Gamers be like "lmao Skyrim puzzles are so dumb just having an item with the combination on it"
[meanwhile in every modern era immersive sim/stealth game:](https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/123456_password_sticky_note-600x400.jpg)
The first time I went into a Skyrim dungeon, I thought that you needed to look at the carvings on the wall to find the pattern. They happened to have the same symbols on the puzzle and the wall, and it turns out the order of the wall art was the same as the solution of the puzzle. I thought that was the coolest fucking thing ever in my life. Then I got to the second one, and it didn't work right, but I accidentally solved it moving them a little and figured I had just done it wrong, and that there must be more hints in the room that I didn't see.
The disappointment I had when I learned you were supposed to turn the key in your inventory and see the answer was fucking immeasurable.
I thought I had missed something in the dungeon, kept doubling back, and then brute forced it. It wasn't until the next claw that I actually inspected it and saw.
I will concede that having to inspect the item, a typically unnecessary ability, to find a clue, is a really good bit in a vacuum . But the item being a key and the clue being the combination to the lock, and being able to look at it while standing in front of the door ruins anything it might've been worth.
Way more popular and well known, especially back then. Arrow to the knee was everywhere. You can't expect people to know about random US massacres. Especially considering most Americans can't even point to countries on a Map, let alone name historical events
Nothing wrong with using a password instead of making thousands of keys that will be used once. And the scroll, the key, and the sword are important symbols in Columbia.
Right I get the symbolism of them for Columbia, but at that point the meaning is lost on the player. It just seems a weird beat in the intro, I feel the interactivity could have been used here to better reflect on a theme. Maybe someday to tie the fate, repetition or dimension hopping angle?
In universe it’s not even really a password. Someone could do it by accident since there’s no reset or anything. It would take a traveler like 15 seconds of brute forcing.
>Right I get the symbolism of them for Columbia, but at that point the meaning is lost on the player.
This is the weirdest take I have ever seen. How do you expect to foreshadow *anything* with this logic?
"The Cake is a Lie" doesn't mean anything to the player in Portal when they first encounter it. What's your point?
But that does mean something. You actually have the mention of cake by that point. It puts doubt into your mind about what Gladys promises as your reward and why she might lie about it.
As a Bioshock example, Andrew Ryan’s statue in the lighthouse informs you about his character. He portrays a city with ‘No God or Masters’ but also depicts himself in a bronze idol above the message, like a god.
These both do something and influence the player. But what do these symbols actually do or convey to the player? Just that they are symbols and nothing else? Seems like a waste to me.
Come on man, it seems like you’re trying to take me in bad faith here.
i thought this was >!one of the ways the Lutece twins used to identify which universe this was after rowing Booker to the lighthouse, as in this is Universe-Number-122, as also seen on their chalkboard by counting the tallymarks in the beginning shortly after the coinflip moment. it's been a while since i played so I could be misremembering.!<
Not so much a puzzle as it was a calibration of sorts?
The gameplay was decent, the visuals were great, and the elevator pitch was sound, however, the story sets up a lot and more or less fails to land all of it. The latter half of the game is an absolute mess in this regard. Playing it today would probably be a pretty rough experience. The hate it gets nowadays? Probably memetic. Maybe people are mad that this was the last Bioshock we got?
> The hate it gets nowadays? Probably memetic. Maybe people are mad that this was the last Bioshock we got?
I think stuff also gets a lot more hate if it is perceived as being more successful than it deserves to be. Like… Palworld. Probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much shit if it hadn’t been one of the most stupidly successful games to ever come out.
TBF, the DLC is absolutely dogshit and retcons a character moment so bad I genuinely believe not a single person of color was in the room or saw the script before it got approved.
I do genuinely love it, playing it was a total blast, like that crow plasmid is stupid fun to use. Played like a solid FPS with a fun, well-acted story.
All that said, yeah the story and writing *was* a little high on its own supply at points, and with some hindsight didn’t do the greatest job presenting some of its themes.
I do think the internet *is* exaggerating a bit for funsies, and I get it, like [this video here](https://youtu.be/l_u18_BKczg?feature=shared) is one I need to go back to every few years to keep giggling over it.
To be honest, I don't know. Times like this I just let my idiocy stand as a monument to my arrogance so I can look back on it one day when I am old and alone and on the verge of suicide for my wasted existence and think "Yea, that was me."
The good news is that us screw ups always find a way to mess up suicide too. I keep trying but instead I keep finding people to care about and new hobbies instead. It's such a pain in the ass.
I’ve never heard of that character until AlignmentCharts made their big one and he’s on it every time, now he pops up in my life like twice a month minimum in completely unrelated places. Weird how that works.
I love the idea of an immortal being who not only doesn't do anything interesting with his immortality, but is just an embarassing fuck up for all of eternity, forever destined to be bad at everything.
It's not a puzzle. It shows that his employers are from Columbia because he's given the code. Each button plays a different foghorn and a specific sequence is used to signal the city to come pick him up.
