KLAN and they're studying up on indigenous phrenology so that they can oust the halfbreeds in thier midst. LET US PUNCH A RACIST IN THE FACE FOR BEING RACIST, LET US QUESTION THE CONCEPT OF MANIFEST DESTINY, LET US BE ANTI-AMERICAN. I can't help but feel like these ideas were specifically left on the cutting room floor because they were worried it'd be decisive.
Also, Songbird should have been Booker. Take that extreme " I will protect her no matter what" drive and propensity for violence and drive it up to 11, graft it into a suit, and then just keep building on it. Hell, maybe lean into the 'bio' in bioshock and give Booker some steampunk prosthesis the same way the handyman have it. Have him get more as he gets hurt (something something not having a heart and needing a machine to replace it). That'd make songbird's death by drowning poetic with the baptism. Hell, have the reason songbird is called songbird because it SINGS to young Elizabeth, the same way that we see Booker sing to current her.. and maybe with a flashback to how he'd calm Anna down when she was a baby.
They need to hire you NOW
To be fair, the game does let you throw a baseball at the caster. It also does make a point about how the "anti-racists" can be just as bad as the racists, themselves.
@@MrRAGE-md5rj You think throwing a baseball at a racist is bad?
@@MrRAGE-md5rj that's not what the game was saying, actually. especially once you include burial at sea, which you must do.
Songbird was a let down. He was underutilized and should’ve been a persistent threat throughout the game.
You did it. You made Booker a relatable, sympathetic character. I applaud you.
My personal rewrite of Infinite (to make a very long story short) involves playing as Elizabeth, losing all faith in Booker when Slate reveals his crimes and Booker is unrepentant, and joining the Vox. Daisy becomes Elizabeth’s closest ally and Elizabeth is haunted by her two ‘imaginary friends’, the Lutece Twins, who help her throughout Columbia. Ultimately, she can’t prevent the trauma of Columbia or Rapture from occurring- but she can stop it from continuing. She and the various Elizabeths from every other reality form a pact to scour the multiverse and stamp out any threats like Comstock or Ryan to ensure what happened to them is never repeated. This leads into Burial at Sea, where one of these infinite Elizabeths is currently in Rapture attempting to hunt down Ryan and Fontaine. After Fontaine’s assassination, she assumes Ryan’s the only remaining target, and teams up with an activist leader named Atlas to find him. She eventually finds out who he really is when she walks in on him calling one of his informants on the surface who is watching and waiting for the signal to activate ‘the Ace in the Hole’. She and him fight, a wave style boss battle where Atlas’ rebels attack you and Atlas doesn’t step in until the end when Elizabeth is exhausted. She runs, and winds up being caught by Ryan’s police.
Part two has Elizabeth in Persephone, begrudgingly helping Sofia Lamb in order to escape and find the quantum particle that will allow her to open a tear and leave. Without that particle, which is sort of like an anchor that allows the Elizabeth collective to open tears, she’s stuck here, and it’s too dangerous for another Elizabeth to be sent in because two of them in the same reality would be disastrous. So Elizabeth finds the particle, making her way through Siren Alley and Fontaine Futuristics to gather the tools needed to repair it. But before she can leave, she receives a tear-vision of Sofia Lamb escaping Persephone through the same path Elizabeth used. And thanks to her precognition, she knows exactly what’s going to happen next. So she books it to the Kashmir, where she is forced to make an impossible choice: stop Lamb from killing Delta and kidnapping Eleanor, someone Elizabeth sees herself in, or search the party for Ryan, her original target. If you choose to stop Lamb, Elizabeth attempts to divert Delta and Eleanor away from the restaurant and nearly gets killed. If you choose to search the party, you find Diane McClintock lamenting the fact that her lover, Ryan, is working in Hephaestus and leaving her to celebrate alone. The Kashmir is bombed, and Elizabeth nearly dies. Either way, the Elizabeth collective manages to extract our Elizabeth just before she dies, and perform surgery to keep her alive. Elizabeth mourns the fact that she failed her mission and that her actions only made things worse- but the other Elizabeths show her visions of the future of that version of Rapture. Because Elizabeth escaped Persephone, Sofia Lamb did too, which allows the events of Bioshock 2 to happen, potentially saving countless Little Sisters. And because she worked alongside Atlas, he was able to give the go-ahead to lure Jack into Rapture, allowing Bioshock 1 to happen and, again, potentially saving the Little Sisters. They show her visions of the bad timelines as well as the good ones, and the Elizabeths all agree that they can’t hold a timeline’s hand and force it to turn out how they want, but they can give them the chance to become something better. And that choice, the choice to become better or do something else, is what truly matters, because that’s what they escaped Columbia for.
The Cancelled Versions (From the E3 Demos) of BioShock Infinite would have been something else rather than the final version. This Game also has a Boat Load of Cut Content and Scrapped Story Elements That could have changed the game.
I suppose you could say Bioshock Infinite is just as much of a Shrödinger's cat as the story itself... In our world, we got a game altered and cut to pieces, but in another world, we got the game that wasn't cut and altered... Shame we don't have the same abilites as Elizabeth...
It's crazy cuz we see that exact version of Elizabeth at the end standing with everyone else. And we see propaganda of that politician in the beginning.
@@wayneigoe6722 ironic given the whole concept of Bioshock’s uniqueness of third person shooting, was you having these super powers. Having the ability to use Elizabeth’s tears in action would have been a much more fluid experience, but understandably make Elizabeth, as a character, meaningless.
I honestly wish they recover all of what was cut, and leave it out on the table for fans to puzzle together, to write the story how the devs initially intended it to be
Cucumber: I liked how Bioshock was a representation of the two types of utopias, and how they’re actually dystopias.
Rapture is about a world with 100% freedom. Columbia is about a society so structured around law/religion and it has 0% freedom. Both are extremely different and yet the end result is the same…oppression of the people and society collapsing.
Rapture is in the ocean and Columbia is in the sky, representing extremes. I love this because I shows how “coming back to earth” is both literal and figurative.
Cucumber!
They did do a great job showing the dangers of ideology and how it can turn two seeming-utopias into nightmares. Even if some things could have been better, the BioShock games are unflinching in that message.
So true!
11 years later and I still feel bad for what happens to Song Bird
Drowning just seems like it was the wrong play...
That's the entire point.
I'm always happy to see more people notice Bioshock: Infinite again.
It’s definitely worth revisiting - I’m glad I did!
Even if it was about how the story's writing was up it's own ass?
Cucumber
So there are multiple plot-holes in this game, but I'm only going to focus on 1. So in Columbia 3 the reason why Booker joined the Vox was because Comstock had Elizabeth moved from Monument Island to Comstock House and Booker needed an army to go rescue her. He joins up with Fitzroy and Slate and Booker and Slate Burn down the Hall of Heroes, but shortly die in battle afterwards, Booker having failed to storm Comstock House in order to rescue Elizabeth.
However, when the Booker and Elziabeth we follow enter Columbia 3 from Columbia 2, the game completely forgets that there are 2 Elizabeths being present in this universe after Fitzroy dies and just pretents that we're back in Columbia 1as evidenced by how Comstock behaves during the cutescene where he revives Lady Comstock. If the game remembered that we were still in Columbia 3 than Comstock would have said something along the lines off "Well well well, if it isn't... Hey wait a sec! How are you, Booker, still alive after my forces killed you and how are you, Eizabeth with him and with me at the same time? Unless you 2 aren't native to THIS universe, which both a blessing and a curse" during the resurection cutscene.
And you know what would have been cool; having Songbird be the penultimate boss and having a fully brainwashed and fully juiced up Elizabeth be the final boss. Alternitively, we could just have Our heroes NOT hop universes and instead have the Vox supply them with weapons by pulling them from diffrent universes. Our heroes then join the Vox in their revolution, but desert the moment Fitzroy starts excuting people who don't join up.
