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Bioshock Infinite Thoughts?

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CptnChan

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I'm sure there are many out there who, like me, came into contact with Ayn Rand after playing Bioshock.

I was a fan of the second game, since I thought it portrayed an alternate extreme to Andrew Ryan with the character of Sophia Lamb, a collectivist through and through.

But that game was not created by Ken Levine, while Infinite is.

So it seems this is the true successor to the first game.

 

What are your thoughts on it?

 The story, the characters, the morals, the message of the game. Anything.

Spoilers welcome.

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I heard it stole the ending from the fanfic; Doom Repercussions of Evil.

I like the flying city but as far as I know it doesn't have a real plot related reason for existing, similarity to the magical powers this time around.

 

I was most disappointed about the antagonists though, racist religious nationalists & anarcho communists, I was hoping for something more like Cave Bound Kantians or Hyperborean Heraclitians, Centrists in a Cyclone. 

Within rapture they were able to make things feel relatable, even if they disagreed with them, something that's a bit hard for the themes they went with this time.

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I heard it stole the ending from the fanfic; Doom Repercussions of Evil.

I like the flying city but as far as I know it doesn't have a real plot related reason for existing, similarity to the magical powers this time around.

 

I was most disappointed about the antagonists though, racist religious nationalists & anarcho communists, I was hoping for something more like Cave Bound Kantians or Hyperborean Heraclitians, Centrists in a Cyclone. 

Within rapture they were able to make things feel relatable, even if they disagreed with them, something that's a bit hard for the themes they went with this time.

 I never read that fanfic, but the ending was certainly not the most original thing. The whole concept was kind of a mash-up of time travel ideas. The final scene reminded me of Looper with Joseph Gordon Levitt.  And I agree with you on the antagonists. I think the main problem was they didn't really stand FOR anything. It was kind of a vague religious/ stereotypical confederate-type white people thing. Not very intriguing.

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  • 1 year later...

With the alternative universes and Elizabeth calling objects into existence from another dimensions, doesn't it represent rejection of the law of identity and objective reality?

 

No. There is a difference between a fictitious fantasy story and a philosophical assertion of the nature of reality. There is no indication that the creators of Bioshock Infinite think this particular element of their story accurately represents reality. 

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Infinite is great, but I heard it was supposed to be even better; the devs cut a lot of content out and took shortcuts due to time constraint or some other. The intros of both the Infinite and the original was awesome.

 

If I remember correctly the reason why Andrew's city Rapture went to shit in the original is because for all his wisdoms the guy never had a police force and mobs simply thrived and took it over. Kind of sad really.

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Having never played the game, I'd like to key on one point:

 

 

With the alternative universes and Elizabeth calling objects into existence from another dimensions, doesn't it represent rejection of the law of identity and objective reality?

 

Since art is the objective representation of the creator's philosophy, one need not have art exist within the real world and its rules.  Indeed, to the contrary, I think that the art best exists in the space where an artist creates his own world with which he illustrates the philosophy he espouses.

 

As a non-objectivist example, The Matrix creates a world wherein men are slaves to machines.  So long as the rules of the created world are consistent within themselves (think like a mathematical ring), the artist may use the created world to tell a story, to illustrate a truth, or to work out a problem for himself.  While I love the Matrix films, there are quite a few moments internally that are inconsistent with the rules presented to the viewer.

 

A better example of using a false reality to tell stories that are uplifting is the Sword of Truth series.  The first few novels are run-of-the-mill epic fantasy, but Goodkind eventually develops his storyline into a much keener interpretation of Objectivist ethics than I have otherwise seen in fiction (excepting Rand's own, of course).  It takes a while for the story to get there, but Goodkind eventually uses the epic fantasy world to present an objectivist world-view, not through Romantic Realism like Rand, but rather through Romantic Fantasy.

 

So I said all that to say this:  When operating in ficticious landscapes, judge your principles within the confines of the created world.

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