Bioshock: Infinite - New E3 Demo - Post #307

[Alex W.]

Persona goes big on Jungian psychology, P4G gives you an intro lecture on the topic then has you get people to fight and reconcile themselves with their shadow selves as the main story rhythm.

 

In any case Infinite’s thematic biggest problem isn’t using racism as set dressing, it’s using that as set dressing on a generic “both sides are villains here” game plot which is an incredible way to set your game up to say some stupid and regressive things.

[Alex W.]

25 minutes ago, Rsdio said:

Obviously it's not just videogames either, I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion not long ago which would struggle to be more acclaimed but thematically it's just a load of big concepts vaguely alluded to for the sake of suggesting depth rather than delivering the reality of it. It has plenty of other stuff going for it though.

Pulling this out separately because it’s a bit off topic: if you’re talking about Christianity and the SF stuff, sure, the lore is just some big framework of nonsense which could be replaced with just about anything without actually changing the story. But the key themes embodied in the characters about learning to live with oneself are the narrative driving force of the second half of the series. Without the children’s struggles to find their true selves most of the important events don’t happen.

[RubberJohnny]

Those other examples didn't have the entire industry bigging them up to the mainstream press as "videogames have something to say".

 

Even if I agreed with the 'set dressing' critique, the main plot isn't any better at handling this stuff, the whole Baptism stuff that frames the main story, is basically the only character development that the main villain has, and acts as the big crux choice and twist of the game is just nonsense - it just doesn't work that way in any denomination, it's got the same weird strawmanning and lack of comprehension that it displays about all social issues, the downside of having one oblivious guy as a writer with no other perspectives.

[Rsdio]

2 hours ago, Alex W. said:

Persona goes big on Jungian psychology, P4G gives you an intro lecture on the topic then has you get people to fight and reconcile themselves with their shadow selves as the main story rhythm.

I'm not saying it's half-arsed - they absolutely run with the theme in terms of aesthetics. I just feel it's a superficial take on it ('this person has an internal conflict - let's magically fix it') but of course that's as subjective as things come. Obviously I don't really expect more than that from an anime video game created to sell copies and turn a big profit, but that's sort of what I was trying (probably badly) to say - when things are used as a hook in mass-market products they're often going to end up being more or less shallow/ham-fisted, which isn't a huge deal when you're throwing old psychological concepts around but definitely is when it's the history of racism. With the big issues it sometimes feels like 'let's mention this because it's bold and headline-grabbing but we don't want anyone to not buy our game so let's not really say anything at all or at least make sure everyone's equally as upset by it and call that sparking a healthy debate'*. And even if a writer wanted to commit to a big statement, you know the edges would be taken off the second a big publisher looked at it anyway.

 

*Ubisoft were really 'good' at this for a while, IIRC it was Far Cry 6 (edit: it was 5) and maybe The Division 2 or something (could be wrong on those, a lot of their stuff bleeds into one) where they were obviously trading off their settings for the sake of column inches whilst simultaneously denying that they contained any political message.

 

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

Pulling this out separately because it’s a bit off topic: if you’re talking about Christianity and the SF stuff, sure, the lore is just some big framework of nonsense which could be replaced with just about anything without actually changing the story. But the key themes embodied in the characters about learning to live with oneself are the narrative driving force of the second half of the series. Without the children’s struggles to find their true selves most of the important events don’t happen.

Yeah, the thematic allusions which become more and more of a conceptual word salad as it goes along. I gathered the creator got the idea to start adding a lot of that stuff on the fly halfway through (from my own 'superficial skimming of Wikipedia' lol) and it kind of shows. It was an example that came to mind here because it was recent for me and I've seen it acclaimed as 'dealing with' those themes but as you say, the core story is really pretty simple and could've been told just as effectively in the style of the earlier episodes and I didn't feel the other stuff added a great deal. I actually enjoyed the really abstract episode (the penultimate one, I think?) just purely for how ballsy it was though.

[Qazimod]

38 minutes ago, Rsdio said:

I'm not saying it's half-arsed - they absolutely run with the theme in terms of aesthetics. I just feel it's a superficial take on it ('this person has an internal conflict - let's magically fix it') but of course that's as subjective as things come.

 

Without wanting to deviate from Bioshock talk - the handling of Jungian concepts in the Persona series varies wildly from game to game. I feel like it's barely touched on in 3, is handled "better" in 4 & 5 (although there's definitely a formulaic feeling - it's like you're moving to the next "internal conflict of the month" ) and maybe more thoroughly explored in 1 (where it's like one of 4's "internal conflicts" writ large across one game-wide character arc) - but even then you're not necessarily dealing with a case study of Jungian theory for the entire game.  

 

I feel like Infinite wants to try and say *something* but at the same time it wants to avoid stirring anything up, so it's either comedically heavy-handed or excessively watered-down.