I think that for me, what really failed in Infinites story was that Booker = Comstock wasn't really laid out very well. And it makes sense since that wasn't the plan originally and they were rewriting the game until a few months before release. Probably why Booker and Comstock don't look very alike, why Comstock looks ~20 years older, and why they sound nothing alike. At the same time, the way they handled them being the same man also forces the ending to be... well... nothing but a rotten cucumber.
Fixing it doesn't seem like it would be too complicated either. My main idea stems from the main song of Columbia, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken". Instead of having the Booker-Comstock split be them making different choices at the baptism, instead, Booker gets cold feet and fails to even show up to it. Then has a kid, sells her to pay his debts, realizes his mistake, spends the next 17 years drowning his regret in a bottle, goes to Columbia to trade a girl for his debt... and fails. But he isn't killed, but rather sent back in time through a tear somehow to the baptism. From there he has a religious experience and realizes the he is destined to fail and that the lamb will always rain fire down on the mountains of man.
Keeping in line with the song, this makes a circle. Booker always goes looking for his daughter, Booker is always defeated by Comstock, and Comstock always takes Bookers daughter. This not only makes Booker becoming Comstock a little more believable, but also ties the song in with the game just a little bit more. Will the circle be unbroken, or will Booker become Comstock? We can play around with this a little bit with choices we can make or through other scripted events. Its what I thought was going to happen when the Luteces had the heads-or-tails board. Every time they ask Booker heads-or-tails, regardless of what he says, it always lands on heads. Prompting a few lines out of the twins before Robert says, "There's always next time." However, this time, for our Booker, it lands on tails. The first tail out of a hundred heads on that board, followed by a few lines and a "Maybe there wont be a next time." said instead.
Otherwise the rest of the story can remain relatively intact. As you say in your video, add a little more of Fitzroy and Fink to give Comstocks other antagonists more life to them. Have a little more of Booker spread throughout as well. Definitely have Songbird show up at least one more time, maybe just before/after Finkton? Perhaps even have Comstock be more of a father to Elizabeth so that she still has some deep down reservations about actually leaving Columbia with some strange man to some far off city she realistically know little about. Finally, the elephant in the room, the thing that most people have at least a mild distaste for. The ending.
In the original, Booker gets drowned at the baptism in order to prevent Comstock from ever being born. However as many people have pointed out since the game launched, if there's a million million worlds then how would this actually stop Comstock? Ken Levine seems to agree since in BaS he has you play as Comstock in part one. Which means Booker died for nothing. Thanks, Ken. Here however, Booker could go out in a more interesting way. Maybe in order to get Elizabeth out safely, he can fly the flagship into the tower himself. There's a big explosion, the flagship, booker, Songbird, the bulk of the Vox and founder forces, as well as some of Columbia all get obliterated. Orrrr..... Booker can just take Elizabeth to Paris. They've successfully stopped Comstock from ever being born, there's no real need for Booker to sacrifice himself.
8:48 " ... so we stop walking through Disney Klan ..."
Hey hey hey!
You can't just say that and move on like it's nothing!
We’ve got a lot to cover! No time to waste!
Minor correction : at 13:26 you claim that the movie advertised is "Return of the Jedi", but that movie is called "Le Retour du Jedi" in French. The actual name advertised is "La Revanche du Jedi" / Revenge of the Jedi, which was the original name George Lucas intended for "Return" but changed it before release. I have seen this pointed out as one of the signs that Elizabeth opens portals to other timelines.
Yes, I was aware of that - I didn't think it was important enough to slow down the pace of the video to clarify.
@@KevinHelpUsYes, but this is the Internet, and there's nothing better in life than to show off what total nerds we are. It's my favorite past time.
Hi @@KevinHelpUs, I'm a Late Night with Seth Myers Corrections Jackal in the comments and I'm sorry for checking if this correction was made.😂
@@KevinHelpUs You could have at least made a quick joke that Elizabeth opened a tear to a world where Disney probably didn't acquire the rights to Star Wars and therefore didn't ruin it
@@martsvend I was a huge Star Wars nerd when this game released and noticed the translation right away, I always thought this was a great deep cut from this game. Flaws etc withstanding this Easter egg is really really good.
I think Daisy going after Fink’s son in the end pissed people off because they wanted her to be an out and out good guy. She’s a revolutionary for a revolution that very clearly needs to happen.
But I don’t think people understand that that’s not the story that’s being told; FFS, the hero and villain are literally the same dude.
@@NotsilYmerej yup. She should be a racist brute. It's not like aiming free and relocate
And even not restraint not a practice
Regardless of what you think of the game story, you gotta admit Songbird is probably one of the worst 'guardians' enemies ever, mf almost killed Elizabeth than saved her lmao
Great stuff.
Other fixes
*Explain who the Angel of Colombia is. She is the most important and powerful character. She starts the story, and creates Comstock. But we have no clue what she wants, who she is… or what she is.
Fix: She is Elizabeth, but from thousands of iterations and multiverses away.
*So the endgame is Colombia destroys New York with its superior tech. And then gets destroyed by the US Air Force? Small in scale and confusing. Fix: they burn New York and everything else in a FLOOD of fire (drown in flame). Only Colombia survives as an Ark.
*Elizabeth was trapped in a tower with no human contact. She should be unable to talk, much less read. Fix: she was semi-secretly raised by her dozens of maids who were loving and then imprisoned when she turned 13.
34:59 Booker and Elizabeth now have a ship and can leave. They don’t need to have enough fuel to get to New York. They can just land and then take a train. Fix: Most ship are only designed to work at high altitudes. At low altitudes the ‘balloon’ implodes. Only special ships can reach the bottom world. Colombia just having tons of cannons is another good idea.
I adore how you present your videos. You take such care and depth in showcasing the stories we are presented, editing and explaining perfectly for old fans and newcomers alike, before launching into what you would change. It gives viewers a well-paced foundation of knowledge before revealing your fixes. Very entertaining and interesting.
Thank you so much for saying so! This one especially was a labor of love. There’s so much greatness in this game that I think it’s a worthy conversation-starter. Really appreciate the comment.
I appreciate all the thought and work you put into trying to fix BI's story. Bravo! Have a like and a cucumber for it!
That being said, I feel that the restrictions you put on yourself with regards to "not changing important plot points", while understandable, are severely limiting you to what can - and arguably needs to - be changed: The ending.
Because the ending of the game proves that the writers (Ken Levine and whoever assisted him) didn't understand their own story, as it completely contradicts the entire premise of the game: The multiverse.
If every choice leads to two different universes, then drowning Booker at the end achieves absolutely nothing. Because for every Booker that reaches that point (which, in a multverse, would be an infinite amount of them, as seen in the lighthouse scene) and chooses to be drowned, there is a Booker who refuses the drowning.
In the end that just splits the timeline in three instead of two: An infinite set of universes with Bookers who refused the drowning, an infinite set of universes with Comstocks who were not drowned and an infinite set of universes where they both were strangled by Elizabeth. The goal of stopping Comstock before he existed would not be achieved (or at least just partially).
That being said, it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that the ending was so poorly thought-through, given that it wasn't actually the original ending of the game. It was just cobbled together on short notice from all the assets they still had available.
I don't know for sure what the story of the original ending entailed, but whatever was included in there, it offended one of Irrational Games' employees who was deeply religious. They threatened to quit the company over this and Ken Levine decided to change the ending in order to keep them. This happened merely three months before launch. Also, it was pretty much pointless in the end, as all but 15 members of Irrational Games were fired less than a year later and the company (and its successor Ghost Story Games) never released anything ever again.
I hope it was worth butchering Infinite for, Ken.
But we can make some educated guesses about what the original ending was, given that Burial at Sea was presumably already in pre-production by the time the rewrite happened, and its story would therefore be based on the original ending. That would explain why Elizabeth has no powers in the DLC and why she keeps seeing Booker appearing and talking to her in Part 2, similar to how the Luteces appeared in the main game. I strongly assume that the original ending didn't have Elizabeth become omnipotent, and what was eventually handwaved away as her "hallucinations" were genuine appearences by some version of Booker. It also explains how Elizabeth is able to return to the "Fitzroy event" in a timeline that, according to the rewritten ending, shouldn't exist anymore.
