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skottichan

macrumors 65816
Oct 23, 2007
1,081
1,264
Columbus, OH
I love how everyone is hung up on the word "infinite". Two problems with the idea of an infinite number of universes. One, there would still be a Prime Universe, the in which all deviations spring from. It was created first, even if by one Plank time, and all subsequent universes are its children. So changing something in the past in the Prime Universe would change the deviation points.

Secondly, and most importantly, there are not an infinite number of universes, let alone Earths, as new deviations are created every moment of time. That's not counting the times where the universe failed to launch, where the Milky Way was never formed or destroyed, where the Sol system was never formed or destroyed, etc right down to worlds where Booker wasn't born, where he died at Wounded Knee, where Anna wasn't born, etc. All of these subtract from the concept of "Infinite".
 

FlatlinerG

macrumors 6502a
Dec 21, 2011
711
5
Ontario, Canada
Anyone running it on integrated graphics? If it will play fine, even on low low settings, on a late 2011 13" MacBook Pro then I'll definitely pick it up. I enjoyed both previous games and have been waiting to here about this one for a while now.
 

anshuvorty

macrumors 68040
Sep 1, 2010
3,360
4,818
California, USA
Anyone running it on integrated graphics? If it will play fine, even on low low settings, on a late 2011 13" MacBook Pro then I'll definitely pick it up. I enjoyed both previous games and have been waiting to here about this one for a while now.

use this website to confirm if your specs are within the minimal limits for the game: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

(My guess is no, its a pretty demanding game in terms of graphics)

Good luck!
 

lewdvig

macrumors 65816
Jan 1, 2002
1,416
75
South Pole
It was pretty meh game but a good story.

I found the shooting boring and tedious by the end. Dumb enemies, boring weapons, un-necessary powers and bland environments (I don't mean the nice whimsical textures, I mean the geometry you actually navigate).

Elizabeth was a pretty lame side kick, the whole cliched running away thing. Stranger still because Booker had just told why he was there 2 minutes before she freaked out. She goes from living in a tower to running with a mass murderer like its no big deal.

The background is neat. The Lutece siblings, steam era quantum physics, columbia world tour and resulting alt history of the world are all neat. BUt its just garnish.

Bioshock was superior in every way because it made none of these mistakes.
 

blasto2236

macrumors 6502a
Nov 4, 2012
798
392
It was pretty meh game but a good story.

I found the shooting boring and tedious by the end. Dumb enemies, boring weapons, un-necessary powers and bland environments (I don't mean the nice whimsical textures, I mean the geometry you actually navigate).

Elizabeth was a pretty lame side kick, the whole cliched running away thing. Stranger still because Booker had just told why he was there 2 minutes before she freaked out. She goes from living in a tower to running with a mass murderer like its no big deal.

The background is neat. The Lutece siblings, steam era quantum physics, columbia world tour and resulting alt history of the world are all neat. BUt its just garnish.

Bioshock was superior in every way because it made none of these mistakes.

I respectfully disagree. The original Bioshock was basically just one claustrophobic corridor after another, and the environments became incredibly repetitive and non-distinct by the end of the game. Having more open environments in Infinite made the shooting gameplay a lot more fun, IMO. More room to spread out and with all the tears and skylines, there are an infinite (rimshot) number of ways to approach any of the battles.

As for the story, it had much better pacing throughout than the original, and also did a better job of making you care about the characters.
 

Tsuchiya

macrumors 68020
Jun 7, 2008
2,310
372
I'm divided about the combat. On the one hand it was functional and gave you a lot of options. Vigors were cool as well. But it could also be pretty brutal. Aiming your powers seemed a bit hit or miss, and you take damage/drain salt so quickly that you need to sometimes play turtle and hide behind something.

At times I wasn't sure whether to spend my cash powering up my weapons to take out later enemies or increase my bars so I didn't die so quickly. Handymen in particular were rough.

That being said though, overall I loved Bioshock Infinite. So much thought obviously went into the game, and Elizabeth was a great NPC. The ending blew my mind as well. There is so much you can miss if you don't pay close enough attention.

Considering a second play through when I get a chance.
 

Wardenski

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2012
464
5
I though Infinite was great. The visuals and sound were glorious, my 5870 managed everything on ultra, minus the "alternative" post-processing.

Elizabeth makes a great side-kick and interacts well with the environment. I don't remember the enemy AI being particularly amazing but it was functional.

I have never found the Bioshock games as fluent in combat as HL2 it has to be said. I have always struggled to use both weapons and powers effectively but maybe I am slow. I always seemed to run out of ammo. I played through on Hard first.

