Character development

[darthkiwi]

I'm just wondering how character development will be dealt with in Bx:I. One thing I didn't like so much about Bx1 was that there was very little limit placed on how your character developed: you could be a great hacker *and* have incredible plasmids *and* fully upgraded guns *and* lots of health and defence and so on. By the end of the game, I got the feeling that I had followed my own character path, but that that path had led me to being a super-powerful character who had pretty much *everything*, and that everyone else playing the game would probably have a very similar character by the time they got to the end.


Whereas - and I'm sure somebody will hate me for this but here goes - in System Shock 2 you begin with a flexible character, but every choice you make from that point on only makes the character more and more individual. One-click character perks were permanent, so had to be chosen wisely with your long-term character development in mind. Stat points were fairly rare, so you could build a very *specialised* character (a great hacker or a powerful soldier or a psi-expert, or some blend of those three), but you could never actually be good at everything. This made me feel as though the game was much deeper in its character growth than Bx was.


Anyway, it was just a thought. Comments?

[iPomegranate]

I somewhat agree with this, having the same character as everyone else is kind of a let down. I would like to see unique character development.

[IGlegacy_Felonious]

I kind of agree with you and kind of don't. By the end of the game you may have acquired all or damn near close to all the tonics and upgraded plasmids. You however cannot slot them all at once, I know I ran around the first time with a souped up wrench going to town on splicers and Big Daddies alike. The next play through while I had most of those tonics/plasmids I had different ones slotted.

[sh0dan]

Its not that our characters aren’t individual in BS compared to SS2. If we all compared them, I am certain that no two would be exactly alike. Its more that their range of powers and abilities has much more crossover with one another. Especially because certain powers were just so good that you would be crazy to swap them out for something lesser.


In SS2 there are essentially three paths and you really have to specialise in only one of them or the game can get a bit tricky. There isn’t really a lot of room for player expression in that system. (Although it was damn fun still).


Myself, I want the range of expression BioShock has because I don’t like being pigeon holed into a certain style of play. But it would also be nice if we had to make some hard choices when it comes to the more meaty powers and abilities.


I would like to see a much deeper character progression system, more like SS2's rather than BS. BioShock was a tad on the “lite” side for me.


Infact didn’t Ken Levine say the character progression would be more granular this time around?

[benporter]

I think that the gradient of development in BioShock 1 actually helped to enhance that primal eco-system setup that the city had devolved into; you start off as a weak scavenger and eventually become the big fish. It would be nice to have a bit more specialisation in Infinite, however. I don't imagine it will be as savage a world as Rapture; it'll be disturbing in its own way.

[darthkiwi]

You however cannot slot them all at once, I know I ran around the first time with a souped up wrench going to town on splicers and Big Daddies alike.


I can see what you're saying, and I agree to an extent. But I always felt like Bx gave you a huge number of actively violent options - grenade launchers, bees in your arms, wrench upgrades - which sort of eclipsed most of the non-violent ones. Or, to put it another way, Bx gave me lots of aggressive tools which meant I didn't get to really appreciate the less direct ones. Whereas in SS2, the fact you can either max out your hacking skill *or* your special weapons skill meant I appreciated my hacking skill more when I made a successful hack.



I would like to see a much deeper character progression system, more like SS2's rather than BS. BioShock was a tad on the “lite” side for me.


After reading your post, I entirely agree with you. It wasn't that SS2 gave you more of a chance to customise your character: it was fairly limited in that respect, and Bx had more expression. But there was something that made Bx feel "lighter" than SS2. I think the fact you can swap upgrades in and out at will contributed to that. And I think the fact you can be very powerful (whether with the wrench or plasmids or guns) as well as being technically skilled killed it for me a little bit. I was also not a big fan of the "Power to the People" stations, which gave you gun upgrades for free. It felt like I hadn't really earned that firepower - but the upgrades themselves weren't all that stunning, to compensate for that. The shotgun became almost useless shortly after I upgraded it anyway. It would have been a better plan, in my opinion, to have made the player pay for gun upgrades with ADAM to limit their use, but to make them much more powerful.



you start off as a weak scavenger and eventually become the big fish.
That's a good point, but, to continue the ecosystem analogy, species don't get one up on each other just through brute strength. I mean, there are some insects that lay their eggs inside other insects, and the young eat their way out. And other species exhibit symbiosis or camouflage, for example. I'm just saying that there are ways you could have "evolved" in this ecosystem which use methods other than force.


Sorry if I seem a little impassioned about this, I don't mean to put anyone down. It's just that Bx was so close to being, in my opinion, a peerless game but I think that in this area it didn't quite go deep enough. If Infinite can rectify that - and Ken Levine has said that the character progression will be more granular, so I'm quite hopeful - then it'll be a dream come true.

[IGlegacy_Felonious]

You make some good points, I don't think anybody sees it as you putting anyone down. I'm all for a deeper character progression, I just didn't see Bioshock 1's character progression a short-coming of the game (if it had any short-coming for me- the last level, Fontaine fight, and mediocre endings was it).


You can always set up self-imposed challenges to almost force you into less direct approaches. My last play through which was for the Brass Balls achievement, besides going through on hard, with vita-chambers turned off, I went through just with just the wrench, not picking up any weapons. Now you can bet I used plasmids I might not have relied on in a normal run from rage, hypnotize big daddy, decoy became all that much more useful, and I always hacked everything whenever I played anyways. It might not be the ideal answer but I found it a challenge/fun to do. I picked up a PS 3 earlier this year as well as Bioshock with it, when I get some time I plan on playing the PS3 version on survivor difficulty something which the Xbox version lacked, I'd imagine that difficulty would require the player to be use every means available to have a smooth run.

[sh0dan]

felonious said:

I plan on playing the PS3 version on survivor difficulty something which the Xbox version lacked, I'd imagine that difficulty would require the player to be use every means available to have a smooth run.



I hope BSI has that out of the box. A survival mode.


The upcoming Fallout New Vegas has one and the way SS2 was designed was really in a survival mode type of difficulty with extremely rare salvage, so that is one wish I do hope the devs add into the game.