I’ll take the cucumber! And thanks for watching the whole thing! Agree that not changing major plot points holds me back a bit (it’s going to be a challenge when we do The Last of Us 2), but it does keep me grounded and helps me show that there was a better story to tell within the framework that the original game established, even if that story’s resolution is a bit flawed, like the ending you mentioned.
Something I think they really missed on with the ending of the story that could have fixed peoples issues with it being a plothole, is the motivations of the Lutece Twins and the resolution of how do you change a variable to a constant. How do you change a multiverse where there are countless Booker's that become Comstock, to one where Comstock can never be born.
In programming logic this is easy although redundant, just set another constant afterwards to correct for the variable to always be the solution you want:
So make the plans of the Lutece Twins to be the creation this constant, a cage where there is no choice, that will destroy Comstock the moment he is born. A coin that will always land on heads no matter how many times it is flipped. They are testing Booker, to find the one who can overcome all the obstacles, all the variables and constants, and then guide him to the proper place, at the proper time, where he will decide to flip the coin, and then no matter how he chooses, it will always land on heads.
Booker even laments to Elizabeth that he would rather have a cage over freedom, no choice to absolve himself from his regrets and sins. So his ultimate sacrifice will absolve himself of his sins as Comstock and leave only the Booker who chooses to not be baptized behind, who will never have his daughter traded away because Comstock is gone. He will be the bird who chooses the cage.
To use the same quote Hellsing Ultimate uses: "The Bird of Hermes is my name. Eating my wings to make me tame"
Booker will eat his own wings, and shall finally become tame.
Fire
Bro after the first hour I had completely forgotten that our end goal was to fix the plot 💀💀💀 I was just along for the ride atp
I really like the idea of Booker remembering his daughter and thinking that she is at home and needs the money to help her.
Cucumber
A problem I really do remember is that when you deal with alternate worlds it makes the stakes disappear. So I think there really should have been something that ties them to the original worlds, at least intending to return. Booker would want to return to the world he thinks his daughter is in, and maybe they can say some risks of being in the wrong world.
So my idea would maybe be something like an object acting as a key back to the previous world, so Elizabeth thinks she can get back there once they borrow another object or person. Maybe something like the necklace you chose for her, so it becomes an important object. The reveal we get of Elzabeth's powers is that she is a living key. And maybe the deal with the Lutece twins is the explosion made them a key to everywhere and nowhere at once, so they differe more explicitly from Elizabeth as paradoxes with limits.
An extra bit, maybe they could have something about Robert Lutece had the side effect of thinking he was Rosalind's twin brother from staying in another universe. Her not moving to his universe had her not affected by the altered memory, and thus could foreshadow Booker's own false memories from going to another universe.
I also remember there being a difference in the Lutece twins being Robert wanted it to end, while Rosalind was more fine with the status quo. Which could be added that after being being displaced he learned that Rosalind let him believe he was her twin. He might even think she put him in a cage, and might have slight differences of opinion on a sweet cage vs. a bitter freedom. Their involvement is testing the hypothesis of what would be chosen.
I really like the idea of Elizabeth being a key to get to a better world! It would have helped Burial At Sea make more sense…
@@KevinHelpUs The focus on a key also works on the idea that Fontaine built up Jack to be a key to what was locked behind Andrew Ryan's DNA, in the first Bioshock.
Elizabeth as a key to the multiverse becomes a paradox following the death of her father, similar to the Lutece Twins following their explosion. Maybe thinking too hard, but you could say something like the bird, the cage and the key, and something about a key could be locking a bird in a cage, or letting it out.
One of the reasons I hated the game was not letting me shoot those two. I always found them just annoying.
I never noticed before but it’s actually bizarre that in Columbia 3 that one guy who fangirled over Booker failed to mention or notice that he’s supposed to be dead.
Cucumber
I couldn't tell you all of the changes that I'd make, because to list them all would reveal that I would basically have written and made a completely different game, but I will list some of the major things I'd have changed:
1.) Booker doesn't arrive on Secession Day, he arrives the evening before (this fixes a plothole with the timetables at the start of the game). He would also have to do actual detective work, talking to people and investigating things in order to get information, no more arrow pointing where to go or faux puzzles like lock picks or "wait a minute, that card."
2.) Elizabeth gradually gains a FUBAR quantum aura around her the more that she uses tears outside of mandatory interactions, resulting in her potentially causing a reconciliation sickness effect to any NPC that gets near her if Booker abuses her abilities. This actually has a passive effect on Booker narratively, causing him to falsely remember Anna and believing that she's back in New York, with his landlady.
3.) Other partners besides Elizabeth: Slate, Fitzroy or one of her people, a Handyman, etc. This would be because certain levels would have different objectives based on what you did the prior level (so for instance, you could convince Slate that there was another way besides death or letting him get caught, lighting the fire back inside of him and leading to a different version of the First Lady scene where they decide to go meet Fitzroy. Then you'd get an alternate objective for Finkton and Slate would be your partner for a while.)
4.) Comstock is a conman who tries to bargain with Booker like in your rewrite, but he becomes increasingly more desperate and erratic up until the confrontation at the end. Not because he wants to keep Elizabeth from Booker, but because he knows that if Booker touches him or gets too close to him, it will basically be the quantum equivalent of detonating a nuclear bomb.
5.) There's a third, hidden faction in Columbia-- Marlowe and his Vigor Junkies, which restores an element of Columbia that was meant to be but scrapped and downplayed in the final game. Basically Marlowe invented the Vigors with Fink, and when it was discovered that overconsumption caused physical and psychological mutations, Fink tried to have him killed to both cover it up and take control of the whole operation. Now the disgraced chemist seeks to find a cure for the monsters that he made from the back alleys and slums of Columbia and that's where Booker comes in. This would add a sort of little sister/big daddy element back into the game, as vigor junkies can be killed to get the salts their body produces, or they could be cured with certain items, which would please Marlowe and cause him to extend his services to safely power up Booker.
Love these! Especially the Comstock changes. SOMETHING to show he uses his knowledge about what’s happening to his advantage.
seeing footage of this game again after so many years makes me wish more FPS games had character design that were this expressive and a bit more cartoony
I think it aged pretty well still. Jhst neat it on 1999 mode today.
Bioshock Infinite is like Rebel Moon by Zack Snyder: a fun ride while it lasts, but gets worse the longer you actually think about it.
Personally I'd rather have Infinite and the original Bioshock as separate. A "Quantum Shock" so to speak
WOW!! Bioshock infinite is already one of my alltime favorite games, but your pitch for the story makes it even better. Booker, Comstock, Daisy, Fink… everyone’s motivations make so much more sense and are so much more compelling. And I love the early inclusion of Anna. I feel like that twist reveal behind her identify would’ve hit SO much harder if we knew about her the entire time. Again, I love the game as is, but it would’ve been AMAZING to get to play your version.
This is such a fun series! I know it’s a lot of work for you and I just wanted you to know your hard work is appreciated and enjoyed
Really like the way you wrote the gunsmith stuff out of the game. The back and forth in this part of the game is miserable, making it about daisy makes more sense and keeps it relevant.
Honestly? I don't know how I'd fix BioShock Infinite. There are so many problems I personally have with it. I suppose the closest I have to based on your own rules is I would give us back the weapon system we had in BioShock 1 and 2
I learned to like the two-weapon system in Infinite, it did force me out of my comfort zone when my favorite guns weren't available, but the fact that they brought the old weapon wheel back in Burial At Sea means enough people didn't appreciate the change.
@@KevinHelpUsI appreciate the idea of the two weapon system, but in practice I found it pretty insufficient at making me as a player use different weapons when my preferred ones weren't readily available. Furthermore, the two weapon system killed the visually unique weapon upgrades that 1 and 2 had, since you weren't using the same weapons during the whole game. Yes, weapon upgrades are still present, but they're primarily just stat changes and none of them affect the look of the guns, which is really a shame.