[Rsdio]

11 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

"internal conflict of the month"

Haha, yes! Nailed it. I should've said 3-5+Q+Arena really, I've never played through the first two so I'm guilty of pretending those don't exist though I know they're meant to be pretty different. Also I played 3 first so that probably informed my feeling about it the most (it's still my favourite in general though). I can definitely imagine them starting out heavier on it, maybe with a more singular vision coming from a smaller team then it becoming more of a backdrop for standard anime story fare as the series got bigger and bigger, more expected of it sales-wise etc.

[Rsdio]

2 hours ago, Qazimod said:

I feel like Infinite wants to try and say *something* but at the same time it wants to avoid stirring anything up, so it's either comedically heavy-handed or excessively watered-down.

Probably my fault this got sidetracked so to try and bring it back a bit.. I feel like this is often the crux of it with these things. Then on top of that you have journalists who are desperate for any sort of angle they can latch on to when covering something (having had to write some very low level stuff for websites before I know how this feels), word of mouth which tends to reinforce the already defined angle and so on. How many times do you read about some piece of media that's talked up as 'an insightful commentary' on this or that, then when you sit down with it to find out what it has to say it amounts to nothing more than 'Well, erm, this issue exists.. And stuff?'

 

It's been a long time since I played Infinite but I think it's probably fair to say that it was really trying to generate that sort of coverage, kind of in the manner of an obvious Oscar bait 'issue film', and you see it often in other areas too but I do feel like I've seen more journalistic overreaching with videogames than elsewhere over the years. Maybe there's still some lingering insecurity about them being seen as a lesser form of entertainment that leads to people getting a bit carried away? That's what I've often vaguely assumed, at least.

 

I feel like I'm coming across as very snobby so I should probably clarify that I definitely don't have a problem with things being a bit superficial or silly at all if they're not trying to be something else (I enjoy a re-watch of Commando as much as the next guy), it's only when expectations are set otherwise that it becomes a thing. Sometimes that comes from the creators themselves, sometimes it's the press, it might just be your mate who recommended it to you going way over the top. I guess there's so much available discourse on literally everything these days that it's pretty easy to have the well poisoned before you've had the chance to engage with something on its own terms for yourself though.

[Alex W.]

To be honest I came to it long after it had been in and out of the press and didn’t have great expectations, and the storytelling in that middle third still wound me up. It felt intrusively bad, perhaps because there’s so little in the story to focus on there except the slave revolt you’re supposed to be having mixed feelings about.

 

Then it kind of gets back on the rails and you shoot quantum zombies while an actual ghost yells at you. The multiverse stuff was great, pulpy fun.

[Rsdio]

To be honest my main memory of the game now is tying myself in knots ranting about it to my mate who enjoyed it because I couldn't decide if I was more annoyed by the way the story handled certain things or the gameplay, which I really should've known better than to think might've gone back to a System Shock style by that point.

 

It was one of those 'Ah, it's good to hear that you enjoyed this - now let me explain at length why you were wrong to do so' conversations where by the end you're both glad to have got it off your chest and wondering why anyone still bothers to talk to you at all.

[Alex W.]

That’s just a regular conversation for me TBH.

[Harsin]

I remember GamesTM’s review of the original Bioshock being quite cringey in a real games is art look Dad reviewing computer games is a real job kind of way.

[Alex W.]

Baguette boy is art.

[Stevie]

6 hours ago, Qazimod said:

 

I feel like Infinite wants to try and say *something* but at the same time it wants to avoid stirring anything up, so it's either comedically heavy-handed or excessively watered-down.

It was supposed to be a different game from what I remember, but time restraints and other issues came in the way(such as developing  multiplayer, because why not) resulting in a different experience. 
 

Im not sure if the original vision would have been immune to the criticism though. Is there anyone who knows more about the vision Irrational Games had? 

[RubberJohnny]

The original vision regarding the politics was basically what we got, I don't think you can blame development troubles for it being muddled.

 

Levine went to GDC and talked about the sort of ethical issue he wanted the game to present and it was "you can choose to stop a guy from being lynched, but get this, later on you find him pulling a gold tooth from a body and giving it to you as a reward". The "these two things aren't even two sides of the same issue", thing was there with the the way that personal conduct of one side is ever condemned, the weird implication that the message he wants you to take away is maybe institutionalised slavery is kinda justified because at least it stopped the blacks from doing crimes, and the hollowness of condemnation of 'doing violence' or 'looting bodies' in a game where the player character does a lot of both of those things.

 

It was always a shitty both sides scratch a centrist and a fascist bleeds kinda thing.

[jonny_rat]

I've just read a post by me from 10 years ago in this thread and 10 years ago me sounds like a wanker.

 

I can't actually remember if I liked infinite back in the day. I LOVE the opening, and the awakening in Colombia, and then the game takes a nosedive like no other. I tried replaying it a couple of years back and it's hard work: the Fitzroy stuff in the story is horrid but it's also often messy and incomprehensible. The combat is useless: someone back in the day in thread thought bioshock 1 and 2 had better shootings: no bloody way. 2 is a fantastic FPS.

[Made of Ghosts]

The only thing I have to say about watershed games-as-art moments here is that this came out the same year as Papers Please.