Weekend Confirmed 159 - Defiance, Ni No Kuni, BioShock Infinite spoiler discussion

So, on the next Xbox being always online, I would point out that whatever Microsoft or Sony do doesn't prevent third party developers from deciding to implement that policy on their own games. I'd also point out that if Microsoft goes forward with this idea and it tanks their sales, they could very easily drop. Its not like bluray making the PS3 $600 level of permanent damage.

That said, I don't think we can ignore the fact that there is a critical mass of console gamers with internet connections, regardless of those who don't. There are certainly 10 million gamers who want a new Xbox and have broadband connections at home. Even if Microsoft angers tons of gamers over this policy, they can still enforce it for at least the first year of the console's life cycle and not feel any sales impact.

Also, I'd point out that the biggest game of all time is World of Warcraft, which happens to be always online. Microsoft's strategy with the Xbox, since the induction of Xbox Live Gold Membership, is to isolate the gamers with the most money, and charge them as much as possible. Traditionally we've thought of consoles as a populist platform, which I think is crucial to their viability, but it isn't necessarily in Microsoft's interest to think that way.

Finally, I want to make the point that the reason broadband is so expensive and so crappy in America is that we depend on private industry to build our internet infrastructure. This is relevant because it reflects Microsoft's methodology with Xbox. Comcast exclusively targets affluent suburban communities and only runs as much wire as it has to, to reach the most well to do households.

Ironically the country where Microsoft's always online strategy would work best is Japan. What countries like Japan do differently from the United States is build networks of "dark fiber" through tax funds---"dark" meaning they don't run a current through the fiber. Then they install conduits for the fiber at every apartment building and household---ensuring that the access is administered democratically.

As a result of that the nation owns the internet's infrastructure, the same way they own the telephone lines. But private companies compete to "light up" the wire, and in other words provide the internet service itself. In that kind of a system consumers can supplement each other, because there are more of them, and the competition drives speed up and the market price down.

So this is a political issue that directly affects gamers' livelihoods. For those of you that vote in America, its something to bear in mind. Write your congress person, and in particular get in touch with your local municipality and challenge them to invoke their "right of way" laws to install a fiber ring in the community. If you do that, then hopefully some day we won't have to bitch like a bunch of cave men over the idea of "always online."

Hey guys and gals. I hope I don't come off as too rude but I feel like the story time segment was a bit too long this time around. I've personally enjoyed it whenever it pops up but maybe you could impose a time limit on it next time? Just an idea. Anyways, love the show!

The Bioshock Infinite criticism from around the Internet got me thinking today.

Here's the Shacknews review: http://www.shacknews.com/article/78364/bioshock-infinite-review-ambitions-fulfilled

By contrast, here's Leigh Alexander's critique (here there be spoilers): http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-now-is-best-time.html

Eurogamer's review: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-25-bioshock-infinite-review

AV Club critique (also spoilers): http://gameological.com/2013/03/review-bioshock-infinite/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=channel_games

1. How is it that an almost-ubiquitously loved game can be both lauded and criticized for its same facets, where the opinion seemingly changes from outlet to outlet?

2. Is it possible to reconcile applause for Infinite going after mature themes while critiquing its relatively limited approach to them? How?

3. How long before we see another game ignite the Internet in the same way, and is it going to be an Irrational title?

Ok. Nikole has to go. Do not bring her back. Her voice is fucking annoying and story time was a waste of time. Sorry to be rude about this but I can't be the only one who thinks this. Last week was great and this week was ruined when she opened her mouth.

Quickly, on the topic of always on/connected just want to say that I have a Roku Box and it's always on. I love it! I'm all for "always on."

So this might be long, it might be rambling, it might be crazy but I have fallen into the Black Hole and that hole is called Monster Hunter. To put this into context I bought the system a week ago and I have put around 60 hours into the game. As I said I am clearly crazy (I bought a network adapter for the PS2 version of this series) so keep that in mind.

Having played so much of the games in the series the design actually begins to seem more and more deliberate. Everything in the game is designed around enclosing you and/or three other people and a gigantic monster in a confined space and letting you battle and making sure that that experience at the cost of everything else is perfect, which is a kind of game design I can really get behind.

All the other activities you do feed into your prep and also teach you the lay of all the worlds. The tutorial is required because Priority Animation combat is still in such few games that if you just dropped people into the action sooner they would get wiped up and down the stage. With that combat you have to ease people into it and they have gotten remarkably better in that 3U doesn't require quest grinding to proceed it only requires monster grinding for parts (which is coincidentally where all the fun is). Also the single player does also act as a 'don't embarrass yourself online' do a bit of this first to get kinda in the zone.