I think a better solution would be to keep the weapon wheel and upgrades, and instead simply heavily limit the ammunition for each gun. You're still scavenging around the battlefield, but instead of for more copies of guns, it's for ammo to use the guns you've been upgrading throughout your journey.
This was the best summary of this game I've ever seen on RUclips, congratulations on the excellent work.
Cucumber.
Cucumber! Thanks so much, I’ve wanted to cover this game for a long time, and really wanted to do it justice. Appreciate you watching until the end, so glad you enjoyed it.
I'm actually still mind blown how the dlc makes the series full circle
1:33:30 The best line, with the changes you've outlined to the "Because I'm going to do it for you." would be to change it to "because I'll be YOUR weapon." It's Booker trying to keep Elizabeth's hands clean, in an early 1900's way, and narratively puts Elizabeth into the first position of control she's ever had. You can tie this in with you're baptism scene, don't make the choice Save Anna/Stop Comstock, make it Save Anna/Trust Elizabeth. There's then a short conversation, Booker's last words are "I guess weapons are always meant to be used. Make it count." And an Elizabeth that's not the center one, with whichever broach you chose responds, knowing that she'll be undone afterwards, "Don't worry, where you go, I follow." In the the pull back of the camera, instead of fading out, the Elizabeths appear to de-age (probably just shrinking, and slip into the water, one by one.
Cucumbers are the worst, that being said...
Bioshock infinite is something far worse than cucumber, it's ALMOST great and that's far worse than just being bad.
Here's hope for Judas, now that Ken is going at his own pace.
He certainly can’t claim he was rushed! (And thanks for watching the whole thing!)
I dont like the ending of the base game tbh. They are right that they have to kill Booker at the baptism to prevent all of the Comstock realities from being made but the booker they kill is one that already went through the baptism, and lets just say that they went back in time to when Booker had the baptism, they would just be killing a random Booker. If the Elizabeths wanted to fix everything, they'd have to travel back in time to that moment (no hopping reality stuff either) and kill him there, the way they did it in the game makes no sense
the issue of that is: No, that doesn't work.
reminder, the game works on the fix point theorem. The onyl thing what the ending achieves is that we now have 1 reality where Booker is just dead. It doesn't erase the fix point. PLus, Booker dieng before he could father Elisabeth also creates a time paradox.
Folks forget that the “worlds” Elizabeth guides Booker through are just events that have already happened, and essentially making Booker relive them as if they’re the very first time. “You don’t leave this room until you give him what he wants”. Booker is reliving this event in his history, except this time he just doesn’t remember, but it must happen, because that’s what *does* happen. It’s just a way for us as the player to experience the events but through Booker’s perspective as he “remembers” his past. The final baptism scene *is* that singularity in time as the event occurs, only difference is Booker is aware of everything Elizabeth has shown him. It’s confusing because we are viewing time here as a single line, but through Elizabeth, we are actually experiencing those events as if they’re happening for the first time. I admit it doesn’t make much sense, but hey, time travel and quantum realities is just as confusing lol
I must say that this version of the story both neatens things up and makes the narrative flow better. While we all bemoan the things that were left on the cutting floor (the demos and development material everyone wanted to see in Infinite), as you said, with the major beats as they are and the story as it is, you made it work.
Nah, game ended fine. Main writer wanted to go back to Rapture and the studio said "no make infinite". With the Dlcs we saw thee greatest arsonist and arson we have ever seen done to a piece of media. He quite literally said indirectly to other writers. " Good fucking luck". Burial at sea, unironically sarcophagus Bioshock as a whole. They were dumb for trying to loop it. It was my first ever experience with Meta verse theroy way back after Bioshock 2 and they shit the bed after the First timeline swap with Elizabeth. I would shake the main guys hand who set fire to the pos that is infinite. Game killed the franchise and we CANNOT change that.
god damn this video really does try to change the story but keeps the integrity of the game intact. good stuff man.
your variation is better as it removes loose ends instead of wrapping them up or tying them off.
I would take some more time in the beach area and have Booker enjoy a nice cucumber spritzer while watching Elizabeth dance.
Theres something I would never change, bioshock infinite is the first game that ends with a murder suicide and is actually happy
The ending is just 3 inter dimensional beings trying to tell a guy to kill himself
The problems of this game, in my opinion, begin and end with Fitzroy. It’s her weapon fetching quest that turns the narrative focus of the game to the tears, and it doesn’t even make much sense since Elizabeth specifically says that they can’t come back to Columbia 1, so what makes Booker think Daisy 2 needs weapons after seeing how different everything is? Why would Daisy 2 have their airship? How do they know either NY or Paris exist here? The answer is, they don’t. You can’t build on a shaky foundation and expect the house to stay intact under strain.
The way that I would fix Infinite is by leaning into the timeline psychosis that’s shown in Columbia 2 and then just forgotten except when Booker has a baby nosebleed. I would’ve made Fitzroy in Columbia 1 a variant of herself that bonded with a variant of Elizabeth (because she was part of Comstock’s household), failed the Vox Populi, and was sent to Columbia 1 as a do-over. Columbia 1’s Fitzroy is dead. To roughly keeping the story intact, that Fitzroy would be the one to publicly kill Fink’s son, blood-smearing and all, showing her declining grip on reality and inciting the Vox Populi to violence. This all happens before Booker meets Vox Populi, so when he does meet them on that airship, in a moment of clarity Fitzroy unexpectedly begs Elizabeth to help send her back. Our Elizabeth never knew Fitzroy, but Fitzroy knows things about her no one else does. And then she loses her grip on who she is/was again.
At this point Elizabeth doesn’t understand what she’s doing, so she goes to Columbia 2 to both look for herself and to see if there’s a Fitzroy, and there is. Elizabeth is mistakenly taken for Elizabeth 2 and taken away.
Booker and Fitzroy 2 have to go find her. We see this Fitzroy get destroyed by having her weapons dealer and comrades killed when they’ve been going out of their to spare the people of Columbia who have nothing to do with the conflict, and she snaps. She kills the son, and Elizabeth kills her. Infinite tries to play with the idea that a person at their core stays the same, but does nothing to make us believe it. Even if the player thinks Fitzroy 2 is justified, she still killed the son when she didn’t have to, just like variant Fitzroy.
At this point, Booker would be deep into his timeline psychosis and this is my “ticking clock”. Elizabeth is a tear baby and immune, and Robert Lutece is built different. This is when Booker would start remembering Anna, or Comstock 2’s memories of Anna being sold, mixing with his own memories of being the one to sell her. He would find a Voxophone of Robert Lutece’s experience with timeline psychosis, and it would show that Booker is going to get worse, not better.
Comstock 2 would actually be a good adopted father to Elizabeth 2, and maybe there could even be a scene where he has Booker over for dinner when he breaks in to mistakenly rescue her and they talk, which would go a long way for characterization, and he sees Elizabeth 2 genuinely happy. But somehow Columbia 2 is still extremist and racist, because Comstock at his core hasn’t changed.
Whether Elizabeth is right or wrong, this would make a stronger case for the ending, because she’d convince herself that Booker can’t change based on what she’s seen, and even she herself can’t. Elizabeth 2 would go on to be the doomsday sheep, and Elizabeth 1 would destroy multiple timelines and herself for the “greater good”. This wouldn’t kill *all* Elizabeth’s, but she wouldn’t be the first or last one to make the choice to erase everything to prevent everything.
During his extreme timeline psychosis, Booker would’ve realized the endgame reveals, but with the time to explore who he is and who Comstock is as he “resists” the impulses of his other self like Fitzroy failed to do. Comstock 2 isn’t affected because it’s his timeline, and the player could ever get to sit with Booker’s regrets before Elizabeth saves him by returning to Columbia 1, making it so he can’t just jump anywhere and everywhere while keeping the multiple timelines in the background. It wouldn’t just be a nosebleed, it would be death.
I haven’t played Burial at Sea, but my version of it would be a variant of Elizabeth that doesn’t lose hope in change and is guided by the Lutece’s (who eventually get tired of rowing that boat) into going back to give Booker a choice to sell Anna anyway for something offered that would be worth it to the player (proving her other selves right), or keeping Anna and getting nothing in return (proving them wrong), which would mean Elizabeth 3 never got her powers, and she’s both erased and saved at the same time.