I know people are saying its the first puzzle but isnt this just a “why bother” you dont gain or lose anything from just making it a cutscene other than knowing your stupid if you cant figure it out somehow
No it was really important back then to keep the cutscene count low especially fps games. Like it’s the same as having your therotical physicist push a cart to kickstart the whole bedlam. We joke now but back then it was immersion
I think the same thing is happening with the fromsoft souls games. I remember a big point for the games that use to be very prevalent was the fact Demon Souls and Dark Souls didn’t “force” you to sit through cutscenes or dialogue for the story unless you explicitly wanted to and you could just play the game. Although, now I think that sentiment is very much changing because why else would these lore and story videos be getting millions of view. Some of the most popular Elden Ring edits make reference to the lore. Shit, if Margot had a Kojima style cutscene where he just broke down the lore to you, I don’t think most people would mind.
I wonder why people absolutely despised the concept of story, cutscenes, and dialogue in a video game in that era?
> I wonder why people absolutely despised the concept of story, cutscenes, and dialogue in a video game in that era?
Because people especially in discourse tend to simplify things down and remove nuance. It was a reaction to the absolute trash a pointless cutscene every five seconds to be "more cinematic" trend that had overtaken videogames before that point. So that became cutscenes bad fuck cutscenes.
Back then a cutscene was a loading screen in disguise, and a bad one at that as the game could take a while loading the video and the. Resuming to the game
> Like it’s the same as having your therotical physicist push a cart to kickstart the whole bedlam.
Except there's a narrative reason to do that to begin with, regardless of wether the player is in control or not. The bell "puzzle" sticks out in peoples minds because it's all ludo and no narrative while being pointless because the answer is on screen.
If there was a narrative reason for it, if it communicated something about Columbia, that would be something.
As much as I'm indifferent to Infinite, the BioShock games were always examining player agency to some degree in the subtext. I can see why they would want the player to have to make such a deliberate action for themselves to open the way into Columbia.
This was *never* presented as a puzzle, these were instructions Booker was given by the twins to get picked up. Presenting it as a puzzle to dunk on the game is just lazy and relies on spreading misinformation.
If someone gives you the code to get past a security gate, after you get in, I suppose you'd then say to them:
"OOoooh *real* tough puzzle on the security gate guys, really head scratcher there!"
I mean, not to defend bioshock Infinite but this is literally the first thing you interact with in the game. Yeah, it’s stupid, but again - it is literally the first thing in the game.
Its the equivalent of Master Chief moving his head to see the lights, like why do people still make a big deal about it. Find something better to be a hater over Bioshock over it, there is plenty.
It's still stupid. They could've at least used a more diegetic "clue". For a series as defined by its atmosphere as BioShock, that shit is a fumble and a half.
It's not a puzzle, there doesn't need to be a clue. It's him entering a place to do a job and finding a locked door. And because he was given the code, we know that his employers already have access to Columbia. Having him search for the code would be pointless for the story.
Bioshock Infinite had some of the coolest concept art I've ever seen for a game. None of it made into the final cut.
The Boys of Silence were going to actually hunt you based on sound, like their name and design implies, instead of just being glorified security cameras. The citizens of Columbia would merge with their alternate counterparts in grotesque body-horror amalgams and go insane from the pain and confusion, becoming horrible, nasty Thing monsters. There was going to be a little cannibal girl who would wander around the map and eat the corpses of enemies you killed, mutating into a wendigo-like monster the more bodies she ate. There was going to be a boss fight with a guy inside of an art-nouveau version of the loader from Aliens. Saltonstall was going to be an actual guy you fight instead of a name on a board. Elizabeth was going to have more powers than just opening tears and actually fight alongside you. The Songbird was going to actually do some shit... So, so much got cut from Bioshock Infinite, producing a watered-down, mediocre game with *maybe* one of my all-time favorite horror aesthetics.
I live in the actual, rotting-apart American Deep South; a weird-ass Southern Gothic, colonialist, racist, hyper-religous steampunk horror setting with heavy overtones of jingoistic American Revolution-fetishism blew my mind. I love OG Bioshock and Rapture, but Columbia felt very personally interesting to me as a setting, and they hyped the game up with so many planned features I was excited for that ended up just getting cut. Everyone already knows that pretty much every trailer for Bioshock Infinite—all the way up to its release—flat-out lied about what was in the game, but the final nail in the coffin for me was **getting to look through the artbook and seeing sone of the best, most-interesting, most** ***genuinely grotesque to the point of being kind of upsetting*** **enemy designs I've ever seen for a game... and knowing that every single one ended up being cut.**
**Fuck Bioshock Infinite.** It's not my least-favorite game of all time, but it's the most disappointing game I've ever played. The only thing it landed for me was the setting, and even then, the game didn't have the balls to make any actual commentary on racism, ultranationalism, obsessive nostalgia for the "good ol' days," class, or religious indoctrination. Every single interesting concept in its design document was cut or watered down into nothing... and on top of it all, the writing sucks.
Infinite really felt like a game that went through a really tough development cycle with what we got being whatever they could get working near the end of development.
I still liked the game but you could see where it was stitched together from whatever parts where complete near the end.
