This 2011 demo looks way better than what we got. I'm genuinely pissed off. Columbia looks so much better, bigger, more open-ended and feels like an actual populated city you can explore. You can actually interact with people and make choices which matter. The gameplay looks more fluid. The dialogue between Booker and Elizabeth was a nice touch. Even the HUD looks better and more stylised. I get that this was probably a completely scripted demo, and a game somewhat similar couldn't possibly run on a 7th gen console, but I can't help but feel that we could've gotten a much better game...
many development issues, game getting built then scrapped then rebuilt then scrapped
Also focus testers having the same problem they did with the original Bioshock
Parker Davis
Dishonoest marketing, they very practically describing a whole different game as late as a month before release in 2013, while hardware constrainsts are usually considered the primary reason for why the game was so scaled down and honestly i do believe that is bullshit as there are numerous other games form that time that had hub areas and expansive level design and still ran on the 7th gen systems, Levine was just a incomeptant studio lead who blatantly didn't know what he was doing and him writing the story over and over again is another factor.
Lincoln Harris
Because the Bioshock games are horribly made and have little to no mod support?
They also removed the body horror elements, because they wanted to cater to a "larger audience".
Nicholas Russell
Did they tighten that corset when they put it on her
Sebastian Ward
This is when I learnt not to pre-order games.
Nathan Reyes
You don't need mod "support" to mod a game. If modders want to, they'll figure it out on their own. Noone really gives a shit in bioshock's case though.
Aiden Cox
>i'm half jew when i smell silver
what did they mean by this
Aaron Powell
It's the best game in the series. Suck my dick, choke on it.
Andrew Martin
the original bioshock was going to be far more open in design and Splicers were going to have a faction rep system, so they wouldn't automatically be hostile to you. Focus testers couldn't grok the idea of 'enemies' who weren't hostile and kept just shooting them, so in the end they scraped it along with the open Rapture plans. In the final game, you're told Andrew Ryan is controlling everyone with "pheremones", this is a late edition to justify all enemies being hostile on contact. You can still see some faint remnants of the originally intended systems, particularly in the Park area, where you get a 'quest' to take out the Saturnine who were originally going to be a faction.
Focus Tester groups really are one of the more obscure banes of the gaming industry, tehre'a also that one story where a group tester for HL2:EP2 ran in circles for 25-30 minutes before realizing he was meant to go further into a cave system to evade the purusing ayy imao creature.
Joshua Harris
Oh, PS: as I said, Bioshock Infinite was supposed to be a return to Kev Levine's original vision for Bioshock, but it got scrapped once again when focus testers STILL couldn't wrap their head around the faction system. Originally, factions in the game weren't going to all be hostile to you, this is even shown in an early E3 gameplay demo
IDK if i'd say they're 'obscure' anymore, but yes focus test groups are fucking awful.
I only have to THINK about the words "Overstrike" and it triggers a blinding rage
Julian Morales
Other games have had faction systems before then that worked fine, did 2K just hire the most retarded focus testers possible or is Levine just shit at designing faction systems?
You're right. It's way better than 1 and 2. Suck it.
Kayden Johnson
Basically: group test with people that you didn't take directly off the short bus. Show some respect for your intended audience who often won't mind a game being 'too hard' since it means they get more meat out of it. Think that covers it?
Evan Gutierrez
>How did they fuck this up so badly? If you didnt fallow the development of the game back in the day you might seem confused on why the final product looks so different but it all came down to one person, Ken Levine and his ego. For some unexplained reason that even he would blame on something different in every interview, a year before the release he decided to soft reboot the games development, fire some of the current leads and take on the task of rewriting and redesigning the project using already created assets. This would start a huge exodus people from the studio and would completely burn every bridge between Levine and his publisher, Take Two. In fact this single decision would force the studio closure in all but name, and make a 300+ staff studio into a 15 man ghost.
Also anons saying it was play testers or what every are wrong. The internal drama got so bad even gaming press picked it up when people refused to work with Levine and kept leaving left and right, its clear who was the problem.
Leo Rodriguez
>did 2K just hire the most retarded focus testers possible or is Levine just shit at designing faction systems? yes
Why don't rival companies just copy what these hyped up old trailers offered? I imagine it would be easy to do this tech and gameplay with today's consoles.
Colton Watson
besides the nearly impossible puzzle at the beginning, its a great game.
Elijah Perez
Me too man... I remember coping with myself so hard when they showed the E3 2013 Gameplay trailer of the actually game and telling myself it will be as immersive and good as the E3 2010 Trailer. Instead I got Call of Duty with colors.
Ian Cooper
Because Infinite sold well and was positively received by wider audiences on release so there is no reason for another big dev to look at the concepts and decide to rip that off when the butchered final game is still considered a success. Any indie dev might but they'd likely never have the resources needed to make it like it was in those original trailers.
Angel Scott
>Zig Forums tells me this game is good >Steam reviews tell me this game is good >I actually buy the game I hate all of you.
Lucas Edwards
It seems like easy money to just pick up where someone else fucked up.
Xavier Sullivan
Imagine a 'director's cut' ed. released with today's technology... A man can dream, but its never going to happen
Noah Ross
Problem is in cases like that people are always going to prefer the original game that existed in their heads, especially if it's already part of a popular series/IP. Spiritual successors often fall flat when they finally do release because while they may retain the core concepts people liked the devs of these things often lack a real creative vision for their own unique world to rival that of the original property, which is probably why they'd be ripping off an old idea people already liked in the first place rather than just doing their own thing. Sure someone could do this and make Fleshzap: Infinity or whatever the fuck but it more than likely wouldn't be worth the effort.