The reason vigors don't fit Columbia could because of the change in the plot. The vigors were always supposed to be created by Fink, but many things suggest that his role in the plot was reduced, early on he was supposed to be the equivalent of Andrew Ryan and Columbia had a connection with Liechtenstein (manufacturing country)and was more art nouveau and darker like og BioShock, there is even a completed model of an elderly Fink in Handyman armor who was supposed to be a boos.
I'm a fool, but I'd love to see more multiple universes played out and explained.
I want to see more Elizabeth's, get confused when we see two identical ones and realize one is more cheerful because they believe in Combstock while the other is resentful for not. One coming with us because they just want to see the world they'll inherit through fire while the other is just normal Elizabeth.
A Dewitt that actually allies with Slate (and others), so we loose Elizabeth and instead get someone we can learn and empathize with before realizing "Did we act to hastily, or will Slate always turn crazy in realities where the Vox aren't running the show?"
What about Fitzroy, let's get a little bit of a Frostpunk narrative and show her being peaceful, but with each tear, see how her message for a better tomorrow gets twisted into just being on top.
Things like these are pretty much the heavy fisted usage of the parallel universe mechanic, but it's important to note that nothing matters, except what we want at this moment, in a game where the only thing matters is Elizabeth and Dewitt, but how and why they got to where they are, across Columbia, shouldn't be discounted as mere movement or level traversal.
Kevin saves the day again. Now this is MY cannon version. Levine can piss off.
This is probably your best video so far. As a request, it would be cool to see how you would fix Metroid Other M's story, considering how much context was lost in translation.
Oh man, I’ve never played Other M, but it would be a fun one. I’d like to play some of the modern Metroid games (I think I stopped after Super), but I’d need to track down a Wii…
I think the biggest weakness people have with the game is that they think that there should be an overlapping narrative with complexity. This is why the Fitzroy stuff make people upset. They wanted the cause to be justified. And her killing was too far. That's not her going too far, that's her removing the mask. When she learns of him being alive in the other world it's not for her to care if it's true. It's better for her that he remain dead. Fitzroy, Booker, and Comstock lie to themselves.They mask their deeds but their self-serving and self-destructive. This is a theme that continues in BaS with Elizabeth. She NEEDED him to pay. Even if it killed her. Fitzroy wanted retribution, not revolution. Comstock used faith to forgive himself. Booker with his guilt. And for all four of them realizing that their paths would lead to their deaths. Elizabeth was the only one truly free of the cycle and even then she would not let go.
This was written SO well. The last line of your story script almost made me cry.
Honestly, I teared up at the ending the first time I watched the whole thing cut together. Really proud of this one.
I love the story fixing and tweaks, but at 1:25:47 it says Daisy shot Fink, but earlier I thought she threw him out of the airship, I'm not sure If I missed a section or if the one thrown out the ship was an imposter or something. Anyway great video!
I've beat Bioshock 2 and Infinite multiple times, and Bioshock 1 once. So I can't get spoiled now.
30:40 I hate to be “that guy” but Schrödinger’s Cat is not an explanation of the Many Worlds theory. It was Schrödinger’s thought experiment made to criticize quantum theory as ridiculous and incompatible with macroscopic systems. Because considering the idea of a cat being simultaneously alive and dead unless observed is nonsense. A cat can’t be both.
Something tells me you don't hate being "that guy".
Cucumbers feed the algorithm.
Overall, love all of the ideas you came up with, the only change I can immediately think of is the very end, about the 'fever dream' illusion of choice:
"Booker says he was a fool just like Daisy for chasing a world that didn't exist but Elizabeth tells him that Daisy had Faith she could build a better world and was willing to do anything even kill or die to make that reality. Booker doesn't understand because after everything that's been done to him and everything he's done to others he's never believed in a better world. to stop Comstock Booker needs the one thing he's never had, Faith. the price for sparing the world of Comstock is never getting to reunite with the baby he thinks he left at home and Booker pays the price because maybe just maybe there is a door behind a door behind a door with a better world."
I think this would feel like Booker got to do 'one less thing wrong' among all his other screwups, and that is a reward in a way, but doesn't feel tied into Infinite's story.
The player, usually, realizes that Anna is Elizabeth way earlier than Booker, but that moment should still happen, and it should be at the moment I quoted from the Transcript (Thanks youtube) - not as a reveal, but as an inspiration for that moment of Faith.
He doesn't fall into the fever dream of what is or isn't real and has a fake choice, instead Booker realizes he was a terrible father for giving up on himself and in turn, for giving her up, he apologizes as he realizes just how many of his choices led to this moment, not *just* the choice of Baptism.
So Booker agrees to the drowning, not to see Anna again, not even to stop Comstock and save the world, but in hope that somewhere out there, 'beyond a door behind a door', is an Anna he didn't make suffer, the better world as you put it, not because there isn't a Comstock around, but simply because Anna is with him, and so he gladly sacrifices himself to eliminate as many Comstocks *and* "himselfs" as he can - the Bookers who chose to give Anna away.
The man was willing to let New York burn and destroyed 90% of Columbia for his little girl, his sacrifice should be less about sparing the world and more about explicitly hoping for the best for his daughter, even if its not *him* who gives her the best, Booker never believes in a better world, but he hopes for a better world for *Anna*, even if its just one, a single world with a daughter who never has to suffer either version of a 'bad father', Comstock or Debt Booker, in her life, hoping to only leave behind 'Better Bookers and Happy Annas' to live on.
Then rather than the ending feeling like the game's version of just 'somehow' Booker ends up with Anna, or your version where it feels like Booker was doing the right thing by Anna 'the whole time' (As he never realizes he gave her up due to going from 'fever dream' to being with Anna, thus realistically cementing him thinking she was there all along and he never gave her up), it feels like his faith was rewarded in that somewhere out there, there is at least one 'Good Booker and Happy Anna' as he hoped.
But that's just my view, maybe its terrible from an outside perspective, maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement and we're actually on the same relative idea, I just didn't get that you meant, I don't know lol The BIG thing to me is that Booker *should* know that Anna is Elizabeth, simply to apologize for everything he did, and to hope a 'better Booker' is out there raising an Anna who never had to suffer neither a 'bad Booker' nor a 'Comstock' ever - make the ending about both hope and repentance, something that any father who screwed up with his daughter should want, and to make it another layer of difference between Booker and Comstock, who never cared about how much he hurt Elizabeth and all of his hopes were about his wants and desires, not hers.
Still, all that said, want to let you know there is another person out there who loves this type of content even if I'm 3 months late to the party lol 'Fix the Plot' videos are vastly more interesting than 'Here's a list of what is wrong' vids and I support you in the hopes that you continue doing this even though its a crapload of work! You can thank the Dead Space 3 and Kendra vids for pulling me in lol
Thank you! It is a crapload of work, but it's fun to deep dive on a topic you're passionate about. Should have a new one out in a week or two.
Stumbled across your channel, and I am very glad that I did. I don't see a lot of video game RUclipsrs talk about story fixers like you did. Good job. If you take requests, one game that I thought had good potential but the story held it back from being really great was Assassin's Creed 3.
Glad you mentioned how the game was missing a Frank Fontaine because as much we all like Andrew Ryan it’s more interesting to see how their ideology can bring the worst of people to the table.
@@tylerlong5112 Not only that, but it showed how someone who believes in a rancid ideology can’t always control everyone who views the rancid nature of said ideology as a path to power. Fontaine didn’t believe in Ryan’s vision, but he knew how to play the game that Ryan had created better than Ryan could. Ryan was defeated by his own love of free markets in a way that it doesn’t really feel like Comstock was defeated by his racism.
Great vid! Love the way you intersperse the game footage and your narration. Very well done!
Infinite is a great game. But not a great *Bioshock* game. I honestly wish they wouldve done a bioshock game set during the Rapture Civil War instead of Columbia.