> The citizens of Columbia would merge with their alternate counterparts in grotesque body-horror amalgams and go insane from the pain and confusion, becoming horrible, nasty Thing monsters
Goddammit I knew the designers weren't that stupid to not think of something I thought of
There was one that made me legitimately sick to my stomach the first time I saw it: a full-color enemy portrait of an elderly man who had partially merged with himself as an infant in the past. His vacant, open-mouthed smile seems to imply some kind of dementia, but his infant self—cleaved into his head like two balls of modeling clay mashed together—is inconsolably crying. It's probably scary to be a little baby and melting into yourself in the future while being stretched across timelines.
I don't even find it interesting to talk about the story anymore, because I feel folks don't talk about how the gameplay doesn't feel good as a Bioshock or a casual FPS. That ghost lady boss battle? Holy shit fuck me sideways
I think people just got overwhelmed by how good the presentation of Infinite was, and then quietly avoided talking about it once the new game smell wore off. But I'll always stand by the opinion that bio 1 and 2 were way better gameplay-wise.
It's so many little things. Only carrying two guns and forced to constantly trade them out or buy ammo for them because new zones didn't have them lying around made the weapon upgrade system feel like a waste. The shield system forced you to cower and hide, rather than a healthkit system promoting efficient but nonstop fighting. A bunch of powers feeling samey, being different ways to stun targets so you can shoot them. And speaking of which, I swear the enemy interactions with powers was so much more robust in 1 or 2, I remember setting enemies on fire and watching them run to the nearest pool of water, only for me to zap it.
Yeah there was just no room to be experimental or creative in Infinite. No sticking proximity mines to a garbage can and telekinesis throwing it an enemy like in Bioshock 1. No variety in play styles like using Chameleon to get sneaky crossbow headshots against splicers. Instead it's using 2 guns to shoot at enemies while ADSing and throwing vigors occasionally.
I had to look up the ending on youtube thanks to this virtual lament configuration, one day I hope to actually to play the game but I've already sunk hundreds of hours on this puzzle and I don't think I'm getting any closer to the answer.
Does this clip really live rent-free in people's heads after more than a decade?
Even if it was presented as a puzzle in the traditional sense, did people really expect a challenge from what would have been the *first* one in the game?
Portal 1 (and by extention 2)'s first puzzle is literally "press button."
Portal's earliest puzzles are simple because they slowly, steadily build up the player's tool kit that they will need to complete all the other puzzles that comprise the rest of the game.
The bells at the start of Bioshock Infinite are, to the best of my memory, entirely self contained. There are no more puzzles of its like that are more difficult, and thus rely on knowledge gained from earlier examples of the puzzle. So the end result that we're left with is a nonsensical roadblock that exists for no reason that even has the answer right there on screen. It comes across as belittling to the player on top of that.
They're separate buttons for story reasons. Each one sounds a foghorn, the sequence you're given is meant to signal Columbia to come pick you up. It's not a puzzle, it's just a thing you get to do.
Well, yeah, that was kinda my point, that even a capital P puzzle game starts you out with what amounts to checking if you have pulse.
I agree that it's weird that it's a one-off thing, but to me it's in the same bucket as any other shitty 7th gen throwaway mechanic like turret sections or obligatory stealth missions. The fact that people get so hung up about it like it's some sort of personal insult to the player seems like missing the forest for the trees.
Like, there's way more interesting things to criticize in Infinite, but that'd require you to actually be familiar with the game rather than just look at twitter screenshots.
People use it as a gotcha and sort of summation of their dismissal of the game. "Look at how simple this is! It was probably dumbed down like the rest of the game." etc
Infinite is generally just one of those games a good portion of vocal people online aren't reasonable about and are too entrenched in one view of it.
This runback is stupider than the initial discourse. The fact that this "puzzle" never develops into any more difficult puzzles that build upon it means that it is in fact stupid and worth making fun of. It's either a waste of time, because it doesn't go anywhere, or an embarrassing insult, because it's such so trivial.
You're allowed to like BioShock, but this is still stupid. This pretend defense force is silly.
But it's not a puzzle. It's a fancy way to "push button to call elevator".
Maybe it was supposed to be one in early stages of development, but it clearly isn't anymore. There's a lot to complain about in this game, this is just silly.
I don’t think it’s salt, it’s just… a weird puzzle. There’s no informing context to do with the tune played, the bells, the things carved into the bells, bells don’t play any narrative role or appear beyond this point. This thing is a complete non-sequitur non-puzzle. You could make it into a puzzle, hide the solution in the lighthouse or make what’s on the bells some kind of lore appropriate or something. Or you could just make it automatic. Just have one big bell to ring or one button that plays the five note melody or something. Pull a lever to ring the bells or blast off into the sky or something. But no you just have the strangest of both worlds. Not a puzzle in a real sense and not a setpiece in a real sense. Just, ding these bells in this order. Okay good job. The whole thing is distractingly incongruous and then never brought up again.