Overall, I think Bioshock 2 is still my favourite game in the series so far. I still haven't played Minervas Den, which is supposed to be very good but I have issues with Windows Live.

I will re-play infinite in 1999 mode later in the year...next up is Far Cry 3.
 

Asuriyan

macrumors 6502a
Feb 4, 2013
622
23
Indiana
I love how everyone is hung up on the word "infinite". Two problems with the idea of an infinite number of universes. One, there would still be a Prime Universe, the in which all deviations spring from. It was created first, even if by one Plank time, and all subsequent universes are its children. So changing something in the past in the Prime Universe would change the deviation points.

Secondly, and most importantly, there are not an infinite number of universes, let alone Earths, as new deviations are created every moment of time. That's not counting the times where the universe failed to launch, where the Milky Way was never formed or destroyed, where the Sol system was never formed or destroyed, etc right down to worlds where Booker wasn't born, where he died at Wounded Knee, where Anna wasn't born, etc. All of these subtract from the concept of "Infinite".

The prime universe for the purpose of the storyline in BSI was the one in which Booker found himself facing baptism. That one moment was the launch point for all of the other universes-- 'deviations' encountered in the game- which is why making that moment impossible in that one universe destroyed all the other timelines in which Columbia existed.

Strange to think of a version of yourself who will inevitably seek events that lead to contact with an alternate version of yourself. This was alluded to with the Lutece 'twins' who eventually sought each other out in every version of the timeline, and eventually brought to bear when it was revealed that in every version of events that led Booker to choose the identity of Comstock, he would become sterile and thus have to seek out the offspring of his alternate self.
 

mrmarts

macrumors 65816
Feb 6, 2009
1,051
1
Melbourne Australia
I own a mid 2010 imac with 8gb of ram and a 512mb video card do you think it will run Bioshock infinite fine with little changes to the graphics, based on the Windows version.
 

MGregory666

macrumors newbie
Apr 27, 2013
29
1
UK
My Mid 2011 base model iMac (512 VRAM, 12GB RAM) runs this game really well on boot camp. I am confident Aspyr will take there time to ensure maximum preformance.
 

ajones92

macrumors member
Jun 19, 2008
87
54
Hilliard,OH
SPOILER! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE YET TO COMPLETE THE GAME!

So let’s talk about the story.

I’ve been trying to piece it together for a few days now, and my head is starting to hurt, so I need to write this down.

I may be wrong, may be missing pieces, so please, question and correct me if you know better than me! :)

I’ve kept it as bullet points, because I can’t think of any other way to piece it together!

The Primary Universe

Booker Dewitt refuses baptism to cleanse of his sins during the war.

Has a daughter called Anna, but his wife dies during child birth.

He turns to drink and gambling and gets into debt.

Robert Lutece offers to wipe DeWitt’s debts if he hands over his child.

Dewitt agrees to the deal, but changes his mind at the last minute, resulting in Anna’s little finger being party chopped off as she goes through a tear.

Dewitt syncs further into depression, scoring his daughters initials into his hand. AD.

The Lutece “twins” have mastered the ability to travel between universes and meet up after their deaths in an alternate universe.

With the guilt of what they have done to Dewitt, and knowing Comstock’s future plans for Anna in Columbia, they offer DeWitt the chance of revenge by taking him into Comstock’s universe.


Dewitt is taken to the lighthouse and the game begins.


An alternate universe.

Now it gets complicated, another infinite amount of universes are created at the time of the baptism, and in themBooker DID get baptised, and born again as a new person. Comstock.

He goes on top meet Rosalind Lutece, a brilliant scientist and creates Columbia, as a reaction to his feelings about the war he fought in, and to ultimately seek revenge on the country who sent him there.

Comstock needs an heir to the throne, and somebody to ultimately carry out Columbia’s master plan, but Rosalind’s experiments with tears and multiverse travel leave Comstock infertile, and unable to have his own child.

Rosalind, through the use of multiverses, finds “herself” in Dewitt’s Universe, where she was instead born as a boy, Robert Lutece.

Together, Comstock, Robert and Rosalind, hatch a plan to bring Dewitt’s daughter, who is technically also Comstock’s daughter, to Columbia, to carry on Comstock’s work when he dies.

Dewitt agrees to the deal, but changes his mind at the last minute, resulting in Anna/Elizabeth’s little finger being party chopped off as she goes through a tear.

In Columbia, Comstock renames the girl Elizabeth, and with the Lutece’s discover she has the ability to open and create tears into other universes and times.

The Lutece twins forshadow the return of Dewitt, who will return for his daughter, so Comstock put things in place that will make this almost impossible.

Elizabeth is locked away in a tower, where her powers and abilities are studied and harnessed. A songbird is created to always protect her. Posters all over the city warn of the “False Shepherd” with AD scratched into his hand.