I like Columbia, but it doesnt hit the same as Rapture. But Infinite has so many good quotes
“God forgives, but im only a prophet, so I dont have to…”
“Sometimes if you dont draw first, you dont draw at all.”
“Are you a tin man or a real soldier?”
The "It's a good game, but a bad X game" is such a tired argument. People use it all the time with Doom 3. It's either a good game, or not.
I really loved your version of BioShock Infinite, I played it alongside BioShock 1 and 2 in high school. Even with all the issues I still have with Infinite, I still love it. Thinking about BioShock still gets me emotional.
BTW, I loved your analogy of having Comstock be Jesus, but having Fink be Judas, but that also led me to make another connection. If Comstock is Andrew Ryan, then Fink is Frank Fontaine!
Videos like this is why I love video essays ❤
One thing that I've always liked about infinite was Colombia not only was it a good decent mirror from rapture it's practically the reason why no government especially the United States cared about rapture they had their own City to deal with.
Yes but Columbia only exists if Rapture doesn't they're alternate universes to one another. They can't exist at the same time in the same world.
There is a glitch method that I found where you can get into the room before Elisabeth kills her. It's pretty cool.
Took me a few days to watch it but i really enjoyed your alternative narrative (loaded with cucumbers).
For me I've never been a huge fan of the multiverse thing so I never really thought about the story much after playing it but it was nice to revisit it a decade later with a more critical analysis. Great stuff man.
Thank YOU for taking the time to come back and finish it!
I think the game loses me with the constant tearing into other versions of the same reality. You lose the connections you had with the original world you were in, and are now fighting against an individual who only knew the previous version of your character. Also, Elizabeth is essentially just a cheat code to give you an advantage against a fearsome foe, instead of you doing the work to tear it down. It just makes the finale seem *unearned.* The ending twist is nice at least, if it didn’t have all that filler from Elizabeth beforehand…
1. best intro ever "Everyones dying for MY sins"
2. I am Ken Levine's confirmed biggest fan so im sooooo interested to see this vid and get other takes
Thank you! I am REALLY proud of that intro, it's not just a good tagline, it's thematically accurate. Hope Ken Levine's biggest fan enjoyed the rest of it!
A video with all the cut story elements and mechanics put together to fix a new story and plot holes would be great 😢I wish this game could get a redo
This game didn’t need to be confusing. It could have been a story about Boker redeeming himself, fighting evil, rescuing Elisabeth, and getting a happy ending. What do game makers have against happy endings? Bad endings and games like last of us 2 stress people out. And with all the alternate timelines gives people headaches.
Heart this comment, would you kindly?
New Goal: Heart This Comment
😂
A MAN CHOOSES
It was weird to me that the "ghost" of her mother was like a (at least partially) theoretical version of her? Made up in Elizabeth's head? It was both a story breaking idea to me and an interesting idea for something else entirely. Like a horror movie.
BIG EYEROLL MOMENT at "Why?" "Because it does." lol sounded more like an admission that it's always just gonna boil down to the OG Bioshock. This game was OKAY but this story just wasn't for me.
@@billybeeeeeeeeee Still one of my favorite games of all time, its simply gorgous despite the story flaws
@@haesome8613 I really had a good time the SECOND time through, but the first time I ever played it, I was hypercritical because I really wanted it to the nail the landing, despite still thinking it isn't perfect, it is still a very fun game.
If the ghost fight was just Lady Comstock teleporting to different spots, re-acting out different parts of her life or various Lady Comstocks around the graveyard and your fighting the memories of the people that watched her speeches or what have you, it would at least have landed better imo.
Just binge played this on my nintendo switch, quickest 8 hour flight ever. Never gets old
Cucumber (it's more like fanfiction and hard reboot, but try out the twist at the end) :
Instead of Booker's divergence being the baptism where he becomes either Comstock or a drunkard, how about the divergence being just the army. After Wounded Knee Booker either leaves and becomes a P.I. drunkard or stays and (to escape the ridicule of his comrades) changes into Cornelius Slate. Comstock would be somebody they both knew in the army but in Bookers timeline there was never a Columbia and Comstock is the same age as Booker and Slate, but Slate looks slightly older and is covered in battle scars..
Booker (the slightly more moral one clouded with guilt but drowning in booze) SELLS Anna
Slate (still a uniformed maniac) loses her while on campaign in Cuba or the Boxer Rebellion.
Booker goes to Columbia to get Elizabeth. Slate is a Commander in the Columbia Army and loyal to Comstock. Comstock is gearing up to "cleanse the sodom" early like you said.
Instead of being locked in a tower Elizabeth knows she is Comstocks daughter. Booker is sent to kidnap her more than rescue her. He collaborates with the Vox Populi to do so and Slate hunts after him. Booker also knows pretty well that he sold his own daughter but the player doesn't. Elizabeth's arc is more about her realizing what the "father" that she actually loved had planned for her to become. And Booker finding his own humanity in keeping her safe as they escape Columbia after the Vox Populi declare they want to use her against Comstock.
Booker and Elizabeth discover Comstock has been using artificial wombs and aging technology to rack up a larger army and can perfectly use that to clone himself another daughter. This would show how inspite of everything he never really had a large following, nor did he follow the word of god either.
Slate separates his own following out of Comstocks Army and exposes how and why he would abandon his daughter, his army starts burning down Columbia faster than the Vox Populi could. Booker also learns sooner that he came there from a different timeline and it was Comstocks inner circle that brought him.
By the end Booker and Slate both learn Elizabeth is Anna and one of them was her real father.
NOW HERES THE REAL TWIST.
Booker's Anna is the one in the game
Slate's Anna died.
Comstock went to another timeline to kidnap Anna because it was the last chance he had after failing to go into different timelines NOT FOR ANNA..... but for her mother... who died in childbirth and he was obsessed with.
The ending could be about wether Booker or Slate ends up taking Elizabeth out of Columbia and continuing being her father. And the duality would be how despite how Slate turned into a murderous grunt at least he never sold his daughter and Booker who found his moral compass after Wounded Knee and tried to repent fell on worse ways and sold his own child.
I have a TON of friends that played this game back in 2013 and they all fell in love with Elizabeth. But nobody is replaying it anymore. And i've recommended it to another TON of people and the thing that always puts them off is "How the hell are that Rick O'Connell and Santa Clause guys supposed to be the same person? And that's is what every Bioshock Infinite discussion starts with. And after explaining that, THEN there's everything else.
Elizabeth in the game is waaaaaaaaayyy too perfect. They could have her start off as a bit spoiled and posh and then grow up as she sees the world around her.
Also for somebody that was effectively bought and sold you never really get the feeling that that was bad enough for her. The game rushes to tell you she was locked in a tower (and kept safe) and brainwashed to become the "lamb of god" (though not before she turns 18, i mean it doesn't look like they made her read the bible yet even) and how she can pick locks while the Pinkerton can't and open time portals to wherever and whenever but stayed locked up because.... (Ryan George voice) SO THE GAME COULD HAPPEN.
Nix the whole "tear" BS. You don't need it on top of superpowers and retrofuturistic tech. Bioshock 1 and 2 didn't need it and it complicates the story much more than it adds to gameplay. I mean you got a character that can bend time and space and you get oil spills and mannequins and ammo boxes and parts of a wall and a complicated story for it. Having her throw supplies and be cute while i zap, shoot, burn and yeet mooks would've been juuuuust fine.
It's not that the game is too complicated, it's that it's more complicated than it should be.
Cucumber! Oh, I like this. I wish we learned more about Slate and his history with Columbia. It always seemed so contrived to me that he was in Columbia in the first place.
I enjoyed your description more than the game we actually received. Infinite is a great game, but I didn't enjoy it as a Bioshock. I would definitely love to live in a timeline where Levine actually got to finish the narrative shown in the trailer.
I always throw the ball at the couple because I am supposed to be an early 1900's American, didn't know you would encounter the couple if you didn't throw it.
They give you a piece of gear the way Fink’s assistant does. I haven’t tried a run where I refuse to throw yet, not sure if there’s a third variant.