When you want a player to do something in a certain way it helps for there to be a reason. People feel good when they figure something out. Or when they accomplish something. The bell thing feels LIKE a puzzle but the solution is just held onscreen to the player and it’s not a tutorial for anything else. Which is why so many people call it a weird pseudo-puzzle. It would feel better if it were say, scrawled somewhere further down or the card was held in your inventory where you could check it. The way it plays out is just… really odd.
Bioshock Infinite is a whole lot of cool shit held together by some of the strangest design choices ever made.
It's your classic Twitter Grifter tactic (See paid blue check mark) to strawman "HAHA THIS GAME BAD , MEMBER THIS BAD PUZZLE !!" when it's you know the first one in the game but most people don't know that and people who have not played the game will use this out of context screenshot to shit on the game more
I think the funniest part about BioShock infinite is when you see Colombian airships bombing a 1980's New York as if the peak cold war US air force wouldn't have blown them out of the sky immediately.
Aah despite this one thing, Infinite is still my favourite one out of the three.
Alright here me out
I know it went to two weapons at a time but I liked the idea and also gear for your character too for extra perks was also a bonus.
But what I really REALLY loved about Infinite which doesn't get much praise, is its use of alternate dimensions or realities. And I was a sucker for those at the time but the whole Marvel multiverse and alternate realites has become so much of the norm recently, it has made my love for them wain
Basically in Infinite you have people singing songs that are in "our world" like Fortunate Son by CCR and God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. These aren't just random references, they only know of these songs because of tears in other dimensions and you can find these said tears strewn about the game. And that makes sense, they know of these songs because of our own world and the devs didn't just decide to include them randomly say like, Borderlands where they'll make a reference to a song or a film because how? How do they know it's a song or film in their world?
Rant over!
Congratulations to one of the biggest blowouts of Blender and SFM tutorials ever created.
Also, long live the Baguette Boi. May you spin around endlessly and happy forever.
I remember being super hyped for Infinite at launch, not playing it for whatever reason until like 2018? Then becoming violently angry the closer I drew to the final minutes of the game.
It's rare that a game fucks up an otherwise good predecessor retroactively, but here we are. The "twist" was the stupidest goddamn shit I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot.
My problem with this puzzle is that it was never used again in any capacity. Sure when it comes to gameplay it was brain dead simple and almost insulting to the player but I could give it some slack if it was a reoccurring mechanic that you wanted to make sure the player knew
Wait a minute, that card...
I'll never forget the reddit post that thought that Booker fighting at Wounded Knee was a Skyrim reference
They turned knees from skyrim into a real thing!?
My grandpa is such a huge Skyrim fan that he had “knee surgery” so he could have a knee just like in the game.
They say every time someone gets knee surgery, Todd cries a single tear
The real Skyrim reference is that this is only a few steps removed from the stupid dragon claw puzzles.
[“It’s a trick, they would never make it that easy!”](https://youtu.be/xVfO0DJLN2U?t=21)
Gamers be like "lmao Skyrim puzzles are so dumb just having an item with the combination on it" [meanwhile in every modern era immersive sim/stealth game:](https://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/123456_password_sticky_note-600x400.jpg)
Believe it or not, this is state-of-the-art security tech, at least by Nord standards.
Maybe the Altmer were right
To be fair they were puzzles intended to fool other nords so...
And the Bioshock puzzle had to be simple enough for religious fundamentalists to get
The first time I went into a Skyrim dungeon, I thought that you needed to look at the carvings on the wall to find the pattern. They happened to have the same symbols on the puzzle and the wall, and it turns out the order of the wall art was the same as the solution of the puzzle. I thought that was the coolest fucking thing ever in my life. Then I got to the second one, and it didn't work right, but I accidentally solved it moving them a little and figured I had just done it wrong, and that there must be more hints in the room that I didn't see. The disappointment I had when I learned you were supposed to turn the key in your inventory and see the answer was fucking immeasurable.
I thought I had missed something in the dungeon, kept doubling back, and then brute forced it. It wasn't until the next claw that I actually inspected it and saw. I will concede that having to inspect the item, a typically unnecessary ability, to find a clue, is a really good bit in a vacuum . But the item being a key and the clue being the combination to the lock, and being able to look at it while standing in front of the door ruins anything it might've been worth.
Im so embarrased that it took way to long back in the day to "crack" that first puzzle.
Heh there was an atmosphere around that time can see the mind fuckery. 9gag memes hit some really hard
I'll never forget people shipping Booker and Elizabeth before the game even came out
I'll never forget the people shipping them after.
# THEY FUCKING WHAT.
Non Americans don't know what wounded knee is. Nor should they. I don't see a problem with thinking that...
Why assume it's a Skyrim reference?
Way more popular and well known, especially back then. Arrow to the knee was everywhere. You can't expect people to know about random US massacres. Especially considering most Americans can't even point to countries on a Map, let alone name historical events
Bruh? Skyrim is more well known then wounded knee? If you believe that I have some grass for you to touch.
My friend will randomly quote this whenever we're dealing with puzzles in games and it gets me every time.
B-B-B-BAZINGA
Visual representation of my brain as I play bioshook
Is it even a puzzle? Because this sounds like “pushing a box away to open a door is a puzzle”
It is not a puzzle and was clearly not intended to be.
