2 comments

1. Ted says:

   April 13, 2013 at 9:08 pm

   Thanks for looking at my article, guys! Just wanted to say that, yes, I did finish the game, but it did take me a while: I got almost all the voxophones (still missing two, dammit), and overall I tried to explore the game as thoroughly as possible. Probably shouldn’t have said that I “plowed” through it–what I meant was that I was about two-thirds done with it and wanted to finish the dang thing, so I basically sat in front of my TV for eight hours straight.

   I did want to bring up again the question of whether Elizabeth can travel through tears into different locations. At some points, it seems clear that objects from different locations can come through–trying to avoid spoilers, but the first one she closes quickly to prevent a dangerous object coming through, and later it seems easy enough for other objects to cross universes. It doesn’t really clarify matters, but at least thematically, it seems insulting to me that the female character’s power is literally to open doors from one place to another, but she can’t seem to actually walk through them.

   Even apart from that, though, she’s still not a very interesting character to me. Discoveries about Elizabeth become less important than discoveries about Booker. She doesn’t have any real agency in the game–heck, even Lara Croft gets to shoot people! And her ‘arc’ is pretty standard: naive, sheltered girl exposed to broader world, gets dramatic costume change. Really didn’t do much for me.

   I appreciate the discussion, though. At the very least, Infinite is keeping people talking, which is a notable achievement for any video game these days.

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   • youko says:

     April 16, 2013 at 12:26 pm

     Ted – Thank you for your reply, specifically your rational reasoning! The tears are a peculiar issue, especially when it introduces a whole mess of things with the space-time continuum. I’m almost wondering if I need to give the game another playthrough just to focus on that, specifically. Perhaps it was vague to leave it up to the player’s interpretation, like so many other things in Infinite.

     As far as Elizabeth goes, Lara Croft might be a high bar to measure up to, but in my opinion, games have done far worse with female characters in the past. I found it refreshing that, despite the escort mission premise, you didn’t have to worry about her health or anything like that. Perhaps the times she saved me with that handy ammo toss also helps how favorably I view her? Although, the production values and quality work with the voice acting and animation also contributes to put her in that echelon of memorable female roles.

     You’re absolutely right, though, Infinite’s biggest success is to keep people talking about it. I was very interested to read a critique on the game for my term paper’s sake, and even though I disagreed with some points (admittedly, I was selling that a bit much for the sake of the podcast), I’m glad I got to read yours.

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