Definitely trying it in my next run.
Not everyone was racist back then
@@Mavuika_Gyaruthe vast majority were against miscegenation. There were laws against it in most US jurisdictions at the time.
@@poopsmith6853 That doesn't really matter. Plenty of people were and still are racist, but still think it is wrong to stone people to death with baseballs. Plenty of people in the early 1900s denounced lynchings while still being personally racist.
I still remember coming off from bioshock 2 straight into infinite and being confused and frustrated (with both story and gameplay), and I quickly put down the game for a while. It wasn't until later after hearing mostly good things about it, that I tried it again. I won't lie, the pacing really threw me, and I hated some characters that I felt like I was 'supposed' to like. Idk, it felt like a mess to me until toward the end where I was finally starting to understand the story. Great story with a fun premise, but told in a messy way imo. I would have loved to see this version ngl.
Cucumber and honestly I couldn't say how I'd fix this game. I'd throw in a nod to bioshock two sure but thats it. Haven't played this game since it came out. But thank you for taking the time to make this video. You're awesome 😃
YOU’RE awesome! (And thanks for watching!)
I’m 99 percent sure the whole “Old Elizabeth isn’t the one that’s been following you the whole game” is what the creators intended. But it’s very confusing and your summary is the best I’ve heard.
Ah Bioshock Infinite. It's been *checks steam* over ten years since I last played this game. Came back for Burial at Sea and never returned.
I do remember my reaction to the ending of the main story. I said it was "Trying to be smarter than it had any right to be." Looking back, it felt so smug.
As for BaS? Totally unsatisfying conclusion. It felt like a double-barreled fuck you to me. I don't even remember what set my back up against it. I just remember feeling insulted.
The game should've had a feature where you can manually switch between universes, let me explain:
So the whole "aquire guns" plot and switching dimensions could've been spiced up with the few decisions that we made (that were ultimately useless in the actual game). Let's say you don't kill slate in your playthrough. Well, in that universe, the police are busy with him and cut corners by just killing the gunsmith. Slate alive = dead gunsmith.
So you need a gunsmith, but in universe 2 slate is dead and so the police had enough time to lock down all the equipment. Gunsmith alive, but can't use equipment.
The quite ambitious gameplay feature could have players navigate various dimensions to solve different puzzles. Your choice determines your original dimension and sets you down a specific quest line to achieve your goal.
Cucumber
Also dang that was an amazing and pretty well thoughtout way of making Bioshock Infinite story way better, i still like the game and story but yeah there was clearly a lot of beats shuffled around and i wish they would've allowed for more time to properly fix the issues. I also think allowing for more unique options and having them affect the world would've helped, for example when Booker throws the ball and we make the choice 1 could be throwing it at the couple and everyone cheers and Booker is simply let go maybe during the rest of the festival he gets discovered and we have to deal with an alternate way of getting around, we still get the skyhook but with a unique animation sequence. Same for many other possible changes including the bird/cage, choose bird and Songbird appears more frequently luke you said as a mini boss, similar to the handymen choose the cage and more enemies appear as well as maybe different dialogues 1 about hope and freedom the other about security.
Very complicated lol but still loved the video and how you were able to make a better story while using everything the game had
Yes! I get that they wanted to funnel the player back to the same path no matter what they chose, but there were ways to do that without making it so limiting. I was going to include the raffle in that montage of the 'other choices' you could have made, but the raffle throw is so similar no matter what you picked that it would have just confused the audience.
Good attention to detail man, thank you for this😊
This game, for all it's flaws, has a special place in my heart. I first played it around the time I got a kitten and ten years later, she still gets super happy hearing the barbershop quartet version of God Only Knows. It's her favorite song
It’s a great song. I really wanted to use it, but didn’t want to get copyright-flagged.
You can't just say these things outta nowhere. That kratos thing made me choke.
I don't really see the topic of oppressed becoming the oppressors as somehow a bad narrative idea. It makes the point that if you wish to change a system you better make sure you indeed replace it with something better and know what you're doing. Otherwise you'll just end up becoming that which you hated. Recognizing issues and understanding a change is needed is only one step, figuring out how to actually fix things is the most important one as otherwise you might end up learning how things came to be in the first place. It leads to the uncomfortable topic of how all bad actions are made by humans and how the said humans might have been normal reasonable people who were molded into these horrible people through circumstances they had no choice in. Demonizing and villianizing people makes these topics easier to approach but they can dilute the complexity and nuance of the topics, remove a level of understanding from them that can help us figure out how to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
If one wishes to do a revolution, they better make sure they know how to continue handling things afterwards because otherwise all they've done is change the management.
I haven't watched the video until the end yet and was wondering whether the author would address this flip as a flaw or as a good idea))
@@Tk-mj1cl I'm more of just talking in general as bringing up the topic reminded me of how people have talked about it in the past. So my comment isn't necessarily directed at the video itself, more of at a topic it brought up.
The idea by itself is good but there's an aspect of the game that makes it almost impossible to work: the Columbia's citizens are literal cartoons of racists. The game put almost all the efforts possible to make them as unlikable and dull as they could and the only time the Vox Populi does something slightly worse in comparison to the actions of the player is whe Fitzroy menaces a boy by the request of the twins.
The problem with bioshock infinite, or your rewrite, is the fact we're dealing a multiverse. The is an infinity of Columbia, Booker, Comstock and Elizabeth.
Any world we're in is meaningless because we can always leave it for an other one. Any time we fail, we can be replaced by an other Booker. And everytime Elizabeth drown Booker, there is an Elizabeth that don't do it. Heck there is even an infinite of world where none of theses character, location and event exist. There is even an infinity of Columbia where Fitzroy, Comstock and Fink managed to get along and create a litteral utopia.
We can save New York, kill Comstock, destroy Columbia, there will always be a reality where they exist and do evil. The only thing that can really matter for us is our Booker and our Elisabeth.
I love Bioshock Infinite, but it's clear it struggle because of that infinity aspect. I think if we want to fix Infinite, we need to actually get rid of the Infinite. And to achieve that, we need three main rules:
1)Only the Luteces can travel freely across the multiverse.
2)Elizabeth/Anna can only open tear between her original world (which is also Booker's world) and Comstock world.
3)No time travel for Elizabeth/Anna either.
The Luteces worked with one of the Comstock, in one of the Columbia, in one of the infinite reality that exist. They get in contact with other, help Comstock buy the child of Booker, then have their accident/assassination attempt and basically ascend to godhood. It happens and didn't happens in an infinity of universe and timeline.
In some of thoses realities, Anna/Elizabeth loose her finger, being in two universes, two realities at the same time, allowing her to travel between theses two specifics realities. That way, we do not have an infinity of universe to save, but at best just two and we also have a genuine connection between Booker and Elizabeth. Only one Book can be her father, only one can save her.
This is where the Luteces try to perform a little experiment, sending Booker to save his daughter and watch how it unfold. Act 1 pretty much happens the same way it did or the way your rewrite it.
I think however, that, from act 2, to play on the multivers thing by alternating between New York and Columbia, between the seedy streets of New York and the paradisiac appearance of Columbia. We can even use the Vox Populi and some fancy New York scenery to invert the contrast. Two important thing, however: Elizabeth cannot stay in her original reality because of the Syphon and Booker is amnesiac, because of his initial interdimensional travel. So both of them fail to realise the New York they are visiting is their reality and basically dismiss it as a mere dream, a mere moment of respite where they don't have to be in Columbia. They are led to believe Comstock world is their world and that they need to stop him. Act 2 will also establish strong bond between the Vox Populi and Booker and Elizabeth.
By act 3, everything is crashing down, with Comstock trying to invade his own New York and the Vox Populi going full revolution mode. From your final confrontation with Comstock and the element gathered in the previous acts, Booker and Elizabeth are slowly driven to the truth. Even as you kill Comstock and destroy the Syphon, the attack on New York continue.
You are then presented with a choice.
=>Booker leaves that reality and go back to his with Elizabeth, but also their friend in the Vox Populi, which mean dooming them and the rest of that reality to Columbia tyrany.