I even think that the world is broken up into chunks is a part of it. The combat in the game is a level of intensity that few games can match and as such there has to be a way to release that bottled up tension if required, which applies to both you and the monsters(who tend to flee much more often). It also keeps the performance in that single area running the silkiest smoothest it can which plays back into the combat. Which only works because Monster Hunter has the best enemy AI in video games.

If it was more accessible would more people give it a shot? Probably, however I find I am less and less interesting in anything that everyone likes.

Being on your final life of 3 against something you have fought in a couple quests previously and down the last of your healing items is the most exhilarating feeling in video games and 6 games later in the series that loop has not gotten any less intense.

Also you haven't lived until you have used your Greatsword to knock a friend out of the way of a fireball that was coming towards them.

The discussion around always on requirement for the new xbox makes me gravitate towards the opinion that the consoles pauperize the video games industry, and are slowing down the progress.

"Always on requirement would be a sign of Microsoft's utter arrogance, and leads to exclusion of people without internet connection."

First of all, private held company can make any business/design decision it wishes, and people vote with their wallets. If "Always on" is a failure, then it is a misjudgment, not arrogance, as people have other options.

Second of all - internet access proliferation. I live in Central Europe, so the area which is not usually considered to be on the cutting edge of technology, but still uptime of my broadband can be counted in months, and I don't recall last time when I had to restart my cable modem (neither router - somebody please help Nicole, as her WiFi story made me open my eyes wide ;-)) I have fairly stable 3G internet access in my cellphone, if I wish I can register in my local community and get free WiFi just because I live in the neighborhood, and if everything fails I can fallback to the 3G modem provided by the company I work for.
And it can get better - I have just came back from the ski trip to Austria, where free WiFi is available at most of the ski stations!
My TV in always connected, the same for the rest of residents of my AV rack, and if so, why the console - a device which is designed to deliver the most modern kind of entertainment out there shouldn't be?

Really, it wouldn't surprise me if there would be a group of people lobbying for adding composite video output to the next xbox, as hdmi-only excludes all these people without hdtvs....

Call me a troll but I do not want my next device to be an iteration of the previous one - my next xbox should be a device carved for the future - always connected, without optical media drive, based on the "game as a service" model.
I want to be intrigued and amazed.
You know what? Even better - the next xbox should be a service, not a device!

For all those DRM-haters without access to the internet I would advice board games (which I love by the way), no inet connection required, no DRM, and on the checkout the game is yours.

Like Nikole mentioned, 'always on' and digital only is a distant future inevitability.

If it comes to fruition, it'll be and unfortunate growing pain towards this future that I think MS will suffer from.

I think these tweets make me lean towards believing this is going to happen, but I must say the quotes from GameStop CEO stating he's excited about the new Xbox makes me think otherwise.

What if the next bioshock was a single player game. Where all of the multiverse's was another players game who made the opposite decession as you. And you had to figure out the right path through other experiences and failures. Would you buy a always on Xbox for that?

ALWAYS a pleasure to have Nikole on the show. Love the way she narrated Ocarina of Time, can't wait for the part 2.

I'm really worried about the "always online" consistent rumors for the 720. There is NO WAY - and I know many gamerz feel the same way - I would buy buy such a system ( I would just rent it to play Halo and Gears ).

Over this past week, I've been seeing ads for Scarlet Blade everywhere on the internet.

If someone would be so kind as to explain this game to me... and then afterwards, tell me again how sexism isn't an issue in the games industry.

I just finished Bioshock Infinite and it was incredible. It was a damn near perfect experience. The one thing that I felt really pulled the game down was the gameplay. It just didn't fit with the game at all. Brace for opinions and SPOILERS.

So, when it comes to the art, themes, setting, voice acting and all that good stuff, Infinite constantly makes you forget you're playing a video game and makes you feel like you're living in a world. But when it comes to the gameplay, Infinite reminds you that you're playing a video game. While the story and the world soars above what other games attempt, the gameplay drags it down. Before I start, I want to say that there's nothing about the gameplay that's mechanically broken or unpolished, all of the gameplay functions properly and controls well.

Here's some of the things that are a stark reminder of just how 'video gamey' Infinite is.