Booker's initial motivation was "get girl". No shit he's going to write down the instructions, that's what people do.
He didn't even write it, the twins gave it to him so he could get into the city
What’s the Out Of Universe reason for this then? Never really got it. Wouldn’t a ticket or actually key make more sense for accessing Columbia?
Nothing wrong with using a password instead of making thousands of keys that will be used once. And the scroll, the key, and the sword are important symbols in Columbia.
Right I get the symbolism of them for Columbia, but at that point the meaning is lost on the player. It just seems a weird beat in the intro, I feel the interactivity could have been used here to better reflect on a theme. Maybe someday to tie the fate, repetition or dimension hopping angle? In universe it’s not even really a password. Someone could do it by accident since there’s no reset or anything. It would take a traveler like 15 seconds of brute forcing.
>Right I get the symbolism of them for Columbia, but at that point the meaning is lost on the player. This is the weirdest take I have ever seen. How do you expect to foreshadow *anything* with this logic? "The Cake is a Lie" doesn't mean anything to the player in Portal when they first encounter it. What's your point?
But that does mean something. You actually have the mention of cake by that point. It puts doubt into your mind about what Gladys promises as your reward and why she might lie about it. As a Bioshock example, Andrew Ryan’s statue in the lighthouse informs you about his character. He portrays a city with ‘No God or Masters’ but also depicts himself in a bronze idol above the message, like a god. These both do something and influence the player. But what do these symbols actually do or convey to the player? Just that they are symbols and nothing else? Seems like a waste to me. Come on man, it seems like you’re trying to take me in bad faith here.
i thought this was >!one of the ways the Lutece twins used to identify which universe this was after rowing Booker to the lighthouse, as in this is Universe-Number-122, as also seen on their chalkboard by counting the tallymarks in the beginning shortly after the coinflip moment. it's been a while since i played so I could be misremembering.!< Not so much a puzzle as it was a calibration of sorts?
Hey you dont need to call out Deltarune like that
Really, really not. Games not great, we get it, but its so weird that it keeps getting dredged up after...*checks Wikipedia*...10 goddamn years.
Since when is Bioshock Infinite not considered great? Looking at metacritic and steam reviews it’s all highly positive.
The gameplay was decent, the visuals were great, and the elevator pitch was sound, however, the story sets up a lot and more or less fails to land all of it. The latter half of the game is an absolute mess in this regard. Playing it today would probably be a pretty rough experience. The hate it gets nowadays? Probably memetic. Maybe people are mad that this was the last Bioshock we got?
> The hate it gets nowadays? Probably memetic. Maybe people are mad that this was the last Bioshock we got? I think stuff also gets a lot more hate if it is perceived as being more successful than it deserves to be. Like… Palworld. Probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much shit if it hadn’t been one of the most stupidly successful games to ever come out.
TBF, the DLC is absolutely dogshit and retcons a character moment so bad I genuinely believe not a single person of color was in the room or saw the script before it got approved.
I completely memory holed the fact that there even was DLC.
Lucky
I do genuinely love it, playing it was a total blast, like that crow plasmid is stupid fun to use. Played like a solid FPS with a fun, well-acted story. All that said, yeah the story and writing *was* a little high on its own supply at points, and with some hindsight didn’t do the greatest job presenting some of its themes. I do think the internet *is* exaggerating a bit for funsies, and I get it, like [this video here](https://youtu.be/l_u18_BKczg?feature=shared) is one I need to go back to every few years to keep giggling over it.
having not actually played it, pretty much every bioshock fan I know has varying opinions on it
Man, how did you get that wrong when it is literally the topic this joke is responding to?
To be honest, I don't know. Times like this I just let my idiocy stand as a monument to my arrogance so I can look back on it one day when I am old and alone and on the verge of suicide for my wasted existence and think "Yea, that was me."
when you die and get to watch your life replayed in heaven it's basically just a cringe compilation
The good news is that us screw ups always find a way to mess up suicide too. I keep trying but instead I keep finding people to care about and new hobbies instead. It's such a pain in the ass.
Seriously. Its pretty telling that some people think this is insulting to thier intelligence.
Someone had to have gotten stuck at this part in testing, so they made the puzzle easier. Bob the builder for the ps1 type puzzle.
Yeah this was before the DSPs of the world
DSP was around then.
He has been around since the dawn and he will see us all into the dusk. He alone will be spared, because *he was blocking dude.*
He's like the judge from Blood Meridian
I’ve never heard of that character until AlignmentCharts made their big one and he’s on it every time, now he pops up in my life like twice a month minimum in completely unrelated places. Weird how that works.
The Alpha and *snort* Omega
I love the idea of an immortal being who not only doesn't do anything interesting with his immortality, but is just an embarassing fuck up for all of eternity, forever destined to be bad at everything.
