Bad article is bad. *SP* (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 21:48 (4122 days ago) @ davidfuchs
edited by Ragashingo, Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 22:47

Wow oh wow did that writer miss the points of the game… pretty much all of them. I may get in "trouble" for picking this article apart, but here it goes anyway…

Centering a story about people of color fighting against racist oppression on a white person and making that white person the agent of the fight’s success is racist.

Um… why? Why can't a white person be the agent of the success of oppressed black people? Ok, sure, if the game pushed the message that the blacks could only be saved by a white person, that they weren't good enough or smart enough to save themselves, then yeah. Racist. But I didn't get that message. I don't think that message was given. According to this article's author is any white person helping a black person racist? How about the reverse. Would it be racist for a black person to help a group of white people? Where does the line get drawn?

When a revolution happens, yes sometimes the leaders become corrupt with power. That usually happens AFTER the power-grab is secure, not mid-victory.

Yes, and usually we don't have our point of view being "distorted" by jumping through tears into similar but very different realities! The Fitzory that took over Booker's airship and sent him to secure the guns was not the Fitzory that was leading the violence and destruction in the later. Would the former have gotten around to the same destruction? Maybe. Perhaps even probably given her voxaphone recording about how she realized that she had a voice and could influence people to get her revenge. But this whole, "usually leaders become corrupt later" is just stupid when dimension hopping comes into play.

and it’s unfortunate that this game has no mechanics that allow for jumping forward in time…

Eh. It's unfortunate that the core gun combat wasn't better. It's unfortunate that it wasn't mind linked via Matrix style VR. The game can only be what it is. You want a game that allows you to time hop to see a slowly building story to its conclusion you go make one yourself.

It's funny, I don't actually like saying that. I usually think countering game criticism with "why don't you secure millions of dollars and hundreds of employees and produce what you want" is pretty unfair. But there's also limited development time / money and there is the validity of what a story teller wants to tell. You can want something other than you got, and sometimes you are right to want it, but there is also a hard to define point where you cross into unfair criticism. I think the above quote crossed that point.

Where was my Occupy Columbia? …Oh right, it was divided on race lines and immediately fell apart (because black women can’t lead? because a strong black woman pushing for change is “just as bad” as the regime she’s trying to topple?

No. It fell apart because THIS black woman (Fitzory) felt betrayed and cast out and trampled upon and decided to get revenge. You have to work a lot harder to go from one black woman in one story doing something to (basically) accusing the story's writer of having her do it because he thinks that's what all black women would do, or because he thinks they are incapable of leading. Asking the questions in and of itself is actually valid in my opinion, but I think if you ask (leading) questions like that you need to then go on and provide the evidence that the writer was really saying those things. I don't think the article gets anywhere close to establishing that.

I feel like if the game wasn’t so eager to immediately showcase how “bad” Columbia was, it’d have been a much more nuanced journey from judging the behavior of the rebels to understanding what actual desperation feels like.

It's a Bioshock game. Showing that the city is bad is pretty much the entire point. I don't even disagree that the game could have show more, gone more in depth, etc, but given the rest of the article I don't think the author earns the… benefit of the doubt for lack of a better term… that she is giving honest criticism of the story rather than using it to push her own agenda.

Could have stood a bit more bomb-showing throughout the rest of the game, rather than…

MEH. I spent two days following each story thread presented in dialog and cutscene and voxaphone and came to the conclusion that the story, ending and all, is very well set up and supported. It wasn't perfect. I still think there were a couple of minor plot holes, but the bomb was shown, you just had to work a good bit extra to see it.

Does imposing so much additional work on the player invalidate or at least diminish the effect? Maybe a bit. But that's a big question better left for later. I did like how the story was interesting on the surface but had that extra layer of support underneath. Should every game and story do it? Probably not. I just think that this one pulled it off.

At one point Elizabeth wonders if she’s wishing these alternate universes into being. While that turns out to be false (the truth instead being the current state of DC comics) I actually would have loved that to be true.

Hmm. I think she WAS in fact wishing them into existence. When Elizabeth opened a tear she always got what she wanted. From getting to view Paris to having the Vox succeed she always achieved her goal. The problem was she had limited ability to choose between realities and often got too much of what she wanted. At best, instead of turning out to be false, the question is left unanswered. I just think that when Elizabeth herself asks the question "Did I do this?" or some such paraphrase then we have to seriously consider that the answer might be yes.

Also I'm not much of a comic person so I fully admit not getting the reference to the current state of DC comics. Hopefully that doesn't render my whole thing here invalid…

Why do the twins care so much about saving Manhattan? I mean, I get *we* lived through 9/11 but they didn’t, so why does the bombing of a place we never go to in the game matter so much more than all of the people living in Columbia? For a game set in US history, this was the one piece of the game that actually stank of US entitlement. Who gives a shit about the city off-screen, let me save the city in front of me, yeesh.

And the final paragraph just proves to me that the writer didn't even come close to understanding the story. The goal of the Luteces wasn't to save New York. It was to set right ALL of the wrongs that sprung from helping Comstock stealing his own daughter from a different reality. This means preventing the bombing of New York, yes, but also means preventing the racism in Colombia, preventing Comstock from murdering his wife, preventing Fitzory, the innocent maid from being blamed for said murder, preventing the death and destruction Fitzory caused, preventing themselves from being "killed" and scattered across time, and preventing all the other things big and small that we learned about during the game. Yes, the attack on New York was a significant event that we got to stop, but I didn't see 9/11 or US entitlement in it.

In the end I just want to take this lady, shake her, and say "NO!" The article doesn't just miss the point of Bioshock Infinite, it doesn't even know what the points were. Instead the author pushes multiple agendas (racism, 9/11, etc) using Bioshock as a strawman of sorts. Of course then there's this:

So I watched my spouse play through BioShock Infinite over the past few days.

Next time play the game yourself before trying to tear it apart.