So much combat. It's like the game has two modes, immersive story mode, and shooting gallery. It's hard to explore themes of shame and redemption and the psychological effects of war and killing when the gameplay is a Rambo simulator. Not only do you find yourself killing hundreds of people the violence is so absurd and comical it's baffling how anyone thought is was ok. Last night I electrocuted a guy and his brain slipped out of his disintegrating body and bounded on the floor. I wouldn't have been surprised if he pulled out a sign that said 'yikes' or Booker said 'take that dick-tits'. The game at times feels like Bulletstorm or a Looneytoons episode. 23 out of 50 of the achievements are about killing enemies. And the AI is dumb and uninteresting, they barely react to getting shot or adapt to your movements. It's a mindless shooting gallery. It became a grind that out stayed it's welcome and I couldn't wait for the combat to end and the story to resume. The game could have done with about 40% less shooting, There's few times where the combat feeds the story in any meaningful way. Aside from fighting the handyman or Lady Comstock, few of the characters had any personality or depth.

The 'video gamey' nature is at odds with the world. There's been great effort to present some complex themes. Rarely does a game present such strong images of racism and religion (two things that most creative types leave to analogy). Despite holding up an ugly mirror to humanity the game breaks its immersion with video gamey stuff that feels out of place and downright comical. An encounter could go like this: I walk into a new area and look, there's the sniper rifle leaning against the doorway, I wonder if I'll need that ... then using my video game super powers I jump 30 meters into the air to attach to a skyline and then fall 30 meters unharmed into a bunch of enemies, shoot a flock of ravenous crows out of my hands into them, I'm low on health but that's ok because I shoot a man with a pistol that causes his head to vaporise and a fountain of blood erupts from his neck and I'm wearing pants that heal my wounds when I kill someone. Then I survey the bloodied corpses and oh look, one of them was carrying a a bowl of cereal, a cake and a pineapple so I instantly eat them and all of my bullet wounds are healed. Then I head-but a coin block and money falls out of it. Actually, at this point head butting coin blocks wouldn't be the most hokey video gamey element to the game. Why do people leave audio logs just laying around in an alley way? Why do locks cost a number of lockpicks that will be consumed during the picking? It's all so ridiculous and video gamey. I haven't eaten a hotdog to restore my health since Double Dragon!

All of these elements in the gameplay, the combat, the traversal are as if they were building two entirely different games. One, a hyper violent light hearted tongue in cheek period shooter, the other a deep and riveting story about a man trying to get his daughter back set against the backdrop of religion and racism. It's like this amazing story has two modes, Infinite asks you to soak in this immersive experience and then it routinely interrupts your experience and says 'now go into arcade G.I Joe killing mode'. I don't think irrational know how to make a game that fits with their world and their story. It's like they have this amazing talent for vision and immersion only know how to make Doom games. I'm no game designer so I can't suggest any meaningful ways to create gameplay more appropriate to the story and world but there must be some better ways to interact with this world than what they managed to create.

These elements really tore the game in two for me. I couldn't wait for the gameplay to get out of the way of the story. I had to wade through the mechanics of this game to enjoy the story. But to Irrationals credit, I came away from Infinite feeling really privileged to have experienced the story. It's really to their credit that their story and world more than compensated for the gameplay.

Thanks for the spoiler discussion on Bioshock Infinite. I really enjoyed Jeff Mattas' theories but I do have one alternate that I'd like to propose. What follows will obviously contain SPOILERS for the game.

Jeff, as with many other people that I've heard or read talking about the game link "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" to the idea of the cycles or loops that have been occurring. I get this if you take the songs title alone and don't delve into the song. I think the song is perfect for the game specifically because the question that it is asking is whether or not the family circle will be unbroken. In the song this is specifically directed towards the afterlife but it applies to the game fiction as well.

First, the stated goal of the Luteces (their thought experiment in Rosalind's words while on the boat) is to be put the baby (Anna) back where they got her. That means they are attempting to make sure the family circle remains unbroken. Second, the song is associate with Booker and Elizabeth/Anna. Elizabeth tells him at the end of the game that they reason he came after her was so that they could be together.

That's why my favorite scene in the game is the one in the basement of the Vox tavern, where Booker picks up the guitar and begins to play. His memories may have been jumbled and refashioned, but a part of him knows he's there to keep the circle from being broken. He's there for his daughter.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/399649/rumour-next-xbox-will-be-expensive-may-21-reveal-suggested/

What subscription model would you be willing to pay?

$300 up front and $10 a month for 24 months?
$0 up front and $25 a month for 24 months?

I thought the whole connection of Rapture is explained pretty easy. Elizabeth states the only constant is a Man, A lighthouse, and a City. So if there are infinite possibilities in some the city is in the air, some it's under the sea, some might be in space, ect ect ect.