=>Stay and fight alongside the Vox Populi, but Elizabeth die and Booker is left stranded in Comstock reality.
I think that version gives more meaning to the realities you go through and dive a bit into Plato's cave myth. What is reality? What value should you give to the cave? Would you sacrifice what is most precious to you for the cave?
In the first months after finishing Infinite, I was flaming for a long time about the whole plot structure (especially because of the way they described how quantum mechanics works) and the easiest idea for some kind of twist for me was the change in Elizabeth's motivation at the end. Write it so that she got tired of Booker and drowned him, yes, to prevent a catastrophe with Comstock, but also because of personal pain when she found out that Booker sold her. She looked so dead inside and uninterested for the second half of the journey through the lighthouses, when the secret of her relationship with Booker began to reveal itself. Thus, the companion would become an antagonist and there would be some complex theme of perception of the damage that our loved ones inflict on us and the issue of forgiving them for the harm caused. It seemed to me that it would be very Bioshock style, because she is our companion and those characters are usually our support from a mechanical point of view, but here she, on the contrary, will become our end. Thus, like in the first Bioshock there is a plot twist based on game mechanics. So they would've paid tribute to traditions, and in the end there would be fewer inconsistencies with quantum physics, because the decision was made not by logic, but by feelings. So cucumber!
Oooh, Elizabeth being an antagonist is interesting (and surely, there would be at least one reality where this happens), also definitely echoes Atlas turning on you in the original game.
I'm glad my favorite Bioshock is still getting coverage!! I wish we received/ will receive more Bioshock. For me pacing is a main issue.
One thing that always bothered me about Infinite's ending is that they just created another split in the timeline. Now there's a timeline where Booker drowns at the baptism and another where he doesn't. The only constant being Booker is at the baptism. Therefore, there decision tow drown him ultimately meant nothing.
"You had my curiosity, now you have my attention"
Yeah once the game started telling me that these people shouldnt fight racism cause thats just as bad, i dipped out lol
"Wildest church service in video games"? Clearly someone hasn't played Outlast 2...
Oh, I played it. That one's a contender for sure.
@@KevinHelpUs Honestly I thought the first one was scarier, but I still love the sequel. Whistleblower was GOAT
@@SympatheticStrawmanVA Whistleblower still gives me nightmares.
@@KevinHelpUs Gluskin, right? Frank Manera is spooky with his saw and the constant "FEEDME!" But GLUSKIN is absolute nightmare fuel.
Thought for a moment this is gonna be one of those "reciting the entire plot, okay bye" video essays lol
I'm so torn on how much to recap in these. I thought it was important given how bonkers the existing plot is, but I also don't want to do a recap and then say "okay, bye".
This is a great piece! ...While I loved Burial at Sea, I thought the main game went off the rails the moment it started going into alternate realities. All dramatic tension and stakes they'd built so meticulously were gone, never to return. So you're just in a random and arbitrary world after that, still trying to feel like the endgame matters. And while the end itself is cool, the third act of the gameplay story on is this deflated thing you can't really put any stock in. A drastically different world that you don't know how to feel about. Like why would I go to a different universe where Lin is alive to get guns to secure my airship... when I can't get back, and I don't know anything about the Vox or the airship (etc.) in the other universe? The game is trying to carry the same motivation where it doesn't work. Why should Shantytown affect me when I don't know what it was like in Columbia 1? Did Columbia 1 for sure even have a Shantytown?
The entire thing needed a more early and upfront discussion of what Elizabeth could see via tears and alternative worlds. They needed to establish constants. There’s always a Comstock and Fink. Always a Daisy. Etc.
Booker telling Daisy 3 he did what Daisy 1 wanted makes no sense. The constants can't resonate within these variables. And it's weird to me that Levine and the devs didn't think that would be the case. It's weird that they never saw it as problematic that they were saying those who seek to overthrow fascists and racists are just as bad. Such a bad decision on their part. It's weird they thought they'd tell the history of the Comstocks and Daisy in a different reality than we started in, with no way to tell if that answer would have been the same in Columbia 1. It's weird that Booker can suddenly be put back in Columbia 3 after Elizabeth says she can't do that. And it’s weird that Elizabeth delivers the twist rather than Comstock, supplemented perhaps by the Luteces. Elizabeth should have been reeling together with Booker. Comstock was the only living player who actually knows what’s going on. To prevent him being the one to blow their minds is a bad choice, as in the game, Comstock is aloof for no reason.
One of the top 5 best intro sequences ever, though. Up there with the original game.
Youre not gonna unscrew infinite without changing the majority of the ending, they start acting on weird certain feelings that seem to come out of nowhere, like Comstock must die, first Elizabeth then Booker
It should be more of a sacrifice rather than an unknowing damning of himself, and it feels out if character for Elizabeth to just do it
infinite's story is either the surface of neptune or a polished dog turd, and since i live in this reality i'll say i played this game but remember nothing of it and (now) im glad i don't :v
I love this game overall, and I remember my excitement about pre-ordering it and downloading it over college dorm's wifi. I know one of the major issues upon launch that people had was the cut content and especially people feeling like the choices had little weight especially since before this the developers hyped up your freedom of choice and how it mattered in the game. Based on what I have heard from other deep dives about the game, it would be difficult to achieve what the developers were originally planning for the game without a large increase of the budget and thr time needed to properly complete to their original vision.
To keep things within the developers' capabilities at the time, I would have probably delayed the game a year and only made some changes to the story. The first being, I would give the player more choices that affected the gameplay and what Columbia timelines you explored/experienced. The gameplay, level design, and what you encounter overall will be the same, but there will be slight differences in what is happening in the setting and what dialogue you encounter.
Like based on your choices, you see either the timeline where Daisy is more violent, one where she is semi-merciful, and one where she is completely merciful.
The timeline you see could be based on what you show as your character's beliefs on mercy, forgiveness, hope, and et cetera throughout the game. And maybe you either are shown the timeline that matches those beliefs or maybe the total opposite of them and what those outcomes are.
I would also more heavily play up, you the player character as the "unrepentant sinner" vs the repentant relgious leader and how much are they really different despite their different life choices.
I think this can also help expand on the themes of choice, human free will, and fate that the game already slightly touches on.
I would also probably for the ending allow the player to choose to either get baptized, walk away again, or go down the original ending with the Elizabeth's dunking you into the water to prune either timeline of having baby Anna or founding Columbia. And then show the final ending where what ending you will see will be based on what your final choice was and what choices you made throughout the game.
Tbh I think the original event with Daisy aged perfectly. Power corrupts. And when you can justify your evils for a greater good, any more evil is just a means towards the supposed end that will never come. The dlc ruined something I thought was a perfect mirror. To those who hate what they see when looking into the mirror, you are the reason the mirror needed to be made in the first place.
I think it's even better you were rooting for the vox just to be disappointed. It's a great story when you become invested and even more so when the author can use that against you later. The thing I loved about Infinites tale is that there were no heroes. It's a tale of endless revenge. Even the ending says that you can't stop the pointless cycle unless you stop in before it begins. Though slight flaws, I think Infinite before the dlc was beautiful.
Don't know if it needed to be a bioshock game exactly but really good. A spiritual successor not tied to bioshock in the same vain as dishonored and Deathloop.
God now I wanna go back and play it again.
Power corrupts? How about the fact that a revolution is not a dinner party and that excesses are always expected in them? Or do you think the retaliation of the oppressed is the same as the violence of the oppressors?
@Magnesium-BasedLifeform-i9e I'm not sure what you're trying to say but if you don't think that oppressed can easily become oppressors then you do not know or understand history or even what's happening in today's societies across the globe. "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
@@Magnesium-BasedLifeform-i9e If you don't believe the oppressed can easily become the oppressors and justify evils they do to others that had nothing to do with their injustice then you are ignorant of or purposely blind to not only history, but what evils that plague the world today. Justice is good, vengeance is often a justification for the jealous to take the power they crave without guilt at the lose of their morals in the process. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”