Comstock kills the Lutece “twins” because they know the truth of how he obtained Elizabeth and his master plan.


When this is DeWitt understand this, he knows the only way to stop this cycle from happening, in the infinite amount of ways it has, is to destroy Comstock at the source.

He returns to the time and place the Baptism took place, and lets multiple Elizabeth’s, from multiple universes, drown him.


Things I still don’t understand.

The Syphon. Is this the source of the tears? The reason they can happen?

How can Elizabeth create them? Is it because she has crossed from one universe to another? This would explain the Lutece’s ability to control them.

Heres a few answers to your questions, at least my opinion on the matter.

The source of the tears is the Lutece field which is the technology used to make Columbia fly, as well as the ability to cross dimensions.

The reason Elizabeth can open tears is because her finger got cut off when Booker grabbed on to her while she was being taken away as a baby. It actually has a voxophone in monument tower of Lutece saying that the girl can open rifts between dimensions because a part of her exists in two worlds. and "It seems the universe doesn't like it's peas mixed with it's porridge."

The syphon was an invention designed to keep Elizabeth from being able to open tears that allow her to escape Columbia. She can open tears still but is leashed to the dimension.

The Luteces can jump between dimensions because when Comstock attempted to kill the Luteces his plan was to stage a hardware explosion of Lutece's machine but instead the twins were scattered across the probability space which allows them to move freely between dimensions....


Oh and while a minor detail, Comstock wanted to kill the Luteces. not to cover up his stealing Elizabeth, which is why he killed Lady Comstock, but because they saw the prophecy that elizabeth would use her powers to destroy new york city in 1983. Robert Lutece issued his sister an ultimatum that they return Elizabeth to her home universe and to booker or he will leave her. Comstock found that out so he had fink kill them,but failed.

They then send Booker to Columbia to get Anna/Elizabeth back before the New York prophecy can come true, and as revenge for Comstock having attempted to kill them. Because of all the different dimensions they end up in a very long loop of helping different "bookers" in trying to accomplish this. This is why towards the beginning the twins ask you to pick heads or tails and on the chalk board there are hundreds of picks for heads and none for tails because in this loop booker always chooses heads and when you choose the pin for the bird or the cage the lutece twins say something about that one always being chosen. Finally the one Booker makes it out after the syphon is destroyed and he ends up being drowned to prevent comstock and all the other bookers created after the baptism from ever existing.

Then to avoid a void, the universe resets to booker back in his house with baby elizabeth in her room.

Well thats how I interpreted everything anyway ;)
 

Irishman

macrumors 68040
Nov 2, 2006
3,388
842
I own a mid 2010 imac with 8gb of ram and a 512mb video card do you think it will run Bioshock infinite fine with little changes to the graphics, based on the Windows version.

The game will be playable. Obviously, with 10.9 on the horizon, we can only HOPE that a new OpenGL stack more compatible with 4.0 (at least) will be forthcoming. In that case, it should improve the overall performance, and maybe we'll finally see features like hardware tesselation on games that take advantage of it.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,395
26,518
The Misty Mountains
I respectfully disagree. The original Bioshock was basically just one claustrophobic corridor after another, and the environments became incredibly repetitive and non-distinct by the end of the game. Having more open environments in Infinite made the shooting gameplay a lot more fun, IMO. More room to spread out and with all the tears and skylines, there are an infinite (rimshot) number of ways to approach any of the battles.

As for the story, it had much better pacing throughout than the original, and also did a better job of making you care about the characters.

I'm late to the party, just picked BI up at Amazon for $20 as a digital download. For anyone not familiar it has been released for Mac Steam.

I'm spending a lot of time lately on my Windows partition so I installed it into Windows Steam, ran through the first couple of save points and I'm liking this much better than the original Bioshock which I agree had nothing but dark oppressive environments. The original was like a haunted house game with no real relief. However, BI has dark locations, but it also has brilliantly illuminated and pleasant outdoor atmospheres to counterbalance the dark. I'm playing the game on "medium" difficulty and I really digging the Skyhook's utility including 1 or 2 hit melee kills. I also like the fidelity of the guns, so far the pistol and machine gun. Outstanding cultural touches from the early 1900's and ominous signs of cult (People's Temple or Branch Davidians, your choice). "The Profit's seed is the key to salvation." Uh huh, I bet the Profit is digging that. :D
 
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saturnotaku

macrumors 68000
Mar 4, 2013
1,978
97
Anyone else having a problem with the game displaying your desktop cursor in the middle of the screen where the crosshair should be? I'd post a screenshot, but it doesn't show up when I attempt to capture it.
 
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