So with Project Icarus being revealed to be Bioshock infinite, the trailer was enticing & consice all at once but it had left several questions that came to our minds as we watched the trailers over & over again. Before we anaylize what we have seen & go over the two trailers we were treated to by 2K & Irrational, I want to touch on something that really struck me when Ken Levine was first approached for interview by different facets of Game media after the initial trailer reveal. The main issue that most found & even I also found a bit myself was that the name Bioshock was there to brandish itself again in the title, was there a significance as to why this Game is involved with the Bioshock namesake or Rapture? Andrew Ryan? Is this Irrational's way of holding on to a successful IP without any risk of commercial failure?
According to Ken Levine various interviews, he just came off very coy on whether or not the game was a precursor or link or if it would even exist in the same universe at all as Bioshock & Bioshock II did. His intention was to leave it all up to initial interpretation by all gamers interested but dissecting what I have seen I feel that the name Bioshock is simply there as a template for an intended formula of what to expect with the experience that you'll have the same way that Final Fantasy does with no real link to it's previous games. where the I notice these patterns that suggest a formula that would suggest the theory I have concocted with the use of the Bioshock name can be seen immediately, Infinite takes place in a completely surreal setting with evidence pointing to Rapture being an underwater city at the bottom of the ocean & Bioshock Infinite taking place within the city of Columbia floating above the clouds in the sky that would never be imagined to have ever be able to exist & it does in this isolated & seclusive state that almost suggests this private & elitist requirement of passage into this society that upholds to a philosophy laced within a governed yet not governed dystopian mindset the way Bioshock used Objectivism, & Bioshock Infinite dabbles in the ideas of exceptionalism. The last significant similarity was the rather large hulking & nearly unstoppable creature that you encounter more then once in the game as it you confront for the sake of saving a hostage-like character. In prior Bioshock titles it was the focus of saving the little sisters & having a Moral system behind it with how you progress, in Infinite there's a reoccurring main character by the name of Elizabeth who plays the role of the "damsel in distress" however she is not as helpless as I just made her sound which I will discuss in the trailer I will post below which incited this same feeling that I encountered in the ventures that I had with Gordon Freeman &
Alyx in Half Life 2.
So leaving the debut trailer & now venturing more into the newest Gameplay trailer that was just released around the Internet yesterday, the aesthetic is clearly ever so present in the pacing & animation of the trailer displaying the anticipated gameplay reveal which never felt stale at all, the attention to detail & accuracy of it's display of exceptionalism with the slow zoom out of this mural portraying the philosophy instilled to the denizens of Columbia reading "It is our holy duty to
protect against the foreign hordes" & then you're character exclaims that he needs to find Elizabeth & as he travels in what baffled me in this weird display of self-abnegation as these citizens attempt to continue their everyday daily lives while this brewing pot of growing chaos & signs of disaster slowly starts growing through out the trailer, seeing people remorselessly clinging to routine while shit gets fucked all around from the old man riding a horse & buggy missing a wheel as it loudly scrapes against the ground & this then once floating city island crash against your floating city island & it slowly descends below to it's doom & again, a woman then sweeping her front porch in front of the building that completely set fucking ablaze & she continually keeps sweeping as if all is well in the street of Columbia. so onward you go in your trek to locate Elizabeth. As you travel further here's where you get this sense of combat being displayed in front of you, picking a gun from the barrel in the Gazebo in the free thinking & free speak radical who spouts on & on about the basic ideals of exceptionalism
which is much more stressed in the game that I have noticed just from all of the images & messages through the trailers in the tour of Columbia you're given & the talk that Irrational has given through various interviews about how Columbia embraced these ideals beyond gospel & are slowing their descent into chaos. while the combat ensues you're then attacked by the first
mystical & magical attack being the closest thing to plasmids that you witness with a flock of attacking crows swarming at you as you witness the main character try to steady off the shots he fires in hope of thwarting Charles as the antagonist so brashingly called him & as the moment was seized, you see the main character sprint forward & melee him of the railing of the island as he fell to his death against the one of the mainly dangling monorail cars within Columbia & that presented to me one of the most needed improvements of the Bioshock franchise was melee options then more then one weapon, countless times I saved from the trouble of going into a needless fire fight when I could have easily dealt with my foes via blunt force trauma to their doomed fucking heads with my giant monkey wrench so seeing this happen with the butt-end of my gun & then watch as he was a distant smear. I then picked up the concoction that was dropped & I did with the first use of Telekinesis which it then gave me another Plasmid-like power that I was once combating earlier against Charles with the murderous swarm of crow & then the antagonist escapes in a most perplexing way that probably took me back the most.