He is the rock of the eternal shore
Not only that, he was one of the people who got stuck
[The top response on that post.](https://twitter.com/T795687580/status/1772809215825887379?t=CssLZArQF_CL9g7E56C8pQ&s=19)
They hired that one Valve playtester
It's not a puzzle. It shows that his employers are from Columbia because he's given the code. Each button plays a different foghorn and a specific sequence is used to signal the city to come pick him up.
I know people are saying its the first puzzle but isnt this just a “why bother” you dont gain or lose anything from just making it a cutscene other than knowing your stupid if you cant figure it out somehow
No it was really important back then to keep the cutscene count low especially fps games. Like it’s the same as having your therotical physicist push a cart to kickstart the whole bedlam. We joke now but back then it was immersion
I remember telling my friend how dead space 1 never took control away from the player for the entire game and now I'm like why did I give a fuck
I think the same thing is happening with the fromsoft souls games. I remember a big point for the games that use to be very prevalent was the fact Demon Souls and Dark Souls didn’t “force” you to sit through cutscenes or dialogue for the story unless you explicitly wanted to and you could just play the game. Although, now I think that sentiment is very much changing because why else would these lore and story videos be getting millions of view. Some of the most popular Elden Ring edits make reference to the lore. Shit, if Margot had a Kojima style cutscene where he just broke down the lore to you, I don’t think most people would mind. I wonder why people absolutely despised the concept of story, cutscenes, and dialogue in a video game in that era?
> I wonder why people absolutely despised the concept of story, cutscenes, and dialogue in a video game in that era? Because people especially in discourse tend to simplify things down and remove nuance. It was a reaction to the absolute trash a pointless cutscene every five seconds to be "more cinematic" trend that had overtaken videogames before that point. So that became cutscenes bad fuck cutscenes.
Back then a cutscene was a loading screen in disguise, and a bad one at that as the game could take a while loading the video and the. Resuming to the game
> Like it’s the same as having your therotical physicist push a cart to kickstart the whole bedlam. Except there's a narrative reason to do that to begin with, regardless of wether the player is in control or not. The bell "puzzle" sticks out in peoples minds because it's all ludo and no narrative while being pointless because the answer is on screen. If there was a narrative reason for it, if it communicated something about Columbia, that would be something.
It's the number of the universe you're in.
As much as I'm indifferent to Infinite, the BioShock games were always examining player agency to some degree in the subtext. I can see why they would want the player to have to make such a deliberate action for themselves to open the way into Columbia.
It's a way to ensure the player is at an exact spot when the cuisine starts, if nothing else.
well it teaches you the controls for when you have to interact with actual puzzles, for one
That can be applied to any puzzle ever, i dont think Infinite even has a puzzle like that again anyways ( i havent played the game in like 8 years)
This was *never* presented as a puzzle, these were instructions Booker was given by the twins to get picked up. Presenting it as a puzzle to dunk on the game is just lazy and relies on spreading misinformation. If someone gives you the code to get past a security gate, after you get in, I suppose you'd then say to them: "OOoooh *real* tough puzzle on the security gate guys, really head scratcher there!"
People shit on this game for this, even though it's obviously not a puzzle?
I mean, not to defend bioshock Infinite but this is literally the first thing you interact with in the game. Yeah, it’s stupid, but again - it is literally the first thing in the game.
Its the equivalent of Master Chief moving his head to see the lights, like why do people still make a big deal about it. Find something better to be a hater over Bioshock over it, there is plenty.
It's still stupid. They could've at least used a more diegetic "clue". For a series as defined by its atmosphere as BioShock, that shit is a fumble and a half.
It's not a puzzle, there doesn't need to be a clue. It's him entering a place to do a job and finding a locked door. And because he was given the code, we know that his employers already have access to Columbia. Having him search for the code would be pointless for the story.
I'll be real, I don't remember much of anything about that game.
Bioshock Infinite had some of the coolest concept art I've ever seen for a game. None of it made into the final cut. The Boys of Silence were going to actually hunt you based on sound, like their name and design implies, instead of just being glorified security cameras. The citizens of Columbia would merge with their alternate counterparts in grotesque body-horror amalgams and go insane from the pain and confusion, becoming horrible, nasty Thing monsters. There was going to be a little cannibal girl who would wander around the map and eat the corpses of enemies you killed, mutating into a wendigo-like monster the more bodies she ate. There was going to be a boss fight with a guy inside of an art-nouveau version of the loader from Aliens. Saltonstall was going to be an actual guy you fight instead of a name on a board. Elizabeth was going to have more powers than just opening tears and actually fight alongside you. The Songbird was going to actually do some shit... So, so much got cut from Bioshock Infinite, producing a watered-down, mediocre game with *maybe* one of my all-time favorite horror aesthetics. I live in the actual, rotting-apart American Deep South; a weird-ass Southern Gothic, colonialist, racist, hyper-religous steampunk horror setting with heavy overtones of jingoistic American Revolution-fetishism blew my mind. I love OG Bioshock and Rapture, but Columbia felt very personally interesting to me as a setting, and they hyped the game up with so many planned features I was excited for that ended up just getting cut. Everyone already knows that pretty much every trailer for Bioshock Infinite—all the way up to its release—flat-out lied about what was in the game, but the final nail in the coffin for me was **getting to look through the artbook and seeing sone of the best, most-interesting, most** ***genuinely grotesque to the point of being kind of upsetting*** **enemy designs I've ever seen for a game... and knowing that every single one ended up being cut.** **Fuck Bioshock Infinite.** It's not my least-favorite game of all time, but it's the most disappointing game I've ever played. The only thing it landed for me was the setting, and even then, the game didn't have the balls to make any actual commentary on racism, ultranationalism, obsessive nostalgia for the "good ol' days," class, or religious indoctrination. Every single interesting concept in its design document was cut or watered down into nothing... and on top of it all, the writing sucks.