Does J.J. Abrams represent bold creative choices? Or the really obvious incredibly boring choice for boiler plate guy who hasn't really made a movie about anything that wasn't either directly telling a story of something else or directly paying homage to something kinda poorly.

Hey guys, spoiler cast is really uncool at this stage.

I appreciate you holding it off till the tailgate, but I really wanted to be part of it. I've been playing as quickly as posible but you guys have advanced access. How about holding off for a few weeks on future?

Nice to see a spoiler section on Bioshock Infinite. Putting it at the end of the show made it easy to skip/come back to if you haven't finished the game too. I finished it two days ago so perfect timing as far as I'm concerned, but if I hadn't finished it, it would have been something I'd come back for later. Just saying.

My ONLY issue with the storytelling in Bioshock Infinite is the connections - however direct, implicit or tangential - to the original Bioshock universe. I didn't need the games to be connected at all and I feel the game suffered most obviously when it tried to make those connections.

I'm aware that the game has BIoshock in the name, but Final Fantasy games have the same title and have fuck-all to do with each other directly. The underlying themes - both in terms of storytelling and gameplay (which is interactive storytelling, in of itself really) - are what connect the games, not the characters, worlds or events.

If the only connection that BIoshock Infinite had to Bioshock was a unique, distopian world to explore, an iconic, creepy 'big bad' to deal with, a measure of socio-political philosophies for players to think about and a mix of gunplay with 'magic' abilities, that would be enough for me. The broad connections would have been enough to connect the games under the same banner.

I compare it to the upcoming Star Wars movies. I am DISGUSTED that the upcoming movies will feature Han Solo, Luke et all in ANY capacity, let alone a major one. Why? It's a chance to start fresh, use the established tenets of the universe (the force, Jedi vs Sith, etc), and take us somewhere new and tell a completely new story, in new worlds, with new characters. Why the fuck do I need the anchor of a connection to a completed narrative in my new narrative?

Other than that, I have no complaints with the game. Is is as good or as important as the original? No. That was a 'back to the drawing board' game, the same way that Zelda, Halo and the original MGS (and none of the others) were. It was a game that made every person who took pride in making games go back and say 'we have to reach higher'. Bioshock Infinite is less a 'look at where we can go' and more of 'look at how far we've come'.

About Anna Comstock, Comstock's wife, Booker says he named his daughter Anna after her mother, it's her namesake.

A. Comstock is the same woman Booker marries (who dies during childbirth). In one universe she is a party girl who meets Booker (who would love a crazy girl like that) and they get married and have Anna their child, and the mother dies in childbirth.

In another universe, Anna (mother) meets Comstock, who has been saved, and forgives her of her sins and converts her (as A. Comstock explains in her voxophones).

Does that explain the question?

Sorry to keep spamming about Roger Ebert, but I just watched this and had to share it:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/38839-nostalgia-critic-farewell-to-roger-ebert

This was an awesome episode. I really enjoyed the indepth look into the story of bioshock and it's universe. The conversation is over, but it brought up some thoughts that I couldn't help but share. I think, but I may be wrong, that Elizabeth said that Rapture was another possibility. That being said it I think it is possible that Ryan was indeed also Comstock/Dewitt giving the Booker/Bookers we played the same DNA.

Also as far as Elizabeth goes I think that she is conscience of her other selves and their experiences as or is like the "twins" who seem to be able to see all possibilities and all instances within those possibilities, or at very least what they is pertinent or what their selves are actually involved in. I'm inclined to believe that the tower not only held back her ability to open new tears but also to access that knowledge.

At the end of the game I felt like I could say "Ah ha! It wall makes sense" and at the same time "whaaaat?" Lol. After listening to what you guys had to say I think that the story isn't so much about the limitless possibilities those are givens but more about which possibilities are the best possibilities, which ones will lead to the desired end result because of the circumstances and attributes of each possibility. From that one booker being able to stop everything, making it to the end, to the crazy vox populi, even to rapture. And I'm not even going to get into how this could might possibly even be able to tie into Bioshock 2, as crazy as that might sound lol.

i hope you like nier, it's easily one of the most underrated games of this generation. consider looking into the grimoire nier stuff, too. ridiculous amount of information in there.

To pay my final respects to Roger Ebert, I watched Citizen Kane with Ebert's commentary track turned on and listened to the man talk non-stop for almost two hours about the film he considered the greatest ever made. I'd recommend doing the same.

Cinema has lost one of it's champions, he will be missed.