Most of what you've written jibes with my experience with B:I. All the Bioshock games had convoluted development histories, but B:I feels like there was never a clear idea as to what the game should ultimately be. (As an example, all those Vox weapons you find late in the game are the only surviving trace of a multiplayer mode the game was supposed to have.) Apparently it got so bad that after four and a half years in development, the publisher had to send in a producer to hammer the game into a playable form in six months to meet the final ship date. As for BaS...I only played the first one, and it felt weird, like a jerry-rigged version of B1′s combat manhandled into B:I’s mechanics, with a heavy emphasis on survival and stealth. As for plot, it does retcon a fair amount of detail from B1 while trying to pretend B2 never happened, and none of the changes are really for the better. I never played BaS2, which was even heavier on stealth, but what I’ve heard makes it sound like a scorched-earth epilogue to Infinite (and a fix-it fic for Daisy Fitzroy that just makes things worse).
Well, I just finished Bioshock Infinite. Some probably not very well-formed thoughts, plenty of spoilers, and a question for those who’ve played it, under the cut…
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