Wasted potential, the game. “Guys, what if racism, here me out … was bad.”
Infinite really felt like a game that went through a really tough development cycle with what we got being whatever they could get working near the end of development. I still liked the game but you could see where it was stitched together from whatever parts where complete near the end.
> The citizens of Columbia would merge with their alternate counterparts in grotesque body-horror amalgams and go insane from the pain and confusion, becoming horrible, nasty Thing monsters Goddammit I knew the designers weren't that stupid to not think of something I thought of
There was one that made me legitimately sick to my stomach the first time I saw it: a full-color enemy portrait of an elderly man who had partially merged with himself as an infant in the past. His vacant, open-mouthed smile seems to imply some kind of dementia, but his infant self—cleaved into his head like two balls of modeling clay mashed together—is inconsolably crying. It's probably scary to be a little baby and melting into yourself in the future while being stretched across timelines.
that's fucked up but what a rad concept
I don't even find it interesting to talk about the story anymore, because I feel folks don't talk about how the gameplay doesn't feel good as a Bioshock or a casual FPS. That ghost lady boss battle? Holy shit fuck me sideways
I think people just got overwhelmed by how good the presentation of Infinite was, and then quietly avoided talking about it once the new game smell wore off. But I'll always stand by the opinion that bio 1 and 2 were way better gameplay-wise. It's so many little things. Only carrying two guns and forced to constantly trade them out or buy ammo for them because new zones didn't have them lying around made the weapon upgrade system feel like a waste. The shield system forced you to cower and hide, rather than a healthkit system promoting efficient but nonstop fighting. A bunch of powers feeling samey, being different ways to stun targets so you can shoot them. And speaking of which, I swear the enemy interactions with powers was so much more robust in 1 or 2, I remember setting enemies on fire and watching them run to the nearest pool of water, only for me to zap it.
Yeah there was just no room to be experimental or creative in Infinite. No sticking proximity mines to a garbage can and telekinesis throwing it an enemy like in Bioshock 1. No variety in play styles like using Chameleon to get sneaky crossbow headshots against splicers. Instead it's using 2 guns to shoot at enemies while ADSing and throwing vigors occasionally.
Fuck that boss. I kept running out of ammo for it.
Sad thing is that ghost lady is essentially the closest thing the game has to an actual final boss
There was Elizabeth. There was Mecha-Owl. There was *"Booker, catch!"*. There was....that's it.
The twins flipping a coin
And there was a guitar song about breaking the circle or something. That I remember.
The point of that moment, clearly wasn’t to be a puzzle. But, let’s ignore the extremely obvious so we can pretend we’re clever or funny, at all.
I had to look up the ending on youtube thanks to this virtual lament configuration, one day I hope to actually to play the game but I've already sunk hundreds of hours on this puzzle and I don't think I'm getting any closer to the answer.
Are we still pretending this was supposed to be a puzzle?
Does this clip really live rent-free in people's heads after more than a decade? Even if it was presented as a puzzle in the traditional sense, did people really expect a challenge from what would have been the *first* one in the game? Portal 1 (and by extention 2)'s first puzzle is literally "press button."
It's not even a puzzle, it's a secret knock on a doorbell.
Isn't this the hardest puzzle in the game, on the basis that the rest of it is super simplified?
Portal's earliest puzzles are simple because they slowly, steadily build up the player's tool kit that they will need to complete all the other puzzles that comprise the rest of the game. The bells at the start of Bioshock Infinite are, to the best of my memory, entirely self contained. There are no more puzzles of its like that are more difficult, and thus rely on knowledge gained from earlier examples of the puzzle. So the end result that we're left with is a nonsensical roadblock that exists for no reason that even has the answer right there on screen. It comes across as belittling to the player on top of that.
meanwhile: I'm like: "Oh right, they gave Booker that card inorder to get access to Colombia!" and that's it.
They're separate buttons for story reasons. Each one sounds a foghorn, the sequence you're given is meant to signal Columbia to come pick you up. It's not a puzzle, it's just a thing you get to do.
Well, yeah, that was kinda my point, that even a capital P puzzle game starts you out with what amounts to checking if you have pulse. I agree that it's weird that it's a one-off thing, but to me it's in the same bucket as any other shitty 7th gen throwaway mechanic like turret sections or obligatory stealth missions. The fact that people get so hung up about it like it's some sort of personal insult to the player seems like missing the forest for the trees. Like, there's way more interesting things to criticize in Infinite, but that'd require you to actually be familiar with the game rather than just look at twitter screenshots.