The antagonist then hops away with a strange contraption that he slides through out his sleeve & then start zipping & sliding away on the same monorail system in this rapid form of transport like some sort of make-shit steampunk spiderman maneuver & from afar, you then see him reappear through the zoomed in view of your rifle scope firing a cannon at you & destroying the
same gazebo he was preaching in moments before the conflict. As the main character starts picking grunts off one by one, the player then goes into a cut scene where brandishes the same monorail contraption & you hop on & zip in the same fashion through the monorail & as you are careening through the railed path you then jump to the next rail in another spiderman-Esq maneuver to continue forward to the next venture & enemies also start zipping at you as you repel one with a melee weapon & the camera crawls into a slow motion to for you feel the impact his body makes against the building to where he then makes to where the cannon was but then stumbles into a nearby building for safe cover & realizes that he just stumbled into a pub where again you see all of these men drinking away in this state of denial hidden away in the phoniness of their good cheer until the main character is then again incline to use his Telekinesis power which he used to take the shotgun away from his foe which again is a new addition to the gameplay that I was not expecting as the most you would be able to do is just manipulate singular inanimate objects or propelled projectiles but never has the ability to take a weapon been done before. As the main character then fights off the enemies within the bar, he then encounters the same cannon again in which he escaped before, the cannon then fires directly at the main character in which he catches the missile in mid-air through his telekinesis & fires it back at the cannon overall showing off a much more fine tuned physics engine in which I feel Irrational has really outdone themselves this time.
The amount of enemies that then appear on the screen is insane & the last thing about the trailer I want to touch on is when you finally encounter Elizabeth while you're fending off the angry citizens of Columbia & around this time you witness the main character display another familiar plasmid like power which would be the lightning as you shock the enemies before
shooting them down, Elizabeth then conjures up a Thunder cloud & as you shoot it with your electricity the cloud showers lethal lightening upon all of your foes reducing them to static corpses along the roads. The main character then continue to fight on through the streets where you witness another bout of teamwork to where Elizabeth takes all of the metal objects around her & creates this miniature meteor that the main character then takes with Telekinesis & shoots forward which brought up several different questions to mind as again, something has been done like this before with Freeman & Alyx, what does Irrational plan on doing to innovate this amazing mechanic littered with potential, would there be any CO-OP suggested through
this? I can only imagine what kind of relationship gameplay could be involved especially when the escort isn't helpless but becomes a valuable asset to your very survival. The character then come across the last familiar theme displayed in Infinite. This Big Daddy-Esq character comes at you much harder & stronger then any of Rapture's Bouncers or Rosies ever did & again through team work involving the environment, the bridge was collapsed with Elizabeth using a power similar to the
mutant Gambit from the Marvel X-Men series & makes the top beam support of the bridge in which your foe is waiting on highly explosive & with the main character's telekinesis controlling an actual cannon head he throws towards the glowing area &
explodes the support along with desperate shots to knock the Goliath down only to witness another Goliath that ends the insanity of the trailer that we all just finished watching.
So that being said, I have laid my impressions & thoughts towards Irrational games latest & we will be discussing it in the newest upcoming episode, so go ahead & let us know what you thought?! write us messages or comments through the usual contacts or just give us a voicemail at 209-566-0190 & stay tuned for the newest episode because it's going to be epic!
-GeorgieBoysAXE