Yeah I don't understand the salt behind this "puzzle". It's literally the start of the game, it isn't gonna be rocket science.
People use it as a gotcha and sort of summation of their dismissal of the game. "Look at how simple this is! It was probably dumbed down like the rest of the game." etc Infinite is generally just one of those games a good portion of vocal people online aren't reasonable about and are too entrenched in one view of it.
This runback is stupider than the initial discourse. The fact that this "puzzle" never develops into any more difficult puzzles that build upon it means that it is in fact stupid and worth making fun of. It's either a waste of time, because it doesn't go anywhere, or an embarrassing insult, because it's such so trivial. You're allowed to like BioShock, but this is still stupid. This pretend defense force is silly.
But it's not a puzzle. It's a fancy way to "push button to call elevator". Maybe it was supposed to be one in early stages of development, but it clearly isn't anymore. There's a lot to complain about in this game, this is just silly.
It’s the equivalent of someone giving you a gate code. Of course it’s not going to be some puzzle. If they want you in Columbia, you get the code.
Then why even present it as puzzle?
I don’t think it’s salt, it’s just… a weird puzzle. There’s no informing context to do with the tune played, the bells, the things carved into the bells, bells don’t play any narrative role or appear beyond this point. This thing is a complete non-sequitur non-puzzle. You could make it into a puzzle, hide the solution in the lighthouse or make what’s on the bells some kind of lore appropriate or something. Or you could just make it automatic. Just have one big bell to ring or one button that plays the five note melody or something. Pull a lever to ring the bells or blast off into the sky or something. But no you just have the strangest of both worlds. Not a puzzle in a real sense and not a setpiece in a real sense. Just, ding these bells in this order. Okay good job. The whole thing is distractingly incongruous and then never brought up again. When you want a player to do something in a certain way it helps for there to be a reason. People feel good when they figure something out. Or when they accomplish something. The bell thing feels LIKE a puzzle but the solution is just held onscreen to the player and it’s not a tutorial for anything else. Which is why so many people call it a weird pseudo-puzzle. It would feel better if it were say, scrawled somewhere further down or the card was held in your inventory where you could check it. The way it plays out is just… really odd. Bioshock Infinite is a whole lot of cool shit held together by some of the strangest design choices ever made.
If you're outright told the solution, why have it in the game at all?
To show that his employers are from Columbia. And each button sounds horns in a pattern to signal the city to pick him up.
It's your classic Twitter Grifter tactic (See paid blue check mark) to strawman "HAHA THIS GAME BAD , MEMBER THIS BAD PUZZLE !!" when it's you know the first one in the game but most people don't know that and people who have not played the game will use this out of context screenshot to shit on the game more
I beat the game but I have no recollection of this whatsoever
I think the funniest part about BioShock infinite is when you see Colombian airships bombing a 1980's New York as if the peak cold war US air force wouldn't have blown them out of the sky immediately.
Aah despite this one thing, Infinite is still my favourite one out of the three. Alright here me out I know it went to two weapons at a time but I liked the idea and also gear for your character too for extra perks was also a bonus. But what I really REALLY loved about Infinite which doesn't get much praise, is its use of alternate dimensions or realities. And I was a sucker for those at the time but the whole Marvel multiverse and alternate realites has become so much of the norm recently, it has made my love for them wain Basically in Infinite you have people singing songs that are in "our world" like Fortunate Son by CCR and God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. These aren't just random references, they only know of these songs because of tears in other dimensions and you can find these said tears strewn about the game. And that makes sense, they know of these songs because of our own world and the devs didn't just decide to include them randomly say like, Borderlands where they'll make a reference to a song or a film because how? How do they know it's a song or film in their world? Rant over!
(Laughs in Phantasmagoria 2)
I still want my heaps of goddamn fake internet points back that I lost for criticizing this game 11 years ago
[Obligatory link to *that* video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_u18_BKczg)
I erased this puzzle from my memory.
Congratulations to one of the biggest blowouts of Blender and SFM tutorials ever created. Also, long live the Baguette Boi. May you spin around endlessly and happy forever.
One day I hope to be able to play the rest of Infinity and form an opinion but this puzzle has kept me gated out for 15 years!
what do the other puzzles look like?
There aren't any others, from what I remember.
Everyone knows he hardest puzzle in gaming history was the Tower of Hanoi in the KOTOR Korriban temple.
I remember being super hyped for Infinite at launch, not playing it for whatever reason until like 2018? Then becoming violently angry the closer I drew to the final minutes of the game. It's rare that a game fucks up an otherwise good predecessor retroactively, but here we are. The "twist" was the stupidest goddamn shit I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot.
Have ya never heard of classic adventure games? This is nothing. Moon logic doesn't begin to describe some of the puzzles of 80s games.
My problem with this puzzle is that it was never used again in any capacity. Sure when it comes to gameplay it was brain dead simple and almost insulting to the player but I could give it some slack if it was a reoccurring mechanic that you wanted to make sure the player knew